Nehru and Patel communicate about Gandhi Assasination Investigation: Patel clean chits RSS (almost)

New Delhi

26 February 1948

 My dear Vallabhbhai,

You are so terribly busy, and I am pretty well occupied, that I hesitate to add to your work. I feel however that I must tell you what I have had in my mind for some days
.
While the investigation about Bapu's assassination by Godse is proceeding here and [in] Bombay and elsewhere, there appears to be a certain lack of real effort in tracing the larger Conspiracy. More and more I have come to the conclusion that Bapu's murder was not an isolated business but a part of a much wider campaign organised chiefly by the RSS. A large number of RSS men have been arrested, probably many of them more or less innocent. But a considerable number of their key men are still abroad or underground or even sometimes flourishing in the open. Many of these people are in our offices and in the police. It is hardly possible to keep anything secret from their group. I was told the other day by a responsible police officer that no search could be conducted in secret because previous intimation always reached the parties concerned.

The Delhi police has apparently a goodly number of sympathizers with the RSS. It may not be easy to deal with all of them. But I think something more than has been done can be undertaken. I have little doubt that the RSS organisation is still fairly active in many ways and will hit back when it can. To be complacent about it might lead to fresh disaster. I am told that they have taken to a number of apparently innocent activities and are utilizing them to keep their organisation in proper trim.

I do not know what exactly to suggest to you. But I have a feeling of uneasiness about the situation in Delhi specially. I think the police and the local authorities have to be kept up to the mark. They have a habit of slackening off after the spurt. What is more dangerous is that a number of them appear to sympathize with the RSS. Hence an impression is created that nothing very effective is being done. Effectiveness does not mean mass arrests but the singling out of people who count and whose potentiality for mischief is great.

Yours affectionately,

Jawaharlal 

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

New Delhi 

27 February 1948

My dear Jawaharlal,

Thank you for your letter dated 26 February 1948 which I received just now.

I have kept myself almost in daily touch with the progress of the investigation regarding Bapu's assassination case. I devote a large part of my evening to discussing with Sanjevi the day's progress and giving instructions to him on any points that arise. All the main accused have given long and detailed statements of their activities. In one case, the statement extends to ninety typed pages. From their statements, it is quite clear that no part of the conspiracy took place in Delhi. The centres of acti­vity were Poona, Bombay, Ahmednagar and Gwalior. Delhi was, of course, the terminating point of their activity, but by no means its center; nor do they seem to have spent more than a day or two at a time, and that too only twice between 19 and 30 January. It also clearly emerges from these statements that the RSS was not involved in it at all. It was a fanatical wing of the Hindu Mahasabha, directly under Savarkar that [hatched] the conspiracy and saw it through. It also appears that the conspiracy was limited to some ten men, of whom all except two have been got hold of. Every bit of these statements is being carefully checked up and verified and scrutinized, and where necessary, followed up. San­jevi devotes a considerable time every day to it. Senior officers of Bombay and GP are in charge of the investigation. Delhi police hardly comes in the picture.

Of course, it is impossible for us at this stage to publicize any of these things or to say anything publicly about what is being done to unearth the conspiracy. Every item of information that is being communicated to us through sources, known and unknown, real, anonymous or pseudonymous, is being investigated. More than 90 per cent of these have been found to be just imagination. Most of these have been directed to the activities of RSS men in various centers. We have followed this up, and except vague allegations that sweets were distributed or joy was expressed, hardly anything of substance has been found in them. After having dealt with these matters at first hand and discussed these matters in detail with Sanjevi and other officers who are in charge of this investigation, including the Public Prosecutor of Bombay, Mr, Pettigarah, who has been advising the investigators on legal points, I have come to the conclusion that the conspiracy of Bapu's assassination was not so wide as is generally assumed, but was restricted to a handful of men who have been his enemies for a very considerable time:—the antipathy can be traced right to the time when Bapu went for his talks with Jinnah, when Godse went on a fast and some others of the conspirators went to Wardha to prevent him [Bapu] from going. Of course, his assassination was welcomed by those of the RSS and the Mahasabha who were strongly opposed to his way of thinking and to his policy. But beyond this, I do not think it is possible, on the evidence which has come before us, to implicate any other members of the RSS or the Hindu Mahasabha. The RSS have undoubtedly other sins and crimes to answer for, but not for this one. If you have any time, I would be glad to send to you Sanjevi and Rana, DIG, CID, Bombay, who are here. They could explain to you the whole case as it has emerged from the investigation. They say they will take another ten days or a fortnight, at the end of which the case will be ripe for being placed in the hands of the Public Prosecutor. As soon as the Public Prosecutor is ready, we hope to appoint a Special Judge to try the case in Delhi.
As regards the RSS in Delhi, I am not aware of any prominent men or active workers whom we have left out. We hear all sorts of reports from somebody or the other regarding a certain person being an active member or not. In some cases, on such reports, arrests were made, and we soon found representation coming from Congressmen themselves testifying to their Congress sympathies and anti-RSS views. We had to release them. In other cases, on arrests of RSS people being made on similar information both we and the Provincial Governments are being accused of rounding up innocent people. In, the case of a secret organisation like the RSS which has no records of membership, no registers, etc., securing of authentic information whether a particular individual is an active worker or not is rendered a very difficult task. Nevertheless, I am assured that practically all the important workers of RSS in Delhi have been rounded up. Indeed, some knowledgeable people tell me that we have rounded up more than necessary. I have already asked Provincial Governments, including Delhi, to let us know what has been the result of these arrests, how many have been arrested, how many have been released, what has been revealed in searches, etc. As soon as these reports come in, we shall have to consider our next step. If there are any key men who are still at large, I should like to know their names, so that we can follow them up.

