Taxi Fraud - Facts and Interpretations

There was an interesting incident yesterday, combined with today. While narrating I have tried my best to separate facts and my opinions. Let me know your opinions (and facts, if available).

After a trip to Jhansi over the extended weekend, wife and I reached Dadar by train yesterday (Tuesday) around 8 pm. A taxi driver in dull pink shirt asked us as we got down, "Kahaan chalenge?"
"Borivali", I said.
"Thik hai, chaliye, meter se chalenge."
I was mildly surprised at his offer, since he had approached us first. But I had nothing to lose, so I just nodded and went with him.

We dragged the luggage towards his taxi. It didn't have enough space behind since it was CNG-fitted old car. I think it was Maruti 800. We kept some luggage above in the tray, and a bag in the front seat. He seemed reluctant to keep it there, but I insisted. It appeared that another friend of him wanted to sit there. The friend, a sardar in white turban, managed to push the bag a bit and sit there.

Then sardar friend asked if we had two notes of 500 in exchange of a 1000 Rs note. I took the note, drew my wallet, and handed him two notes. He turned them back saying "thousand diye na". I looked at the notes again, and noticed that they were two 100 Rs notes, not 500. I was mildly surprised again. We took those notes back and gave him two 500 notes instead. He walked off.

Later the pink-shirt requested that we take another cab instead as he didn't have enough fuel to reach Borivali. He guided us to another cab and helped move our luggage. The new driver then drove us home from Dadar station.

Halfway to Borivali I noticed that I should have had more 500 Rs notes, and I had more 100 Rs notes than I should have had. Then it struck me that the sardar friend must have exchanged them. I had heard such stories with Bangalore rickshaw-wallas, but it didn't strike me at the instant when the same fraud was happening with me. As a friend had commented earlier - I am too nice.

We had failed to note the registration number of both - the earlier taxi we sat in, and the taxi we eventually took to Borivali. Angry with ourselves, we came home, cursed, ate and slept.

Today (Wednesday) I was staying a bit late in office, but left and reached Mahalaxmi station at around 7.41 pm (since 7.40 Borivali local was already gone, and 7.43 Andheri was next). I like 7.40 Borivali, it goes to platform number 8 at Borivali, from where I can walk home easily. Next Borivali train was 7.50 which goes to PF7. Not so bad, but... meh. So I thought let's go to Dadar and check out if I can find the pink shirt and the white turban again.

I went there. There was a similar looking (though I am not really sure whether he was the same) sardar at the same spot. I roamed around and tried to observe him for five minutes. Eventually he took an old couple to his taxi. Now I was watching him like a mom watching her two year old walk in the park, without the affection of course. Another sardar, with dark blue turban sat in the front seat and engaged in some talk with the old couple. After two minutes the couple came out of taxi, being walked to another one.

Now reasonably sure of the culprit, I confronted the sardar driver (with white turban) and asked him where he was yesterday. He came out of the taxi. I maintained that he had embezzled me of 800 rupees yesterday. He listened curiously to my allegations and denied being there the last day. 3-4 people gathered around the drama. I explained the whole sequence to everyone and accused that he was trying the same trick with the old couple. I ran to the uncle and asked him whether he was asked for change of 1000 rs note. He submitted that he was asked but he didn't have change. Lucky him!

So now back to the driver I asked for my money back and threatened to report to police otherwise. When I was walking away from him, another fellow sardar (third one) and a non-sardar driver tried to console me and asked me about the details.After much exchange of facts and descriptions of the people and taxi involved, they said they knew of the taxi and it belonged to a rival taxi union. Now here comes the twist. They fully reimbursed me my loss, and noted my mobile number to verify the fraud at a later stage of investigation.

I asked them why he had to suffer because of someone else's mischief. One of them said they will recover it from the actual culprit since they know him, and "customer is god". Even after more hesitation in taking money, they insisted that it was not a big thing. I finally walked off with the recovery.

End the facts, start the thoughts.

First, did the fraud actually occur, or was I too suspicious? Cues - taxi driver approaching and then asking to go by meter, reluctance of bag being kept in front seat (pre-planning of fraudster coming and sitting), my estimation of number of notes in my wallet, similar incident heard in case of bangalore rickshaw-wallas, guiding to another taxi to avoid questions later using an excuse of low fuel (he should have known earlier). Or I was downright cynical. I am betting a 95% probability of fraud.

Secondly, did I catch the culprit or ended up victimizing someone else? Frankly I have no idea.

One possibility is that I was mistaken about the identity, it is hard for me to distinguish one sardar with white turban from another. They either knew the real culprit and were in a position to get the money back or just wanted to shut it off since the costs of the matter reaching police may be very high - suspension/fine. Supporting cases - their narrative, a general opinion of sardars on average being truthful and honest, seeming rivalry between taxi unions. Second case is more disturbing since it is equivalent to harrassment.

