Dogs and People

Saw this notice in the elevator of one of the Luxury apartment complexes in Bellandur. The question arises, who is the notice for. If it is for dogs, they seem to have very educated dogs who can read and understand english. If it is for people, the picture is less than accurate and what kind of idiots these people are looking for.

India Elections Tidbits #1: Why I think parties are looking at the wrong place for votes

Since the biggest entertainment of India i.e. parliamentary elections is just around the corner, I thought to understand the last parliamentary elections little better. As a researcher, I have learnt that the best way to understand any event is through the telemetry that it generates. So I decided to look at the data.
First my experience, even though election commission puts all the data on their website, it is extremely difficult to use in any meaningful way. They put PDF files for everything and the PDF files are also generated through bizarre set of input document. It required lots of hard work to get the data into a database so that one can make some sense out of it. This is first in a series of (hopefully) posts related to parliamentary elections 2009.
Now to answer the question that is mentioned in the title, why I believe political parties are looking for votes in the wrong place. A primary look at data suggests that many of the winners in the election don't represent anybody. Just have a look at the table. The figures in brackets in third column are voting percentage in the constituency.

Winners with low voting percentage

Winning Percentage (of the total electors)	Number of seats	Total Voting Percentage
10%	2	Buxar,BH(46.51%) Nawada, BH(38.13%)
11%	2	Salempur, UP(39.21%) Chatra, JH(45.67%)
12%	5	Madhubani, BH(39.83%) Pratapgarh, UP(44.66%) Phulpur, UP(38.69%) Gonda, UP(45.12%) Palamau, JH(45.95%)
13%	11	Jamui, BH(38.13%) Anantnag, JK(27.10%) Bhiwandi, MH(39.39%) Jalore, RJ(37.98%) Lucknow, UP(35.33%) Farrukhabad, UP(46.78%) Baharaich, UP(41.12%) Sant Kabir Nagar, UP(47.27%) Machhlishahr, UP(40.99%) Chandauli, UP(46.39%) Bhadohi, UP(43.35%)
14%	17	Begusarai, BH(48.75%) Banka, BH(48.74%) Arrah, BH(35.78%) Sasaram, BH(42.70%) Srinagar, JK(25.55%) Rewa, MP(48.34%) Kalyan, MH(34.30%) Mumbai North East, MH(42.46%) Agra, UP(42.03%) Akbarpur, UP(43.62%) Hamirpur, UP(48.40%) Deoria, UP(45.26%) Bansgaon, UP(39.02%) Lalganj, UP(43.62%) Ghosi, UP(45.23%) Varanasi, UP(42.61%) Godda, JH(56.48%)
15%	16	Mujaffarpur, BH(46.41%) Gopalganj, BH(37.40%) Ujiarpur, BH(45.89%) Karakat, BH(41.61%) Palghar, MH(48.10%) Aligarh, UP(51.44%) Kheri, UP(54.58%) Misrikh, UP(41.48%) Fatehpur, UP(45.19%) Faizabad, UP(49.94%) Kaiserganj, UP(41.10%) Shrawasti, UP(43.06%) Rajmahal, JH(55.18%) Kodarma, JH(56.14%) Dhanbad, JH(45.03%) Lohardaga, JH(53.21%)

As we can see in the table, except for couple of constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir where the voting percentage itself is very low, other constituency have not so bad voting percentage. Bihar, UP and Jharkhand seem to be states where this trend is prevalent. Also these constituencies are not obscure constituencies, these are represented by Meera Kumar, Murali Manohar Joshi, Salman Khurshid, Lalji Tandon among other candidates.

So, what is my point here. I think that political parties are just not paying attention to the the block of voters that doesn't vote. That is more than 40% of voters who have not voted and can tilt the election in each of these constituencies.

That's where parties like AAP are more successful. Because of their design, they seem to be easily able to attract non-voters. I think new parties like AAP need to get their message out to these non-voters and get them out on voting day. Old parties, need to put candidates that can inspire non-voters to come out and vote. That's why I believe old belief of "winnability of candidates" is a wrong approach. If parties put candidates that can inspire people to come out and vote, they can easily get a positive result in each of these constituencies.