I quite realize that police and the local authorities who are in Delhi or elsewhere have an appreciable number of RSS sympathizers. Here again, however, the difficulty is to locate the men. Whenever I have received the least information about the names, and particulars of any RSS men in Government service, I have communicated them to Sanjevi or Mehra. In some cases, Government servants in Delhi have already been arrested for RSS activities. Delhi's quota of RSS arrests compares favorably with that of any other place or province. I doubt, therefore, whether the accusation can be substantiated that Delhi police or local authorities have been inactive on account of RSS sympathies. However, I shall again have a discussion with Mehra on the particular problems which you have mentioned and see what further action could be taken.

Yours sincerely, 

Vallabhbhai Patel

The Hon'ble Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
New Delhi

Mahatma Gandhi Assassination: Excerpts from case diary

Interesting, even in the aftermath of Mahatma's assasination, the police departments seem to be fighting turf wars.

I again explained the full facts of Karkare before Mr. Nagarwala, and also I told Mr. Nagarwala that Madan Lai accused had stated that one of the ac­cused was the editor of the Agirni or Hindu Rashtarya newspaper, he was of sallow complexion aged 33/34, 5/6" in height and it is not known to him whether he is of Bombay or Poona. Besides these two, I had stated the des­cription of three Maharatas and one Raja Sahib. Their description was explain­ed by mc to Mr. Nagarwala. About the editor Hindu Rashtarya or Agirni and Karkare, special request was made that they have been named by their co-accused, therefore, they should be arrested first so that we may be able to get the clue of the others from them.

22-1-1948, 11.30 a.m. : Mr. Nagarwala stated that his information is that there are more persons in this party. This party is of about 25 persons, all are responsible for this conspiracy. Special arrangements for the arrest of Karkare have been made in Bombay and in Poona [and] Ahmednagar. About the other suspects, they have located three or four at present, but our scheme is to first locate all, and then their arrest will be carried out. If at present we will arrest three or four from them, by doing this we will not succeed in the arrest of others.
About Ahmednagar, he said that he will accompany us, when he will get the information, but you should not go there now. He then sent for Mr. Kargaonkar, Inspector CID, Bombay, who came inside his office. He ordered his Inspector to arrange for our lodging at a place where nobody can know about our arrival. He also instructed us not to give our Delhi address in the hotel's register and in our presence, he contacted one police officer on phone at Ahmednagar and also got New Delhi. Immediate trunk call booked, for DIG, CID Poona. He also said that he would first consult the H.M., Bombay, and then he will take further action against the accused.
22-1-1948, 2 p.m. : At this time we reached the house of Inspector Mr. Kargaonkar, CID, Bombay, with our kits, and stayed in one room in the said Inspector's flat.
22-1-1948, 4 p.m. : At this time we reached the CID Office, Bombay, and Inspector, CID, Bombay, said that your presence here is not required; so we returned to his house and reached his house.
22-1-1948, 7.30 p.m. : At this time, Mr. Kargaonkar, Inspector of Police, CID, Bombay, with Deputy Inspector and Sub-Inspector came back to his house and he said that they had located few suspects, and had deputed their police for the other suspects, who are not located as yet. He is definite that they will succeed in tracing all the suspects.
For Karkare and the editor of Agirni or Hindu Rashtarya newspaper, he said that one Inspector of Police from Ahmednagar is coming tomorrow and will come to know about those two and then will arrange for their arrests.
22-1-1948, 8 pm.: We slept at Inspector CID** Bombay house. Case Diary prepared and kept.

Sd. Jaswant Singh DSP 

Attested : True translation ot CD. dated 22-1-J943.

Jaswant Singh DSP

FIR No 40 dated 20-1-1948
U/S 4/5 Explosive Act, P S Tughlak Road.
Writer : DSP Jaswant Singh.
Written at : Bombay.

Sir,

Reference Case Diary dated 22-1-43, I submit that at this time I with Malik Bal Kishan, Inspector, Delhi, and Mr. Kargaonkar, Inspr. CID, Bombay, reached the CID Office, Bombay, and met Mr. Nagarwala who gave lists of passengers who left Bombay for Delhi From 13-1-1948 to 20-1-1948 and said that he was going for an urgent work, he would be coming back within no time and would give further instructions.

I have gone through thtse statements and nothing fruitful comes to my notice at present.

