Hare Krishna

Astrologer's Role in Marriages

2012-02-14T05:09:00.033+05:30

These days, many people are consulting astrologers whether the bride and groom's charts are matching or not.

If we believe that, the astrology is correct, and it cannot be changed, then at the time of birth itself, our fate has been decided, and whom would one gets married is decided. So, there is no need for one to check the astrologers about the horoscope match. The astrologer does not play any role in this.

I asked the same to an astrologer. He told me that, his role is only shortlisting. If there is no match for the bride and groom, and if they do not consult astrologers, then they would spend lot of time and money, and finally, the marriage would not happen. If they come to the astrologer, they would check whether one can proceed or not. If it is a clear no case, then one would save lot of time and money.

He gave a counter example to the same. There was a family, who always comes to him for anything in their family. For their son, they visited the astrologer many times to match with the bride chart. Once, he went out of station for few days. At that time, that family found a match, and they got married without consulting this astrologer. Within 15 days after the marriage, the husband left his wife, because she was harassing him like anything. The astrologer told me that, this guy had two marriages in his chart. That's why, for his marriage, they could not consult him.

From this, few people conclude that, astrology is always correct, and everyone should follow it, and they follow all the random and fake astrologers and change their life according to what they say.

The conclusion that I got was, whatever has to happen will happen. It cannot be changed. We can only be prepared. If the astrologer says, you will face troubles, if you marry that person, and if you are not destined to have troubles, you will not get married to that person. If you are destined to have troubles, you would get married to that person. Irrespective of your interest and actions, the whole world conspires you to get married to the person you are destined to, provided you are destined to marry. If you are not destined to marry, then the whole world would conspire you to not get married.

Another astrologer says, many people are getting married late, which is true. My guess is, the astrology is using astrology to delay the marriages. It is very difficult to find good astrologer these days. Most of them do not have any knowledge in astrology, and for many, the goal is, to extract more money. If the astrologer says, the chart is good for every match, then they would get married soon, and the astrologer wont get much money. If the marriage does not happen, then they can earn money. So, the fake astrologers try to reject as many as possible. If the astrologer had not said no, then many people may get married without any issues. Since, their destiny is not to get married, they are going to these astrologers only to cancel the marriages. Astrology is using itself to prove itself.

I used to hear the predictions of few parrot astrologers, who always say correct to any illiterate. They say, something like, these days you are getting dreams regularly. But, by the time, you wake up, you are forgetting. You are thinking about one thing deeply. You don't know what is going to happen in that. For these things, it is true for almost everyone. Any healthy person would get dreams regularly, and it is very rare that, they remember it. Everyone thinks about many things. It is very difficult to do not think. Since, they are true, the illiterates believe that, the astrologer is correct.

The same kind of general truths can be applied even for marriages. There is no perfect match. For any couple, at some time or other, they fight with each other. Even decades back, the couple used to fight in such a way that, the wife goes to her parents house and stays there for some time. These days, even divorce became common. So, if an astrologer says, within 3 years, this girl fights with the husband, and goes to her parents house, it would be true for most of the time. The astrologer would also suggest big puja to rectify this problem. If there is no fight, then, the astrologer says, because of this puja, nothing happened. If there was a fight, he says, because of the puja, the problem reduced significantly.

Illegal Does not Mean Unethical - Dr.JP is Planning to do Illegal Activity

2012-02-12T23:28:00.001+05:30

Illegal does not mean Unethical. Illegal only means, you are violating one or more rules set by the government. Even if the rule set by the government is unethical, still, if you violate it, it would be called as illegal.

If the people are self-dependent, then they do not care about the government. If people do not care about the government, then most of the politicians will be worth of nothing. Many present politicians can survive only, if people are dependent on them. For that purpose, government introduced many unethical rules which are there just to increase the suffering of the people.

One example is, Andhra Pradesh farmers cannot sell rice to any other state in India. A.P. farmers are not getting good price for rice in A.P. If they sell rice to the neighbor state Karnataka, they get Rs.150-200 extra per bag of rice. But, A.P. government is neither giving fair price to the farmers nor it is allowing to sell outside the state. Whenever any farmer suicides, all these politicians visit their house, and say, they would take care of their family and would solve all the problems of the farmers. But, they do not remove these kind of restrictions.

Dr.Jayaprakash Narayan has given a warning to the government to remove this restriction before Feb 17th. If they do not remove, then under the leadership of Dr.JP, all the farmers would violate the government rules and sell rice in Karnataka on Feb 18th and 19th.

All the so-called sincere people out there; Now, you can criticize that, even Dr.JP has done illegal activities. If he violates the rules on 18th and if the government files any case against him, you can say that, Lok Satta Party is also similar to any other party, and it's president has pending cases against him.

Open Competition and Capitalism Increases Corruption

2012-02-11T23:24:00.000+05:30

Whenever anyone talks about corruption, the first example that I give is, corruption in getting a telephone in 2000 and in 2003.

Till 2000, If anyone wanted a phone, they need to pay bribe and even then, they would get only after 2 months. By 2003, if anyone wants a phone, it would hardly take few minutes to get a phone. The corruption has gone away because of the competition between different Tele-communications companies. We need open competition and capitalism to reduce the corruption, and not by arresting the employees of BSNL who were taking bribes.

After this, many intellectuals raise the next question. The biggest scam in India happened in Tele-communications. That open competition has given an ugly face and the corruption has increased to unimaginable level.

Let's suppose, if there had been no competition, and there is only BSNL controlled by the government, like it was till 1996. What would have happened? The entire spectrum would have been taken over by the BSNL. How much money would country have got out of it? Absolute zero.

For obvious reasons, if there is no money, then one cannot do corruption in that.

All the communists want to reduce the corruption to zero, which is possible, only if, the income is zero.

All the capitalists are fine with the loss of money because of corruption, as long as we get something out of it.

Redbus May Cancel Your Ticket Without Your Permission

2012-02-08T23:23:00.006+05:30

My friends had very bad time with Redbus. They had booked two tickets in redbus, and they wanted to cancel one. They called the customer care and asked to cancel one. Customer care people tried to cancel, and then said, it is not possible to cancel one ticket. They did not cancel any ticket. My friend found another one who would like to travel in the same route and went to board the bus. At the time of boarding, they said, one ticket was cancelled and they did not allow another to board. That other person had to go by very expensive way to reach his destination. Obviously, at that time, it won't be possible to go by a cheaper mode of transport.

Later on Redbus called and said, other person did not show up, so, they cancelled that ticket and returned full fare. That was the biggest comedy. When they were fighting on why they cancelled without their permission, they were saying the passenger did not show up. They returned full fare, saying passenger did not show up. (Nobody returns full fare, if the passenger does not show up.) But, the expense because of the alternate transport was much more than the full fare.

If a case is filed in a consumer court, it is easy to win. But, for that, one needs to spend significant time (which can be translated to money). So, they did not go for that option.

If you are planning to book tickets by Redbus, be careful. If you are doing partial cancellation, prepare for the worst.

When You Are In Others' Shoes

2012-02-05T23:26:00.002+05:30

Many years back, my manager used to tell our team about few reasonably big functionalities.

This is a very simple functionality. While having lunch with one hand, you can finish this feature with another hand.

For obvious reasons, we did not like that.

Few days back, I told the following to my colleague before starting for office from home, about the only feature in a sprint.

This is a simple functionality. By the time, I come to office, you can finish this feature.

One Question to the Supporters of Anti Corruption and Anna Hazare

2012-02-03T23:28:00.001+05:30

How many people have submitted all the original documents in the income tax declarations with true claims including but not limited to house rent, medical bills, travel bills etc.?

Whatever the reasons that people have, to submit fake documents, for the same reasons, the corrupted people are doing corruption.

What is Valuable for One is Not Valuable for Others

2012-02-02T23:21:00.003+05:30

When I was in Hyderabad, one friend invited me for lunch, and in Chennai another friend invited me. Both times, I think, I ate minimum no.of items than they prepared (not quantity), and Dal and Rice were the major items that I had taken. Both were the best lunches that I had in those cities.

One common friend asked me, whether I did not like the food, because, I had taken only dal and rice, and with force, I took one more item for the namesake. I told that, since, dal and rice are good, I ate only that. Then, I was given a class that, even if I like those two items, still I should eat other items also. Otherwise, they may think that, I don't like the food. I am not sure, who is correct. But, I was more happy by eating just those two items.

At another time, a family friend invited me for lunch. They did not cook dal. The person asked his wife, whether she made dal or not. She said, since dal is the one which is eaten everyday, she did not prepare. Eventhough, there was no problem with that food, I cannot say that, it was the best food that I had eaten in recent time or in that city.

When she said that, dal is the one which is eaten everyday, I felt like saying, who eats daily? You may eat it daily. But, I don't. For obvious reasons, I did not tell.

For the person, who does not know how to cook, and eats in the hotel always, the normal food that is cooked at home would be delicious. It may be normal for them, but it is a good food for me.

Probably, the junk food that I eat daily may be special food for many people.

Many years back, when I was a kid, I visited a village to attend a marriage. There, they have arranged a car and a tractor to go to the marriage hall. I did not like to go by tractor. Since, I travel by bus regularly, I did not want to go by bus either. I wanted to go only by car, and I waited till the last trip of the car, and went by that. Now, if I am in the same situation, without any second thought, I would go by tractor.

Thanks to
Mrs & Mr. Vamsi Kalyan
Mrs & Mr. Siva and Sobhana

In Case Your Business Partner Harasses You, What Would You Do?

2012-01-30T17:15:00.007+05:30

You and your friend have started a business together. After some point in time, he wanted to separate out. Eventhough, you don't like it, but, you agreed to separate out. When the process of separation is going on, your partner has started harassing you and your family. He started destroying your wealth.

The separation is not completely over, and you are holding more than your share of the business. The extra share of the business is less than the damage that caused to you by your partner, either directly or indirectly. In more technical terms, if your partner had not destroyed your wealth, then you would have saved much more than the extra share of the business that you are holding.

Now, would you return his share of the business, when he is harassing you and your family, and still continuing the destruction of your assets?

I am sure many people will not return his share of business. Few kind hearted people may return after everything is settled, and only after he stopped the harassment and fighting.

If a person who calls himself as a well wisher of both the parties advise you to return money, would you really call that person as a well wisher. If he threatens you to return the money, still do you call him as a well wisher? Let's suppose, if you call him as a well wisher, do you think your family (who is suffering everyday) will also call him as a well wisher? If you decide to return the money to your partner after listening to your well wisher, how does your family feel?

Disclaimer: This post is completely fiction, and resemblance to any actual incidents is purely coincidence. If there is any resemblance to any actual incident, and if anybody posts that as a comment, that comment would be deleted immediately.

Google - Best to Worst

2012-01-27T23:28:00.001+05:30

At one point of time, Google was the best in everything, and there was no feature that could have been developed in a better way. I don't know, what happened in the recent time (don't know whether the changes in the top management effected this or not), Everything is becoming worse, and one had to continue with google, since there is no other competitor for most of the things.

Gmail - The new interface is very bad. I don't know who is the new program manager for Gmail. It seems, he/she gets one or two mails per day. That's why, he/she might have designed that way. The old program manager designed gmail for heavy load. They might have fired him/her to save the cost.

Google Reader - All comments of gmail are applicable to reader as well. They removed sharing feature to promote plus. So, those who read others' shares have to visit plus to read. Even then, it won't share the entire post. It would share only the first few lines, and the user has to visit the original site to read it.

Blogger - Initially, they made the interface worse for the advanced users. Now, they changed it to make it usable for advanced users also. Still, In the new interface, they have given more preference to icons rather than text. If I see New Post and the corresponding icon, I always would act faster for the text rather than the icon. [Don't know, whether some doctor would call this as a disease or not.]

Buzz - I don't know what made them to kill Buzz. But, it was the most simple interface, and only because of that, visitors to my blog has increased by many times.

I am still using the old interfaces for gmail and blogger. I could not find any way to use the old interface for google reader.

Security - Previously, Google has given the maximum preference to the security of the user's accounts. Now, it seems, they are least bothered about it.

Android OS - (Tested with Samsung Galaxy i5510). When you login to the gmail account from mobile, it stores the password. One cannot sign out, and removal of the password is also not possible. One has to do restore to factory settings to actually remove it. User can login to a dummy account, and from there, they can add another account, by which they can login to gmail and others. When they are done, they can remove that account. But, the problem is, till, you remove that account, it stores the password. If you lose the phone, when the account was added, they would get the access to the entire account. One has to change the password in that case. Or one has to enter the password, everytime, they want to access their account, and remove the account, once they are done. It is too tedious for anyone who worries about security.

There was one old gmail app from google, which works in Nokia, that does not store the password. It stores only the cookie. So, the user can access the gmail account at any time without entering the password. Since, it stores only cookie, we can remotely sign-off, in case we lose the phone. But, I cannot find that app now.

Another worst thing is, once you change the password, you cannot reuse the old password.

Google App Engine:

To upload any application in google app engine, you cannot use a browser. You have to upload it from command prompt/eclipse or other tool. When you use command prompt, while uploading, it asks for the username and password of the gmail account. Once you enter the username/password, anyone from that system/login can update the same application without entering the password again. It stores the cookie in the system and google never says where the cookie is stored. The cookie would expire after the time period that is set in the settings of the google app engine. The time period varies from 1 day to 2 weeks.

In windows, it stores the cookie and email id in Registry in HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> JavaSoft -> Prefs -> com -> google -> appengine -> tools -> admin

In Linux, it stores in ~/.java/.userPrefs/com/google/appengine/tools/admin/prefs.xml file.

If we delete those, then while updating the application, it asks for username and password again.

Credit Card details:

If you are having paid version of any service from gmail, then to renew it, you have to store the credit card, or should be ready to bring down your service for some time.

