Bye bye 2010 - Welcome 2011

I don't want to start new year with pessimism, but the event in 2010 are yet to conclude, which will keep the excitement going into 2011. We may see more new promises from Congress, to fulfill in 100 days (it was a movie too b.t.w.). On the other hand they may be hoping that no other new scam should emerge. On personal front I hope that the banks like Standard Chartered, which boasts having 150 years presence in India will actually fix their malpractices of befooling Indian citizens. We saw some action happening on education front and Right To Education finally became law. But what are we doing to reduce the burden on kids, who are already loaded. Mr. Sibbal will anyway focusses on larger initiatives, getting more educated teachers is not on his priority list. More later... 

Never..Since the European and US markets are going to be down for at least next 8-10 years, Chinese know that if they have to make revenue through exports, India is the market where they can dump anything they want to.
Due to internal politics, we are not able to promote our own industries & Chinese know this fact very well. That is one reason, we Indian citizens can not afford local made costlier products, and have no options but to go with the cheaper Chinese products. Many of us even don't know the ingredients, chemicals mixed with them. We should only accept relationship offer from Chinese, when they stop their acceptance of PoK (just like they want Indian government to recognize Tibet.

China wants to become 'mutual friend' of India, Pak: China Daily

Who had stolen my idea

I had posted an idea on Learning Management System (LMS) being hosted a SaaS offering as LotusLive [http://rishibhargava.blogspot.com/2008/02/integrating-lotus-learning-management.html] - but apparently, some senior folks had other thought and they had converted this as BizTech projects and I was not even informed and again as usual, it comes to only YOU as an individual in an organization and others will just ride on you.

FixMyRoad.in - Idea of a social website for citizen's grievance about Indian Road infrastructure

Every Indian citizen knows that Indian Road Infrastructure is 15 years backwards than most of the advanced economies. Two years back, I came across a Web Site titled : FixMyStreet (Great Britain) and I liked that idea and concept. I know, many readers may feel that it is local municipality, corporation, state governments, central government, national highway authority of India's responsibility to fix the road. But imagine how much private sector and to a large extent public sector companies will benefit from the good and drivable roads:

1. Public opinion is alert to find fault but, since it finds fault with almost every-thing, public criticism fails to count as it should. A sharp, clear discussion in our schools, at least once each year, of what constitutes a good road, of what material it should be made, and what it should cost and who can build it most economically, would in a few years give us a public opinion that would do much to insure efficient road makers and efficient use of public money in building roads
2. Motor Vehicle and Life Insurance Companies will have to shell out less as claim amounts (which currently run into several crores or rupee/year (because of lesser accidents)
   
3. Lesser bio fuel consumption (hence oil marketing companies may not like it)
4. Lesser wear tear of the vehicles and that may actually bring the cost of vehicles down.
   
5. Good road will also allow lesser traffic congestion, good public health (dust free - hence lesser breathing related diseases)
   

I have even started educating my son on the importance of having good roads. Now, when my son sees a bumpy road in Bangalore - he tell me that road construction folks have taken all the money and did not fix it.

I also want to implement the similar citizen portal where people can contribute the following:

1. It should be available to all the citizens of India.
2. People can register themselves (via some verification mechanism)
3. They can upload photos of the roads in their locality along with the details like when the road originally constructed (if known), last time it was repaired, material used during road building, phone numbers of Junior Engineer (PWD), Assistant Engineer (PWD), Contractor's name, phone numbers, photo etc.
4. The locality/town/city wise reports will be sent to district magistrates for their review and copies of hte same to state PWD and central PWD, road & transport ministries.
5. Allow people to discuss the problem
6. Get the updates from respective authorities on tentative dates, cost of the road/patch work etc and post it on the site
   

Now, I have the idea and many more (which http://www.fixmystreet.com/ is not offering) - is it worth patenting :-) ). Probably not..It is a social cause. I want to make it happen, but I could not get help from my organization (as such social causes does not come under their purview). In that case, how can I go about doing it..I just don't want to start it as a blog - but want to roll out as citizen's portal, which represents Indian Public. I liked Jaago Re's campaign during 2009 assembly elections in India and I want to emulate them..but, I lack the funding, infrastructure and team to do it...Any volunteers, please contact me @ 9008176536.

