About: Lokpal

While I was discussing a couple days back with a friend of mine about Anna Hazare's 16th August fast onto death, I was suprised that he was in support of govt's version of the lokpal bill with arguements being - we have to pass something, and this is merely a publicity stunt. No wonder, a poll by tv 9 showed that only 7% were aware of what the Jan lokpal bill is, with the rest either unaware or don't care... Here is my attempt to improve those numbers.. (am sure the numbers have now improved after all the goverment's blunders with handling Anna Hazare)..

Here is a link that briefly describes Jan Lokpal bill: Jan lokpal

And here is the critique of Govt's version of Lokpal bill that is being introduced: Govt's version

The PM being or not being in the purview of Lokauykta (the proposed anti-corruption body to be setup per state) is really the smallest feature of Jan Lokpal. The Govt's version is a sham..

- if you file a complaint against a politician, says the govt's version, they can come back at you with more force..

- if you file a complaint against a politician, says the govt's version, the PM or the speaker of the house will look at it in leisure, and will initiate an investigation if the complaint is against someone in opposition.. (coming back at you with even more force at the same time..)

- apart from the terms "lokpal" and "lokayukta", there is nothing that is common between Jan Lokpal and Lokpal bill. Even if the terms were replaced with "ullu-banao" and "yet-another-armless-body" in the govt's version, it would mean the same thing..

And here are some youtube videos:

Corruption, I strongly believe, is the biggest problem facing the country these days. Followed very closely by 'sab chalta hai' (everything goes) attitude. No, not population. That is a topic of a seperate discussion altogether. Population is generally a boon not a bane (except may be in some cases). US's recession problems can be traced back to lack of population (in my opinion). There aren't enought people there to buy services and goods produced in the country.  

A country needs to be progressive to make the lives of its citizens easier every single day. As I see it, India is going backwards every day. What I mean by a country being progressive is, every day things need to show progress year over year.

As an example, there was this pedestrian crossing on one of the main roads where I lived in US for sometime. Couple of months later, shiny yellow things that can reflect in car's lights were inserted around the crossing on the road so that drivers could stop when pedestrians were crossing. Now, that is not enough is it? Cars might not notice the shiny things on the road at night. So, couple months later, these were replaced with yellow blinking lights on the road connected to a push button at each end of the street, so that people crossing could press that button, which would make the lights blink which the cars can see and stop. Because the lights are on the road, some drivers looking straight and up might still miss them, so couple of months later, street lights which blink yellow lights along with the lights on the road. were installed. And all the changes were done with as minimum of a a traffic disruption as possible.

In another example, on a usually busy state highway, there was a place where there were many street intersecting with it. Which lead to a bunch of street lights in a very short distance causing frequent traffic slow downs. A few years later the street lights were replaced with circles (roundabouts, they size of which are small compared to circles of Indian standards), so that majority of the traffic doesn't have to stop. It has worked quite well in my experience and traffic is generally smooth.

For all its quirks and debt problems and republican and democratic bickering, US is a progressive nation, which gives hope. India on the other hand, doesn't seem to be so. How much time do you spend travelling to your workplace every day? How about 5 years ago? 10 years? How many major accidents involving your close family and friends do you know of that happened in the last few years? How about 10 years ago? Every other close friend of mine has run into a ajor accident recently. What about the drainage system?

A road is built, couple of months later, it is dug for cables, left open for a long time. Then closed again, and then dug again. What about the national highways and flyoves you say. Well, yes, the national highways indeed show progress, but something you drive once a month on average. Flyovers, because of corruption, I cannot say if they were built for general good or to show some activity.. They disable life for quite sometime around their construction zones until they are built.. and we walk and drive around them.

Agra, the most visited historical city in the country, doesn't use traffic lights on one of its main roads, which were invented decades ago, instead relies on traffic police who can barely control the overflowing traffic. Countries have moved onto lights which sense cars to change colors automatically and cameras which take pictures and videos and send you tickets home when you jump a light.

Small things, minor imperfections you might say. Small frustrations, that make you not smile at someone, and make you lose 3 hours of your life every day. "How does it matter, I drive in an A/C car with tinted windows closed all day, talking on my iphone"..