Any service provider would give option to renew their service before the due date. But, google does not give that option. You have to store your credit card details in the account, and on that specific date/time, it would charge your credit card. If your credit card does not work on that date for any reason, your service would be disrupted. If you do not want to store the credit card at all, then one day before, you have to cancel the service, and immediately take the service. But, during that process, the service may be disrupted.

Google says the data they store is secure. But, they made everything else as very insecure. For those who do not know how the google authentication/security works, if they login to google account from android mobile, or login to app engine or give their credit card details in a shared gmail account, then there is no security to their account/credit card.

Since Google is indispensable, and there is nobody in the competition, we have to live with these. There is no other option.

Thanks to Michael, Rajesh Tiruveedula and Panchakshari Damerla

Way To Protest

2012-01-24T23:26:00.000+05:30

The present day politicians have defined the protest as troubling the people and not allowing anyone to do their work. They defined it in such a way that, anything that does not trouble others is not a protest at all. Unfortunately, people also started believing the same.

Recently, I came to know a different way of protesting.

Some time back, the Gopuram of Sri Kalahasthi collapsed, and after that, Government has started a committee to check all the temples and the strength of the structures. The committee has given a report on many ancient temples. For the Gali Gopuram in Mangalagiri, which is the tallest Gopuram in A.P., the committee has given report that, the foundation is not very strong. Then, the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh has sanctioned a bill to demolish the Gali Gopuram and construct a new gopuram in the same place and granted Rs.10.5 crore.

This was objected by many people at Mangalagiri. The Gali Gopuram is popular, mainly because it is an ancient structure. If they are going to demolish it, there is no need to create that Gopuram again. But, if the Gopuram can be protected by any means, then it must do that. The social organizations have consulted few Professors of Civil Engineering to check the feasibility. They suggested few measures by which the Gopuram can be protected with an expenditure of Rs.1 Crore. But, the Government has sanctioned Rs.10.5 Crore to demolish and construct a new Gopuram of the same size. Of course, the amount is no way enough to construct the same.

The social organization in Mangalagiri wanted to protest the government on this. They have conducted drawing competitions to all the students in Mangalagiri in front of the Gali Gopuram. Since, it is also a main area in the town, it attracted lot of crowd, and almost everybody came to know about this issue. The organizers have also conducted signature campaign for this. By the awareness of this in the public and their support, the government came down and withdrew the demolition of the Gopuram.

People must encourage positive ways of protests and strongly oppose negative protests. If we are not going to discourage the negative protests, then it would trouble us only. If we encourage positive protests, it would help us solving our problems easily.

Thanks to Aasara organization and Madiraju Govaradhana Rao for fighting to save Gali Gopuram of Mangalagiri.

Having Bad Time in Buying Books

2012-01-21T23:25:00.002+05:30

It seems, I am having bad time in buying books. After not buying anything in the books exhibition outside ISKCON store, now, I could not buy even ISKCON books.

ISKCON has published the Bhagavatham in 18 volumes in different languages long back. But, in Telugu, they have taken a lot of time to publish. Starting from 5th volume till 12th volume, I bought the Telugu Bhagavatham books as and when they were published. Recently, I came to know that, they have published all the volumes in Telugu. When I asked for the last 6 volumes, they said, they would sell only the entire set and not individual books. I said, I would buy the entire set, and would sell the first 12 volumes back to them, and asked how much would they willing to pay me. But, they rejected that, and said, they won't buy back, because, they already had enough of the first 12 volumes. I did not want to spend three times money, and have written to the Head office in Mumbai, and they said, they would take around 2 months to publish those books separately.

By using the astrology chart and the present planetary periods, the astrologers say, during a particular period, whether one gets money or loses money etc. Probably, in my present planetary period, the planets are against me buying books.

Definition of Pure Vegetarian

2012-01-20T23:25:00.025+05:30

Almost 15 years back, one famous telugu hero released a spiritual movie which was a big hit then. After that, in an interview, he said, he was a pure vegetarian. In the same interview, when he was asked what was his favorite food item, he answered Chicken.

One person that I know, boasts as, everyone in their family are big devotees of Lord Krishna and everyone of them are pure vegetarians. As another statement, I was told by the same person that, their son was not feeling well and he could not eat eggs.

One of my friends is from a caste, in which people do not eat non-veg. He never utters the word meat, non-veg etc. When he wanted to refer non-veg, he says something like, "The one that you eat" (Eventhough, I don't eat non-veg). He eats eggs, and he argues with me that, eggs are vegetarian, and he is a pure vegetarian.

Another person whom I know, eats non-veg, but does not eat on tuesday, friday and saturday. That person says, they are better vegetarians than me. The reason that I was given was, they use different utensils for veg and non-veg. So, on those days, they avoid non-veg completely. Since, I eat in hotels, it is possible that, they might have used the same utensils for non-veg also. So, they are better vegetarians than me.

Many people claimed that, I am not a devotee. After accepting that, now the people who eat non-veg claim that, they are better vegetarians than me.

One must watch video for non-vegetarians. (Vegetarians, please forward it without watching.)

Courtesy of the Video: Rajesh Tiruveedula

Love and Life

2012-01-18T23:25:00.004+05:30

I like the following story very much, which I got as a forward long back. After reading the post bhOndOO proposes, and posting the extract in my blog, I felt like posting this also.

My husband is a Software Engineer by profession, I love him for his steady nature and I love the warm feeling when I lean against his broad shoulders.

Two years of courtship and now, five years into marriage, I would have to admit, that I am getting tired of it. The reasons of me loving him before, has now transformed into the cause of all my restlessness.

I am a sentimental woman and extremely sensitive when it comes to a relationship and my feelings. I yearn for the romantic moments, like a little girl yearning for candy. My husband is my complete opposite; his lack of sensitivity, and the inability of bringing romantic moments into our marriage has disheartened me about LOVE.

One day, I finally decided to tell him my decision, that I wanted a divorce.

"Why?" he asked, shocked.

"I am tired. There are no reasons for everything in the world!" I answered.

He kept silent the whole night, seemingly in deep thought, with a lighted cigarette at all times. My feeling of disappointment only increased. Here was a man who was not able to even express his predicament, so what else could I expect from him?

And finally he asked me: "What can I do to change your mind?"

Somebody said it right... It's hard to change a person's personality, and I guess, I have started losing faith in him.

Looking deep into his eyes I slowly answered: "Here is the question. If you can answer and convince my heart, I will change my mind.

Let's say, I want a flower located on the face of a mountain cliff, and we both are sure that picking the flower will cause your death. Will you do it for me?"

He said: "I will give you your answer tomorrow...."

My hopes just sank by listening to his response.

I woke up the next morning to find him gone, and saw a piece of paper with his scratchy handwriting underneath a milk glass, on the dining table near the front door, that goes....

My dear, "I would not pick that flower for you, but....please allow me to explain the reasons further.....

This first line was already breaking my heart. I continued reading.

"When you use the computer you always mess up the Software programs, and you cry in front of the screen. I have to save my fingers so that I can help to restore the programs.

You always leave the house keys behind, thus I have to save my legs to rush home to open the door for you.

You love traveling but always lose your way in a new city. I have to save my eyes to show you the way.

You always have the cramps whenever your "good friend" approaches every month. I have to save my palms so that I can calm the cramps in your tummy.

You like to stay indoors, and I worry that you will be infected by infantile autism. I have to save my mouth to tell you jokes and stories to cure your boredom.

You always stare at the computer, and that will do nothing good for your eyes. I have to save my eyes so that when we grow old, I can help to clip your nails and help to remove those annoying white hairs. So I can also hold your hand while strolling down the beach, as you enjoy the sunshine and the beautiful sand...and tell you the colour of flowers, just like the colour of the glow on your young face...

Thus, my dear, unless I am sure that there is someone who loves you more than I do... I could not pick that flower yet, and die ... "

My tears fell on the letter, and blurred the ink of his handwriting...and as I continue on reading... "Now, that you have finished reading my answer, and if you are satisfied, please open the front door for I am standing outside bringing your favorite bread and fresh milk...

I rushed to pull open the door, and saw his anxious face, clutching tightly with his hands, the milk bottle and loaf of bread....Now I am very sure that no one will ever love me as much as he does, and I have decided to leave the flower alone...

That's LIFE, and LOVE. When one is surrounded by love, the feeling of excitement fades away, and one tends to ignore the true love that lies in between the peace and dullness.

Love shows up in all forms; even in very small and cheeky forms. It has never been a model. It could be the dullest and most boring form...

Flowers, and romantic moments are only used and appear on the surface of the relationship. Under all this, the pillar of true love stands... AND

THAT'S OUR LIFE

A Good Proposal From A Simple Guy

2012-01-17T23:21:00.002+05:30

The following is taken from BhOndOO Proposes written by Rupesh Nasre. It is one of the good proposals that I have read.

I thought about it umpteen number of times.
I am not the smartest person you know.
I am not the richest person around.
Nor am I the most eligible bachelor.

I may not be as warm as your parents, but I care for you.
I may not be your best friend, but I respect your feelings.
I may not be the most revered person around, but I am true to you.
I am not omnipresent, but I am always there for you.
I may not know what to say when you are sad, but I will be able to offer you a listening ear.
I may not know how to make you smile, but I will smile with you.
I may not be the best person around, but I will be good to you.

And until recently, I used to believe that I will be able to convince you by showing how much I… how much… I love you.

However, I realized that I am not the only person who loves you so much. All your friends do. Your relatives do. Your parents do. Perhaps much more than what I can.

They all can support you emotionally, financially, psychologically.
They can give you anything you want.
They can make you smile.
They can keep you happy.
They can create the best world for you.

So I have nothing special or more or better to offer than anyone else. Neither more intelligence, nor more wealth, nor more love. Nothing.

There is only one way I can become special.

And I would be special only if… you love me.

Quote of the Day - Communal and Secular Parties

2012-01-16T23:26:00.002+05:30

The party which demands for a single code bill for all the religions is a communal party.

The party which introduced different code bills for different religions is a secular party.

Forgiveness of Women

2012-01-14T23:25:00.000+05:30

Many people and poets say that, Women have more forgiveness than men. Just few points for food for thought.

If a guy proposes a girl for love or marriage, and if the girl is not going to accept the proposal, then their relationship would be broken except in exceptional cases.

If a man and woman have strong argument in anything in professional or personal life, then their personal relationship also would be effected, and undoing may not be possible in most of the cases.

If the guy has really done some mistake knowingly or unknowingly, which effected a girl, and even if the guy is ready to fix the situation or trying to understand what the mistake that he has done, it is very rare to find the girl who would let the guy know the mistake that he has done, and no need to speak of finding girl who would cooperate with the guy to fix the situation and re-establish the relationship.

With sincere apologies to the women who have forgiveness.

Criticisms For the Followers of Religion

2012-01-11T23:27:00.001+05:30

Many times, one has to face many problems, if one says himself or herself, that he/she is a devotee or follow certain religious principles.

If the devotee does any activity which others do not like and it is not considered as good by the general public, immediately, they will say, you are a devotee or follow certain religion, and why do you do like this?

For any rule set by the scriptures, it also mentions many exceptions, where that rule is not valid. For example, the scriptures say, drinking alcohol is not allowed. At another place, it says, it is permitted as medicine. There are many exceptions, where one is allowed to lie. If the person is in danger, then most of the rules are exempted. There are many rules in donations (not exceptions). One should donate only if all the rules are satisfied. Otherwise, it may have negative impact.

If anyone has some common sense and knowledge on the situation, whatever the correct action that they take would be almost equivalent to that of what is prescribed by the scriptures. It is just that, they may not be aware that scriptures support their action.

In few cases, the devotees may intentionally do incorrect things, in case the benefit that they get by the sin is far superior than the punishment they get. In that case, they would accept the punishment happily.

Criticism of why are you doing like this, when you follow certain religion, is not valid. The only difference between those who follow and those who do not follow is, those who follow it, are ready to take the results, others are not.

Courtesy: the people who have criticized me in the name of Lord Krishna for the mistakes that I made knowingly.

By the way, in my about me, I changed from devotee of krishna to aspiring to be a devotee of krishna.

Books Exhibition in Chennai - 2012

2012-01-08T23:30:00.001+05:30

Books Exhibition in Chennai started on 5th Jan 2012 and it would continue till 17th Jan 2012.

Venue :
St. George Anglo Indian Hr. Secondary School
(Opp. to Paachayappas College)
Chennai – 30
Timings: 3 PM - 9 PM (on Weekdays), and 11 AM - 9 PM (on Holidays)

First time, since I started attending Books Exhibitions, I did not buy anything other than ISKCON books.

The reason can be one of the following.

I have lost interest in buying books (Interest in reading books is anyway not there)
I have all the books.
There are not enough books in the books exhibition in more than 500 stalls.

One disappointing thing in the books exhibition was, there was no stall for Telugu books. For politics, I could find only one stall of publications division of the government. I wanted to buy the last volume of the freedom movement, which contains the happenings just before the Independence, like Partition etc. But, they rejected to sell just one volume, and they insisted to buy the whole set. I did not want to spend Rs.1200 for a book of Rs.300. So, finally ended up buying nothing outside ISKCON store.

Generally, in ISKCON stall, I don't buy anything, because, either I have their books or have already read those. But, this time I found two books that I did not have and have not read, and bought those.

I assumed that, I would buy lot of books in Chennai Books Exhibition, and did not show interest in going to books exhibitions in Bangalore, Hyderabad or Vijayawada. Because of that, I saved lot of money this year.

Prohibitions in Hinduism

2012-01-06T23:29:00.001+05:30

In Hindu theology nothing is prohibited, but a menu of prescriptions and enumeration of consequences of your actions.

Courtesy: Subramanian Swamy, President of Janatha Party on Twitter (@Swamy39)

Role of the Chief Opposition Party

2012-01-03T23:22:00.000+05:30

The role of chief opposition party is very important in the ruling of the government. Many times, the chief opposition party is as important as the ruling party.