The Samurai Revisited: Theoretical to Theatrical

“What NONSENSE!” thunders Vinay Avasthi,

These morons have made e-business a travesty,

Idiots are running all the Internet business,

None with intelligence, it’s plain craziness.

What I’ll do, I’ll finally start ARRIVING,

Gonna stop my mindless cross-country driving,

Will set up my new business, with new criteria,

You guys want in? Have any good idea?

Milind: Yes, Yes. Washington taught me many new skills,

With these stupid environment laws, you can make a few kills,

Though my business acumen makes my family go pale,

My only real problem is- I don’t know how to scale!

How market leaders take the monopoly way,

Shiva got business ethics from MS the hard way,

In competitive marketing, I can show you the way,

Boycott canteen, eating out daily is the only way!

Swapnajit complains, yaar this is simply not fair,

I just want a Thesis idea, and no one seems to care?

I will join as soon as my proposal is finalised,

And will ask the prof how yours should be crystallized!

Srini grins, Sorry guys, I woke up late,

Yes, social media, twitter can open up a floodgate

Intel from fourth estate to data mining can be our spectrum

And ‘Early to bed early to rise’ should be our dictum!

Vinayan: You see, just what I was afraid of,

Corruption! Even before your business has taken off!

You are already following a corrupt method

All this estate, mining, spectrum, will go the Vigilance road!

Habeeb: So So So and So, whatever it is that you wish,

Tell us in two lines; don’t beat about the bush,

I can well be a part of your paraphernalia

As soon as I sort out my Europe and Australia!

Rohit: It’s just a problem of project management,

Put it all into a PERT/CPM arrangement

I don’t mind becoming your consultant,

As long as my profit is a sure resultant!

Getting rich is what sets Tarit on fire,

Other than jalebis I have just one secret desire,

But surely I’ll join your Corporation,

If for the above secret desire, I get your cooperation!

What nonsense! Avasthi thunders,

How can I work with these idiots, he wonders,

They don’t have even one chance out of five,

Hell with them, I’m going on a cross country drive!

Written between 1100 and 1140 on 4^th Dec 2013 in Room 213 IIM Indore

(Thesis presentation of the FPM I Guy)
By Vinayan J

Class 1 Officers

I am currently at one of the "premier" management institutes of India doing my course work. Yesterday, late night, I was sitting in the lobby of the places where I am staying, three elderly gentlemen walked into the lobby and an interesting conversation ensued.

Elderly Gentleman 1 : Get me some tea!
Reception Man: Sir, this is late at night, almost the dinner time, there is no tea.
EG1: Tea has no time!
RM: I am sorry sir

EG2: क्या यार, क्लॉस वन ऑफिसर को चाय कैसे नहीं मिलेगा। (How can a class 1 officer not get tea)
RM: Nobody is there in kitchen, you can get tea only in the morning

EG3: At what time will I get tea in the morning
RM: Between 6-7 the tea is served in cafeteria

EG1: रूम में नहीं मिलेगा। Won't I get it in my room
RM: No sir, the team is served in cafeteria

EG2: क्या हाल है, क्लास वन ऑफिसर को चाय के लिये भी इधर उधर भागना पड़ता है।

At this time I had almost had enough of this class one officer business when one of those gentlemen turned towards me. From my dress, I looked like waiter of a highway dhaba.

EG1: पेपर किधर है।
Me: मैं तो पेपर को एक महीने से ढूँढ रहा हूं, आपको मिल जाये तो मुझे भी बता देना।

At the end of this conversation, I am thinking why have these guys been sent to a management school by the government. I am sure they have no interest in learning anything here. They are already missing their class 1 officer status. Let them enjoy it in their place of work and leave this management institute alone.

Food security bill and middle class hypocracy

Off late I have decided to disengage myself with political conversation because the political discussions are so polarized now-a-days that any time you express you view which does not tally with somebody else's view you hear back abuses rather than arguments.
Today being the day when Lok Sabha passed the Food Security Bill is another such day. The argument went something like below.
A Gentleperson: Why this UPA government is destroying the country, now this food security bill, 2G, Coal Scam...
Me: I think we need food security bill because there are people who don't have food and it is a shame that in this country people don't get sufficient food.
AG: This is all for corruption, what good has come out of the PDS system. Whole of the food is diverted to blackmarket. It is our tax payer's money....
Me: Those need to be fixed, but somebody who is not getting food, if he has better chances of getting food, I think it is worth it.
AG:No, we need to stop all these things, till the time we fix corruption, we can not give these subsidies, all the tax payers money....
Me: Ok, so since there is black market in gas cylinders, should the subsidy be stopped there as well. Let's stop that subsidy as well and when we can build a corruption proof system, we will give gas subsidy.

