Ashish's Blog

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Farmers in Derivative Markets: A Helping Hand!

Nepal is an agro-dominated economy wherein 35% of the total GDP is contributed from this sector.

Rice fields in Changu Narayan village in Nepal.

According to the latest data from the World Bank, 28-30% of the total land of Nepal is cultivable. Keeping in mind the scope and the potential of the agricultural sector in an economy such as ours, how can a derivative market benefit the farmer’s productivity levels?

With each passing year, the farmers in Nepal are facing various obstacles from the market. From various studies conducted on a domestic and international front, monstrous hiking of the prices from the middlemen remains the predominant factor. A farmer produces their produce at a certain cost. But when the middleman gets their hands on these products, the price is inflated to unimaginable levels. In short- these middlemen are not providing the right prices for the produce when the product reaches the consumers.

The case of black cardamom furnishes the best example. Poor farmers are compelled to sell their products at much lower rates immediately after the harvest, when the general scenario is just the opposite.

Nepal, despite being the world’s largest exporters of cardamom, has not been able to reap the benefit out of the immense potentiality. Lack of proper knowledge among the farming community has been the major hurdle and thereby, the middlemen are taking advantage of this scenario. So, what can a derivative market contribute to make this market a thriving one is a big question.

The derivative markets of Nepal should start with few basic steps. Firstly, the lack of knowledge among the farming community remains the major hurdle. In this regards, the farmers can be directed to trade their agricultural products in the derivative market so that they can get the right price rather than selling their hard produced crops at lower prices. But, given the current practices, is it possible?

According to Integrated Regional Information Networks, commonly known as IRIN, agriculture in Nepal is facing problems due to under investment, lack of research and usage of obsolete technologies in the sector. Also, decline in the resource allocation from government from 3.7 percent of total government spending 10 years ago to 2.6 percent in year 2013 in the agricultural sector has hampered the development of the agricultural sector. If those cultivable lands are used again by educating the farmers about the long term benefits, then they will not need any loans or any other financial support. By educating farmers, the derivative market can also provide avenues for the enhancement of the economy.

The day is not far when a farmer from a corner in our economy, confidently stores his produce in a warehouse and proceeds to the exchange to auction it. But the question arises-When?

Written by: Shristy Shakya

The article was published in The Himalayan Times on 28th December, 2014. Link to the article

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Dubai - A City of Endless Business Opportunities

Dubai, situated on the Persian Gulf coast of the United Arab Emirates with 4,110 square kilometer of land area is a city of endless experiences. It is not wrong to say that the city has emerged as " A Land of Opportunities" with its vibrant economy making it as a major business center with dynamic and diversified business environment.

Changing itself over the last three decades, Dubai's credential as the place to do business has been supported with its new ranking naming it the third "most dynamic" city after San Francisco and London (Source: City Momentum Index - Jones Lang Lasalle). With the growth that Dubai is currently going through and the highest standard of comfort and luxury being offered by the city, the business activities are certain to grow even more in the years to come.

Ease of Doing Business

Dubai has been gaining momentum in its economy and is being considered as the third most dynamic city for doing business. Lets see how the business regulations and its enforcement in United Arab Emirates supports the ease of doing business in this region. Dubai's economy enjoys a competitive combination of cost, market and environmental advantages that has created an attractive investment climate for the locals as well as the expatriates.

With new firms entering into Dubai's market, innovative products and creation of job opportunities have contributed Dubai to become a prosperous city in the region. "Doing Business 2014" - A co-publication of The World Bank and the International Finance Corporation, have ranked UAE at 23rd place for Ease of doing business out of 189 economies by taking into consideration various key business indicators.

So what are the economic and the business indicators that are considered by the World Bank for ranking. The procedures, time taken for starting a business, access to electricity, loans, taxes, rights of the investors are some of them which are mainly focused by the World Bank and IFC. The diagram below shows where UAE stands in the individual indicators ranking.

The comparative analysis of the indicators for year 2013 and 2014 show how much improvements have been done by UAE in one year. What are the reforms made by UAE that helped it climb three places up to 23rd in year 2014?

Getting Electricity - Eliminated the need for the site inspection and reduced the time for providing the new connection.
Registering Property - Increased the operation hours of the land registry and reduced the transfer fee.
Protecting Investors - Introduced greater disclosure requirements for related party transaction and made it possible to sue the directors, when any of such transaction harm the company.