BJP is the only party that has done good service to the country by being Chief Opposition Party. Other than BJP and Lok Satta, I don't see any other party which has worked for the public to the extent they can, by sitting in the opposition. Most of the parties have a single goal of opposing the government for everything (Unless the government tries to increase the reservations or introduce new reservations). [Of course, With FDI, BJP seems to become like any other Opposition Party.]

When P.V.Narasimha Rao was the Prime Minister, then floor leader of the Chief Opposition Party (BJP), L.K.Advani, publicly praised him as the best Prime Minister after Lal Bahadur Sastry. Other than L.K.Advani, I am not aware of any other floor leader of the Chief Opposition Party praising the leader of the ruling party. BJP has given full support to all the economic reforms that P.V.Narasimha Rao brought.

When Manmohan Singh tried to get Nuclear deal, BJP has given full support. Only to the general public, it has shown off as if it is opposing. For more details, read Double Standards of Political Parties - Understanding What Politicians Actually Meant

When Chandrababu Naidu was Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, he tried to introduce private operators in Bus service. But, Congress opposed it, and he could not do it. When Congress tried to the same, TDP stopped it, and finally nobody did it.

Everyone praises Manmohan Singh for his strong will to get the nuclear deal. But, he was the one who strongly opposed Vajpayee, when NDA government had done Nuclear Tests. After Manmohan Singh became PM, Pranab Mukherjee criticized BJP for taking the credit of Nuclear tests, eventhough, everything was done by Congress government. BJP or Vajpayee never tried to take credit which they have not done. After the death of P.V.Narasimha Rao, Vajpayee clearly said, P.V.Narasimha Rao gave him a chit which says, "Bomb is ready. Go and explode". Any sane person would clearly understand, who is giving credit to whom.

The floor leader of the Chief Opposition Party is officially given the Cabinet Minister status, and he can contribute to the public almost like a Cabinet Minister.

Cartoon in Eenadu on Lokpal and Corruption

2011-12-28T07:16:00.000+05:30

Translation: Lokpal is coming. If you are going to give Rs.25 Lakh or Rs.50 Lakh, it will not workout. There is more risk. Think about it. Unless you bring double the amount, it cannot be done.

Without understanding why the corruption is there in the first place, if we try to reduce the corruption, this is what happens.

Six Stages of Learning

2011-12-27T23:26:00.000+05:30

According to the ancient Indian education system, there are six stages involved in learning anything.

a) Information - In the first stage you tend to gather information. You tend to become familiar with basic terminology and vocabulary.

b) Knowledge - When you are able to relate the various pieces of information, you are said to have acquired knowledge.

c) Skill - When you apply the acquired knowledge practically you develop a skill. Skill can be mastered only by constant practice.

d) Insight - When you have spent sufficient time in perfecting your skill, you automatically come to know why a certain thing happens in a certain way. You now can see a pattern which ordinary people may not be able to see. Thus you now have insight.

e) Foresight - After developing insight (knowing the pattern in past), when you project the pattern in future, you can start predicting things. Thus now you have developed foresight (projecting patterns in future with high accuracy).

f) Wisdom - After developing foresight, anyone can use it for personal benefit. But when you develop ability and motivation to use the foresight for the benefit of the society, you are said to have reached the stage of wisdom.

In english language everyone is called a teacher, but sanskrit is a very rich language. There was given a different designation for each type of teacher at each stage of learning.

One who gives you information, is designated as "Adhyaapaka".
One who imparts knowledge is called as "Upaadhyaaya".
One who teaches you a particular skill is "Aachaarya".
One who gives you insight is called "Pandit".
One who gives foresight is called "Drashtaa" (seer).
And finally one who gives you wisdom is called "Guru".

Courtesy: Rajesh Tiruveedula

Quote of the Day - Sexual Harassment on Women

2011-12-24T23:23:00.002+05:30

I would like to shoot the feminists who fight for sexual harassment on women without fighting for improving public transport.

Side Effects of Dowry - Dowry From Working Women

2011-12-21T23:23:00.002+05:30

The following is taken from Idli, Orchid and Will-Power by Vital Venktaesh Kamath.

Venkatesh Kamath's friend's daughter marriage was fixed. But, later on his friend was thinking of dropping the match, because, the bridegroom was asking for a car. He was not even in a situation to buy a scooter. He came to Kamath and told the same.

Kamath asked him to bring the bridegroom once. He brought the bridegroom to his hotel. After talking casually for some time, Kamath asked the groom, whether he was fine with the marriage, if he gets a car. The groom said, he does not have any problem. Then Kamath told his friend to print the wedding cards and sent him away.

After that, Kamath asked the groom, "Why are you asking for a small car? Ask for Mercedes."

Groom: "No way. They cannot give. Even this car, I did not ask. My mother asked."

Kamath: "It does not matter who forced. Finally, you only asked. So, ask for big car."

Groom (got confused): "We don't have place even to put a small car. How can I ask for a big car?"

Kamath: "Then ask for a garrage for the car also."

Groom: "They don't have capacity even to give a small car. How can I ask for a big car and a garrage?"

Kamath: "That is not your problem. I will make sure that, they would give all those."

Groom: "Are you going to give money to them?"

Kamath: "Yes, as a loan"

Groom: "How can they repay you. They don't have that much capacity."

Kamath: "I will tell you one life secret. No daughter would like, if her father is in debt. If her father has taken the loan for her, then she would prefer to clear it as soon as possible. That is also, if her husband works in a big company like L&T, then she would prefer to clear it even sooner. She takes Rs.100 everyday from you and saves it. She gives that to your father-in-law, and he would give it to me. That way, I would get back my money through your wife from you."

Later on, the groom married the girl without any dowry.

Recently, my friend got married. She has given dowry in the form of cash and gold to the groom. She has taken loan equivalent to the total dowry amount. After the marriage, She would clear the loan from her salary.

After hearing that, I got confused on what the groom or his family thinking while taking the dowry. One reason might be, they may be thinking that, after the marriage, she may reject to give her salary, so better to take it now itself as dowry.

At the end, By taking the dowry, the third party who has given the loan to the bride is getting benefited.

Different Roles in Software Development

2011-12-18T23:24:00.003+05:30

In many product based companies, the developers at different levels starting from Trainee Software Engineer till Distinguished Engineer, are given the same kind of work. But, the way they do that work would be lot different.

If some work is given to developers of different levels, and if all of them do their best, then others may say the following in response to their work.

Distinguished Engineer - He has not delivered anything.

Principal Software Architect - He has not written even single line of code.

Technical Architect - Even a kid can write the code that he has written.

Sr.Software Engineer - He has developed a complex functionality single handedly.

Software Engineer - He has developed one of the most complex functionalities with very good design, which uses all the concepts of design patterns.

Trainee Software Engineer - He has developed the application by using all the latest technologies, it's latest features, and all the concepts of design patterns. To understand what he has written, one needs to learn all the latest concepts in the latest technologies.

(If the problem can be solved by changing the process or the way they use the system, then it won't require any new product to solve the problem. Even if it cannot be solved by changing the process, if it can be solved by using existing products in a different way, that would be better. That's how, Distinguished Engineers and Principal Software Architects work.)

By the way, My lead is taking lot of time to understand the code that I have written with the latest concepts. I also used the following comment, while sending for review.
// When I wrote this, only God and I understood what I was doing
// Now, God only knows

Obituary - Google Buzz - Rest in Peace

2011-12-15T23:27:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, Google Buzz died.

When Google Buzz started last year, the no.of visitors to my blog has increased by many times just in few days. It was very simple and user-friendly to share and read. My blog would be definitely effected by the death of Google Buzz.

I feel, it was the biggest stupid decision that Google has taken till now.

Laziness

2011-12-14T23:20:00.009+05:30

Laziness is not a bad quality. If somebody is lazy, it only means, they do not have interest, or Physical or Mental strength to do the specific task.

Lack of Interest need not be a negative point. If the person has more interest on others, then they may never get interest to do this and may think it is lazy. For example, if someone has interest in doing something, but, whenever they would like to work on that, if they remember something more important, then that never gets done.

Lack of Physical strength is one major thing in laziness, and many times, it is very difficult to understand. Many people think that, a person is healthy or not healthy, and there is nothing in between. But, there are many stages between healthy and not healthy. If the person does not have enough energy to do something, then unintentionally, they may try to skip doing that. When people become old, this would become more clearly visible. In recent times, With the change in the food habits and many other things, by the time one reaches the age of 30, their energy reduces significantly, and they may try to skip many things, which appears to others as laziness.

If the mind is too stressed, or if it does not get enough rest or relaxation, then the mind may not work effectively. In that case, one may try to skip the tasks that requires thinking. Others may consider this as laziness.

Many times, it is very difficult to find the root cause of the laziness. It can be as simple as, having spectacles of power slightly less than or more than the required. In that case, they can see everything clearly and they won't get headache. But, it would cause uncomfortable to them and they would feel like taking rest instead of doing work.

Once the problem crosses a certain limit and makes them unhealthy, they would get the treatment, and everything becomes normal. But, if the person is in between healthy and unhealthy for quite some time, that would lead to laziness. They think, they are healthy, where as they are not.

If you care about others who are lazy, help them in identifying the root cause rather than making fun of them. If others are making fun of you for your laziness, they are not worth of being your friends.

Courtesy: Panchakshari Damerla

Dr.JP is Not Accessible to Kukatpally People

2011-12-11T09:47:00.000+05:30

Instead of worrying about the agriculture issues in the state and fighting with the government,
Instead of worrying about the societies acts and fighting in the courts opposing the government,
Instead of worrying about the lokpal bill and presenting his opinions to the parliamentary committee,

If Dr.JP decides to worry about the drainage, garbage or street lights in Kukatpally, I would not support him or Lok Satta.

I would prefer to have a leader, who would use his/her complete power in developing the entire country. If the leader has so much power, but, sticks to only very limited area and uses very less powers for the people, then probably, he/she would be better suited in philosophy and may be an ideal example of a monk. But, never in politics or business.

If everyone in the state wants their MLAs and MPs to work for their local issues, then there won't be anybody to worry about the state issues or country issues.

If Dr.JP spends more effort to solve their local problems, so that he can win in the next elections, then his whole life would be spent in that only, and there will never be any end.

I believe, and I feel Lok Satta also believes that, the actual change that we need to bring is, make people aware that, their vote can change their life, and only their vote can change their life. Winning in the elections is never a primary.

If Kukatpally people think that, there is somebody else who can better serve them, let them elect them instead of Dr.JP. I don't have any issues and I strongly feel that, even Dr.JP does not have any issues on that.

FDI in Retail

2011-12-07T23:26:00.006+05:30

I cannot understand the issue with Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in retail. I don't know whether the protesters are clear on what they are protesting.

Is it issue with Foreign Money?

If it is the issue with foreign money, then won't the same problems be there, if the money is invested by the Indians? How does it matter whether the profits are earned by Indians or foreigners? Indians are already buying enough foreign goods to give profits to the foreigners. Are you going to stop buying foreign goods to save Indian industry?

Is it the issue with Super Markets, because of which Retail business would be effected?

Any kind of development would have impact in many people. Many people may have to move to different kind of jobs as part of the evolution. If everyone wants to do the same kind of work everyday for whole life, then obviously there won't be any development.

Those who are worried about employment, instead of fighting to ban FDI, if they fight to ban ATMs in India, that would create lot of employment.

Why Indians are not investing in Super Markets significantly

I don't think any domain where free market is allowed, one can earn lot of profits. If there are many opportunities to earn profits, then many people would be there in the field already and would make the entire domain saturated. Best examples are Telecommunications, Airlines and TV Channels. Many of them are not in profits or having marginal profits. I don't think super markets is a best option to get lot of profits.

If there are no profits, then Why foreign companies are coming?

If there is minimum guarantee to the investment, there are many Indians who are ready to invest. But, if there are losses, or one has to wait for a long time to get profits, then not that many Indians are ready to invest. Whereas, the US companies are ready to take lot of risk. They are ready to wait for a long time to get the returns and they don't mind investing a lot in research, where the returns are not guaranteed. They may invest in India for the returns they may get in the future.

If the foreign companies are coming and going to make losses in India, then we should invite them with red carpet and should allow 100% investment, because, if they are making losses, it means Indians are making profits.

Right now, is there any cost advantage in Retail?

I don't see any cost advantage in super markets. Most of the regular commodities are sold at MRP. Vegetables and fruits etc., are more expensive in super markets than the road side shops. But, in road side shops, one may have to bargain to reduce the price. Even for expensive items like Mobile phones also, if you go to small shops, you may get it little cheaper than the shops in the big malls.

Many people (including myself) prefer malls/super markets, because, one can buy everything at one place, browse through the items and can check new products, pay by credit card/food coupons without extra charge, and there is no need to bargain. There may be indirect price advantage, because while browsing, one can see less expensive alternate products, and buy them.

Is it a way to convert to Black money to White?

India would be at advantage, if the black money is invested in India rather than saving in foreign banks.

Monopoly

Irrespective of what all happens, if the government does not encourage open competition (i.e., if it puts restrictions to the new players), then it would lead to monopoly and everyone would suffer. If government ensures that, any person/organization can enter into this business without much hassle, then everyone would be benefited.

The foreign investment should not be allowed in cases of security, agriculture lands, or any other thing which is limited in India. In all other fields, we should allow foreign investment.

If the FDI bill is not passed in the parliament for whatever reasons, I would consider that as the failure of BJP and nobody else.

I Support Y.S.Jagan, KCR and Mamatha Banerjee

2011-12-06T23:25:00.001+05:30

Y.S.Jagan says, sun rises in the east. I agree to him. So, I am supporting Y.S.Jagan.

KCR says, the capital of Andhra Pradesh is Hyderabad. I agree to him as well. So, I am supporting KCR as well.