At this point, the discussion turned into an abusive slanging match which I had feared to start with. I think I will stick to my stand of now having political conversations.

Aadhaar card enrolment, an experience

Since the day GoI declared that in not so distant future, the cooking gas (LPG) subsidy would be delivered directly to the customer through a scheme called direct benefit transfer (DBT), Whole of India is running after getting an elusive piece of number called Aadhaar number. I never bothered to go for it, because it involved standing in a line for hours.
Yesterday, I saw this website that had a method where I could get an appointment online, fill the form online and then only show up at the enrolment center for document verification and biometrics, so I decided to give it a try. Here are my experiences for getting enrolled for Aadhaar.

• Getting an appointment was easy, may be because the website is new and not many people are aware of it. But I could get the appointment for next day and there were many slots open till the evening.
• I also filled all the forms online but since I was not certain of how the data would be made available, I also took physical forms and filled them and carried them with me.
• As I reached the enrolment center, I was pleasantly surprised to find a person sitting there with a list of people who had taken the appointment for document verification. He verified the documents and asked me to go to the adjacent room which had the setup for enrolment.
• This is where proceedings took a turn for the worse, The guys who were actually doing enrolment, had no clue of the appointment system. It was every individual for him/her self. The person with the loudest voice was the next person in line.
• We waited for an hour hoping that somebody would call us but nobody called up.
• To make things further complicated, there seems to be another system at http://appointments.uidai.gov.in which is also issuing appointments at the same center with same timings. The center does not have list of people from this system. They only have list of people from the system I mentioned earlier. This is resulting in the people at the center getting overloaded since they have twice as many people showing up.
• Anyway, we also used the loudest voice method to get ourselves scanned for biometrics and got our enrolment done.
• The data that we entered online, is not available at the center so it has to be entered again and that is extremely time consuming.

In nutshell, like most of the other ideas of GoI, it is a brilliant idea gone horribly wrong in implementation. I only hope, as time goes along they fix it.

Logistics: Why we suck

I needed to buy two components that go inside of a PC. One of them was available with IT Depot which is based in Chennai. Other item was not available with any retailer in India, so I decided to order it with a vendor in US.
The vendor in US (Amazon) did not ship that item to India, so I decided to use one of the address forwarding services (Borderlinx).
Both the orders were placed one after another on June 06, 2013 around 1:30PM. Today is June 12, 2013. I already received the order placed with US retailer yesterday night, while the order with Chennai retailer is still showing a status of "Ready to Ship".
How is it possible that these online retailers based in India can be so pathetic for an item that they claim is in stock and was paid for so long ago.

Seven jyotirlings, Thirteen days

This summer (2013) we decided to drive around and try to see maximum number of Jyotirlings that we can see in 11 days. This post is just to capture what happened. Following were the jyotirlings that we covered as part of this trip.

1. Ghrishneswar Temple near Aurangabad in Maharashtra
2. Bhimshankar Temple, Maharashtra
3. Trimbakeshwar Temple near Nashik, Maharashtra
4. Somnath Temple, Gujarat
5. Nageshwar Temple near Dwarka, Gujarat
6. Omkareshwar near Indore, Madhya Pradesh
7. Mahakaleshwar in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh

Following is the itinerary that we followed.