The country is making improvements to invite more foreign investments and make the country prosper. Some of the areas where UAE is improving in order to go up in the ranking for Ease of doing Business as per Doing Business Index are:

UAE is ranked 100th in enforcing contracts (moving one rank up from 2013) taking 524 days to resolve a dispute, counted from the momentum the plaintiff files the lawsuit in the court until payment. Luxembourg is ranked number 1 in enforcing contracts.
UAE is ranked 101st in resolving insolvency (moving one rank up from 2013) taking 3.2 years to finish the settlement for closing a business.

With continuous improvements in its economic reforms and regulations, Dubai is definitely a hub for the investors to do business. Among the Middle East & North African (MENA) region, UAE is ranked at the top in Doing Business Index.

This makes Dubai the most preferred place to do business in the MENA region. It would not be any surprise that we will be seeing Dubai at first place for Dynamic City in City Momentum Index in some years now. To get more detailed insight on starting a Business in UAE, you can check the report from World Bank " Doing Business in UAE"

As rightly said by many people, "Dubai - A City of Endless Experiences and The Land of Opportunities".

Sunday, February 2, 2014

3 Unique & Interesting Musical Instruments

Listening to a song, ever wondered which instrument was used for the arrangement. Amazing instruments, great music and innovation, what else do we need then. As a painter expresses his/her feelings through the painting with a feeling of vibrancy and depth of it in the canvas, musicians do the same by expressing their emotions in the form of music they play.

Music is not merely playing an instrument. One should realize that its a feeling that passes through the ear and energizes the mind and heart, before it is expressed in any human form of emotion. There are different varieties of instruments that help us do it, and to the amazement some of them are really unique and interesting. Let's have a look at some of these instruments.

Hang

This unique instrument was developed by Felix Rohner and Sabina Scharer in 2000, it is 52 cm in diameter and has a height of 24 cm. The musical instrument is an outcome of the result of many years of research on the steel pan and other instruments and is still going through continuous development.

It is a hand played instrument with a pleasing and unique sound. The developer PANArt Hang Manufacturing Ltd no longer offers this instrument and has replaced it by a new instrument developed on the basis of Hang called Gubal. Lets have a look at the video of an artist playing Hang.

Well, I believe you guys liked the sound as well as the playing. Sad to say that the company has replaced it with Gubal from start of 2014. Hope Gubal will be in more demand and popular than the Hang.

Theremin

Theremin originally known as etherphone is an early electronic musical instrument developed by Russian inventor Leon Theremin. It is a very unique instrument, there is no physical contact between the instrument player (Thereminist) and the instrument. It produces sound by generating electromagnetic fields around two antenna, where the straight vertical antenna controls the pitch and the horizontal curved antennae controls the volume.

Thereminist's precise hand movement is a key in controlling the pitch and the volume for the performance. Since the release of the film Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey in 1994, more people know about it resulting in the growth of its use in the contemporary music scene.

With no complicated chords and fingerings, the instrument might looks easy to play, but many musicians who have tried it felt that it was one of the hardest instrument to play, as it is creating music in air with precise hand movement which is not easy to master.

Stylophone

Technology is advancing day by day and almost all of us are aware of the popular stylus. Its a computer accessory that is used to assist in navigating or providing more precision when using touchscreens. Now, what is unique about stylophone? must be a question in your mind. It is a miniature analog stylus operated keyboard developed by Brian Jarvis in 1967.

It consists of small metal keyboard, which produces sound when the circuit is completed by touching it with the stylus pen. However it can also be operated without the stylus. Lets have a look at one of the interesting video made by Cuckoo playing the Stylophone.

If you like the music, you can listen to more of his work at his youtube channel Its very interesting how he plays the instrument.

Innovation has led to development of new and progressive musical instruments and we are yet to see more of them. If you have some more instruments in mind, please share it in the comments as I would love to know about them.

Keep exploring, Keep Playing.

Friday, January 24, 2014

Looking for Chords of a Song? Meet Chordify

"Talking about covers, whether visually or sonically, if a particular combination of notes struck a chord in your heart in a way that you want to be a part of it by covering that song, then there is nothing wrong with it." - Ville Valo

A couple of days ago, while surfing the net, I found out an interesting site chordify.net which I thought is worth sharing with the people who are interested in music. So what is Chordify all about?

What is Chordify?

Chordify is a web application that transforms the music from Youtube, SoundCloud or any uploaded music file into chords. Sounds interesting!!. The first thing that might pop into your head is "Any Song", and the answer is "yes" any song that you upload, chordify will display the chords for that song. The online music service automatically recognizes chords from the audio signal, and aligns them to the music in simple and intuitive player.

