Category: titbits

Engineering Economics by Tara Chand

~ Swapnil Garg ~ Leave a comment

We just got published the book that my maternal Grand Father wrote and first published in 1952. The book is now in its 15th edition.

My grandfather authored this book in 1952, when he was 35 years of age and working as a civil engineer with UP Irrigation Department. The book was one of the first ones to attempt an introduction of economic principles to engineering students.

The book has a very strong legacy on the family front:

a) The original and subsequent early editions of the book were typed or hand written by my grand father in the evenings, when he returned from work. It took away a large part of my mother and her siblings father time.  My mother still remembers the publisher (Mr. Nem Chand) coming on his cycle to collect the book chapters which my grand father had finished typing out or writing in long hand the night before. We lost Shru Nem Chand in 2019.

b) As my mother shares, the royalty from the book has a huge role to play in marriage arrangements of my parents, way back in 1964.

c) My grandfather had just finished revisions for the fourteenth edition of the book, when he expired in 2002. Mr. V.K.Aggarwal, son of Shri Tara Chand took the challenge of revising the book after his death.  It took us 5 years to get the 14th edition of the book published.

d) In 2007, I contributed a chapter to the book — Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization.

e)  In the 2014, my father was working on the next edition of the book, when he expired.

f) In this edition

a) I contribute another chapter titled ” Public-private partnerships”

b) My younger brother Prof.(Dr.) Sachin Garg contributes a chapter on “Big Data and Engineering Economics”

c) My son, Ms. Shaaranya Garg (Age 13 years) designed the cover.

The book is truly a family tradition, taken forward by the family…..

The table of contents of the book is as below…

Part 1: Fundamentals of Engineering Economics
1 Definition and Development of Economic Life
2 Fundamental Concepts of Economics
3 Agents of Production
4 Forms of Business Organization
5 Money and Exchange
6 Banking
7 Rent: interest and Profit
8 Taxation and Insurance
9 Methods of Financing and Valuation
10 Estimating and Cost Accounting
11 Depreciation
12 Book Keeping and Accounts
13 Trade of India
Part 2: Fundamentals of Industrial Engineering
14 Factor of Production: Labor Wages and Trade Unions
15 Agriculture: Marketing and Cooperative Farming
16 Industrial Psychology
17 General outline of Government
18 State Controlled Planning of the Economy

(Previously India’s Five year Plans)
19 Industrial Law
20 Workman compensation
21 Indian Electricity Act : 2013
22 Controls: statistics and charts
23 Contracts and Arbitration
Part 3: Emerging Trends
24 Liberalization: Privatization and Globalization
25 Public-private Partnerships: An introduction
26 Big Data and Engineering economics

Engineering Economics 15E_1

 

 

 

 

Lost in The Concrete Jungle

~ Swapnil Garg ~ Leave a comment

Lost in the concrete jungle… (Reposted from  facebook)

Idea credit –-Saarthak Garg
Written by –- Swapnil Garg

Recently, I visited Shanghai with my family. I was to attend an infrastructure conference on transport policy (the World Conference on Transport Research). As is usual with my visits to conferences with my family, I spend a considerable amount of time at the conference, till the time of my own presentation. After this my attention wavers off and I only attend select sessions which are of importance to me and which are directly related to my subject of interest. Hence, my family gets a significant amount of time early on to see the place on their own, and then I join in. During this visit, my two sons were 11 and 9 years of age, and studying in classes six and four respectively. As this was school session time in India, we had sought special leave from their school for them with an assurance they would collect data, information and facts on China during the visit, and present the same as reflections to their class and to their school.

On the third day, while we were traveling in taxi, my younger son (9 years, Class IV) made an interesting observation. When asked about his reflection on Shanghai and what he would write about it, he remarked, “See there are so many identical twins, and also so many clones. But, I feel sorry about some of the lone ones, and I am sure they must be very lonely”. Wondering what he was referring to I poked him to elaborate. He pointed towards the Shanghai skyline, and asked me to note. Most buildings came in pairs. But, many buildings had multiple replicas of themselves, and many could mean any number like five, ten, or even twenty when we counted. However, there were still many buildings which were one of its kind, standing lonely and all by themselves.

A nine year old, lost in this big concrete jungle, had created life out of inanimate structures and give them a new meaning. From that time onwards, and till the end of our Shanghai trip six days later, we identified thousand of mono-zygotic (similar) and di-zygotic (dis-similar) twins, taller and shorter siblings, armies of clones ready to attack, and we also felt sorry for those lonely individual building which had no company.

 

 

Elections for UP assemply 2012

~ Swapnil Garg ~ 1 Comment

1. I do not have a vote. The best I could do was to take buaji to vote, and I successfully did that. At the same time ensured that no one else voted for Phuphaji, Deepu and Meetu. It was not a straight forward task. We needed to go to two election booths to find their names. But, this was my first feel of the elections in the country, and I am marvelled by the system established, despite all that we say about it. It works, and works at such a large magnitude.

 

2. Everyone is taking his shot at the possible outcome. Here is mine.

Total seats 405

BSP  100

SP 100

BJP 50-80

Cong 50-80

Serious horse trading as to who goes with whom, with BSP-SP alliance ruled out, it could be SP-CONG, BSP-CONG, BSP-BJP, or SP-BJP( unlikely).

Let us see!! I am expecting month of horse trading and only then a solution, amid a lot of cash flowing around.