Mamatha Banerjee says, West Bengal is a state in India. I agree to her also. So, I am also supporting Mamatha Banerjee.

The media people are no way better than this. If a leader, say, Dr.JP says, he is supporting something, and if some other popular leader, say, Chandrababu is also supporting the same, their statement would be, "Dr.JP is supporting Chandrababu", as if Dr.JP is supporting everything that Chandrababu says. Let's say, if Chandrababu is opposing the same, their statement would be, "Dr.JP is opposing Chandrababu", as if Dr.JP is opposing everything.

I feel frustrated to see this kind of statements even from the so called intellectuals. If you take any four people in this world, then atleast two of them would be on the same side, (assuming that there are three options, supporting, opposing and neutral). It does not mean that, the two, who are on the same side are supporting each other in everything.

The media won't change anyway. I would be happy, if atleast those who feel themselves as intellectuals write/say properly.

I am frustrated to read the statements of the so-called supporters of Lok Satta on Dr.JP's stand on no-confidence motion. He is neutral to No-Confidence Motion. Period.

Quote of the Day - Failure of Woman

2011-12-03T23:23:00.002+05:30

Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, "She doesn't have what it takes"; They will say, "Women don't have what it takes"

Courtesy: Udaya Reddy

Are Protests and Satyagraha Constitutional?

2011-11-28T23:25:00.000+05:30

Taken from http://acorn.nationalinterest.in/2011/08/14/faq-why-is-anna-hazare-wrong-and-lok-pal-a-bad-idea/

We have the right to protest peacefully. But it’s not about whether we have the right or not. It’s about are we using that right wisely. (You have the freedom of speech but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to blast Eminem using a loudspeaker at 2am in a residential district.)

As Ambedkar said while introducing the Constitution in November 1949, once the Constitution came into force, we should avoid all non-constitutional methods like protests and satyagraha, for they are the grammar of anarchy. If two persons go on fasts until death for two opposing reasons, we cannot decide the issue by allowing one person to die first.

Fast until death is political blackmail. It is a form of theatre engaged in to coerce the government into doing something that the agitators want. Whatever may be the cause, a single person cannot be allowed to dictate laws to the whole nation.

Another note from the same

Mahatma Gandhi used civil disobedience against laws imposed on India by the British government. Indians had no say in how the laws were made and how they were implemented. Indians could not repeal laws we didn’t want. Civil disobedience was justified in this context.

Gandhi also used it to coerce Indian nationalist leaders too, including Ambedkar and the Indian National Congress, into accepting his views. Whatever might be the wisdom of Gandhi’s intentions, this was undemocratic and created a culture of ‘high command’ that lives on to this day. Fasting was not justified in this context. This part of Gandhi receives little attention in the dominant narrative of Indian history.

Dr.Ambedkar on this issue. - http://pragati.nationalinterest.in/2010/08/the-grammar-of-anarchy/

If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form, but also in fact, what must we do? The first thing in my judgement we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives. It means we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution. It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us.

Mindless Railway Department - Changes in Tatkal

2011-11-22T23:24:00.017+05:30

When Lalu Prasad Yadav was the railway minister, everybody used to praise him. I could never understand why, everyone was praising, because he had not done anything. Everything that people boasts about him were done in the Vajpayee government itself (including online reservation, tatkal etc.). One reason might be, after he became the railway minister, the profits increased a lot. After Mamatha Banerjee became the railway minister, and started destroying the railways, I realized how great Lalu Prasad Yadav was.

When everybody has decided to destroy the system, and if one does not do anything and sits idle, then he/she is considered as the person who has done real development in that system. [I am not sarcastic about this.]

I can never understand the government's policy on Tatkal tickets. They say that, they are coming up with policies to reduce the misuse of Tatkal tickets. Now, they have reduced the time duration for Tatkal tickets to one day, and changed few other things like, in one ticket, one can book only for four people, and the identification details have to be provided at the time of booking e-ticket.

The simple way to reduce the misuse is, increasing the price for Tatkal. If they make the price as double or triple to the normal ticket, then the misuse would be reduced automatically. If somebody needs to travel so urgently, then they should pay more. They cannot pay less and travel like others who booked 2 months before. [By the way, there is emergency quota to cater the emergency needs, and Tatkal quota need not be linked with that.]

There are two reasons for any black market. One is insufficient supply and another is, price is significantly lower than what the consumer can pay. If the system is in this state, then it is very difficult to remove the black market, without increasing the supply or price. If the railway department increases the price, then the black market would reduce, and it increases their revenue, by which they can improve the services of the passengers.

India is developing at night, when all the politicians are sleeping.

When do we get time to clean our code mess?

2011-11-16T23:22:00.001+05:30

When do we get time to clean our code base?

This was the question asked by one of my colleagues to the Executive Vice President in the all hands meeting.

The Executive VP heard it like code mess (and another VP corrected it). He said something like, come up with a plan with the manager and the director, and he would consider that etc.

The following are my thoughts on the same.

Before asking the time for cleaning up the code base, I have few questions.

Did you write clean code yesterday?
Are you writing clean code today?
Will you be writing clean code tomorrow?

If the answer is No, then there is no point in asking extra time to clean up the code base. If we are not going to write clean code in our every day tasks, and asking separate time to clean the code base, there is absolutely no use, and it is just waste of the time, resources and money. First we should concentrate on writing clean code everyday, and then we should think of cleaning the existing code.

In any business, it is of no use to spend some extra time to clean some code base, unless we are 100% sure that, the code need to be changed soon with short dead lines, and also before that, we will not get any feature which requires re-writing of that. If the code is going to be re-written soon, then there is use of cleaning it now. We can directly re-write it later on. Whenever we get the change request in a component, at that time, we can try to fix the design/code of that component. Only, if we are sure that, the time that is given to those change requests is not enough with the existing design, we should fix the design now. Otherwise, there may be no use of cleaning it now.

If we are modifying a component, then the modified design should be in such a way that, all the parts that you are touching and it's integration with other parts would become very clean after that. If you are writing code, not only the exact parts that you are touching, but, all surrounding parts of the code also should be cleaned.

If you are changing a method as part of a bug fix, then may be you should look at the entire method and it's usage, and see whether you can rewrite the method in a very efficient way. If you are adding a method in a class, may be, you should look at redesigning of few methods, so that, the class would become clean.

Whenever any developer changes any code, if they look at the high level picture, and modify the code/design accordingly rather than just implementing that feature alone without bothering anything else, then within couple of months/years (depending on the size of the project), the entire code base becomes very clean.

Generally, no business person would give dedicated time to clean the code, unless, they are 100% sure that, the code would be maintained a lot and will not be re-written. They may also give time, if they have deep pockets. If they have deep pockets, probably, you can ask for salary raise first.

Courtesy: Shawn Smith (Who has shown me the difference between fixing a bug by a developer and a Distinguished Engineer. If he fixes a bug, then only another distinguished engineer can fix in such a clean way).

Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy on Deficit Budget in Andhra

2011-11-13T23:22:00.000+05:30

The following is the speech of Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy (then Deputy Chief Minister of Andhra) on 1st Feb 1956 in Andhra assembly.

Separate Telangana supporters are saying, Telangana has surplus budget. They are saying, their revenue would reduce, if it merges to Andhra. It does not make any sense. Can we say that, any state in India has surplus budget? In all the states, we have so many problems. We don't have enough education, health facilities or roads. When the country is backward in all the fields, it is a mistake to say that, we have surplus budget.

Without doing any work and without providing any facilities to the people, keeping Rs.4 crore surplus is not at all an achievement. I am proud that, Andhra is in deficit. We are doing many things which even Madras state is also not doing. Since, we started many schools and colleges without thinking about the revenue and income, we are in deficit budget. We are getting lot of revenue from electricity and if we don't start these schools and colleges, we would have lot of surplus budget. Hyderabad is not starting any schools or colleges and that's why, it is in surplus budget.

Deficit Budget - Surplus Budget

2011-11-07T23:28:00.002+05:30

One state has surplus budget and another state has deficit budget. By this, can we say that the first state is better than the second state?

There are two organizations of equal size. One is having huge profit, and another is having minimum profits. Can we say that, the first company is better than the second company?

Except those who understand the economics, many people think that, the first state or organization is better than the second state or organization.

For any state or organization, the way to check the health of the economy is not, whether the budget is deficit or surplus, or the organization is in profits or losses. One should see the growth and the investments that it had made which can give good returns. If the state or organization has invested in fields which can give very good returns, then even if it has deficit budget/less profit, it would be better than the other state or organization which has surplus budget/more profit, but has not invested anywhere. A good entrepreneur will never keep surplus budget or profits. They will always invest that money somewhere else for better returns in the future.

Amazon is a very good example of an organization which has less profits, but economically good. They never work to meet the present quarter's results, and never meet the expectations of the Wall Street. They work only for the long run and invest significantly for the long term business. Because of that, their profits are small. It is not the company to invest to get short term gains. But, if anybody is looking for long term gains, it is one of the best companies.

During the formation of Andhra Pradesh, the Andhra state had deficit budget, and Telangana state had surplus budget. By showing that, people of Telangana always criticize Andhra people that, Andhra people robbed Telangana. They had huge money and Andhra depended on them. If we look little deep in that, it would be clear that, Andhra had invested in much better way and Telangana did not invest properly.

The growth of a state mainly depends on the education of the people and infrastructure in the state. If a state invests in education and infrastructure for the state even by getting loan, that would always give very good returns. Even if they have huge debts and is in deficit budget, still that state would be considered as having strong economy.

At the time of formation of Andhra Pradesh, the education level of Andhra is way higher than the education level of Telangana. [I think, this may be the only one which everyone unanimously agree including Telangana and Andhra People.] That's the reason why, Telangana people felt that, they would lose their jobs, because, they cannot compete with Andhra people. That's why, they brought Gentlemen Agreement, and many other bills, so that, Telangana people are secure.

At the time of formation of Andhra Pradesh, many areas of Andhra had electricity, and that was one of the biggest revenue generator for the state government. Whereas in Telangana, only 7 towns and 11 villages had electricity in 1957. The agriculture in Andhra was way ahead than the agriculture in Telangana. In Andhra, people were using the electricity for agriculture, whereas that was not the case in Telangana. The infrastructure is very less in Telanagana when compared to Andhra.

Andhra had invested money in Education and infrastructure a lot and that's why, it was in deficit budget. Whereas, in Telangana, they kept all their money without investing anywhere. That's why, they had surplus budget. It does not mean that, Telangana is richer than Andhra. If both are kept as two separate states, Andhra would have been many times superior to Telananga. Unfortunately, they are asking to separate the state, after significant investment flew to Telangana from Andhra.

Kiran Bedi - Manipulation of Bills

2011-11-01T23:25:00.000+05:30

Kiran Bedi has been criticized that, she has charged more than her travel expenses. She claims that, she used that money to fund her NGO, and is using the money appropriately. She feels, whatever she has done is ethical. Whether it is legal or illegal depends on many factors, and it is not possible to tell without looking into all the details.

After this dispute, she said, she would be ready to get the maximum punishment, including capital punishment, if required. She says, the Jan Lokpal Bill should not be linked with this, and it must be passed.

I am unhappy that, even with these disputes, she has not realized the problems that present government employees/politicians are facing, by doing things which are ethical, but not legal. There are many policies which restrict the general public in doing their basic things. When the government employees bypass those rules to provide better service to the general public, which are ethical but not legal, they are accused of being corrupt. She is fighting to eradicate corruption absolutely everywhere. It means, if anyone is going to do any illegal thing, they would be arrested and imprisoned including those who have done ethically correct.

I hope she realizes it pretty soon that, first the policies have to be changed so that, those which are ethical would be made legal, and then we should bring strong laws to control the corruption. Without changing those policies, if we bring strong laws to eradicate corruption, then most of the people would be in jail only.

Andhra is the Reason Behind Every Bad Thing in Telangana

2011-10-29T13:10:00.000+05:30

Telangana lost so much land for the industries. It is all because of Andhra people.
All the educational institutes are started by the Andhra People, and it did not give any scope for the Telangana people.
Andhra people are coming to Hyderabad and doing business here, and robbing our place.
...
...
Someone in Telangana failed in the exam. It is because, Andhra teachers intentionally failed those students.
Someone is suffering from fever. It is spread by the Andhra people.
..
..
and many more

Telangana people are so much aggressive in criticizing Andhra people for everything. But, they are not criticizing Andhra people for one thing, which they should.

in the initial days, the Telangana movement was sponsored by the Coastal Andhra real estate people. By bringing the Telangana movement, the real estate between Vijayawada and Guntur, and in Visakhapatnam has grown up like anything. The prices of the land and many other things have increased more than 10-20 times in just 10 years. There was direct correlation between the movement in Telangana and the prices in Coastal Andhra.

The real estate people show stars in the afternoon saying, We get Telangana in few months. After that, Andhra would get capital between Vijayawada and Guntur, where Government has 10,000 acres of land. There are only two other places in the entire Seemandhra where Government has 10,000 acres of land at one place. So, the capital would surely come here only. Once the state is separated, you cannot buy even an inch of land. So, better buy the land now itself. This way, they will show you heaven in your palm.

With the Telangana movement, Telangana people are suffering like anything, and Andhra people are using the same thing to increase the prices of everything in coastal Andhra. The beneficiaries of the Telangana movement are Andhra people. One person was saying, Andhra people are very good at doing business. Whatever may be the situation, they will do the "appropriate" business, and there is no need to worry about them. We need to worry only about the people of Telangana. Unfortunately, Telangana people are not realizing it, and they are not listening to others.

CM From Telangana

2011-10-26T23:21:00.000+05:30

One of the main points of having separate state for Telangana is, it is ruled by the people from Andhra area, and not from the Telangana region.