Chordify Origin and Popularity

The website is an outcome of a PHD research by Haas, W.B. de. After his PhD research on music information retrieval, Bas did not want his work to get lost in a dusty closet with other PhD theses. He decided his chord recognition algorithm was almost good enough for public use, so he brought together a group of other music enthusiasts to create Chordify. Chordify is the handiwork of 5 guys from Netherlands and UK. They started work on this on October 2012. The website seems to be rapidly gaining popularity. In less than 2 years of its operation, it has already reached among the top 35000 websites in the world.

Sleek Interface

The user interface for the website looks very simple and easy to use, however the website uses state of the art web development techniques made for and by music enthusiasts. When I tried a song the chords were pretty accurate. The relevant chord is highlighted on the screen and moves inline as the song progresses. If you want to learn only some specific parts, you can click any part and it takes you automatically to that part of the song be it chorus or bridge. All thanks to the modern technology that now one can learn the chords for the song that we like in one click.

Things to improve

As the output is solely based on the automatic recognition of the audio signal, how accurate is the output generated from Chordify. The website is in its initial phase and it doesn't display any chord variants other than Major and Minor. The time signature shows 4/4 and for the songs with different time signatures, it doesn't really work out as the song is still divided in fours while showing irregular beats. In terms of accuracy, this app is better suited to simple songs rather than riff laden and solo centric songs. The website is improving the chord recognition quality, however automatic chord transcription is a hard problem in general, and the developers are working to improve it. Hope we will get to see a advanced form of chordify sooner than later.

For all the people who are interested in getting the chords for the songs they like, this is a site that can be really helpful. If you find the website helpful for you, please comment below.

Saturday, January 18, 2014

4 Pianists to Listen To

Piano is one great instrument that provides melody of life. “Pianos, unlike people, sing when you give them your every growl. They know how to dive into the pit of your stomach and harmonize with your roars when you’ve split yourself open. And when they see you, guts shining, brain pulsing, heart right there exposed in a rhythm that beats need need, need need, need need, pianos do not run. And so she plays.”

A single listing of pianists in all genres would be impractical, given the multitude of musicians noted for their performances on the instrument. But If you are wondering which pianist should you listen to, here are some of the pianist who are master in what they do.

Vangelis ( 29 March, 1943)

Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, popularly known as Vangelis is a Greek composer cum pianist, who began composing at the age of 4. Although a composer, I would consider him as a Pianist as I love to see him playing piano. He was a person who refused to take a traditional piano lesson, and through out his career did not have a good grasp on reading and writing notations. But we can see how his music has inspired other to take piano playing seriously.

Whenever, we talk about Vangelis, the song that is anonymous to his name is score for the movie Chariots of Fire based on 1924 Summer Olympics. The music choice which was supposedly unorthodox as most of the movie of that period had orchestral scores, whereas his music was heavy and modern.

The other song that is one of the favorite in my playlist for Vangelis, is score from 1492: Conquest of Paradise, which was based on Christopher Columbus' voyage to the New World. The song itself gives you the feeling of achievement. His music is gorgeous and unique.

Richard Clayderman (28 Dec, 1953)

More than 1300 recorded melodies in his name, Richard Clayderman is a French Pianist who has given a new meaning to the word "Romance" in piano playing is certainly one pianist to listen to. He is noted by the Guinness Book of World Records as being "the most successful pianist in the world". He is notably popular for instrumental renditions of popular music, movie soundtrack and easy listening arrangements of popular classical music.

Although there are many popular songs for him, some of the songs that is a must in my playlist are:

Yiruma (15 Feb, 1978)

A South Korean pianist whose playing style is popular among the new generation listeners, started playing piano from the age of 5. His style of playing is normally categorized into "New Age Classical" or "Contemporary Classical" as his music is even popular among the listeners who are not that familiar with the classical music. Yiruma's music is considered as soothing and peaceful, as it takes you to a different world of imagination. I am sure that you will also feel the same once you hear him.

Some of the songs that is a must listen in my playlist for Yiruma are:

Maksim Mrvica (3 May, 1975)

Maksim Mrvica, a Croatian born pianist started playing from the age of 9. Maksim Mrvica knew he wanted to play the piano when he was just eight. He caught a glimpse of the instrument at his best friend Alexander’s house. That was in 1984 and although 22 years later he is one of the most famous contemporary pianists in the world. His playing is categorized as a new age classical form of music, which is a very popular.

Some of the songs which is a must listen in my playlist of Maksim Mrvica are:

To the amazement of some, the list doesn't include some great legends like Beethoven, Mozart & Liszt. They are some of the legends who can never be included in the list. They are the gods of music.

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