Hindu Human Rights Watch

After a long time, I am happy to see that someone is tracking the Human Rights problem of Hindus.

I happen to talk to few Hindu people in Pakistan and also saw them in the refugee camp in Delhi. It was painful to hear their pain.

I hope other people also take a note of it and ensure Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh get justice and fair treatment. Kudo's to Hindu Post to taking this effort. 

Innovation Driven Entrepreneurship

Yesterday evening, I have having a chat with a good friend of mine about what our big IT companies are doing.

My friend said that the big IT companies are failure because they have not done enough. They have not entered into aggressively into the product development and hence are valued less. There are much smaller companies in other countries with much higher valuation.

There are things that I always think of and so after listening him, I proposed a different point of view.
I believe that the problem is not this 'big' IT companies but actually we are.

India has lot of innovation. The innovations are every where whether you are in the villages or cities. There are many smart and educated people.

Today, I saw an inspiring article from another friend Dr. Abhay Jere here about Innovation Driven Entrepreneurship. And I think it is very timely.

India as a country has not more than 20-30 years to excel. In these years, if we are not in the forefront of the economic revolution then we will not be a very successful and happy country.

In India, I think our problem is less about innovation and more about Entrepreneurship. Our innovations should be taught about basic concepts of entrepreneurship much before lot of time is spent on the refinement of innovation.

In the article, Abhay Jere ji talks about our human capital as main asset of Bharat. And these assets are a great source of innovation. I think these assets are also great source of economic activity where these innovations can be utilized. Innovation creates great amount of value. But this value is not captured in most cases or very little of the value is captured by innovator. Mostly big enterprises license these innovations are very little cost and capture most of the value.

If innovator is also an entrepreneur and can capture majority of the value created, we could certainly help motivating other innovators. This will also ensure innovator will think end to end rather than 'just' innovation part.

If www.i4c.in could actually develop framework and help these people to get venture and create enterprises within the country, then very soon, we will reach our economic target of the country. As the objective on the website says that focus is on the lower end of the pyramid, I believe then the investment also will be of lower scale. We should come up with Micro Venture Capital Strategy similar to micro lending.

Dr Abhay Jere is has been consistently working on this front and I believe these things will be part of the strategy in future.

Punjab National Bank Customer Service

My experience with Banks are not always best but recently with PNB was at worst.

Here is what happened:

I went to the bank to deposit 7K INR in cash.
I took token (for cash deposit below 25K) and waited for my number.
Once my number was called, I went to the counter. The counter person refused to take my money for deposit and said that bank does not take any cash deposit below 30K and I should go to a cash deposit machine outside of the branch and deposit there.

There was no crowd and not a rush period. So, I enquired with him that they should have informed to me about this before hand for which they told me that they had put a notice (in small fonts) somewhere at entrance and they will not entertain my request.

I went to branch manager who also refused to budge to my request. He said he is unable to take cash deposit at counter as if they take any cash deposit then the top management asks question from Center. Well, after much argument he convinced me to go to the cash deposit money.

I then went to the machine which had looong queue (while counters were empty now) with no one able to deposit.

Apparently the machine was not working. We went to the branch manager (who now disappeared) and all the employees refused to take cash deposit. One employee recommended that we come next day to deposit.

While most of the transfers I do it online using NEFT or RTGS, there are times when we need to do urgent cash deposit. Not allowing customers to deposit money is a big loss. While private banks are sending people at home to pick up cash and deliver services at door steps, nationalised banks are not ready to take cash deposit. I hope all this changes soon.

Youtube Video of arguments.

Technology cannot be forced on people. Management of PNB should look into their service.

Did you face anything similar at PNB or at other banks?

Voter Registration Drive

As elections are on the way, we see the problems around us. Especially in Pune where I am in, I hear form many people that they would like change. But then, most of them also don't have election voter ID card or if they have it, it is from their old address and they will not be able to vote this time unless they travel long distance back home.

So, we decided to set up some voter registration drive with the help of few volunteers and currently it is planned that we do this for every weekend in and around Pune.

If you would like to volunteer for such a cause, please contact me and I will be more than happy to coordinate and organise. It does not has to be every weekend. Even one weekend for 4-5 hours would be good.

Prime Minister Relief Fund - Accounts

After all the unfortunate incident at Uttarakhand (UK) and the ongoing effort to provide donations and other benefits, I saw several posts and also in news paper that PM has called for contribution to the relief fund.

So, I checked for past history and this money was utilized. Here is the link to Audited version of the expenses. Do check yourself too.

http://pmindia.gov.in/pmfunds.php

Here is the table copied from the link about.

Year	Total Income (Fresh contributions, Interest Income, Refunds)	Total Expenditure (Relief for Riots, Flood, Drought, Earthquakes, Cyclone, Tsunami, Medical etc.)	Balance
2008-09 (A)	353.49	216.31	1611.62
2009-10 (A)	185.11	120.26	1652.83
2010-11 (A)	155.61	182.31	1625.64
2011-12 (A)	200.79	128.41	1698.00
2012-13 (A)	211.41	181.52	1727.79

 A = Audited

It looks like fund received more money than actually spent. I am not sure whether we had less disaster in the country or we have more generous people. But something surely missing (and fishy)

Any knowledgeable person would like to share insight about it would be great.

Blackberry z10 discount deal

Saw in the news paper that blackberry in India is having discount of up to 11,000 INR for the exchange offer.

At first I thought that it is as lucrative as the deal for SamSung. But on further research it does not seems to be that good.

• It is not standard 11 K discoung. It is upto 11K. So, if you return blackberry curve, you may only get 3K discount
• The price of the base blackberry itself is very high
• If you deduct 3K from 37K, the phone is very costly even at 34K. 
• Galaxy Note 2 was 27K after 10K discount

Here is the related news.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/blackberry-launches-exchange-scheme-for-z10-offers-discount-up-to-rs-11000/403426-11.html

I doubt that in the long run, blackberry will be able to sell more phones.

Also, I am not convinced about paying more for blackberry services when you can get all your email and chat on unlimited internet (EDGE) for 150 Rupees.

The ROI seems to be not just there.

Even though I have used blackberry for more than 10 years, I have moved to android phones. Even 10K simple phone from Micromaxx is much better than what is offered by blackberry.

Last Rites for Alta Vista next week

One time favorite search engine of my early days of software engineering is going to be shutdown next week.

There was no google at that time and we are just amazed at what we could find quickly. Of course, after google, things have changed and I hardly look into any other search engine.

I am not sure if the altavista code base was used to build the search engine for Yahoo :-)

Anyway, for all those people like me who have used it in the past, may feel a little nostalgic for a moment but we are not going to miss it for sure.