Mumbai, having seen Kasab killing so many citizens, still begging for justice. Congress, like Afzal Guru, is allowing the case to be dragged till it can to win minority votes. If our dear minorities decide, the congress will come back to power and then they will hug Kasab, apologise regarding any discomfort he had in the jail, invite him to become citizen of India, offer him to run from Azamgarh on Congress ticket.
I think that will be true justice to Kasab to the service he had rendered to India. Hail Congress and hail Raul Gandhi..oops, Rahul I meant..I hope Bianca not listening..

From another blog:

"The revelation in New Indian Express, Chennai of the false claim of Mr. Rahul Gandhi made in his sworn affidavit that he holds a M Phil in Development Economics from Trinity College, Cambridge University calls from an immediate Notice for perjury to be sent to him by the Election Commission. Otherwise, I shall move the Courts for action.

The revelation confirms the disclosure I made after a visit to the Department of Development Studies, University of Cambridge in 2005. I was informed by the Department’s library and revealed in its computer, that Mr.Gandhi did not complete his M Phil degree because he had failed the National Economic Planning and Policy exam and hence could not fulfil the mandatory requirement of writing a M Phil thesis (much less defend it). Also, Trinity College does not award M Phil degrees, and Development Studies Department has nothing to do with the Economics Department.

Moreover, according to University records Mr.Gandhi as Raul Vinci had given his citizenship as ‘Italian citizen by birth since born to an Italian mother”, and holds an Italian passport in that name. He also paid his fees from a numbered account in a tax-haven bank.

Incidentally, Mr.Gandhi had failed the first year B,A in St.Stephan’s College in Delhi because, as his sister had in Jesus and Mary College, he failed the Hindi compulsory course exam."

Narendra Modi, sprit of Gujrat and great people

I had been commenting on Times Of India Online articles recently, but due to some weird reasons, none of my comments are being published..So, I have decided to provide a link of the same article appeared on TOI Online and comment via this blog.

Mr. Modi is one of the best leaders I have seen and admired personally for these reasons:
1. He has been creating job opportunities to his state people and encouraging companies to setup shops in Gujrat. He may be giving land at cheaper rates to many companies - but all this is ultimately helping the people of Gujrat only.

2. Gujrati muslims, who are against Modi on Godhara carnage, should not forget that it is because of him and his pro activeness, they are able to eat three meals a day, pray five times in a day. Not very far from Gujrat, we have Pakistan and we can compare the lives of hindus living in Pakistan and of muslims living in Gujrat and very clearly, we know who is safer where and who is able to lead better life.

3. Modi had been demolishing temples in Gujrat for road widening and other construction work for cities development work. We don't see too many Hindu organizations complaining about it or shouting/protesting loudly. There were few folks, who objected (VHP), but again Modi had his own way to deal with them. But how many muslim leaders have come forward to support in such initiatives, and we talk about one Babri Masjid.

4. Gujrat had seen so many natural and political calamities, but I am full praise for the people of Gujrat. They have never say die spirit and after every such calamity, the whole state bounces back.

I think, we need Mr. Modi in every state to clone the success story of Gujrat..Sonia Gandhi calls Modi "Merchant of Death". Such a moron she is..So many leader from Congress (Renuka Chowdhary, Rahul etc), Lalu (an other clowns) have tried to belittle Mr. Modi by saying all kind of words. But who had achieved such a success consistently. When industry leaders call him as Prime Minister material, then we should respect him for what he has delivered.

Times of India and many news channel which are pro-congress should think about it and change themseleves. Don't stick to "old lady". Hail Mr. Modi.

The menace of "Amway" social marketing in India

While returning from Mumbai around 3 months back, I happened to meet with a gentleman working with Standard Chartered Bank in Bangalore..As good passengers, we exchanged our phone numbers, interests, hobbies, work related trivial matters etc..

