Monday, April 18, 2011

Fasting - A Data Driven Approach

Via Facebook via Salil Tripathi via Patrick French, comes this spreadsheet. The important extract is the following:



In a convenient graphical form, it is like so:



Special mention goes out to Krishnamurthi R Rao, Garbini and Dantavakra for asking an Irom Sharmila question at a quiz, and special mention goes out to Spacebar for being one of the literal handful in the audience who knew the answer.

3 comments:

Space Bar said...

*blush*. Did I tell you, I never redeemed those vouchers? You (therefore) owe me a book.

(I had forgotten Kalaignar's performance. Some day, I will forget AH's also.)

Richa said...

Interesting -- the only fasts that lead to success (defined as meeting of specific demands) have been the ones that captured the imagination of mainstream India. Hazare, Gandhi's fasts, state creation... Other prominent fasts helped highlight issues, spread awareness perhaps delay things but little or no real change in the issue under question.

Perhaps the moral of the story is: If you are going to fast, make sure that you figure out how to make your issue a mainstream issue. Fasting for issues with no direct impact on mainstream educated urban India is useless (except for whatever media/political leverage you can gain out of it)?

Ludwig said...

[SB] Idiot. Serves you right. No book for you.

[Richa] As a friend said about Anna's fast, "You need to pull a 'fast' one." :P