In the Independent India, most of the Prime Ministers and "Super" Prime Ministers are from Uttar Pradesh. But, consistently Uttar Pradesh has been in the bottom of the Human Development Index and in every other measure. Does it say anything to the supporters of the Telangana movement?

The rule of having CM from one region and Deputy CM from another region is not at all constitutional. This rule in the gentleman agreement may work only for the national parties like Congress. But, it does not work for the other parties. The main leaders who headed the regional parties are from Seemandhra including NTR, Nadendla Bhaskara rao, Chandrababu, Dr.Jayaprakash Narayan and Chiranjeevi. When they get majority in the assembly, why would they give CM post to someone from Telangana? Does it make any sense? NTR and Chandrababu did not have Deputy CM for their own reasons. When NTR was the CM, initially Nadendla Bhaskara Rao was number two in the party, and later on Chandrababu became number two. Both are from the Seemandhra region. Chiranjeevi got only 18 seats in the last general elections. Out of 18, it got only 2 seats in the Telangana region. For hypothetical purposes, let's assume, it had contested in the elections with the manifesto of United Andhra, it would have got many seats in Seemandhra and 0 seats in Telangana. In that case, how can they give Deputy CM to person from Telangana? Let's suppose, if it gets only one seat in Telangana, do they have to give Deputy CM to that one lone MLA?

Another thing that I could never understand was, the definition of a Telanganite. The leaders like NTR, Nadendla Bhaskara Rao, Chandrababu, Dr.Jayprakash Narayan and Chiranjeevi had stayed/have been staying in Telangana area for more than 15 years. Still, they are not considered as Telanganites. The present CM Kiran Kumar Reddy was born and brought up in Hyderabad. Still, he is not considered as Telanganite. But, KCR who hailed from Bobbili is considered as "pure" Telanganite.

This rule of Gentlemen agreement is not constitutional and is not valid in any court, and this rule is applicable only to Congress and to no other party.

Telangana 1969 - Sending Employees Back

2011-10-23T23:22:00.000+05:30

In 1969, during the Telangana Movement, one bill was passed by the Andhra Pradesh Government. That bill says, all the employees from Andhra region, who are in Telangana would be moved back to Andhra region. All the posts in Telangana would be filled by the employees of the Telangana region only. If no suitable person is available, then the post would be kept as vacant, and will not be filled by people from Andhra region. This issue has created a big impact mainly for the teachers in the Telangana region.

Who lost by this bill?

If the teachers in schools and colleges are moved back to Andhra region, and if the corresponding posts in Telangana are kept vacant, it is a disadvantage only to the people of Telangana, and never for Andhra region. If Telangana people do not study, they only will suffer. After few years, if the people from Telangana do not get jobs (because of the lack of education), they cry on Andhra people saying, they had stolen their jobs.

Telangana - L.K.Advani

2011-10-20T23:27:00.000+05:30

After L.K.Advani started talking about Telangana in his Jana Chetana Yatra, people started criticizing him by pointing out BJP resolution in Kakinada. I don't accept their criticism.

In 1998, in Kakinada, BJP passed a resolution of 1 vote, 2 states. They promised that, they would give separate Telangana, if it comes to power. But, when it came to power in 1998 and in 1999, it did not give Telangana. Because, Chandrababu Naidu was giving support and he did not want to separate the state.

For any person, their first priority is always sustainment and their promises comes only after that. If they cannot even sustain, there is no question of fulfilling the promises. Without Chandrababu, they could not form the government. If they don't take the support of Chandrababu, they cannot fulfill any promise, leave alone Telangana. By taking the support of Chandrababu, they could fulfill may promises except Telangana.

I would not criticize L.K.Advani for the above reason. But, I criticize him for the below reasons.

During 1999 elections, L.K.Advani said, there was no plan to give the separate Telangana state. The reason he gave was, for all other new states, the capital was far away from their places. Whereas, for Andhra Pradesh, Capital is in the middle of Telangana. So, there is no need of giving separate state.

He understands the importance of the Capital. Now, why is he taking the capital away from Seemandhra? Why is his point no longer valid now?

The following is the excerpts from his auto-biography, My Country My Life:

Aware of the division passions that this issue (formation of new states) had evoked in the past, and aware also of the strong possibility of similar demands arising in the future, I enunciated a sound guiding principle to go ahead in this matter: for Parliament to consider any specific proposal for the formation of a new state, the legislative assembly of the parent state should adopt an enabling resolution to give its consent.

Now, L.K.Advani is demanding to pass the bill in the Parliament without passing in the assembly. Is it not directly contradicting to what he wrote in his book?

While replying to the debate in Parliament after the enactment of the legislations for the reorganization of the three states, I said, 'No one party should claim credit for the creation of the states and I would commend both Houses of Parliament and all political parties, particularly the main opposition party (Congress), and constituents of the ruling alliance (NDA), for the smooth passage of the Bills'.

This was a good example of how consensus-building, rather than confrontation, can yield the desired results.

Now, what is he doing? Is he building consensus or confrontation?

Eventhough, I have lot of respect for L.K.Advani, I could not support him on this issue.

The Root Cause of the Telangana Movement

2011-10-14T23:29:00.000+05:30

There is only one person who is the root cause of the Telangana Movement. He is Nara Chandrababu Naidu. Because of his mistakes, now Andhra Pradesh is suffering.

Had Chandrababu developed Kuppam, Chittoor or Tirupathi, instead of Hyderabad, nobody would have bothered about asking separate state. Even if Telangana people had asked, it would have been given immediately, and there would not have been any fights. [Telangana people say that, even before Hyderabad was developed, there were movements for the separate state.] It is purely Chandrababu's mistake for developing Hyderabad, eventhough, he very well knew that, there was Telangana movement in 1969. He thought, it would not come back again, because, in 1972, when Andhra people agreed for the separate state, Telangana people rejected it.

Because of Chandrababu's mistakes, now people are suffering.

Courtesy: Krishna

Telangana Movement Should Continue to Get Separate Telangana

2011-10-08T23:27:00.000+05:30

If the Telangana Movement continues the same way for the next few years, then they will definitely get Telangana with unanimous support.

Andhra people's main worry is, they do not want to lose the developed area (Hyderabad). If the Telangana movement continues in the same way, then Hyderabad becomes undeveloped. After that, Andhra people will not have any objection in separating from Telangana and Hyderabad, because, there is no gain by staying together. Since the Telangana supporters want only separate state, and absolutely nothing else, so, they can easily get separate Telangana by continuing the movement the same way. After continuing the Telangana movement for few years, even if they do not want to have a separate state, Andhra people will start Jai Andhra movement, to have separate Andhra.

For those who do not know the history, in 1969, Telangana movement came and after suppressing it, in 1972, Jai Andhra movement came. If KCR and Kodandaram continues the same way, either they will get separate Telangana or there will be Jai Andhra movement in couple of years.

Quote of the Day - PM Not Part of the Selection Committee of Lokpal

2011-10-05T23:24:00.000+05:30

On the suggestion of not including the Prime Minister in the selection committee of the Lokpal, Dr.Jayaprakash Narayan says,

A man or woman who can be trusted with a nuclear button and accreditation of war and peace, if you cannot trust that person to be merely a part of selection process for an authority, we are being little unreasonable.

Courtesy: http://www.loksattavideos.com/2011/10/lokpal-round-table-conducted-by-lok.html

How Different Companies Respond to New Requirements

2011-09-29T23:28:00.000+05:30

Apple

You don't need that functionality. We know what you need more than you. Don't argue with us. You don't need that functionality.

Open Source

That functionality is already implemented. You cannot come up with any requirement, which we have not yet implemented. May be they are just command line tools and may not have UI. Most of the companies just develop the UI on top of our libraries and sell as if they developed it everything themselves.

Microsoft

Nobody is asking us the requirements. Everybody is just hacking our software, and developing whatever they want. When we release newer version, and if those hacks do not work, then they just blame on us saying that, we don't maintain the backward-compatibility. The open source enthusiasts criticize us that, Linux is more windows friendly than Windows Vista, eventhough the fault is with those who hacked our softwares and developed applications with unsupported, undocumented, undisclosed internal APIs.

Google

We give 99% of the functionality required by 99.99% of the people. If you are in the minority, pray God.

Showing Off Without Showing Off

2011-09-23T23:27:00.000+05:30

Do little bit of extra work everyday, which your manager did not ask for. Don't tell him/her that, you have done these things extra which he/she did not ask for. Later on, make them realize in an indirect way that, you have done lot of work, but your manager does not know about it, because, you never cared about the recognition, but cared about only the project and company. The recognition that you get would be much more than what you would have got by giving regular updates on everything that you have been doing [Provided that the manager is little good manager].

You left for the day from office and your manager called you saying, there is an urgent issue. Ask him the details of the issue, and tell him/her that, you would be in office in 5 mins. You know very well that, it would take minimum 15-20 mins. When you reach the office after 20 mins, don't appear to the manager, and directly start working on the issue. Once you reach a state, where you have some details and need your manager's decision on taking the next step, go to your manager, and give the update. Your manager assumes that you had come to office in 5 mins.

Your manager has asked you to do something of low priority, whenever you are free. With the work load that you have, it can be done in 2 days time. But, you are lazy and do not want to do it, but, have done only after 5 days. If the work is of something for which, the manager does not need to take any action after your completion, then don't inform him/her that the work is finished. Whenever he/she asks about the update of that task, tell him/her that, it is done long back. Your manager assumes that it is done in 2 days.

I have to accept that, I am doing these things shamelessly (few knowingly and few unknowingly).

Performance Optimization

2011-09-14T23:26:00.000+05:30

My Manager: Is there any scope for optimizing the 8 reports?

Myself: I have to see.

(internally in my mind)

Four reports, I think, we can optimize because, they were written by others.

Other four reports, we can definitely optimize very well, because, they were written by me, and I know how crappy they are.

No offence meant to anyone

Two Developers of Same Caliber Think Alike

2011-09-08T23:25:00.000+05:30

If there are two developers who have same caliber, and if you don't like one developer (on technical aspects), and if you are not a developer, then don't criticize him/her at another developer who has the same caliber. Because, they think alike, and if you criticize one developer at another, then they will understand that it is your mistake, and not that of the other developer.

Many years back, in the company that I was working, a new project was started, and I joined that project with another developer who has almost equal knowledge as of me. Almost since the beginning, myself and the other developer had serious issues with two non-developers in that project. They used to give so many (stupid) suggestions on many design/architecture aspects, which we have thrown into garbage, and they were very unhappy with that. We used to rebel with everything that they used to say. We never interfered into their work, but, when they were trying to interfere in our work, we used to reject everything. They felt like, because of not using their suggestions, the project was going slowly. After few months, they had taken another developer who has more knowledge than me. Before he joined the team, these two non-developers had personal interaction with him. They criticized me and the other developer, and told him that, since, we did not take their ideas, the project was going slowly. They asked him to take the project in the proper direction by controlling me and the other developer.

After he joined the project, within few days, our work got reduced significantly. Previously, whenever the non-developers say anything, we used to spend lot of time in fighting with them. After he joined the project, he used to take the lead, and used to fight with the non-developers for everything. Myself and the other developer never needed to do any fighting and we were peaceful.

The non-developers thought by bringing that person, they would get the control of the project, but, it fired back on them. They never understood that, if one developer of some knowledge sees few issues in the design, then most probably, another developer of the same caliber would see almost the same issues in that design. Instead of trying to understand the problems in the others domain, if one gives suggestions and criticizes them, it would just fire back on them only.

Double Standards of Political Parties - Understanding What Politicians Actually Meant

2011-08-31T23:23:00.000+05:30

BJP - Stand on Nuclear Deal

After wikileaks disclosed that BJP supported Nuclear Deal in private, many people criticized BJP for their behavior.

In my opinion, those whoever are criticizing BJP for this, do not know how to read one's manifesto, and how to interpret what the politicians speak.

Most of the indians do not know what the country needs, but, they think they know. Our media also never worries about the country. That's why, it is very difficult for any political party to convince a common man on a highly advanced policy. That's why political parties have double standards (sometimes indirect double standards).

In 2008, when there was discussion about Nuclear Deal, L.K.Advani rejected the bill saying, it would stop India from doing Nuclear tests. At the same time, Manmohan Singh said, we are not losing any rights on doing Nuclear tests.

By that itself, I understood that, BJP fully supports Nuclear deal. Because, from the statements of both, it was clear that, L.K.Advani did not have any objections. After the vote of confidence in 2008, Dr.JP clearly said that, BJP fully supports Nuclear deal. Unfortunately the common man did not understand it, since the media did not explain it.

When bill that is related to nuclear deal (Which was must to pass, for the nuclear deal with USA) was introduced in the Indian Parliament, BJP fully supported to that bill, and few parties of UPA did not support it. Again, the common man did not understand it, and the media did not try to explain it.

Another rumor was, when Vajpayee was the Prime Minister, BJP tried to have Nuclear Deal with USA, but, they could not materialize it.

But, when wikileaks said, BJP supported Nuclear deal, suddenly everyone understood it, and people started criticizing BJP left and right.

Understanding the political parties intentions is pretty simple. Read about them little deep, and read the entire news rather than headline. It would be straightforward.

Chandrababu Naidu

I am yet to see, when Chandrababu Naidu stands on atleast one of his main promises. Starting 1982, when his father-in-law N.T.Rama Rao started the party, till 2009 elections, repeatedly, he was doing things, which were theoretically considered as incorrect. But, whatever he has done, it was the best for the state.