Another possibility is that these guys or their friends were the real culprits. So to avoid the matter from reaching the police, they kept it amongst themselves. Supporting facts - same episode with elderly couple, readiness to reimburse me, the insistance that it was not a big thing (he actually showed a bunch of 100 and 500 notes, which together would have been approx cash 5k), and "customer is god" jargon.

Put with these facts and interpretations, I would take a 20% bet on them knowing, 20% on them paying me off (the first possibility cases) and 60% bet on the second possibility. Let us see if I get a call for the promised investigation.

Thirdly, should I have taken money from him at that instant, or waited for investigation and then asked for it? Given the above bets of mine, I now think I did the right thing by taking it.

Fourthly, should I have reported the incident to police anyway? I did not put myself into the agony, since there was a natural justice received. I am still not sure how to proceed. What if policeman takes advantage and harrasses them unduly? What if the fraud keeps on happening to others?

Also, why is it so hard to take note of taxi numbers, or why are we so lazy in such basic things?

As Nietzsche's famous quote goes - "There are no facts, but only interpretations." My interpretation is that I am nice, but not too much. Also, management bullshit lingo has gone mainstream.

PS: Finally off from my blog-o-sleep. Only such incident could wake me up. Comments welcome.

Future

Scene 1: At the time humans did not have enough intelligence to be distinguished from other animals, there were two rules.

1. Eat and reproduce.
2. Repeat
   

Scene 2: 10000 years ago, we were hunter-gatherers. There was no written law, and only loosely understood rules. Something like -

1. Eat, reproduce and provide for your group.
2. Find something which can make your tasks simpler - like fire, tools made of wood or stone, wheel etc. Once one human has found it, the whole group has a better chance of survival.
3. Whoever is physically strong will survive better.

Scene 3: In feudal ages, majority of population was peasants and labourers. There were formal laws made by powerful like kings/thakurs/barons etc, which were followed by everyone. However, due to unequal distribution of power there were too many moral hazards to improve standards of life for everyone. So the rules of the game were like -

1. Provide for family.
2. Pay taxes according to your produce. The taxes will go for the welfare of everyone. So again, civilization as a whole will survive better.
3. Do not question authority. Whoever has stronger connections will survive better.

Scene 4: Today we are at a stage we think about freedom, equality and justice. We aim to provide democracy, rights of property, voting, free speech, Habeas corpus[1] etc. Now the rules are loosely -

1. Be responsible towards self, family and taxes. Taxes will go for providing of "public goods".
2. Make use of freedom of rights, but do not falsely shout fire in a crowded theater[2]. Also uphold the freedom for everyone else (including those who are marginalized, not necessarily through specific concessions). Give respect to get respect.
3. Whoever can contribute/innovate/raise standards of life can survive better (broadly speaking, whoever is more intelligent/wise can better provide for themselves/family/society/humanity).

Okay, maybe we have not reached this state fully yet. The previous rules are sticky, and have not gone out of the game.

Scene 5: In future, I think issues for the whole earth (like sustainability of environment) will be more important than ethnic and political differences. Hence we will need to democratize our powers over the earth's ecosystem further down to other animals and plants.

Giving voting rights to other creatures may sound outlandish and outright crazy. But only in 1948 did UN uphold voting rights to women[3]. Many suggested it was outright crazy. A large part of Arab world still denies the rights today. And I am not saying anything about rights denied to races and colonies in past.

You may argue that trees don't have enough capabilities to select wisely. But it was argued all the same about tribals, blacks and women. And see how it has been proven wrong.

The basic aim of life still remains survival - with all the other types of gender, preferences, races, and also with other species, not without. We need the diversity to hedge life on earth against possible future catastrophes like virus attacks. If we need to survive together, we need to treat everyone equal.

That is what the future is going to be - Orangutan rallies reaching UN headquarters in protest of declining tropical forests[4]. And do expect political lobbying from butterflies, salamanders, bats, vultures and lemurs with tacit support from plants and fungi, and blessings from endangered species or perhaps a directive from Gaia[5].

Related readings:

1. Habeas_corpus - The right to appeal
2. Shouting fire in a crowded theater - of rights and responsibilities
3. Timeline of women's suffrage (nternational)
   
4. Statistics of threatened species
5. Synopsis about GAIA theory

Truth, power and peace

"Only power can protect peace", Says China Air Force Commander (refering to imminent unavoidable militarization of space) and "Only power can protect truth", says RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat (in news on TV, can't find link). Without endorsing the philosophical background of both, let me agree with "power can protect peace/truth" and disagree with the word "only".