Mr. Kargaonkar, Inspr. CID, Bombay, informed us that Inspr. of Police from Ahmednagar had arrived and he had been sent back again, by the D. C. Mr Nagarwala with special instruction. Karkare is not there. Inspector of Police, Ahmednagar, has been ordered to search the editor required in this case; CID, Bombay, has also received similar orders about the search of editor of Agrini or Hindu Rashtarya newspaper.

At this time, I enquired about the previous history of Karkare from Inspector of Police, Bombay, and requested him to give me some idea of his information about the culprits of this case.

On this, Inspector CID, Bombay, said that Karkare's full name is V. R. Karkare who is a proprietor of the Deccan Guest House, Ahmednagar. He is a prominent worker of the Hindu Mahasabha and a social worker. He used to go to refugees in Chambor Camp. His connections are with the big leaders or the H M.S. [Hindu Mahasabha]

The following arc his co-accused and associates :

1. Mr Badge of Poona, a worker of the H.M.S.
2. Autar Singh, Punjabi Sikh of Amritsar (now proprietor, Sher-Punjab Hotel, Bombay). He is the man who supplies arms and arranges for the collection of arms. He is under arrest and was in jail before this occurrence.
3. Mr. Talwar of Karachi now in Bombay.
4. Mr. Balraj Mehta of Lahore (now Shivaji Park, Bombay).

All the above persons are workers of the H.M.S. and they often work with Karkare in such matters. And the Inspector hesitated to give further details.

23-1-1948, 12-30 p.m. : At this time, D.C., Bombay, arrived in the office, and he said that he is doing his best for the arrest of these suspects, and further remarked that I am not required here at present; when required, he will call me, and he ordered that I should go back to Delhi. At this stage, again a request was made that according to our accused's statement, Karkare and the editor of Agirni or Hindu Rashtarya are named in his statement, and if they are arrested, they should be sent to Delhi. He agreed. Further the D.C. Bombay instructed us that at our arrival in Delhi I should inform the Bombay Police about the further development from the statement of Madan Lal accused.

At this time a brief note on this case with the name and description of the accused wanted in this case was handed over to the Inspector CID, Bombay. A request was made again that he should inform us about the arrest of Karkare and the editor of Agirni and he will arrange to send them to Delhi.

23-1-1948, 3 p.m.: We left Bombay by train.

Sd. Jaswant Singh 

DSP

Note: 24-1-1948: Arrived at Delhi. Case Diary prepared and kept 24-1-1948.

Jaswant Singh 

DSP

Attested : True translation of CD. dated 23-1-1948.

Jaswant Singh 

DSP

Letter from Sardar Patel to Rafi Ahmed Kidwai

While I was reading through letters of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, here is an interesting letter that he wrote to Rafi Ahmed Kidwai.

New Delhi

25 July 1948

My dear Rafi,

This morning a person entered my house in the dirtiest clothes possible and looked like more of an intruder than any-body else. My peons and my guards took him as such and would have also dealt with him as such had he not announced that he was a telegraph peon and had telegrams to deliver.

I am sure that you will agree that it is a disgrace to us all if telegraph peons, or for that matter other peons, go about in such filthy condition. The telegraph peon have to go to embassies, consulates etc. I wonder what they must be thinking of the standard of the cleanliness and smartness of our postal peons when they see them in this condition. I think in the capital city of Delhi we must insist on better turnout of our staff. I suggest, therefore that you may issue instructions that in Delhi every telegraph and postal peon must be properly dressed and must be in clean clothes. I see no difficulty in regard to the issue of uniforms. If there are difficulties, they must be overcome in the fair name of this country.

Yours sincerely,

Vallabhbhai Patel

The Hon'ble Mr. Rafi Ahmed Kidwai

Minister for Communications

New Delhi

Fact checkers in India

Finally somebody has taken it upon themselves to start fact checking the claims made by politicians. Just read an article in Mint about claims made by Mr. Narendra Modi in a speech yesterday.

Here is the summary.
Mr. Modi made two claims, 1) only 23% homes have latrines in Bihar 2) 16% homes have electricity in Bihar. Both facts are right from the census data.

What is bothering me is the fact that Mr. Modi is truthful but is being economical with truth. Have a look at chart below.

As we can see Mr. Modi is right about Bihar, it is really at the bottom of the ranking, but I have two questions in my mind. Mr. Modi's party was ally of Mr. Nitish Kumar till few months back and why did they not do anything about it and Mr. Modi is running Gujarat for last 15 years and why did he not do anything about it there. To put it is perspective, as per 2001 census data, Gujarat was 18th in the list and in 2011 it is 21st. So I would say it is hard to believe Mr. Modi when he claims that he can fix the problem in Bihar.

As we can see from the chart above, Gujarat ranks 16 th in Electricity availability as per 2011 census. The same census data suggests that it ranked 11th in 2001.
So, Mr. Modi is right when he claims that Bihar has not progressed enough under the government of Mr. Nitish Kumar. It still lies at the bottom of the pool along with UP. He should take the share of the blame since his party was running the government with Mr. Nitish Kumar till some month ago. Mr. Modi is not so right when he claims that he can fix it because on these two accounts, Gujarat has gone down in the ranking of states.

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.