After reaching back to Bangalore, I got a call from him regarding an exciting business opportunity and his eagerness to meet me at my place..I readily agreed..What started since then was his four visits along with his wife during off hours and explanations regarding how one can make money by joining Amway band wagon..While, I tried to give him pointers that I was not keen in joining this network, he kept on insisting and also gave me two CDs to listen to what others are preaching about Amway..While, the products from Amway could be of superior quality, but such tactics leaves one with bad taste in mouth..

I think, I would call this tactic as social marketing and including the spouse in the whole cycle as cheap way to earn money..I am not saying that people are entitled to earn extra money in whichever way they think is right, but leave others who are not keen..

After, I had refused to entertain his further calls, I am not getting his pestering calls any more..I am not in favour of rejecting people out right. In this case, I thought, this person is educated, well mannered, but even then, such a behaviour is uncalled for..Some one should take strong actions against this type of propaganda marketing..

The mentality of India's premier space agency towards its employees

I happened to meet a senior person associated with India's leading space agency recently and it was shocking to learn thier vision towards the young generation employees - no wonder, they think their employees as mere utilities to develop some programs for them..

I was reading an article on how NASA is considering their employees as assets and how much attention they give to their employees productivity and satisfaction..While, in India, the agency think tank thinks that mere pride for working for nation will attract the talents - they may be right to some extent, but not in longer run..ultimately the apathy towards the employees in longer run is proving costlier to them..While, they may be able to launch the space missions with small budget, but the delays, lack of vision and leadership is technology is proving costlier to them..While, NASA on the other hand, spending lot of money in research and development of their employees..They spend considerable amount of money and energy enhancing productivity, ways to keep the satisfaction level high all time..

While, in India, nationalism can be used as a tool to lure the talent, but common sense prevails in longer run and that is the reason, we see brain drain..The current recession is seeing more job applications coming towards them, but in good times, this will never be the case, because of the lack of positive thinking and thinking to save money on trivial matters, while spending lavishly on road shows like statues, momentos, models...They try to put their resources on working on such things, which will demoralize their work force and no one wants to work on such trivial work, for which off the shelf products are available - this is called re-engineering by exploiting the workforce. People had joined this organization to do space research and development, not developing something which is not of their interest..

Look how NASA has allowed its workforce to collaborate on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2208274185 in keeping their interest in mind..Nothing wrong, they did not even spend any money to do this...All that was required is the thought process, which I have to accept is lacking with India's Government Organizations..

One of te worst person to have met today

I happened to meet one of the worst and arrogant person of my professional career..Unfortunately, as an IBMer I was supposed to be cordial with him and had to respect him as a client (but not done any tranactions as of now), otherwise it would have been disaster..

You can find him @ http://www.medwasteind.org/members.asp and http://mod.nic.in/samachar/aug1-03/html/ch19.htm

I am not sure how such folks become eligible to head some of the prestigious posts..I guess the tail of old british raj still wagging..Such a mindless person..Fortunately, I had to tolerate him for only 25 minutes..Only thing that restrained me was me representing IBM, otherwise he did not deserve the treatment that IBM had to give him..Probably sitting on the other side of the table had his mind upset..

Education is changing times

We have great minds at work in India to enhance the educational infrastructure and methods to teach. But why are we still lagging behind in generating innovators who wants to serve the nation? I know this is very sensitive theme I have chosen to right about, but the people can always argue about few things:

1. They complain about lack of good facilities in the institutes and for research scholars, equipments, red tapisim so on and so forth and every one who choose to study abroad give this as a reason.


2. Finally, we blame politics and politicians for everything we are not able to do. I know some states are very progressive where as some states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Orrisa, West Bengal are fighting poverty and politicians rule the states.

My take on these two things is different. I am not convinced that educational system in India is bad. It is really good and if you have will and resources to support, it is very competitive and that is why we see many Indians excel outside India as well as within India - otherwise why would IITs, IIMs and NITs would have good name.

Second, it all depends on individual's will to do something good for their own country and wish to stay back in India. I am proud of those who decide to stay back and work towards the betterment of India and Indian society by at least paying taxes to Indian goverment (whether tax money goes to real cause or not, that it different), but at least they are not paying money to U.S. or Europe to fund the war on so called "War on terror".