"But I can now book train tickets and pay my electricity bill online".. what about the millions of people who dont care about the internet and walk on the streets everyday to make a living? "But see,things are changing, there is a general conscience change in the administration that is taking the country forward.. we don't need a bill pushed by some layman to curb corruption, it will come under control on its own".. Relying on politicians' and administrations' conscience for such a  change is like we relied on China for not attacking India pre-1962 war. 

We are not a well oiled machine that moves forward, but a rusty old train that's going backwards, on an downhill slope.. Anna Hazare's bill is our chance to make the change. Please take a moment to understand what it is and spread the word..

Of Internet, products and online research

If you asked me, whats the most revolutionary invention of our age, like most people I would say the internet. Needless to say it has trasnformed how we live and interact through facebook and what not. But why the grandiloquence all of a sudden? Here's why

Recently I wanted to buy a garage door opener. Being lazy, I did not research online. I went to Home Depot, the Genie Powerlift exclerator (this wont be about the opener, I promise) seemed nice, it had a lifetime warranty, screw drive system, which the sales person said was very quiet and so I picked it (I have a feeling these salespeople kind of know what you are inclined towards and tend to push you towards that, but anyways..).

Before installing it, I thought of doing some online research. Searching a bit I found the winner. Clearly Chamberlain whisper drive had more and better reviews. The decision had been made for me. I cared little as to what the few reviews that came for Genie had to say. I promptly went back to the store, returned the Genie model and picked up Chamberlain.

I consider myself a customary researcher. I spend little time on online research if I am buying something under 50 bucks. 50-300, I spend some time, not a whole lot. Over 500, do lot more research before buying. If I were to distribute people on the basis of habits of doing online research, I would put about 10% of people in the thorough research category, about 25 in my customary research category and the rest in no-research category.

What would happen if that 10% grew to say 70%? It can grow that high once the barriers for doing the research are dropped. Say you are standing in front of the 4 brands of tissue paper rolls in Costco, and suddenly a star rating pops up on all of them showing how they were rated by many people (like the pranav mistry demo).. why would you not want to have the opinion of a 100 people before you buy something? When you were going to pick up something based on the price, the ad-campaign, the few features mentioned on the roll, you now are leaning towards the highest rated one. Even if it means you are going to shell out a few more bucks. What would have been a semi-random decision, is now least random. The Genie brand would probably have met my needs of quietness and power in a garage door opener just as much, but I had to pick up the highest rated one. You'll come back a few weeks later only to see that there are only two brands of tissue rolls remaining on the aisle, the most expensive one and the least expensive one. You'll read in the news a few days later that the other two have filed for bankruptcy.

In that day and age there will be clear winners and losers and we will all be the same. (I am sure its not that straight forward, but just a sleepless-mid-night thought :)).

Borat, my opinion

Let me put it this way - Its a gud movie, you can watch it, you'll enjoy it, you'll have some gud laughs. But you cannot watch it again. Its a bit too grose.

Is india's gain America's loss?

An interesting article in the forbes magazine: India revisited

"..Does it mean more or fewer jobs for Americans? It means different jobs, different opportunities, different markets. And realizing that our competitors look very much like we do."

Sorry, I dont have any personal comments on this one. I like reading articles on India shining however true or false they are.

Windows CE 6.0 released

I dont know why I saw it, but i did. I saw the windows embedded ce 6.0 release keynote.

It is very interesting though. I am very far from anythign related to CE, so cannot really evaluate or comment on how good it is for the embedded systems development community. Can developers now easily develop cheaper embedded devices for the living room that can probably connect to the internet and show things off on the tv? I am not sure, but the keynote did make it seem quite easy to build a picture frame (based on an ARM processor I think) which connected to the internet and pulled images off live.com and flickr.

Robo sapiens

Yesterday I bumped into an episode 'Robo sapiens' on The Discovery channel. Ever thought The Matrix is impossible? What if you could have two extra robotic arms or two extra legs or wheels that operated with your mind as if they were a part of your body? What if you could calculate as fast as a PC? Check this out- http://science.discovery.com/tuneins/robosapien.html. It could be true in the future.

