My Life ... My Journey

It's been long since I decided to play a game on my mobile phone. The reason - every time I start playing games, I get addicted to them. I got myopia playing video games in childhood. Getting back to the point, I decided to play game to understand if it can simulate my brain and get me to use the rusty parts of the brain. The game works on a very simple concept. You are the mayor of a city. You are given a small townhouse and some money. You have to build the infrastructure, facilities, demarcate zones, run the economy of the city. While it may sound complicated, it starts with simple steps and has levels where as you gain experience, you move up the levels. New levels unlock new buildings, features, resources, capabilities and/ or money. The app nicely uses a prompt section called quest - which work like simple tasks and as you complete them, you get rewarded. You need to keep a look at supply and demand for different resources and how the population is faring. While, I enjoyed it...

The FY20Q1 GDP results came in recently. It shrank by 23.9%. A quarter marred with the pandemic and its higher order effects including lock-down brought one of the most vibrant economies to a halt. Many people dwell on various aspects of this number. The critics of the government have admonished it for being the poorest performer among G20 nations. Others gaped in horror thinking about the actual impact as the informal sector's impact is not accounted in the GDP. There are others who see the silver lining. GDP denotes the sum total of goods and services produced in the country. It is a figure which tells us what has happened in the past. Present and future are altogether different aspects. The PMI figures for August were 52 indicating expansion in manufacturing output compared to previous month. This indicates we are returning from the downhill ride. As the government allows more relaxation under new phases of pandemic response termed 'Unlock', one would expect the economy ...

A lot of people have been contemplating on going wide vs deep in their life -profession or otherwise. What exactly does one mean by going deep? Going deep means gaining expertise in a specific area by devoting one's attention to the same. There are many anecdotes to support this thought. There is a famous idea prevalent in the contemporary society that one requires 10000 hours of practice to develop mastery of any art. Expressions like domain expert, industry expert, Black belt etc. denote the same concept. They all point towards perfection or deep knowledge achieved in a particular trait through long-sustained efforts. Now lets turn our attention towards going 'wide'. Width refers to the expanse, or how far you can go. If you owned a piece of land wide enough, you may come across many different artifacts and changes in soil, topography, etc. Width thus essentially has come to correspond to the ability of knowing multiple traits. In professional world, people are calle...

Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on US Election eve that 500 and 1000 denomination notes would not be any longer legal tender, the issue of demonetization has been a topic of heated discussions. The response to the move has been varied and interesting. While some political parties like TMC immediately demanded a rollback, others waited to catch hold of some straws to beat the government on the issue. There were multiple aims of this exercise- 1. Temporarily check flow of counterfeit currency which is used to fund terrorism, insurgency and drug cartels 2. Attack on black money hoarded in form of cash 3. Give a push to a less-cash society with better accountability Most criticism has been around the preparation or the execution post the decision. Let's look at the stated goals and the criticism to evaluate the decision. For the first two goals, demonetization as a move is effective only when  it comes as a surprise and there is little time to make alt...

Freedom of Expression has also gone into the list of words abused a lot as people use it in unrelated context and unsparingly. What constitutes Freedom of Expression (FoE)? The general understanding is that each individual has the freedom to express (display) his/her opinion without fear. Is FoE constrained or is the freedom unlimited. As an individual, you are free to do what you wish. No one can't curtail the choice you make but of course, you have to be ready to bear consequences. In the law of jungle, you may do chest-thumping or incite a predator but you should be ready to face consequences for your foolhardiness.  We don't live in a jungle. We live in a society and the membership of an individual to the society is based on social contract . Put simply, individual puts curb on his/her freedom, rights and choices in return for law, order, and mutual benefit. In modern state like India, these rules of society are codified in form of constitution. Indian constitutio...

I recently watched the film by Anand Gandhi. the movie was awarded the Best Feature Film at the National Film Awards. The starting frames allude to the eponymous thought experiment that whether  a ship which was restored by replacing each and every one of its wooden parts remained the same ship . The movie is composed of three smaller stories. The first story is of a blind photographer who tries to visualize things through her camera. She listens to sounds and uses a camera aid to click snaps. She gets the photos etched, analyzes it with finger-touch and takes feedback from her friend/lover to confirm if the photos reflect the scene she perceived. When asked why she took up photography, she says first to document and archive, and secondly to explore, understand and see. But it's more than that for it gives her a purpose in life. She comes across as an unfazed indomitable spirit who refuses to keep any accidental good clicks for it represents something which she hadn...