Third, it is really the bureaucracy who is dragging the nation behind..politicians come and go, die and take birth..but it is our civil servants and top decision and policy makers who have let us down for so many years..The main reason is their strong lobby and inner circle which is difficult to penetrate and lack of accountability towards the Indian public. Not all politicians are so greatly educated (since our electoral system does not put education as requirement to contest an election) and so busy to save their power that they don't have time to look into common public problems. Gone are the days when we used to have strong will powered leaders like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Lal Bahadur Shastri etc. But mostly current politicians are the tools to our IAS and PCS officials.

I am very frustrated by the fact that so many IITians/Engineers/Medicos opt for IAS and do not plan to make India a place for innovation. Water, energy, green, food conservation ideas are so much needed than anything else. When you are in such a higher up post and with all the resources at disposal (I know you will say you have your own bosses - lame excuse), you are the people who can move the things faster than any politicians can do (as they come and go by). They can identify the talent pool, create future team of visionaries, innovators and for these you have to reform the educational system in such a way that we not only generate innovators and great thinkers, but who wish to stay back. Not people who complete M.Tech./Research by the Indian tax payers money and then go abroad to pay taxes to foreign countries.

My request is with our bureaurocrats who can turn the things around by listening to the people of India who have ideas to offer and use the talent pool and resource we have at our disposal. What else do we need????? The current politicians will go away one fine day anyway and we need to move forward..

IBM Leads in promoting IT related education in within India

The first and foremost requirement for any country to be successful is their youths and children. If they are educated, then the nation succeeds. By education, I don't mean everyone attending the classrooms or schools, but be responsible, be knowledgeable and be aware of surroundings.

These days, with the advent of IT, IT education is becoming part of most of the educational systems. IT education for children should not be limited to mere having ability to play games and remain in the home hooked up to the internet; nor giving them tools to help them complete their homeworks. But, it should be in such a way that the best can be brought of their young minds. What are they thinking, how well they behave?

I think, IBM is doing better than many other IT companies in India to promote IT education at multiple level. Some of my colleagues are taking personal interest to enable rural students in IT and I think that is a great work as long as the direction is right and out come is positive.

Need for better, cheaper and affordable education in India

Supreme Court has been trying hard to convey this to educational institutes, but it does not seem to bother the private educational bodies who are busy minting money and sharing the profit too with those who help them continue.

Making schooling free till 8th grade in government schools will do good a lot on rural areas, but that will not help maintain the standards in the education. That requires lot of work from the educational ministry and government. If teachers do not get incentives and salary in time, what will motivate them. If teachers do not upgrade themselves, they can not broaden the minds of young generation. That is why it is important for government to impose some rules on private (educational) bodies to give back to less fortunates.

The difference between priviledged and not so privilledged can be lessened by this form of social service. The examples are in the form of doctors. Doctors in India have to perform services in rural areas for some time in their careers, so why not teachers in so called private schools/colleges. Isn't this is their responsibility to raise to the occassion? Similarly, technical institutes like NITs and IITs must be encouraged to visit the villages to share their wisdom with children of those villages to promote education.

Integrating Lotus Learning Management System (LMS) with Lotus Bluehouse

With the advent of SaaS and IBM'e initiatives of offering Web Conferencing Service (Sametime Unyte), Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr as SaaS (in Lotus Bluehome [http://bluehouse.lotus.com], it opens up another avenue which was ignored.

IBM has another Lotus brand of product for Corporates/Universities/Colleges/Schools named Lotus Learning Management System (LMS) [http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/learning-management-system/]. This is really cool product which provides ability to the institutes set up their coursewares, conduct trainings and a lot about learning. I am very keen to see if LMS can be offered as SaaS within Lotus Bluehouse. The advantages (plenty) (ok, I will talk from the perspective of customers - IBM can think of revenues)