Power is an easy solution to protect peace and truth, but a very dangerous one. All the history will show that centralization of power has always led to its abuse more than holding up peace/truth. While Bhagwat acknowledges that truth has a way of staying dormant and that it never dies, my contention is why do you need power in the first place.

An easy argument is that in order to preserve your identity, you would prefer that someone powerful doesn't arm-twist you for his personal interest. All the politics at national and international levels in its most genuine form keeps coming back to "I want to be powerful because I don't want other powerfuls to dictate my life."

The difficult part is to understand that the power is not over others, but over self - one, in preserving myself while being arm-twisted, and two, controlling myself and avoiding arm-twisting others. Even if I suffer or even die in the process, the truth does not, it never will. I end up living through the truth that lives beyond me and everyone else.

In the long term, majority people (and I am sure other animals and plants) want peace and truth. The natural path is of peace and truth. By the logic of evolution, life moves to a path of 'fit'ness to the environment around. The environment is the facts - the truth. Keeping it sustained is peace.

Any suppression of truth only builds a temporary imbalance. Unnaturally tackling the imbalance using power only creates another bigger one somewhere else, until it all collapses and ends up abusing the power. It is like entropy and the second law of thermodynamics (more on it sometime later).

Without contradicting oneself at different points of time, the only long term sustainable strategy of life is truth and power over oneself, thereby implying peace and benevolence (not necesssarily altruism).

Defining love

The age old question: What is love?

1. Caring for someone
   
2. Not expecting something in exchange
3. Willingness to give anything up (except your core values/beliefs/system)
4. Forgiveness/Absence of hatred or indifference

I think the last one is generic and yet elegant. Hatred comes from feeling of merciless revenge. Ability or willingness to forgive someone (sometimes after a punishment/revenge) is absence of unforgiving hatred, is love.

In the vaguest of terms, I have no idea how convincing this argument is. I just scribbled out the train of thought. Don't think too much about it, you need not react to this thought immediately. Take your time.

God

What is common between prisoner's dilemma, global financial markets, and law? All of them give good results if (and only if) everyone believes and complies with the rules of the system.

If I forsake other prisoner's trust, I gain in a single game. But in repeated games, my best strategy is to comply voluntarily and punish immediately (more specifically, copy other player's previous move, at times with small probability of forgiving defection). With a rational opponent, the sum of individual benefits in non-compliance is less than that in compliance strategy. A beautiful illustration of this can be found at S Anand's four philosophies arising out of pure mathematical logic. Communication, or any method of co-operation between prisoners helps.

In an investment bank I can earn fat bonuses for a few years using complex financial wizardry. But when it comes in an opaque and unaccountable manner (and same is done by other bankers as well), everyone loses trust in me, my company and overall market. The sum of individual paychecks and bonuses is less than overall loss faced by the market. In the long run, I would earn more if I (and others) believed in not cheating the system by not being transparent and circumventing the laws. Government's measures of restoring co-operation and faith help.

If I believe in god (of any kind), I am less likely to resort to atrocities, having faith in my own future. If I start creating a destructive distrust between different religious beliefs, I create a fundamentalist in someone's mind. Respecting the religious systems - mine and others' helps in cooperation and peace.

I have come to believe that the hope essentially stems from the faith in the system. I am inclined towards being agnostic when it comes to religion. But given the above analogies, I think it is better for me that I believe in a system. If more people believe in a system (not specifically religious system), mutual cooperation can produce more benefit for the society on the whole. I am more or less willing to believe in god, if it helps coperation in the system, and I think it does as shown by researchers. This article in The Economist shows through economic games that belief in group/system helps. (Read the last para for humour.)

One may compare the belief in a system to an economic cartel of producers, in both the systems there is a short-term incentive to defect from given association, but not in long term. However, there is one important difference. In a cartel, the extra value created for producer is coming at the cost of customer, making it a zero sum game effectively. In a game of prisoner's dilemma cooperation creates value but not at someone else's cost.

Few days back one of my friends was trying to proxy in class. If I don't believe in the system of x% compulsory attendance in a class, I am likely to give/arrange for proxies. I hope the above argument is convincing enough for him not to proxy in class :-)

PS: Yesterday we had a fantastic talk by Shaheen Mistry from Teach For India. I am inclined towards volunteering, but not yet sure of it. Let's see.

tired

Frankly I'm tired of the glorified rat race.
Not because we rats join it, but because the race breeds more rats, or so it is designed.
However, I should clarify that rats are the most supreme intellectual beings in the universe, as the conventional wisdom⁽¹⁾ goes.

Frankly, I've stopped looking forward to count Gandhiji's face.
Not because it's the means not ends, but because there's much more to get yourself aligned.
However, you may say that you need to buy that alignment too. I disagree. After me, my alignment goes.

Somehow, I've put my dreams on the backseat
With the faith that the spark⁽²⁾ will live for long
I am taking up more responsibilities, few which are a burden.