India is the 3 rd largest economy in the world in terms of GDP (PPP). It has grown at a rate of 7-8% p.a. for most part of the last decade. However, to grow further and bring the remaining 1/3 of our population out of poverty, India would need to grow at these rates. After 1991, there haven’t been significant reforms and India needs another round of substantial reforms. A majority of these reforms need to tackle the supply side bottlenecks as there is a strong demand. One of the major concerns is the ease of doing business and the support structure for enterprises. The country languishes in infrastructure. There aren’t adequate roads, railways is suffering from under-capacity, waterways and aviation require lot of capacity creation. Energy is also a big issue as more than 70% of crude oil demand is met by imports. There is no reliable power supply available to industries as the power plants can’t meet the demand due to shortage of coal. Getting skilled labour, environmental clea...

I was reading an article yesterday about humans' rising over-dependence on technology. The advancement of technology has brought umpteen comforts to our lives. The drudgery of tasks has been replaced by the remote-operation of machines. Technology has become an important part of our life. The mere thought of living without modern-day comforts would be dreadful. It would be foolish to argue that technology is not good for humanity because the advancement of society to a great extent means advancement in technology. However, there are some who believe it's taking us away from nature. From being an integral part of our environment, we started altering our environment and now exploiting it beyond repair. Mahatma Gandhi famously said, "There is enough for everyone's need but not for greed". Even ancient civilizations focused on harmony between man and nature. Today though we would like to argue for same ethos, the truth is it would be a superficial display. Pe...

In this era of globalization, one can easily connect with people living in different locations at ease. We may be very well versed with people we have never met in life but may be equally ignorant of the neighbor living next door. It's an age where we spend considerable time in virtual world as we do in the real world. The explosive growth of communication media has greatly impacted our life. Sometimes, it's very difficult to dissociate oneself from virtual world.So, people revere movie stars as Gods, news channels make and break governments, people sympathize with protagonist battling scheming vamps, or look for their marriage partners online. Today, for every real activity, there is a virtual counterpart. You can fight wars, manage business, sing, shoot, cook, plan family, travel to other planets, and even save humanity online. So, what has led to so profound emergence of this virtual world? It's difficult to answer it precisely. But this could be a re...

As I write this post, a lot is happening in the world. Tunisia recently saw its people force its President to flee the nation and thus usher a new era of welfare and development policies. Egypt is following suit as thousands of people protest on streets against the President Hosni Mubarak who has become a dictator. The oppressive regime of 30 years has infuriated the people to rise against him. As of now, Mr Mubarak is holding to it and has been unrelenting to the demands of the protestors. There is a clampdown including disruption of internet, strict actions against protestors and any action that could intimidate the people. They are projecting a state in chaos if the Mubarak Government concedes to their demand. While the face-off between the two sides continue, we would have to wait and watch what comes out of this. This leads to some serious questions. Was it some recent incidences which led to the current Egyptian revolution or was it a process of accumulated grievances. If the pe...

There was a time when I used to love quizzes. I used to answer the questions posed at me and I took pride in answering them. Soon I realized that I had decent knowledge about India but when it comes to world, I am as good as anyone. I did participate in few quizzes in school and won as well (not necessarily because of my contribution). Nevertheless, I came to college and I actively participated in quizzes. Oh I know some answers, I helped my team get some score but every time I did not clear the preliminary round. It was sad but I did not lose hope. I persevered for a complete one year before realizing it was futile. I had to either get a partner whose knowledge complements me (world, sports, entertainment) or I had to raise my comfort level in the weaker fields. Unfortunately, I failed in both and lost interest in quizzes. Despite this, I did seldom frequent quizzes. After all these years when it's almost time to say goodbye to college, something unbelievable happened. ...

As I set to write this post, two things are remarkable :- It is after a long time I am posting on my blog. (Never tired of being lazy) It may be a race against time as the internet goes in 12 minutes. (restrictions are omnipresent) It is the latter I would talk about. Internet has coem a long way from its use as Darpanet by US Army to becoming a necessity of modern life. You no longer need special LAN wires to access it. It has become as ubiquitous as gossip. (comparison just for the sake of it ;) ) Even the mobiles can be used to access net. The world wide web today allows us to be aware of what's new, gain information regarding specific fields, do research, stay connected with friends and family, play games, look for job to do invest money, do shopping, read books and what not. And because of the versatile nature of internet , it has assumed such a great place in our life. Of course internet has its advantages. Who would deny it. But what amount of time we should spend onl...