1. All the offering that SaaS model provides (QoS parameters including better security and responsibility lies to SaaS provider, but site administration can still be done by the customers.
2. LMS along with the collaboration tools, a great mix - do we need classrooms still :-) - Yes, classrooms are best place for the regular students to be in..but for distant learning courses (where many US varisities conducting off-shore classes from India, this could be vital)..Currently, many research scholars (or college students doing project work rely on public social networking tools such as Orkut, YouTube, MySpace and other Project Management or file storage tools, they can get benefits. They can conduct conferencing with their peers or guides. Teachers can setup blogs for various topics and we have collaborative learning and experiences.
3. Many people may not be good speakers (and hence politicans), but they may have great writing skills and providing these tools in a controlled environment is such an easy way to encourage them to speak out to concerned audiences and not going public this way.
4. VERY good tool in Indian context - why: In Europe and Americas, they already are technologically advanced and students are exposed to good and bad part of Internet. But in India, with these tools, we will encourage them to adopt to these (read Lotus Bluehouse + LMS) and we have still huge number of people, who don't know these tools exists in the world. Educational institutes are a great way to popularize these tools among the generation next - and we have people, who don't want to listen to this and want to think about immediate revenue and profit - which is good for the H1/H2 quantitative figures, but bad for the people who may benefit by using those - well they can still still use open source it they wish, but that is not controlled and no one is really responsible for those. But if they some how be able to adopt to Bluehouse, it is well controlled environment, and they can collaborate better and secured..

I hope for the best of the Indian people...

Back to basics!!!!

I did not realize that many people may not understand the whole concept behind my blogs (specially non-IT). I apologise for my ignorance.

If you are new to "social networking" concepts, then you can go to:
http://www.whatissocialnetworking.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network
Then to read concepts about blogging in schools:http://www.ena.com/news/get_connected_2007_05.html

This is going to be future state in schools and colleges. e.g. many students feel shy in the classrooms or may be hesitant to express themselves and teachers/parent may not know the real reason. At times, it is found that they can express better in writing, hence blogging/community sites/wikis/YouTube/Orkut provide a better opportunity to connect teachers and students together. This is very new in India, but will definitely pickup as internet availability and infrastructure improves in India (it will take its time, but need not be a big bang).
With my blog, I am trying to take some initiatives to educate people that what it really is and how can these tools can help communication among individuals.

Can Indian Education Society emulate Internet2?

Read what Internet2 is all about - http://www.internet2.edu/

The question Indian educationists (IITs and NITs speicaly) have to answer is: Can they provide similar infrastructure to other smaller institutes/schools? I guess, funding may be a problem, but then they should start bringing companies into their growth plans and vision..For Indian companies, it is really a shame that they are not taking large scale combined initiative, but are focussed on smaller areas which cater to their short term and immediate concerns or goals like to build better roads in Bangalore so that employees can reach to the office faster :-)
I think, IBM again is doing great job working with colleges and universities across most part of India and not just local..

SaaS - What is it now?

Ok..We have another buzzword "SaaS" (clarified by one of my friends as not Ekta Kapoor's SaaS (bhi kabhi bahu thi)) :-)

SaaS - Software As A Service: To me it does not sound much difference from ASP (Application Service Provider) model. ASP based model were successful and worked out well for many companies (specially timesheet management, bug posting, mail and even some banking software were hosted on ASP environments). Now, SaaS has more support from SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) community also and trends are moving towards service management and provisioning on contractual basis - with SaaS, the clients need not buy or worry abour hardware, software, maintenance, upgradation etc.

In this model, instead of on-site hosting of the application and infrastructure, everything will be out-sourced..But SaaS providers now have to provide better security and QoS (Quality of Service). This is true in case financial/insurance companies want to leverage this model, the providers will have to obtain security/audit certificates from SAS 70 auditors [http://www.sas70.com/faq/faq1.htm]. Most of the time security and infrastructure provided by the service providers is better managed than on-site infrastructure. The client will have to pay a fixed/variable fee to use the hosted services and environment (probably annual contract).

This may be very cool in Indian context, where SMB (Small and Medium Business) and small government bodies/schools/colleges may not buy the whole software and hardware to setup/manager their own applications. they can contact SaaS providers for solutions. IBM has shown keen interest in this field and definitely they have will to do and resources to provide quality services specially in emerging markets such as India, China, Brazil, Russia, African nations etc. one such example could be offering Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections itself as SaaS and fullfil the QoS paramters set by the clients (could be bandwidth, security, user access, maintenance, availability)..This way, small companies/bodies need not invest heavily on infrastructure (DEV/TEST/STAGING envrionments) and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is with SaaS..I like this model very much and isn't IBM had been doing this successfully with Bharti and Idea accounts in India..So, they have shown that this model is workable, but need to standardize this model by adopting certification criteria and adhering to those to fullfil the contract with different clients.