1. 06-April-2013 Left Bangalore, reached Pune for night stay
2. 07-April-2013 Left Pune and reached Aurangabad, planned night stay in Aurangabad. In the after noon, visited Ghrishneshwar temple and Ellora Caves. Both are next to each other
3. 08-April-2013 Drove to Bhimshankar, after darshan continued to Nashik and stayed night in Nashik
4. 09-April-2013 Went to Trimbakeshwar. Darshan took longest here. Temple seems very popular with devotees so one must plan for couple of hours for darshan even on lean days. Continued driving to Ahmedabad for night stay
5. 10-April-2013 Stay in Ahmedabad for relaxation.
6. 11-April-2013 Drove to Sasan Gir stayed night
7. 12-April-2013 Stayed in Sasan Gir for safari
8. 13-April-2013 Left for Somnath Temple. Reached around 10am. This place looks most commercial of all the jyotirlings. Continued driving to Dwarka. Stayed night
9. 14-April-2013 Did darshan at Nageshwar Temple and also visited Dwarkadhish and Bhet Dwarka
10. 15-April-2013 Drove to Surat. We decided to drive to Indore via Surat because we got very bad opinion on direct national highway from Ahmedabad to Indore. We were sure that road to Indore from Surat via Dhule is good, so we decide to drive longer.
11. 16-April-2013 Drove to Indore, reached night
12. 17-April-2013 rest day
13. 18-April-2013 Visited Omkareshwar in the morning and Mahakaleshwar in the evening.

Most of the route that we followed, roads were good. Detailed travelog for the journey would come up later at my other drive blog at Bimmer India.

Life, what can I say, is interesting

As I am driving around the country, I landed up in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. I generally would have waited to write this post till the end of the trip, but life turned so interesting today, that I had to do it now before I regained my composure.

I am staying in a no-service chain of a popular five-star hotel in the city and because of them being no service hotel, they don't have an in-house restaurant. There is another restaurant in the same building which is called Asia Kitchen.

I visited them yesterday and the food was really good quality. We were generally satisfied with the food and service. When I reached the hotel room and was generally looking at the bill, I realized that they had charged me Rs. 125/- for a bottle of water. That sounded little excessive to me because even in Bangalore five star hotels the bottled water was never that expensive. Also, this was no fancy water brand, it was regular Himalaya. Just to confirm, I looked at the water bottle, which is generally priced Rs. 20/-, was labeled Rs. 40/-.

So, when we decided to visit next evening again for dinner, we picked up a couple of water bottles from the vending machine in the hotel where it still cost Rs. 15- for half-liter bottle. Our decision made life really interesting. As we landed up at the restaurant and got a table, here is the conversation went on.

Waiter: Sir bottled water or regular water?

Me: We don't need water, we have our own.

Waiter: No sir, you either take bottled water or regular water, outside food item not allowed.

Me: What? you won't allow me to bring my own water, I can't drink regular water and your water is priced Rs. 125/-

Waiter: No sir, that is our policy

Me: Please let me know if you won't allow to drink our water, then we can leave and go somewhere else.

Waiter: (mumbles something...)

Me: Can you confirm with your manager? Let us know and we will leave if you don't want us.

Waiter: Ok.

At this time the waiter leaves and in a few minutes, the manager comes to our table.

Manager: Sir, it seems you have got the bottles from the hotel vending machine, it is Ok. 

Me: How can you recognize that these are from the hotel vending machine? I could have brought it from anywhere. How can refuse somebody to bring their own water? At this time my wife chimes in that one many have special needs for water e.g. boiled water etc. and they may bring their own water.

Manager: Sir, we are just following what the owners have decided for us.

Me: I get that, but can you give feedback to your owners that they are marking up water too high, even higher than most five-star hotels.

Manager: Ok, sir I will do that and I apologize but you should understand that we are just employees and we don't decide on prices.

Me: Ok.

At this time life suddenly turns super interesting. There is a European couple in the table next to us who joins the conversation.

European Couple Husband: I think you should leave this restaurant.

Me: Maybe I will, but that is for me to decide.

European Couple Wife: They are running a restaurant and they need to make a profit.

Me: Yes, but not by marking up packaged drinking water.

ECH: I think you should leave this restaurant.

Me: (ignores)

At this time the hotel staff is feeling very nervous, the manager is already apologizing to us and another employee goes to their table and starts apologizing to them.

ECW: I think you should never visit Europe?

Me: I am not in Europe, am I?

Now I am furious, I almost want to do some physical damage somewhere, but in the name of "Incredible India" and " Khushbu Gujarat Ki" I decide to keep quiet and not continue the conversation anymore with hotel staff or guests.