Whether it was
1982 (when he openly challenged for anyone to defeat him in any constituency in Chittoor district; By the way, he lost it)
1983 (As soon as NTR won, he joined TDP)
1985 (Claims, he has saved NTR from Nadendla, where as Nadendla and Daggubati says the other way)
1994 (Prepared to jump to congress, if TDP loses)
1995 (Backstabbed NTR with Daggubati and Hari Krishna and became CM; Soon thrown out Daggubati, and after sometime thrown out Hari Krishna)
1998 (Jumped from United Front to NDA)
1999 (Full of useless promises, which destroys the state, which he never kept)
2004 (Another full of useless promises)

After these many things, in 2009, if anybody had really believed that, he would really give money to the poor people, there is nothing more funny than that. The unfortunate thing is, those who became upper middle class from middle class in the last 10-15 years, are not understanding that, it is because of him, they moved up in their wealth. When there are ignorant people like that, we have to tell lies for their development.

Lok Satta - Stand on Lokpal Bill

Most of the people would have known by now about this, but, many people did not know before.

Since the day one, Lok Satta or Dr.JP has not been in agreement with the Janlokpal bill proposed by Anna Hazare. But, they could not say it as the headline. Because, the supporters of Janlokpal were in such a way that, if anybody does not support Janlokpal, they are corrupt. They have huge publicity, where as Lok Satta is struggling to get publicity. Anna Hazare has huge publicity for his janlokpal bill, But, when Dr.JP tried to introduce bill on Anti-Corruption, nobody supported it.

That's why, there was no headline on anything against to Janlokpal till now, and Dr.JP or Lok Satta did not say anything against them till very recently. But, if anyone had read the notes of Lok Satta after the round table, it was very clear. Lok Satta was against bringing PM, Judiciary, MPs behavior in Parliament, and lower bureaucracy under lokpal, which were must for Anna Hazare. Those four documents were in the home page of loksatta.org for many months, and I don't know how many bothered to read them. Another very interesting thing was, Lok Satta has not drafted it's own version of Lokpal bill, eventhough, it's opinions are a lot different from all other bills. If Lok Satta drafts Lokpal bill, immediately all the supporters of Janlokpal will start campaigning against Lok Satta. Of course, the recent incidents in the last few days should make it clear for everyone. If not, you can assume that Lok Satta still supports JanLokpal (and vote for Lok Satta).

If you want to develop ignorant people, you have to have double standards. There is no other option.

Quote of the Day - Corruption and Lokpal

2011-08-28T23:30:00.000+05:30

When CBI, CBCID, CID, ACB, courts, police, IAS/IPS officers, politicians and public could not reduce the corruption, because, (with the claim that) they themselves were corrupted, How can JanLokpal bill with more powers magically eliminate the corruption. Are we going to bring gods and angels as the Lokpal members?

Increase in the No.of Divorces

2011-08-24T23:25:00.000+05:30

Many people are worried about increase in the no.of Divorces.

But, I am happy about it, because, the root cause for increase in the no.of divorces is, the women are becoming independent. That's why, if they cannot live with their husbands, then they are applying for divorce.

But, I am unhappy, because, Government gives too much power to women, and many women who are independent are misusing those acts, and because of that men are suffering. There are many stories at 498a.org, where men suffered because of women unfairly.

If a woman suffers because of her husband, she can just leave him and take divorce. I don't see any reason, why does she need to use 498a act to get him arrested and put him in jail for few years. Within the limited circle I have, I have seen few women who, when they got some differences of opinions with their husbands, used this act and started harassing them. Obviously, I did not see any fair usage of this act.

If the wife's family is richer than the husband's family or if the local police is "so called" sincere, then the misuse is significantly more.

I still cannot understand why Chiranjeevi needs to arrest his son-in-law in the name of dowry harassment. Why cannot they just get divorce and leave him? Is it to take revenge for the things happened in 2007?

Suicides by farmers

2011-08-18T23:21:00.000+05:30

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/article2038322.ece

The following is the snippet from the above article.

“One of the articles in the Open page (April 24, 2011) talked of suicides of silk farmers. It said how a couple committed suicide because they were unable to pay a loan of Rs 80,000.

There was a sarcastic comment too: ‘This is equivalent to an IT couple's one month salary.' As a professional working in the IT industry for the past seven years, I was deeply saddened by that comment.”

My comment to the original article is,

The income tax paid by that couple is much more than Rs.80,000 per year. What is government doing with that money? Giving free TVs, cable connections and donating money in different forms rather than improving those poor farmers? These people do not question the government for anything, and fall on the people who are earning more money. If one does not do their duty properly, and criticizes others for everything, then they would never develop.

Freebies By the Government

2011-08-12T23:30:00.002+05:30

You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

Courtesy: S.Chandran

Murders By Telangana Supporters

2011-08-06T13:26:00.001+05:30

Two days back, one of my acquaintances went for counselling for P.G. admissions in Hyderabad, and was not allowed to attend counselling by the Telangana supporters. That student never lived in Coastal Andhra or Rayalaseema, and that student's parents also did not live in Coastal andhra or Rayalaseema in the last 30 years.

If one student is not allowed to counselling, then they would lose one year. If they stop 40 students, it means, they are destroying 40 years of people, and it is equivalent to killing one person.

In this case, Telangana supporters have done a murder, but, unfortunately no media covered it. However, the media covered the suicides of some ignorant people in the name of sacrifices for Telangana.

When United Andhra supporters destroyed the government property in Dec 2009, the court has given punishment of 10 years imprisonment to them at very fast speed. Whereas, for Telangana supporters, entire assembly (except one MLA) asked to withdraw the cases, and the cases did not even go to the court.

Some time back, one Telangana supporter commented that, Andhra people would be happy to construct buildings on the graveyards of Telangana people.

My reply to that is,

If anyone is going to destroy my life or the life of my close friends and relatives, then I will be more than happy to construct graveyards for them, irrespective of whether they are terrorists, militants or Telangana supporters.

If Lord Krishna gives special powers, I would like to eliminate all the people who have done direct/indirect murders in the name of separate Telangana. If not, I would like to become Yama Kinkara (the one who punishes people in Hell) and will punish all these in my own way, so that, they will not forget it for atleast for one life of Brahma (31,536,000,000,000 human years).

Had Sivamani been in Software Industry

2011-08-02T23:28:00.000+05:30

Sivamani (Software developer) to the Manager:

I worked with 10 managers in 7 years in 2 companies. Ask any manager, "Sivamani strongly rejected my design. Can I go ahead with that?" If atleast one manager says, you can go ahead, then I will not interfere in your design again.

For those who did not watch the movie Sivamani, starring Nagarjuna,

Sivamani, (Sub Inspector of Police) says to the Liquor shop owner:

I worked at 8 places in 4 years. Ask anybody in those areas. "Sivamani asked to close the shop. Can I continue the business?" If atleast one person says, "there is no problem, you can continue", I will not interfere in your business again.

Performance Review - Carrot tied to Donkey

2011-07-27T23:25:00.000+05:30

A farmer wants the donkey to take the load and travel. But, the donkey does not move. So, he ties a carrot to the donkey similar to the above. The donkey wants to eat the carrot and moves forward. At the same time, the carrot also moves by the same distance. The donkey cannot eat the carrot, till the farmer reaches his destination.

Whenever anybody says, they are doing something because, otherwise, their performance review would be effected, I remember the above. I have seen many people who are sacrificing themselves, so that, they can get better rating in the performance review.

They work a lot on weekends and late nights, eventhough, they are not interested in doing that.
Sometimes, the manager asks for something which may impact the project negatively. To do not effect the performance review, they agree to the manager, which causes loss to the company.
If one does not take enough rest, or force oneself to work more, then the productivity would go down. The correct thing is improving the productivity and not increasing the no.of working hours. Unfortunately, many managers do not follow that.
They fear that, they may not get another job. If that is the case, then first they should concentrate on acquiring more skills so that, they can get another job, rather than just blindly following the manager. If they don't acquire more skills, then it may have more negative impact in the long run.
Not everyone can get promotion. Most of the companies won't give promotion to more than 20% of the people per year. In that case, for everyone to get promotion, it would take minimum 5 years.
In case of relative ranking, many people try to push down others, or would try to prove that, others are wrong. This creates a bad environment among the colleagues, if everyone is trying to get better rating in the performance review.
If one wants more salary, the best thing is, change the company every 3 years. If one tries to satisfy the manager to get better performance rating, then that does not do any good for oneself or the company.
If you think even 3 years is long time to stay in the company without listening to the manager for everything, then prolong as much as possible. Increase the estimates, let them think that you are less productive, and keep enough liquidity to survive for 3-4 months. Don't resign just because, the review is little bad. Resign after 3 years, or if there is no point in continuing in the same company.

Work for yourself and Work for the company. Do not work for anybody or anything else.

Finished ISKCON Bhagavatham 7th Canto

2011-07-20T23:26:00.001+05:30

After spending 4 years, finally, I have completed ISKCON Bhagavatham 7th Canto (9th volume). Bhagavatham has 12 cantos and ISKCON published those in 18 volumes.

To read the first four volumes (Cantos 1st, 2nd, 3rd first part and second part), I took one year.

For the next four volumes (Cantos 4th first and second parts, 5th and 6th), I took four years.

For the next volume (7th canto - 9th volume), I took four years.

After every four volumes, the time taken is increased by four times. If the same speed continues, then

For the 10th, 11th and 12th volumes, I would take 4*3 = 12 years

For 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th volumes, I would take 16*4 = 64 years

For 17th and 18th volumes, I would take 64*2 = 128 years

With this speed, I think I would take 204 years to finish the entire Bhagavatham, unless I get blessings from Krishna or the devotees of Krishna.

Who is to be Blamed for Bad Code?

2011-07-15T23:21:00.004+05:30

There is very bad code in the project. The developer was asked for explanation on writing bad code.

The Developer blames the Development Manager for giving less time to finish the project.

The Development Manager blames the Program Manager for giving too many requirements without giving enough time.

The Program Manager blames the Director that, he forced to fulfill all the requirements of the client within the time frame set by the client.

The Director says, he was ready to provide more resources to the Development Manager, but, the Development Manager rejected it saying, "Nine women cannot produce a baby in one month", and he could not increase the time because of the constraints from the Vice President.

The Vice President says, he does not have an option, because, he has pressure from the CEO to become market leader in couple of months.

The CEO says, "What is the issue with the code? It is solving our problems".

We Want to Solve Our Problems

2011-06-27T23:25:00.001+05:30

* Conditions Apply (We have 1000 unnecessary conditions which may obstruct in solving the problems)

I have seen few rallies by students asking the APSRTC to increase the no.of buses. They conducted the rallies/protests with many students with catchy slogans on the banners. They say, they are working for the society by doing these kind of protests/rallies etc.

When the government has passed ordinance to take the private buses, employees of APSRTC protested saying that, it is a part of privatizing the APSRTC, and the government withdrew the ordinance. When the government tried to allow unemployed people to ply small buses, the same kind of protests started, and the government withdrew it again. Neither the APSRTC nor the government has money to buy new buses. In this situation, the government did not have any option other than keeping quiet and not solving the issue.

Cannot the students travel by the private buses? Do they need only APSRTC buses? If they can travel by private buses also, then when the government withdrew the ordinance, why did not these people protest against that? Did they think that, it is the issue only with the government and APSRTC and not anybody else? Did they think that, if they protest in that case, there would be clashes between the APSRTC employees and the students, which they did not want?

If you want to solve the problem, and if you are not going to help the government in solving the problem, your problem will never be solved.

There is one (and only one) political party in Andhra Pradesh, which talks about non-cooperation to the government. But, they are non-cooperative even to the people. If we really want to improve the society, the non-cooperation should be to the government and cooperation should be to the public.

The Government does not give permissions to the private people in transportation, and the government does not increase the no.of buses. If anybody wants to do non-cooperation movement in this case, just run your own private buses/vehicles without any permissions. Help the people by providing transport to them, and take whatever profits that you can get out of it. I consider only this type of movement as real non-cooperation movement, where non-cooperation is to the government, and cooperation is to the public.

Statement of the Last Century

2011-06-21T10:22:00.002+05:30

Had the audience of that day [in the High Court] been constituted into a jury and entrusted with the task of deciding Godse's appeal, they would have brought in a verdict of 'not guilty'.

- Justice G.D.Khosla on 21st June 1949.
(During the trail of Nathuram Godse)

Lokpal Bill - I may be against to it

2011-06-19T23:30:00.002+05:30

There is a big discussion going on on whether the Prime Minister should be included in the jurisdiction of Lokpal or not. Dr.JP and Lok Satta are of opinion that, Prime Minister should not be included in the jurisdiction of Lokpal. The explanation can be read from here.

After this article is published, I got response from a person criticizing Lok Satta saying that, Lok Satta does not support Lokpal, and Congress and Lok Satta give same support to Lokpal. After reading his entire criticism, I started thinking about the entire Lokpal and felt like, this may be misused completely and lead india to undeveloped country from developing country.

If we take any successful entrepreneur, in their organization, there would be atleast 1% wastage of their money. The entrepreneur knows that, the money is getting wasted. But, instead of concentrating on reducing the wastage, he/she would spend his/her energy in improving the business by 100%. And, that is the correct option for the business. Some times, The head of the business also takes few decisions based on their strong gut feeling to improve the business, and they may not be able to give the reasons for that.

If the same thing happens in the government, the wastage of money is considered as corruption, and the strong gut feeling can be considered as favoring their relatives/friends etc. If a minister tries to get 100% more revenue instead of reducing the 1% wastage, that would give more value to the country. Since, it is government, that 1% wastage can be considered as corruption, and he may be prosecuted for that. If he does something by his gut feeling, that can be considered as favoring their friends/relatives etc., and he may be prosecuted for that as well.

From the way the "so called supporters" of jan lokpal bill are talking, they want all the people who are involved in any kind of corruption should be prosecuted and punished. If that happens, then all the ministers who are really working for the country would be prosecuted and punished.

We need to understand that, the country and it's sovereignty is the top most priority. If India is captured by another country, there is nothing more destructive than that. That's why, the Prime Minister has to be excluded from the Lokpal. Indira Gandhi has given the extra ordinary powers to the Prime Minister (herself) during the Emergency period. Eventhough, the next government (Morarji Desai) had revoked most of her policies brought during Emergency, still, they have not revoked the powers given to the Prime Minister with the reason that, for the national security and integrity, it is important that, the Prime Minister should have those powers.