What can we do to address poor Internet availability/access/infrastructure problem in India??

This is the major problem why many of the civil bodies in India are finding it difficult to adopt to the Internet itself and to show their own presence in the World; so it is more difficult for them to adopt Web 2.0 tools. Many departments don't have computers, internet connections, well electricity itself. How can this be solved:

• Do they rely on Government to take initiatives?
• Can IBM (or some organization) help build solar powered computers for governement or rural areas? (UPS can be charged with solar power and then companies can donate old PCs to these areas instead of dumping them)
• Do they rely on Private bodies to bail them out in the form of charity/funds.
• NGO - are they really good enough to help these bodies when they themselves don't have resources or don't want to get into troubles themselves
• Community libraries/centers can be setup where they provide limited time net access (I know it is a challenge in Indian context, but some where change has to be made)
• ...
• ...

Lets assume for this discussion that some depatment/organization has a computer with internet access. Why not an individual or a group within these bodies start using blogging or other social networking tools to promote their cause or create their own blog space on public blogs available as stop gap measure to show their presence to start with. E.g. they can create a community profile (orkut, myspace, YouTube) for their deparments to tell what they do, put photos etc. They can use Google docs to create and share documents etc. If some department is lucky enough to have their own LAN, they can download free Wiki software and setup their local Wiki site (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki) and start collaborating. They may not need whole big enterprise level infrastructure to start with and should not deter them going forward.

As their blogs/wikis/community sites attract more and more people and they start getting more feedbacks from good citizens in the form of encouraging words, then they can look for government aids.

What is required is an "Initiative". As an IBMers, can we help in this cause? We all must have cotacts in these social bodies and atleast 2% of them have this vision and dream..If we can help them realize this, this will be a very good initiative from social initiatives point of view. They need not start with big bang and that is what we need to tell them..The reason why I am saying is that the next generation of workers in those bodies will have more challenges if the current generation doesn't start this now. With open world, privatization of many public offices, it is a challenge for them and we may help them by encouraging/enable/mentor them..To start with, if they don't have access, as a part of community service, we should try to help them move forward..

Comments please...

Returning back with thoughts...

I had been struggling to write for long long time now, but decided to give it a shot. I have started getting into blogging now and was reading alot about it off late.

It is very heartening that people are using such a beautiful concept to share their thoughts and different types of blogs are giving tremendous knowledge and insight into different streams, not just the work but travel, health, education, fun etc. I have started feeling better after going through many articles about Web 2.0 and what it is offering and what it will offer in future. Web 2.0 is also helping creating "2.0" wave :-)

Now, soon you will start hearing "Enterprise 2.0", "Office 2.0", "Messaging 2.0" (that is my imagination), "Collaboration 2.0"..What about including "Social Networking and Etiquette" as a part of next session's syllabus? Recently, I was reading a news about a "Virginia Student's Snow-Day Plea Triggers Online Furor" [http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,325209,00.html] and how this student used his knowledge of social networking to raise his voice. This triggered several concern in the society about the good old "generation gap" topic. Every few years, society revives itself and Web 2.0 (or I prefer social networking) is a new way to broaden this gap :-)

I don't know how the olders people (I know, we will get older one day) thinks right now about speed with which kids are getting exposed to Intranet and opportunities is brings about. It is not only true with the kids though, even within the corporates, individuals and management apart have started realizing the importance of this and have already taken steps to embrace this. IBM is now trying to make this concept available at corporate level by launching "Lotus Connections" last year and now there is a new mantra emerging as Enterprise 2.0.

I tried not to mix technology in this, but now it is getting very difficult to separate technology out when we talk about Web 2.0. My next blog will be for the need of governance model (different models when in public and when in corporate) in Web 2.0 world and I hope schools adopt this as a part of "Civics" or "Sociology" lessons. If you read this..then you know I am socially connected now :-)

Start blogging..

Give me time to think...