Why restaurant business in India is hopeless

Of late I have been thinking about the fact that the quality of service in almost all the restaurants has gone down to abysmal levels. What could be the reasons for it. The only places where one can expect decent service is the restaurants situated within five star hotels.
I realised that this general decline in service happened around the same time when almost all the restaurants in town started charging something called "Service Charge" which resulted in almost all the customers stopping to pay tips.
Now most of the restaurants are nothing but almost like public sector undertakings, guaranteed salary with no incentive to work better.

What is god particle?

What is God Particle?Why has it caught our fleeting fancy? Is it more important than proton,photon,electron? Utpal Chattopadhyay explained it in a series of tweets, I am just reproducing these here. Edited after first publish.

One of the not so well understood problem or puzzle in Physics is why the electron or the proton or the photon are as heavy or as light as they are? What are the laws that give rise to these masses? For example, we know that  the (rest) mass of the photon, the particle of light, is ZERO. We may ask why it is zero. Is there a deeper reason? It turns out that the answer is yes,  the zero mass of a photon is directly related to a deep symmetry of the electric and magnetic fields.

Weinberg , Salam and Glashow tried to unify electromagnetism with weak nuclear forces. Weak nuclear force is what causes radioactive elements to decay. One problem they encountered is that  in order to unify through a symmetry principle, most particles needed to be zero mass just like the photon where as we know that the other particles have non zero mass.  This problem was solved by giving one of the fields a "Vacuum Expectation Value". What do we mean by  vacuum expectation value of a field? It means the following: Take elctromagnetic fields for example. In vacuum far away from everything, you would expect the strength of  these fields to be zero. That would be almost right. Almost because thanks to quantum mechanics, electric and magnetic fields will always fluctuate. so their strength is never exactly zero but zero plus minus small amounts. In other words, the AVERAGE value of electric and magnetic field in vacuum is zero, Stated differently, its vacuum expectation value is zero.

What physicists realized in 1960s is that the vacuum expectation value can be NON zero, More importanly, a non zero vacuum expectation value will "spontaneously break" the symmetry of Weinberg, Salam and Glashow,  BUT as a bonus it will generate mass for these too.

Bingo. In one stroke we can begin to understand what part of the physics might be responsible for mass of these particles. Hence the search for this particle. This particle used to be known as "Higgs-Kiggle-Englert-Brout" boson after all the physicists who developed the idea independently but people got tired of the long name. Hence the name Higgs boson survived.. It is called a boson because it follows the statistics of S N Bose (1894-1974) !

The Higgs boson is  no more fundamental than the electron, or the photon. BUT the beauty is that  it allows a unified view of why some particles are massive. This was the last piece of the puzzle of Weinberg-Salam-Glashow theory. BUT it generates another question.. Why does Higgs boson field have non zero vacuum expectation value? NO ONE knows for sure as yet.

How gullible are we as a nation

I have been wondering of late, how gullible are we as a nation? Anybody can tell us anything and we start running behind them. Only thing we don't trust is ourselves. Here are two instances that incidentally happened this week.

STEN LINDSTROM comes out this year on the 25th anniversary of bofors scandal and says that he was the whistleblower and he saw his leaks being used selectively (in content and timing) by The Hindu at that time and did not do much about it. Now 25 years laters he is talking again.

Then coincidently the same week S&P downgrades India's credit risk to negative and Moody's goes ahead and writes a almost political report on India.

The report termed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as an "ageing technocrat who now appears tired of the rough and tumble of Indian politics" and added that the UPA didn't have the numbers or the leaders to push through tough-minded reforms needed to drive the next wave of growth.

Now what moody's and S & P are saying is nothing new, everybody agrees that business and investment climate in India has taken a beating but we (the mainstream media) wakes up only when foreigners tell us to do that.

I expect our media to do much more homework rather than just listening to STEN LINDSTROM, Moody's or S & P whose credibility it not really great anyway.

  

Here are some more strange happenings today.

According to a source in LNJP Hospital, the doctors immediately began to provide CPCR, which involves pressing down hard and rapidly on the chest and blowing air into the patient's mouth. The doctors also removed the girl's clothes to administer an injection, but were unable to save the girl. At this, some of the people accompanying her began shouting that the doctors had misbehaved with the girl and killed her.