After the country's sovereignty, next most important thing is the development of the people and the country. If people do not even have basic necessities, that cannot be considered as developed country. If the ministers are working for the development of the country, and these "so called" social workers are going to stop their work, because, there is some corruption in that, then India will never develop. It will become undeveloped country from developing country.

For those who follow the news regularly, few years back, few MPs were prosecuted and expelled, because, they had taken a bribe of around Rs.50,000. If an MP is going to be expelled for taking bribe of Rs.50,000, does not it mean that, somebody can spend Rs.5 crore, and get arrested half of the parliamentarians? Can anybody understand the state of the country, if that happens? India would be captured by another country. As simple as that. The "so called" social workers do not understand that, eventhough they are corrupted, still they are doing something for the country, if not for progressing, atleast for not falling down significantly? They do not understand the situation of the country, when the government does not work, or there is nobody to govern.

If we change the system, then we don't need to do anything for reducing the corruption. We should fight for changing the system, so that corruption cannot exist, and not by artificial means. The supporters of jan lokpal bill have completely forgotten that, they themselves elected those leaders. They neither have plans to elect good leaders nor contesting themselves in the elections to make corruption-less government. They elect corrupted leaders, and want to change them. Probably, they can do this thing better in movies rather than the real world.

If I were to support the Lokpal bill, I need a clause that, the corruption should be more than 5% of the total revenue for the project/deal. I don't think any of the present activists or supporters of jan lokpal would agree to that.

Related Links:
Jan Lokpal Bill - My Perspective
Anna Hazare - Other Perspective

[Humour] Airlines

2011-06-10T23:21:00.000+05:30

A man at the airline counter tells the representative, “I’d like this bag to go to Berlin, this one to California, and this one to London.

The representative says, “I’m sorry sir. We can’t do that.”

The man replied, "Nonsense. That is what you did last time I flew with you."

Jan Lokpal Bill - My Perspective

2011-06-01T23:28:00.001+05:30

If you can read the post Reality Check India - Jan Lok Pal - Caveat Emptor, then you don't need to read this post. The following is my version of what it said.

I do not want to live in a dictatorship country. I want to live in a democratic country. I would like to elect the person who can rule the country for five years.

In the name of curbing corruption, we cannot introduce dictatorship. We need to maintain the democracy, and that is the foremost priority. If Jan Lokpal bill undermines democracy or tries to bring dictatorship, then that must be stopped. If there is no democracy, then there is no value for the Independence.

At the end, I want to give the power to the person whom I elected, and not to anyone else. I should be able to control everything, provided I can convince more than 50% of the people. If I cannot do that, then that is not democracy.

In the present Jan Lokpal Bill, the following things are very worried and many people raised this issue. But, they were given a stamp that, they are against reducing corruption.

1. Bringing Prime Minister under Lokpal.
At any point of time, the country must have a leader. Otherwise, there would be many issues.

2. Supreme Court and High Court Justices.
Supreme Court and High Courts are very important for the country, and they have given complete independence, so that, they can act better. In case of any problems with that, then the parliament cannot take action with 2/3rd majority, and not 50% majority. So, the parliament can take action only if opposition also agrees. If there is any other institution on top of supreme court and high court, or on top of the justices, that would lead to many issues.

3. Bringing the MPs behavior under Lokpal including talking and voting in Parliament.
4. Controlling and removing Civil Servants in the state and union governments.
5. Having the powers of courts, and giving the powers of courts to other members.

All these, simply means, creating a dictatorship in our democracy in the name of reducing corruption. The dictatorship works best, when the dictator is good. The country would collapse, if he/she is bad. I want democracy, so that, I can elect a dictator (for 5 years) who is good.

I don't like Jan Lokpal Bill in it's present form, and I don't have any respect for any of the proposers of that bill as well.

Strikes by Doctors

2011-05-28T23:24:00.000+05:30

The following has been told by one doctor.

Whenever there is strike by doctors, news papers mention how many people died during the strike. They talk as if the doctors are killing the patients and ask doctors to withdraw the strike. But, the fact is, everyday, we are seeing the same no.of people dieing in front of our eyes. The media or government does not care about that. But, it cares about only the people who died during the strike. We ask for minimum facilities in the hospitals, which can save many lives. Even if we don't do strike, the people would die anyway, because of lack of medicines and facilities in the hospitals. Instead of providing medicines, government looks us as criminals.

There are significant no.of good doctors in the government hospitals who want to serve people. If the government does not have funds for whatever reasons, atleast, if it allows the hospitals to charge money from those who can afford to pay the fees, that would improve the situation little better. Unfortunately, our socialist government does not allow discrimination of any kind (Reservations based on 16 different criteria is out of context here.)

It is Women's World

2011-05-22T23:25:00.001+05:30

Amma (Jayalalitha) in South (Tamilnadu)
Didi (Mamatha Banerjee) in East (West Bengal)
Behenji (Mayavathi) in North (Uttar Pradesh)
Aunty (Sheela Dixit) in the Capital (Delhi)
Madam (Sonia Gandhi) at Center
Nani (Prathiba Patil) on top (The President)
Meera Kumar controlling the Lok Sabha
Sushma Swaraj as opposition leader in the Lok Sabha

Still Government thinks that, women are not getting enough opportunities. For that, Andhra Pradesh Government increased the reservations for women in the local elections from 33% to 50%.

Only people of India can save India. Unfortunately, people of India think that only God can save India.

Courtesy: Panchakshari Damerla

Starting With the Problem or Technology?

2011-05-16T23:29:00.001+05:30

Few years back, I attended a project meeting where there was a discussion about the new technology that we were using for the project. The senior developer proposed that, there is one concept in that new technology which is a good feature, and we should use that. Immediately, the manager said, "No. No. No. We cannot use all those. We don't have enough time for all those things. We will just deliver the basic things for this release, and we will see those for the next release." After that both the manager and the senior developer aborted that concept in that technology.

After few days, I used the same concept in the same release. Neither the manager nor the senior developer knew it. (Because, I did not tell, and there was no need to tell.)

For the functionality that I was working on, I felt that, using that concept was more efficient, and I used it. If that concept was not efficient for my functionality, I would not have used it. You should use a concept/technology, if that solves your problem efficiently, and you should not use it, if it does not solve. The statements, "We will use this technology" and "We will not use this technology" in isolation does not make any sense.

Whenever you want to do anything, you have to start with the problem and find the best approach rather than, starting with a technology and aligning that to solve your problem. This may look funny, but, unfortunately, I have seen many people who start with the technology rather than with the problem.

By the way, I still use 40 years old VI editor, and I am very happy with that.

Few Questions on Independence Movement

2011-05-10T23:28:00.011+05:30

During the Independence movement, many people left their jobs/colleges/schools on the call of Gandhi and Congress. What happened to all of them? How was their life before and after joining the movement?

What happened to the people who were put in jail?

What happened to the families of those who were in jail?

If we had not got the independence, what difference would it have made to those people?

If we had not got the independence, what difference would it have made to the common man (atleast to 99.9% of the Indians)?

If Britishers were robbing our country, what are our leaders doing? (Rs.1,700,000,000,000 in a single year is not at all a small amount.)

Did we get independence, so that, Indians can rob the country instead of Britishers?

If we criticize Britishers for Divide and Rule policy, are not our leaders doing the same in the name of religion, caste, locality, language, dialect and by many others?

Does the Nationality matter (British, Indian, or Italian) or do we need someone who can improve our Life?

Why no history book (atleast what is available to 99% of the people) talk about the elections that happened before Independence except as one line in 500 pages book?

Why no history book talks about the Britishers giving the maximum control (in writing and spirit) to the elected governments (who are Indians) in the states many years before the Independence?

How many incidents were there when Britishers violated the constitution that they had written for ruling India?

Was the constitution that they had written for India, too bad for Indians?

How many times, Indians were arrested/killed, by violating their constitution (barring Jallianwala Bagh and couple of other similar incidents)?

Was the only motive of Independence, ruling by Indians and nothing else?

If not that many people sacrificed their life, when would we have got the Independence?

Do our freedom fighters know that, Ruling cannot be and should not be changed overnight? (One great leader asked for the freedom that night itself, if possible)

Indian Leaders rejected Simon Commission because, it does not have any Indians in it. Is it justifiable? Clement Attlee, who was a member of Simon Commission then, subsequently became the Prime Minister and gave Independence to India. Have not we blocked Clement Attlee to some extent in giving Independence to India?

There were 500 Kingdoms in India till 1947. What was the stand of the freedom fighters on those kingdoms? Just because, they were paying royalty to British, did they think that, they would be automatically merged in the country after Independence?

If we see the present andhra pradesh area, people in Hyderabad state suffered more because of Nizam's rule than the coastal andhra people by Britishers. Didn't our freedom fighters know that?

Unrelated Note:

In Chennai, I overheard a conversation of a young telugu couple. The person was telling his wife that, at the time of the separation of the state, NTR asked for Tirupathi, and MGR asked for Chennai. That's why, Chennai went to Tamilnadu, and Andhra got Tirupathi.

That was one of the funniest conversations that I heard. Probably, I can convince him that he was not correct. But, after 15-20 years, convincing his child would be more difficult, because, if anyone is believing something for more than 15 years, it requires lot of effort to change their belief.

I feel, Given enough power, history can be changed. (Atleast to what is known to 99.99% of the people.)

We are closing one business to focus on our Mission

2011-05-04T23:28:00.001+05:30

The standard dialogues from the top management who are closing a business are

We are closing one business to focus on our mission.
Our strategy has been changed, and we no longer want to be in this business.
The business is no longer aligned with our vision of the company.

Would any entrepreneur close a business, if they are getting profits? If there are profits in the business (even if they are very tiny), then anyone would try to sell the business, rather than closing it.

If they are not getting profits, and closing the business, cannot they tell the same thing directly rather than telling all the management words like Focus, Strategy, Mission etc.?

Algorithm Complexity - Interview Questions

2011-04-28T23:30:00.000+05:30

If you say, the complexity of Hashtable is O(1), then with the same logic, I would say, NP=P, and I am more accurate than you. If you don't know what is NP and P, and whether they are equal or not, then please read more about complexity and algorithms.

Read any research paper (not the textbook written for kids or by just finished graduates) on algorithms, when they talk about complexity, they always mention worst case complexity. Whenever they want to mention anything other than the worst case, they explicitly mention it.

Exponential algorithms

Some times, people use exponential numbers in the solution, and think that the solution is linear or polynomial. The moment, one uses exponential number, the entire solution becomes exponential.

I know one interviewer who has one favorite problem. That problem has linear solution. If anyone answers that question, he changes that question little bit, which has the complexity of O(n^2). But, if we use an exponential number, then the problem looks like it is linear. Of course, the moment they use exponential number, the entire solution becomes exponential, but, he was not aware of that. He rejected many candidates who solved with O(n^2), and accepted those who solved with exponential numbers but looks like linear. The interviewer was dumber than the interviewees and he could not recognize people who are more talented than himself. [Unfortunately, smart people getting rejected by dumb people is very common in the software industry.]

Given a number n, what is the complexity of printing all the even numbers from 1 to n? Is it linear, polynomial or exponential?

Many people think that, it is linear. But, the fact is, it is exponential. The complexity of an algorithm is always with respect to the input size. If the input is the number n, then the input size is (log n) (with base 2) [It is the no.of bits required to represent n]. If the no.of bits in n is m, then, we need to count 2^m times, which is exponential to the input size m.

To understand in a simple way, if an algorithm is linear, whatever time it takes to give the input, the output would be given in the same proportion. If you spend one second to give the input, the result would be given within few seconds. Whereas, for exponential algorithms, as the input size increases, the time taken to give the output would increase exponentially, and even for average size input, the computation cannot be done within a life time. For example, printing all the numbers from one to 100,000,000,000,000,000 cannot be done in one life time. It can never be linear or polynomial.

Travelling Sales person's problem.

Given a list of cities and their pairwise distances, the task is to find a shortest possible tour that visits each city exactly once.

This is one problem which I disagreed with many people. There is a difference between theoretical version and practical version. In most of the books, there is a condition that each city should be visited exactly once. In reality, for a real sales person, that is not possible. For many places, the sales person has to visit more than once for optimized travel. If we put restriction that, they cannot visit a place more than once, then the total distance is not optimized for the real sales person. They have to take round trip to visit the places, and finally end up travelling more distance. Many people stress that, Hamiltonian Cycle is required for the travelling sales person's problem. It is required for the theoretical version, but not for the practical version.

Both the problems are NP-Hard. But, if we put the restriction of visiting each city exactly once, then the problem becomes even more harder, and even the approximation is also NP-Hard. Whereas for the practical version, there are good no.of approximate algorithms, and for many cases you may even get the optimum solution. That may be one reason, why more importance is given to visiting each city exactly once.

If you are taking interviews, and if you ask without having good knowledge, I am sure, you will miss very good candidates. I know many people, who would reject even the professors of IIT in their area of interest.

Courtesy: Abhiram G. Ranade, Ajit A Diwan, Sundar Vishwanathan

Tolstoy on Indian Independence

2011-04-22T23:25:00.000+05:30

Tolstoy's observation on Indian Independence.

A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred million. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he would fail to grasp what those words mean.... Do not these figures make it clear that not the English, but the Indians, have enslaved themselves.

The same can be applied even now. People elect the politicians, and they only criticize them. The people enslaved themselves, and criticize the politicians who are honest in their dishonesty.