India is an emerging superpower. It is expected to be the third largest economy in 2030 after China and US. It's definitely something to feel proud of. But will that pride be accompanied by true happiness. In 2030, India is expected to be the most populous country in the world. More than 6 decades after independence, we are still fighting the same problems of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, malnutrition and corruption. We are the world's largest democracy and have set examples for the world to emulate. We have also in turn been good at absorbing and assimilating ideas, practices and technology from the world, from the people we have come in contact. While it is quite debatable to comment on whether we have imbibed more good things than bad, it is certainly true that we have not been smart enough to solve our problems effectively either through indigenous ideas or best of the world techniques. The reasons are many. Some blame it on the huge population which nullifies whatever...

This discussion ensues from the recent report on demand of separate time zone for North-east. A time zone is a region of the earth that has uniform standard time, usually referred to as the local time. By convention, time zones compute their local time as an offset from UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). Local time is UTC plus the current time zone offset for the considered location. India currently has a single time zone compared with Russia's eleven time zones, the US and Canada's six zones, Brazil's four zones and Australia and Kazakhstan's three zones. China, however, is a notable exception with a single time zone. India's east-west span of more than 2,000 km covers over 28 degrees of longitude, resulting in a two hour difference in the sun rise and set across the eastern border and the Rann of Kutch in the far west. Thus, is the demand for separate time zones in some circles. Academicians, youth, teachers, students and women organizations gathered recently to at...

The world must be envying India for its citizens owning mobile phones are in a state of bliss. Calls as cheap as 1 paise/sec and SMS expected to follow soon is a far cry from the early years of 21st century. When once, the customer had to pay hefty price for even incoming calls, the decision to make incoming free has changed the whole scenario. While Mr Raja allegedly involved in spectrum allocation scam may not be feeling 'princely', the mobile users surely would be. There are some reasons why this tariff war is believed to last a little longer :- The new license-holders who have already launched or are going to launch their telecom operations are giving the existing players stiff competition. The proposed number portability system when launched would allow easy migration of customers from one operator to another The Government's decision to reduce termination charges from 20 paise/min, which is the charge one operator has to necessarily pay to other for a call emanating ...

This article which appeared in Economic Times on 29 October 2009 tells that at least half a dozen of top 25 in the world's largest software maker shows significant Indian contribution. Its not only Microsoft, but Indians have proved their mettle in almost every successful business and technology start-ups. Silicon Valley hosts one of the largest Indian tech-force. Its not technology and business alone, Indians have shone in almost every field, ranging from spelling bee contests to music. The diaspora has carved a space for itself. It brings back the old debate of brain-drain. In this globalized world, its impractical to control flow of talent. Whether NRIs have done us more harm than good is a controversy in which I don't want to indulge. But it is true that we must identify the potential of our citizens and give them ample opportunities to hone it and benefit the society, nation and humanity at large. From ' Vishwaguru ' to an urge to become a knowledge economy, all de...

Have you ever felt as if you are swimming unconsciously in an active sea where you can feel something happening around you but you feel detached from it as if in state of coma ? ... I know it sounds awkward but I am sure there are many like me who must have felt something similar at one point of time or other. It may be some kind of delusion or psychological effect that one gradually slides into passiveness. You feel as if you are a pupa who has lost the will of coming out of cocoon. These moments might be quite troubling. You may want to overcome lethargy, but the comfort of inactivity pulls you back. You simply don't know what to do about this situation. Even your mind fails to answer your questions. On a deeper note, perhaps one has slid into aimlessness. It may be momentarily. You may have certain targets to achieve but you know there is no urgency. And when this thought starts taking control over your mind and thought process, you fall into a state of hibernation. While animal...

The general elections 2009 brought its own expectations, enchantments, disillusions, and uncertainty. The citizens of the largest democracy had many issues in mind while they decide what best suits there future. Some were responsible enough to utilise the opportunity of making decisions for themselves and the entire nation while others preferred to be 'Pappu' enjoying the spicy political news presented in form of raw entertainment (a feat only our media can achieve) from a distance. With Election Commission banning exit polls during elections, the analysts and political parties gauged aam aadmi's mind by media reports about daily changing political formations, out of blue statements of netas, verbal duels, and the various permutation and combinations of factors(caste, religion, charismatic leaders and plethora of other local issues) leading to victory or defeat. This all seemed to be even more fascinating at moments as compared to India's first love Cricket(IPL). In a...

These screenshots show the sleek, attractive ubuntu interface. Jaunty Jackalope Dust theme.

In the calm of the night the tick-tick of the clock increases and the time lonely seems to fly by collecting the accounts of everyone's deeds While humans are asleep, their luck is decided by the actions of the past by the Creator of All Freedom of action; freedom to use time freedom to choose one's own fate He is the judge, we are the players blessed to live, the way we want Thou shall waste thy precious time But look o look! the time passes by ....