Why, in such stupid cases, does police look for amicable settlement. They should just book these mobs.

The accused party was accompanied by the police and brought to us. We had a talk wherein they profusely apologized for their misbehavior following which the doctors decided to call of the strike. The issue is being solved amicably," said a senior administrative officer at LNJP Hospital. 

Travelog: Sanchi and Udaygiri

Finally after staying for couple of decades in Bhopal, I decided that it is high time I need to pay a visit to Sanchi. It is approximately 50 to 70 kms from Bhopal depending on the route that one takes. One can go to Raisen and then go to Sanchi. This route is longer. The other option is to go to Vidsha and Sanchi is around 10 kilometers before Vidisha.
The place is very nice, the ticket price  is cheap, only Rs. 10 per adult and children up to 15 years are free. There is a very good audio tour available and provides good information about the monument.

Sanchi is part of Vidisha tourism circuit which is littered with ancient archaeological discoveries around that place. One can check Madhya Pradesh Tourism. There are many places which have archaeological finding ranging from BC to few hundred AD time frame.
Coming back to Sanchi, it is a buddhist monument and decently preserved. Most of the construction was carried during Gupta dynasty.
Food & Stay
There is only one decent hotel in the city, called Gateway Retreat and us run by Madhya Pradesh Tourism. MP Tourism is the government of MP undertaking responsible for development of tourism in the state. Since it is directly run by the government, hospitality is not one of their strong point. I would suggest any visitor to not have hopes for great service here. They should stay in Bhopal and drive down to Sandhi. The drive should not take more than one and half hour.
Road Condition
Road to Sanchi is in pretty good condition, the road towards vidisha is much better compared to one via Raisen.
Udaygiri Caves
Udaygiri caves are around 10 kilometers from Sanchi and have a set of caves that were constructed around 5-6 BC. The caves have sculptures cut from monolithic rocks. There is no entry fee here.
Important Facts

• Around 50-70 kilometers from Bhopal, roads are good and easily reachable from Bhopal. Should take around one and half hours. The Sanchi monument opens at Sunrise.
• Best to start from Bhopal after early breakfast, visit the monument in Sanchi, either carry packaged lunch, or have lunch at Gateway Retreat in Sanchi, and be back in Bhopal at night.
• No fee for camera in Sanchi, tripods are prohibited
• Great audio tour available at entry of Sanchi monument, they also rent out umbrellas at a rent of Rs. 20 per umbrella.

India's telecom revolution -- a missed opportunity

A lot is said about India's telecom revolution and it is a positive story but now making this claim almost sounds like repeating yourself again and again. I have not heard of a positive outcome of this revolution in last 4 years. Why is it so? I believe if we look at this closely, we will realise that it is a story of lost opportunities.
Anybody with even a little knowledge of telecom would appreciate that telecom is nothing but a communication medium. It was revolutionary initially because it provided a voice communication medium to masses that government run operator coud not provide in 50 years but once we reached a significant population with this medium, nothing was done to leverage it further.
None of the e-governance initiatives exist on mobile phones as applications or mobile web. Even the applications for which data readily exists in digital form have not been translated to run n mobile phones. Look at http://agmarknet.nic.in, it has mandi rates from most of the mandis from all over India on a daily basis. If a farmer can look at the rates in mandis around his place, he can make decisions on when and where he wants to sell his produce. Similarly weather information can be made available in more granular and location targeted fashion to farmer. For urban poor, making whole e-governance infrastructure in a mobile friendly fashion would result in real revolution.

