Measure and wash rice until the water runs clear.
Add twice as much water (by volume) as you have rice to a saucepan, and a bit of salt.
Boil the water.
Stir in the rice.
Cover with a glass lid (clear lid is important) and reduce to medium/low heat, the water should just barely be boiling.
Wait until the steam tapers off and you can't see the water layer anymore.
Carefully remove the lid, and start stirring the rice.
Continue to stir until the last of the water is absorbed / boils off.
I usually only buy the one type of rice, a short grain brown rice from SunRice in Australia, and usually only when it's on special.
Anyway, point being: I know I can cook this one particular type of rice to perfection in a saucepan with 1 volume-unit rice to 1.5 volume-units water. Bring it to a rapid boil for one minute, then wrap the whole pot in two dry cotton bath towels (hotbox), leave it for ~45 minutes.
Voila!
Also works with some short grain white rices, with 1:1 ratio and many fewer minutes in the hotbox.
Personally, I can't stand any long grain rice (Basmati, Jasmine, etc).
Side bonus: a lot of that nasty arsenic washes away instead of sticking to the rice and going in your body.
You're making assumptions that your definition of "perfect" is the same as everyone else's. There are cultural differences with respect to the preference of the actual texture and stickiness of the rice.
For example, my Chinese parents basically don't like the stickiness or texture of rice made by any other culture. It might be close minded, but it does illustrate that different cultures have different standards for what makes rice "perfect".
At the very least, good basmati is steamed - you only add enough water to cook the rice (you don't drain it afterwards), then bring it to the boil before simmering it at a very low heat. It's pretty hard to reliably get right - every time I use a new stove or pan or try to cook a quantity I don't often do is a gamble. If you mess up it's either crunchy or squishy.