Happy New Year 2006!!

Trust your Doctor!

I have regarded Doctors as "Super-Human Beings" right from childhood and still continue to do so. Over the past week, I learnt a few lessons as to how imperative a doctor is when it comes to diagnosis and treatment of infections or diseases and how we should not become judgmental about him.

Last week, I had a frivolous infection, but the "urge" to learn more about that, led me to the ubiquitous Internet, and when I searched about the symptoms, the never ending net threw millions of websites to which I went immediately.. They had complex indecipherable information (incomprehensible for a non-medico) and I ended up confusing myself more than before. The net warned me of blabla"phytis" or blabla"ia" for the symptoms I mentioned. This perturbed me a lot and made me pay the unwanted visit to my Doctor's.
After making a note of what my problems were, My doctor asked me a few more questions. I put forth my theory about what I read online and what my assumptions/diagnosis about the disease would be. He stared at me and asked a question which I will never forget in my lifetime, "Do you think I learnt medicine in a day? I spent more than 5 years to learn the Art. Never experiment with partially available information.". I offered my apologies to him and started back home.
During my travel, I tried recollecting where else we tend to be judgmental or work on partially available information. I was startled with the instances I was reminded of! Everyday, almost every second, we end up making assumptions, spread superficial rumours, ponder over frivolous or even non-existent thingies! The net is of course a vast information resource, but we may just use it for reference and not make any expert conclusions from that. Information from internet could be potential resources for further study, but they may not give us the complete picture. (at least at the medical and higher science levels)
Hey, I am having a swelling in my arm. Should I look into the net regarding the reasons? :)

Chalega attitude and software coding!

Indians are known for their chalega attitude which does not mean they are generous or humble but it exposes the sheer inefficiency in our mindset. We are "adjusting" to poor roads, incompetent netas, babus, managers and many more like what VP point out here. We have a very short-term memory too which the politicians are cashing in on. We forget their mis deeds in a few months and vote them back to power.

I prefer to say that this attitude has been ruining our country for long, and may end up devastating the whole country in the long run. If I may be a little aggressive in saying that this could have got perpetrated by some of the actions of Nehru, I intend to be. Atanu intertwines his comments with Lee Kuan Yew's speech, which I would rate as one of the best commentary blog articles I have read. I do not want to talk any more but just that Nehru's import substitution policies, license raj quotas (which he thought would take the country up the development ladder) ended up being disastrous pits which perpetrated corruption and inefficiency in Government establishments.
My soultion to this chalega attitude - Make all Indians write Software codes!!! Any compiler/interpreter (which "process" the codes writtten) needs perfect syntax to be followed and our chalega attitude of adding or leaving a few words, letters do not work here. Some softwares donot process codes even if a semi-colon or a comma is left. That is the perfection expected out of a human being! Our chalega attitude will definitely vanish in front of a software processor!

Bihar sans Laloo

If someone talks about Bihar, next thing that comes to our mind is the inevitable Laloo. He is a mastermind when it comes to politics and experts who used to write him off during elections later started wondering about the crowd pulling mass effect he has ('had'?) in Bihar. If this could be the umpteenth time I may say it, Everyone knows how "backward" (relatively backward would be a better word) the state is when compared to the other states and we should attribute a substantial credit to Laloo, who, despite having virtually ruled the state like a king, did very little that could have taken the state forward.
Very often we hear of how Biharis topping all entrance exams like JEE, AIIMS, IAS etc. Laloo failed to give those intellectuals a space to experiment in their own states and so they started migrating to other states. Dacoity and theft went hand in glove with corrupt police. Do we have to think anymore about the law and order situation then?
For most part of his tenure, Laloo saw to it that his state people got little educa'sun'. (Education may open their eyes and ruin his posi'sun').
Alas, the day came when he was ousted from his seat! Will he cow down? No way, said Laloo and seated his wife in CM's chair and controlled from behind. Did he stay in jail for long? Nay! He became Central Railway Minister!!!! Isn't this absurd?? I was shocked beyond consciousness when I realised that even en elitist person like Manmohan had to bow down to the whims and fancies of power politics and had to succumb to Laloo pressures and tactics.
But, again, There is definitely light at the end of the tunnel :). In assembly elections, Laloo's party was terribly defeated and now Nitish Kumar has got elected as the CM. Some good news from him too. He plans to 'develop' Bihar but admits the fact that it may take a long time for him (He has put in his excuse even before the actual work, Ohh mere typical neta!!)
Only if fast forward reforms are carried out and speedy processes are followed, can Bihar catch up with the rest of the country, and later could think of moving ahead past other states. The people in power know this for sure. But, it is just that the Indian Neta Mentality may creep in anytime to spoil the party!!

Two movies, kids, grown-ups, triangle, magic and popcorn! :)

Over the past few days, I visited the Sathyam cinemas often, thanks to the online booking they have introduced (thecinema.in). Two movies that I particularly liked - 'Harry Potter and the goblet of fire' and 'Kanda Naal Muthal' (which translates to, "from that day I saw you"). Both the movies occupy completely different bandwidths if you were to classify them on a movie spectrum. But, just that I couldn't stop comparing both.