Somehow, there are no drums and no beat
With the assurance that my life will be song
I am falling in the trap, and not exploring the garden.

I am pushing time, another month passes
Buried deeply in work, study and classes
Not bothering to take a look outside
Snubbing others' existence⁽³⁾ in my own pride.

I will be another one among oh-so-glorious faces
Looking at the world from my rose-tinged glasses
This poem should become more structured, I decide
I lack the taste, but there's no restaurant I've not tried.


Notes -
1: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
2: Chetan Bhagat's speech: Keep the Spark
3: The Disadvantages of Elite Education, by William Deresiewicz

Half Way Through

Living every day in the fast pace
All dull work without a grace
Each one struggles to find own place
Where's his face? There's no trace.

Noises, fights, quarrels, affrays
3.3 for consult, because it pays
"Ain't no rat", his conscience says,
"I want brighter days, in my own ways."

Half way through the rough waters
Falling in love with Knopfler & Waters
"GPA?" ask Kotlers and Kotters
Careless he mutters, "It hardly matters!"

Pursue his dream, all does he care
Melody and beat, guitar and snare
'Cause, the truth when it's laid out bare,
Is not money or chair, but finding your flair.


- In response/echo with a couple of thoughtful posts in last few days - by Nikky and Kandarp
we are half Yum Bee Ye already....

Soham

This thought occurred to me a few days back.

Before that, let me give you some background on my beliefs so that it would be easier for you to reach the conclusion I reached.
1) I am an agnostic - It is very difficult for me to have blind faith in existence or non-existence of something.
2) I wonder about consistencies in different religions and philosophies - about the ultimate truth or about realizing that you carry a part of the God-ness in the universe (Paramatma or the equivalent).
3) I believe that taking an initiative (leadership so to say) is an individual decision after your own realization (the defining moment). Leadership cannot be taught or inherited (Leadcap)

Putting all this together, I think one carries a part of the ultimate power (God/Paramatma etc) BECAUSE one can decide to make a change to the world, and see it happen. To me, that is the most profound realization over some time.

In short - "Soham" - is the realization. I am him. I am the one who can change the world for good. And so is everybody else, if they wish.

ततः किम्

Here is post on this blog after a long time, since most of my time is being spent in my job, music-practices and (maybe wasted in) preparing for IIM interviews. So the habit of blogging on every weekend has now taken a backseat, and doesn't seem like driving for some time to come.

Here are the reasons one should appear for IIM interviews -

1. Irreproducible percentile
2. IIMs calling (and a promise of bright future therefore made)
   

Reasons it might not make any difference

1. Same old story of "घर से ऑफ़िस, ऑफ़िस से घर, बॉस का डर, बीवी का डर"
2. It does not answer the question "ततः किम्"*
3. The world might not exist in a livable form after only a few years due to either/combination of

• US foreign policy and a feared chain reaction
  
• Chinese space policy and another chain reaction
• Standstills on Hosur Road in Bangalore and continuous addition of running vehicles
  
• Increasing global warming and increase in natural violent activities thereof
• Decreasing biodiversity - on land, in air and in water
  
• Aliens getting frustrated of increasing stupidity on earth

And here are the reasons I would think twice before going to an IIM

1. Need to get a haircut. And keep doing that till hair stops growing.
2. Need to revise dept fundae, HR questions, general awareness and what not
3. Need to learn to be a hypocrite, especially in the interviews
4. Need to move on - Hate trying to find amicable people every now and then, especially regarding one's musical activities.
5. Not earn financially for following two years and still face hardships.
6. Face a stiffer and faster job-life after that.
7. Foresee an early retirement out of exhaution, frustration and long suppression of one's non-professional penchants.
8. If you win a rat-race, you win, but you are still a rat.

Given a choice, I would go to IIMs if haircut was not a concern, but now I am confused.
So right now I am in a moral dilemma, similar to the person around whom a typical GD revolves - "What should s/he do now?"

* "ततः किम्" means "what after that?"

p.s. there has been an update on this post to add reasons for indifference, so don't get confused if you read the post differently now.

moving on

i don't smoke. i don't drink as much. but i'm addicted to quizrooms on dc. after deciding to quit, twice i felt like playing again. but now i've quit. well, almost....

i used to be addicted to aoe. then i quit. then i am playing cs for some time now. i'll quit that too someday.

i used to be in love. then i quit thinking about it.

i write blog whenever i feel like expressing myself to my other self. someday i'll quit that.

i'm looking forward to a job which will give me money. after some time, i'll stop looking forward.

i want to live life happily. some day i'll go to himalaya and live an ascetic life.

i try to set things right, if i feel something should be changed so that the world could be a better place to live. someday i'll quit.

i'm an optimist to the core. sometimes i quit being an optimist.