Battle of Plassey(1757)

 Battle of Plassey (1757)

This battle was fought between the British EIC led by Robert Clive and the Nawab of Bengal.

The Nawab of Bengal was Siraj-Ud-Daula. He was not happy about the Britishers not paying taxes and duties and misusing few trade privileges. Then there was the 'Black Hole ' incident where the Nawab held several Britishers in captivity in a prison meant for just six people. So these factors led to the battle. Robert Clive was initially not sure about battling the Nawab's army due to their superiority in terms of numbers. But the Britishers managed to make deals with two of the three commanders of the Nawab, who were Mir Jafar and Rai Durlab, who stayed neutral or fought for the British. Only the commander Mir Murdan was with the Nawab who was defeated by the British and the Nawab was also put to death.

So this was a summary of the Battle of Plassey which changed the course of Indian History, with the Britishers gaining power over Bengal

 Quantum Physics

So this write-up is regarding Schrodinger's cat thought experiment of quantum physics. This thought experiment was introduced by Erwin Schrodinger, an Austrian-Irish physicist. He was not sure of the Copenhagen theory which mentioned that the quantum states of two objects are not predetermined until observed. So Schrodinger gave an example of a cat in chamber with a vial of poison, a hammer and a radioactive material. When the radioactive material decays, the hammer gets triggered and the vial breaks. This leads to the death of cat, but in case this is not observed by a measuring device, then is the cat alive or dead? But still it was not enough to disprove the superimposed states theory. The observer effect was clearly seen in the experiments with the quantum particles.

Dosanomics explained

So, this write-up is regarding Dr.Raghuram Rajan’s speech in 2016 at a Federal Bank event. So an engineering student asked that he mentioned about inflation control but in reality, let’s say,if we consider the example of Dosas. When inflation goes up, the price of Dosas also go up but when inflation goes down, the price of Dosa doesn’t get any lower. So why does this happen. So this was a valid question to which Dr. Rajan answered as follows. He mentioned about the role of technological improvements affecting the prices of products. So in areas where technological improvement has taken place the prices can be lowered but in areas like Dosa-making, that’s not the case. This is known as the Balassa-Samuelson effect.The person who makes the Dosas still puts the batter, spreads it around and takes it out. There is no technological change, while the rising wages do affect the prices of Dosas. To retain the workers who can migrate to sectors with improved productivity due to technology and with high wages, the wages of Dosa-makers get affected. Thus, the prices of Dosas don’t come down in times of low inflation.

So this was an interesting answer by Dr. Rajan to an interesting question