Exaggerations aside, the show showed a person paralyzed under the neck. He was implanted with electrodes under his scalp which sent signals to a computer which decoded the signals. He could control the cursor on the PC, play a game of ping pong just using his bran. He felt the cursor wa part of his body. It also showed a monkey which controlled a robotic arm with its brain, using implants under its scalp. Its amazing how teh brain trains itself to control the these external obejects. All the technogy has to do is to decode the signals from the brain and convert them to a meaningful and consistent output (which is not a simple problem ofcourse) and leave the rest to the brain to train itself.

The possibilities for the future are endless and scary. There was only one thing funny about the show, the people who were implanted with these artificial things are called Cyborgs (??). Whoever came up with that name. Sounds like an alien. 'And thus he became a cyborg'.

SPB in seattle

Yep, our very own S P Balasubramanium was here in Seattle (about a month ago, so this post should have been posted long back, but nevertheless..) to perform for a fund raiser to build a Hindu temple here (to extend the current one to be precise). It was great to hear the great singer. But, unfortunately, it wasnt a lot of fun for the kannada fans who where there. He only sang one kannada song.. He did mention in the beginning of the show ofcourse, not to worry about the language of the songs but enjoy the music.

It would have been true if it were for classical music, but film songs? I dont think so. The song gives an entire different meaning and u enjoy it at a different level if u know the language or if you are atleast familiar with the song, heard it a couple of times to get the music, and kow that it is a hit in a different language.

Atleast, this is one of the advantages of being here.. u get to see a lot of celebs perform live.

11 NIT dirtectors sacked..

About 11 NIT Directors being sacked immediately after the change of Govt

Prologue (for people who dont know what are NITs, RECs and what I am talking abt) REC - Regional Engineering College. India has these second rung of Engr Colleges (Second becuz, first are the well known IITs, and as a group they are definately next to them. Individually, I would say, some are next to the IITs. Well, this post is not abt the ranking so let me go on...). There are around 18 in total, one per state. A govt is elected at the center (BJP), has grand designs for the RECs, promotes many of them to deemed university status calling them NIT (National Institute of Technology). has plans to improve the quality to, well, if not equal to that of IITs, atleast somewhere close to them. atleast somebody had realised that 7 IITs are not enough anymore for a country with a huge and growing educated population as India.

Then it calls for interviews for the position of directors of the NITs. Really good candidates turn up, they are interviewed and appointed as Directors. NIT Karnataka, (KREC formerly, my college), similarly got Prof. S S Murthy, a Prof. from IIT Delhi as its director. The director is doing a gr8 job, has a gr8 vision for the college (I had finished college when he was there, so this is what I had heard from Profs and students). In the meantime the govt's term comes to an end, there is election and a different party (congress with allies) forms the govt. And all of a sudden Prof. S S Murthy along with 10 other such directors is sacked!! Just becuz of a govt change? Just becuz they were selected by a previous govt? Not even evaluating what they hav or hav not done. And a press statement is also given that they hav been sacked!! Politics at its lowest level. Why does the govt even bring in such politics in education? If only I could get hold of a paper clipping, I would post it here. Why dont they realize that the 7 IITs are not enough for India.

I am not sure why am posting this. Am sure nothing is going to change now and nothing ever will. The college will (am definately hoping that it will) remain as good as it was before. May be, it wont reach the heights that Prof. S S Murthy could hav taken it to. And clearly, its wrong. why I am blaming Ms. Sonia Gandhi, cuz she is the leader of the majority party. She and our PM are/should be responsible for what happens under their govt.

(epilogue) If nothing this post atleast lends a voice to someone out there fighting for this seemingly small but really important cause. Tossing a director is not like tossing a governor of a state who doesnt have much power. The director can either make or break a college. This man could have brought NITK on the world map. The problem I see though is that nobody is really fighting (including me). NIT alumnii esp. NITK/KREC's have not been even 10% as active as IIT alumnii.