Both happen to be stories of 3 friends - two males and a female, where one of the guys keeps fighting with the girl. The tamil movie deals with emotions among the three and how they tackle it and pair up, while the english flick talks first of friendship and then growing puppy love among them. And to top it all, both the movies keep us glued to our chairs for the whole length of the movie! While one talks of what happens in an utopian land where witches and wizards taught magic to young witch and wiz-kids, the other movie is very earthish, and juxtaposes very banal activities, like friendship, love, romance, ego etc, though in an acceptable and comic manner. Lots of scenes to relish often in both. A striking similarity between the two flicks is the absence of even one smooch (smooches have become so common in even Indian movies :) ) or sleazy scenes...

A must see is what I would say when you ask about both the movies!!

'JN NURM'

Wondering what JN NURM is? It is (as usually named after Nehru) Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, another flagship mission (Mission Impossible?) of the UPA government. If our urban centres had been properly planned initially, do we need a renewal mission? The name 'renewal' is intimidating by itself! The mission was officially launched today at a project outlay of Rs. 1,00,000 crores (My, I mean taxpayers' money!!) and it claims to provide urban infrastructure and urban services clubbed with corporate governance (ooohh! Great jargons!!)
Today's newspapers carried half-page (Again, My, I mean taxpayers' money!!) ads on the launch of this project and the highlight of those ads were Nehruvian words which go like this "What I should like in regard to every city is a clear plan of what the city will look like; say, twenty or thirty years later"
Another big laughter for me after reading these lines from the father of mockery Nehru (If I were to award a title to Nehru, I shall consciously award him "The man who fcuked Indian Economy"
If he had said these golden lines during his rule, why do we see our cities in such disastrous conditions now? I don't think he created the infrastructure when he was ruling and that it has degraded over the years. It is just that our netas and babus are too good at snob talks but when it comes to delivery they fail utterly.
It is even a big shame to call out cities "Urban" or "Metros". They just lack the critical facilities that ought to be present in a metro city. For example, A metro is supposed to have a well connected transportation system, which links all forms of transports, say Train, Bus, Air etc. Our transport stations are situated in chaotic locations and they offer utter discomfort for the passengers. Another critical factor that affects the "metro" scene is people!! Our people don't deserve any facility to ease their lives. They steal electricity, don't pay taxes properly, amass wealth beyond proportion, even go to the extent of breaking rivers if it may cause danger to the encroachments. Moreover, the recent floods in all our cities should open the ever closed and dead eyes of the men who rule us, and these rains expose how poorly prepared we and the authorities are, to face any natural calamity. With little hope that this mission will succeed (Am not at all a pessimist, but given the handling of such previous projects by our authorities, I am sure that this is another mission impossible (for our netas and babus)). I anyhow, wish this project good luck with great hope attached!

This news rocks!

Everyday, We look forward to some news in our newspapers which will keep us engaged in laughter for the whole day. Something that caught my eye today is from The Hindu, Now, designer uniforms for Chennai Telephones employees

The article went on to say that the designer uniforms would give BSNL a corporate edge and that it would give employees a sense of identiy.

My humble request to the BSNL honchos (who think uniforms could solve the attitude problem of their employees) is to first put in place robust technology, train the people (meaning, the employees) properly and then give them the freedom to experiment (with people and products).

My Blood Pressure shoots up everytime I call the BSNL Dataone helpline. We expect some cogent words from people sitting in a helpline, but most of the times I have called them, they are at loss for words or they put me on hold for a long time and "search" for words... Being a nascent service, I understand that there would be more enquiries and so they have to juggle with all, but One thing I know is that the questions we ask are not rocket science or nano-technology based and also that they would have been trained to answer all these questions.

Another issue with BSNL is that of their CellOne cellular service (I don't subscribe to it, and I would never do that mistake in the future too!) but have been witness to many a faults of CellOne and also many a pranks the network plays. We placed two CellOne mobiles nearby and tried calling one from the other. Guess what? "The subscriber is out of network". This was outrageous! BSNL also claims they have network in nook and corner of the country and to some extent, they have put up towers along the highways too. But, what if they haven't increased their capacity? Without additional capacity increase, it is as good as not having the network at all!

BSNL has to get more freedom (in terms of decision making at policy and financial issues) from the clutches of DoT. DoT and the Communications minister treat BSNL as their offsprings and so the PSU has to dance to the whims and fancies of the ministry and the department. In the recent days, the powers of the telecom regulator TRAI is also being curtailed slowly so that the ministry could take decisions on its own. This leads to a disastrous situation and nullifies the fact for which a regulator was put in place! ET strongly condemned this act of diluting the regulator in its Editorial through For Regulation, Not ministerial whimsy
If it may not appear that I am stressing an often repeated phrase, I would like to say that BSNL has to go to the markets. It has been estimated that total value of BSNL would be around $30 billion and it could be still more if a proper valuation is undertaken. Assuming BSNL to be valued at $30 - $40 billion, if Government intends to sell even 5% of the shares, it could mop up close to $2 billion dollars which could be utilised for so many developmental purposes (With a committed PM, FM, Montek and many other concerned oldies, I am pretty sure that the money would not be wasted). But, such a decision could be taken after multi-levels of meetings and talks and by then any damn thing could have happened!! It happens only in India!!