A personal landmark

Today I complete 20 years in the work force. I started working for Bharat Electronics exactly 20 years on today's date, i.e. 16-December-1991. It is a important personal landmark so I thought I would summarize last 20 years of my life through this post.
Joining BEL
I completed my graduation in June-1991 and was asked to join BEL on 16the December, 1991 in Bangalore unit. We had three months training and we were called probationary engineers till our training was completed. Once we completed our training, we were designated Deputy Engineer and posted to our units which in my case was BEL Kotdwara in the foothills of Garhwal mountain ranges.
BEL Kotdwara
I, alongwith the group of other 5 engineers from the batch, joined BEL Kotdwara on 11th March, 1992. I still remember it was one day before the festival of Holi. BEL Kotdwara was fun, regular visits to Siddhabali, Lansdowne. We even drove our bikes to Dehradun, Mussoorie once. On 28th of September, 1994, I left BEL to join Motorola India Electronics Ltd. in Bangalore.
Motorola India Electronics Ltd., Bangalore
I joined MIEL on 3rd of October, 1994 in Bangalore at their office on St. Marks Road. The building was called "The Presidency". Since the building was full, after joining and training I was sent to work at a rented facility at Manipal Center at the junction of Dickenson Road and Cubbon Road. In few months the new facility of Motorola, called The Senate, was ready at Ulsoor Road. We moved there and I worked out of that facility for next almost 10 years. Eventually Motorola built another facility in C. V. Raman Nagar in Bagmane Tech Park. We moved to that facility on 27th February, 2004. I worked out of that facility till 2010.
Leaving Motorola
In June 2010, Motorola decided to close the group (Enterprise Applications Research Labs, Applied Research Center, Bangalore) in which I was working and I was one of the causality of that decision. Anyway it was time to leave the place.
Entrepreneurship
In July 2010, I joined the startup  with few of my friends  which was building a product in the telecommunication infrastructure space. We built a prototype, demonstrated to few tier-1 operator across the world and then we were acquired by Movik Networks in October 2010.
Movik Networks
I joined Movik Networks as part of that acquisition, did some interesting work for next few months and finally left them on 31st March, 2011.
In April 2011,   I joined Hewlett-Packard in Bangalore.

To summarize, it has been interesting ride for last 20 years. What is the most disappointing is the level of technology ownership in most of the Industry. I had expected that we would see more technology and product ownership with Indian industry which does not seem to be case. Hope things would improve in next few years.

FDI in Retail

The big question being asked now a days, FDI in retail is good or bad. I really don't know so I decided to verify the argument of pro-FDI groups that there are lots of inefficiencies in the supply chain and that's why we need FDI. So I looked at the prices of certain vegetable items on 26-November-2011 in one of the Karnataka Mandis and compared it with the prices that I paid on the same day with one of the retailers. The chart on the right shows the price markup that I was subjected to the price between one of the Karnataka mandis to what the retailer charged me. As we can see that in most cases the markup is upwards of 50%, much closer to 100% with highest markup being 400%.
This is the case with vegetables which are perishable goods and have to be sold by the end of the day, one would assume that the prices of these goods would have least markup.
For people who want to verify, here is the data that I compiled and used.

	Store Price	One of the Karnataka Mandi
Tur Dal	89.9	39.25
Onion	18	11.5
Brinjal	30.49
Capsicum	36.9	20
Potato	16.5	13.8
Tomato	15.9	14
Bottle Gourd	35	7

So, there is definite markup, in many cases it does sound un-reasonable but whether bringing FDI in retail really solves this problem, I am not so sure. Anti-FDI people claim that MNCs are just for profit and they may squeeze everybody. So looks like complicated issue but in my experience, additional competition has always helped customer.

The magic that is Indian Customs Department

I recently got a mobile phone shipped from one of the online stores in UK. The shipment contained two items, one mobile phone and a USB charger that was thrown in free by the retailer.
When the shipment reached customs, DHL was responsible for getting the shipment cleared by customs. Normally I have seen that the customs charged on mobile phones is between 4-5% but this time it was around 25%. The only logical explanation that I have is that customs department looked at the free item and classified the whole shipment in that category and charged customs at that rate.
Anyway, that's how it is. I can only rant about it.

What Team Anna needs to do?

Over this week, Team Anna seems to be in complete disarray. It had to happen. Earlier it was easy, bunch of guys, with very strong point of views and different opinions about many topics, came together on a cause for which all of them agreed. Corruption was the issue that was common to all of them and they all agreed.
As Team Anna started diversifying into other issues and plunged themselves into rough and tumble of electoral politics, although from sidelines, they broadened their scope and all of sudden the issue of them not agreeing on all issues started coming to fore.
For last three days, I have seen comments from, Kejariwal, Kiran Bedi and Bhushans contradicting themselves and each other.
I think Team Anna needs to take a step back, make sure that one issue that they have taken up is taken to closure before opening up the field.

My idea of a Lokpal bill

In my last post I analyzed all the publicly available Lokpal bills in details. Here I am trying to do a cut and paste job and try to come up with a Lokpal bill that I believe is the best solution in our context. Before I do that, let me list down what is my expectation from Lokpal bill.

• It should be a strong deterrent for corruption in public officials without damaging independence and decision making of these institutions.
• The Lokpal should have jurisdiction over whole country

Prime Minister : Lokpal should have jurisdiction over Prime Minister but since any inquiry against Prime Minister can result in clamor of his resignation. The resignation of PM can result in vacuum in central government because there is no equivalent of President's rule at central government level, there should be checks and balances against exercising this jurisdiction over PM. I like the idea of NCPRI in how to deal with corruption by PM. In summary it is outlined below.

• Any complaint against PM is evaluated by full bench of Lokpal for prima-facie evidence. Once the bench finds the prima-facie evidence in the complaint, they refer it to a full bench of Supreme Court for their opinion. On positive opinion from SC, Lokpal notifies the ruling dispensation of imminent inquiry proceedings with a notice of few days giving them time re-elect a new PM.

CMs, Ministers, MPs, MLAs, MLCs : Nothing special against then, Lokpal exercises complete jurisdiction against them and can initiate inquiries against them on receipt of complaint. The reason CM is treated differently than PM is because there is provision of President's rule at state government level and no power vacuum is created if CM has to resign.

As for MPs, MLAs, and MLCs conduct inside Loksabha, Vidhan Sabha, Rajya Sabha is concerned, in the light of recent cases of mis-conduct of members during proceedings of these houses, Lokpal needs to exercise jurisdiction against them but sufficient protection needs to be given to members for their behavior in house. We can probably adopt the model suggested by NCPRI for PM with few changes for bringing MPs behavior in house.

• Any complaint against a member of any house by Lokpal can be sent to the presiding officer of the house, who will, within a limited (well defined) time, either approve the inquiry to be conducted against the member or if he wants to reject the inquiry refer it to the bench of Supreme/High court who has to validate the reasons of his rejection.

Public Officers : I believe that the skills that are required to inquire against corruption done by higher officers are very different than petty bribery committed by peons and lower officers. I believe that all the officers that are holding supervisory positions (i.e. there are people reporting to them), need to be brought under Lokpal. For this purpose, CVC and other equivalent agencies in states need to be merged into Lokpal. There is a difference in an individual demanding bribes and supervisors institutionalizing bribes and that's why these need to be tackled differently. For non supervisory officials (clerks, peons etc), departmental methods need to strengthened. All the supervisors need to be held accountable for corruption within a department. If there are more than a certain number of complaints against non supervisory employees of a government department, automatically it should trigger an inquiry against the supervisor of those employees by Lokpal.

The idea here is that it is the responsibility of supervisors to make sure that people reporting to them are not corrupt. Non supervisors can be handled with departmental disciplinary mechanisms.For example we could decide that if a department receives more than 5 complaints per week, the supervisor will be inquired by Lokpal for institutionalized corruption within his department.

Judiciary : Judiciary is our only safeguard against Lokpal and his officers gone rogue. We can not include Judiciary under Lokpal and to eliminate corruption against Judiciary, we need to probably strengthen Judicial Accountability Bill on the lines mentioned by NCPRI.

Summary : We need a poweful Lokpal but as I have always maintained, the most corrupt departments in India are the departments with most amount of power. A all poweful Lokpal will eventually become a all corrupt Lokpal. The government department will also have to start collecting the Lokpal officers' share of bribe and the cost of dealing with government with go up for every citizen.

We need to guard against creating an institution with tens of thousands of officers who start interfering in every part of citizen's life.

The Lokpal should also restrict itself to corruption, we probably also need to define corruption, where money or favors are demanded to get something done. Incompetence or decision gone wrong with best intentions, should not be part of what Lokpal should worry about. Take the case of a situation where there is a natural calamity and a district official needs to procure somethings urgently, if he buys goods and gets favor in return, that is corruption, but if be buys things quickly, may be at inflated prices, bypassing regular tender process with his best intentions to serve people, Lokpal should stay out of such cases.

My 2 cents.