Source for Tolstoy's Observation: Gandhi - A Sublime Failure by S.S.Gill

Anna Hazare - Other Perspective

2011-04-16T23:21:00.004+05:30

Almost everyone in India is strongly supporting Anna Hazare and his movement against corruption. Only Congress and Lok Satta Parties asked him to withdraw his fasting. Many people were inspired by him, and they did fasting or campaigning within their capacity. I feel his way of solving the problem is not scalable and may mislead the people and India.

Except Politicians everybody hates Politics

India is a democratic country, and all the Indian citizens get right to chose the people who can rule us. If we chose that option carefully, we don't need to do anything else. But, instead of choosing that option, he has chosen fasting. I would have been more happy, if he had come forward during the elections and asked everyone to vote for a good political party. If he thinks, there is no political party which is good, he should have started a political party.

Unfortunately, except the politicians and their families, everybody else hates politics. During the elections, ask any NGO or social worker for helping in your election, they would simply reject it unconditionally. During the elections time, all these 'so called' social workers sleep, and after that for five years, they try to do everything possible. They want the anti-corruption bill to be passed. They want the corrupted politicians (who were in the assembly/parliament for more than couple of decades) to be punished. They ask people to participate in the movements for developing the country, and the list is endless.

Unfortunately, even Anna Hazare does not have good opinion about politics and politicians. He is against politics and politicians. He thinks that most of the politicians are bad (Initially, he said all politicians are bad) and does not want to meet them. If they are bad, why the people had voted for them in the first place? If we chose a corrupted person, he would do corruption. Politicians are honest in their dishonesty. We are doing wrong thing by voting for a corrupted person, and then we are fighting on the streets to punish that person. This kind of things done only by people who do not have any work or mind.

Spend one day in voting for a correct person, and you can take rest for five years. But, all these active people sleep on the voting day and fight for the next five years.

Voting bad people during election and then sitting on Dharna afterwards is much like not studying during exam and pleading professor for grace marks. - chanchal_p

Do we need a separate act for people's representatives

If atleast 20% of the voters take little interest, then we don't need any acts for people's representatives. Except sons and daughters of the senior politicians, almost everyone starts at a small level and gradually they become ministers. Those who come to politics without much background start their career as a corporator, councilor or surpanch. After that, they rise to Chairman/Mayor, then to MLA, then to Minister of State, then to Cabinet Minister and then to Chief Minister.

If the politician is doing corruption at any level, and if the voters immediately refuse him/her, do not vote him/her again in his/her life time, then nobody would do corruption. A corporator knows that, if he/she does corruption, he/she will never become even an MLA, no need to speak of Minister. So, if they want higher post, they have to be sincere. It may be very unlikely that, a person is sincere for 20 years, and suddenly becomes corrupt. Even if there are politicians like that, still, the average net profits that they would get across all those politicians would be negligible. Because, not every candidate wins in the election continuously, and even among those who won, not everyone becomes minister. So, if anyone is trying to be sincere for 20 years and then want to do corruption, country won't lose that much because of them.

Hysteria will not end corruption

If NGO types want to make laws, let them get elected to the Lok Sabha or else go back to activities that are genuinely non-governmental. Making laws is the right of government, no matter how ineffective or corrupt the government may be. This appears to have been forgotten in the mass hysterics of last week. It is time to remember.

Does Fasting Help?

In Manipur, there is a lady Chanu Sharmila, who has been fasting for the last 10 years for human rights in Manipur. She has been in hospital for the last 10 years. Till now, nobody cared about her.

Misuse of Fasting

1.5 years back, one politician (mis)used fasting, and almost everyone in that state had to suffer like anything, and that state lost everything for 6 months, starting from IPL to new software companies.

If people start using fasting for everything, then there will be more misuses, and it is definitely loss for the country.

Only Politics Can Change People's Life

Government can do a lot to the people and it cannot be replaced by even the biggest billionaires of the world. What can be done by a Prime Minister in two weeks is a no match with the donation made by Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.

http://blog.tnsatish.com/2009/03/why-jayaprakash-narayan-came-to.html

Are we sincere?
http://manchupallakee.blogspot.com/2011/04/blog-post.html (It is in Telugu)

"I Don't Like Anyone" Option While Voting

2011-04-11T20:14:00.000+05:30

I see many people asking for the option of "I don't like anyone" while voting in the elections. But, that option is not required. If all the candidates are bad, then by voting for the person who is least bad will change the entire system automatically.

Most of the people sees the candidates from the major parties (which can form the government), and if their candidates are bad, then they say, everybody is bad, and they need option of "I don't like anyone". In almost all the elections, there are many good candidates contesting either from small parties or as Independents. If they get atleast 1000 votes in an assembly election, that would give lot of encouragement for them, and they would continue to contest in the elections to change the system.

Right now, many uneducated people are very hesitant to vote for the candidate who may lose. If they cannot vote for the winner, they feel like as if they lost their prestige. The educated people, instead of asking for this option, and if they vote for the good candidate, and if he/she gets good no.of votes, then even the uneducated people also change. They would change by seeing the no.of votes that a small candidate gets, and that would effect all the big parties, and very soon, the small candidate wins in the election.

In Andhra Pradesh, if anyone asks for this option, I would see him/her like a fool only. If they want to improve the system, they should vote for Lok Satta Party.

Related Posts:
Vote for Party or Vote for Candidate

Allowing Investments Of Short Duration

2011-04-06T23:25:00.000+05:30

Let's suppose, without any external investment, we are earning some amount every month. If we get some extra investment, then our income increases. One external organization is ready to invest for certain unspecified duration. As long as they keep the investment with us, we get extra income. Once, they withdraw the investment, we will fall back to the original income that we were receiving.

In this case, should we allow the external organization to invest in our organization or not?

Ask any communist, they would reject this idea without any second thought, and clearly says, no external organization should invest in our organization. For that, they show the proofs.

The graph would be something like below.

Any disturbances in the external organization would lead to the drops like B to C. There are many incidents like this. We don't want to suffer because of their disturbances.

But, if we step back, and look at the complete graph, it would look like something below.

F is the point where, the external organization invested money. Because of their investment only, we started getting more money. Once they withdraw the money, then our position will not fall back to the previous place, but, it would be little better than our previous position because of the extra income that we received during their period they invested. But, the typical communists do not see the whole picture, but, just sees the period where it is fallen, and criticize capitalists in all possible ways.

You’ll never meet a rich person who has never lost money. If you never want lose money, then you will never become rich.

Stock Market - What to Sell

2011-03-31T23:22:00.000+05:30

One year back, you bought two shares. First one for Rs.6,000 and second one for Rs.4,000. Today, both are at Rs.5,000. You need Rs.5,000 and you want to sell shares. For the sake of simplicity, assume that, you cannot sell the shares partially. If you want to sell the shares of one company, you have to sell it completely. Which company shares would you chose?

In my experience, those who do not have experience with stock market would chose to sell the second company shares.

But, my guess is, we should completely ignore the history of the share, and should sell the shares of the company for which the prices will go further down, or the company which has less growth going forward. My opinion is same for real estate as well.

Cash back Offer

2011-03-25T23:29:00.000+05:30

For a long time, I have been hearing about cash back offer from many vendors/service providers. If the consumer does not like the service, he/she can get back the money they paid. I always used to wonder, how much difference does it make? I never buy a service, just because, there is cash back offer.

The cash back offer is generally to capture the potential customers who are evaluating different services, or those who are in dilemma whether to buy or not, or whether it would be useful or not. If cash back is offered to those people, then there is very high chance that, they would buy that service.

There are few service providers who do not return money under any circumstances. If those service providers tell all the clauses to the consumers before selling the service, then there may not be any problem. If they don't tell all the clauses before selling the service, and if the consumer does not like all the clauses, then it may lead to many problems. The consumer may demand return of partial/full money. If the service provider does not return, then the consumer may give more negative publicity, and the loss to the service provider may be much more than the money demanded by the consumer.

Some time back, I have paid full amount to one service, and then I realized that, their service is very bad, and I did not want to use the service. I did not use their service at all, and I asked them to return the money. Initially, they said, they won't return money at all. But, finally, after few months, they returned the money. Had they not returned my money, I would have given enough negative publicity for them, mentioning all the negative points about them, and they would have lost much more than what they returned to me.

Sometimes, it is better to return the money, if the request is reasonable.

We Need Gandhi Again to Change Our Country

2011-03-19T23:21:00.005+05:30

We need Gandhi again to change our country.

Even if Gandhi comes now, he cannot change this Country.

These are the few statements, that many people say.

Why do you think that,there was nobody who was better than Gandhi was born?

Why do you think there was nobody who had put more effort than Gandhi for developing the country?

If we compare the results or fame that Gandhi got, probably, there was nobody who got better results or fame. But, it is completely wrong to think that, there was nobody who had put more efforts than Gandhi. There were/are many leaders who had put/are putting more effort than Gandhi. It is just that, they have not got as much fame as Gandhi, and not as successful as Gandhi.

India Will Not Become A Developed Country As Long As

2011-03-13T23:30:00.000+05:30

India will not become a developed country as long as people think that,

How does it matter to whom do we vote? Nobody does anything and everyone is corrupted.
What is the use of voting for that party? They are not going to win anyway.
Politics is dirty and good people should not join politics.
Government should not privatize anything.
A small favor to the majority religion makes one religious, and big favors to minority religions makes them secular.
We need more social organizations to serve the country.

If you think any of the above points are valid, then I will not vote for you in Assembly or Parliament elections.

Reservations - Castes

2011-03-07T23:21:00.003+05:30

Recently, I watched a program on reservations. In the entire program, they have never cared about the root problem.

Few people advise to introduce reservations based on the economy status. But, a higher caste student has always better opportunities than a lower class student. Even if the higher caste students are poor, they would be having some relatives who are rich, and they help them. They are getting better career guidance then others. In higher castes, the people have societies, and they are helping their caste students. But, for lower castes, there are nothing like that.

The correct solution in this case is, providing help to everyone who are in need. If a poor person cannot study because of lack of financial support, give loans to everyone who needs it. Right now, it is not at all easy to get an education loan. Make that simple, and provide easy way to get the loans. By that, all the poor students can study without others' help.

I personally benefited a lot from the library in my home town. The library used to have all kinds of magazines including career guidance. By reading those magazines, I got a fair idea on what to do next. Establish the libraries in all the small towns and villages, and provide different kind of books and magazines. That will help everyone in that town/village, and not just people of few castes.

The societies in higher castes came because of no help whatsoever from the government for anything. If a particular caste is getting all the benefits, where is the need to form a society and donate money to that? I would say, if there is a social organization, it means, the government has miserably failed in solving the problems of the people who are getting help from that organization. In an ideal environment, there will not be any NGOs, and even if they are there, it would be bare minimum.

Caste discrimination cannot be removed by removing the reservations. Even before reservations came into picture, the caste discrimination was there. So, both are independent.

There are many reasons and types for caste discrimination. Many people have restrictions on castes for marriage. That is also one kind of discrimination. But, it does not effect others. In places like Tamilnadu, just by knowing their caste, we can say whether that person eats non-veg or not and vice-versa. For many people in Tamilnadu, by knowing the day to day activities, it is possible to guess their caste, and by knowing the caste, it is possible to tell their food habits and few other things. In those places, the caste is essentially nothing but, the behavior of the person. When a person wants to give his/her house to a tenant, most of them prefers a tenant who has same habits, i.e., who is of the same caste. Here, caste should not be seen as a social barrier. It is the way a person lives. In this case, it is not possible to remove caste from the system, and there is no need to remove this type of caste system. Because, in this case, the caste is just a name given to a behavior. This type of discrimination does not harm others.

Go to any engineering college or medical college. Ask any student whether they know the caste or the category (OC, BC etc.) of other students. You will get the answers from most of the students. Ask the employees of any private company about the caste or category of their colleagues. Most of them cannot tell. Probably, in Tamilnadu, they may tell whether they are brahmins or not (if they know whether they are veg or non-veg), but, other than that, it is very difficult to tell.

Discriminating the students based on caste makes the students discriminate based on the caste.

Only foolish people think that, by asking everyone their caste and discriminate based on that removes the caste system from the society.

In foreign countries, everyone gets the same quality education and health irrespective of their financial status. That's why, they don't need reservations. If we also get that level, then we can think of whether to keep the reservations or not.

Here, they themselves agreed that, quality education and health is not reaching everyone. Instead of fixing the root problem, they try to solve it partially by creating discrimination and in the process they create frustration among many people and make people fight with each other. If they agree that, in 60 years, they could not eliminate discrimination, when can they eliminate it?

I know many IAS officers who did not get a good rank but came by reservations and has done really good. I know many other higher caste IAS officers who got a very good rank, but do not know anything.

Here, the root problem is, an IAS officer who did not get a good rank is performing much better than a person who got a very good rank. It means, there is some serious issue in the selection and ranking itself. Instead of fixing the problem of selection and ranking, if we bring the caste into picture, it will not solve anything.

I agree that, there is no selection criteria which is absolute good. Even in the exams conducted by IITs, many times, people who do not have good knowledge gets in. But, Civils and Group Exams are very extreme. There is not even a single relation between the exams and the work that they do. The exams do not test the capabilities of the person for the position that he/she is applying. Civils is common test for thousands of important posts in India in Administrative, police, foreign, postal, trade, railways and many others. Even within IAS, there are many different posts like Collector, Managing Director of different organizations, secretaries to the ministers etc. If we just take secretaries to the ministers, almost every secretary requires special skills in their ministry. Each ministry like Finance, IT, Agriculture, Health etc. requires special knowledge in that field. Those who have studied a lot in those fields can contribute more and others cannot contribute that much. There is no relation between what the officers are doing to what they were tested. If there is no relation between the rank and the contribution, there is absolutely no relation between caste and contribution as well.

Be Professional In Professional Life

2011-03-01T23:25:00.005+05:30

If you are expecting someone to spend much more than their regular spending for anything, then make sure that, you would make it completely voluntary. Don't force them to participate and pay.

If you are expecting the participants to pay for some activity that you have initiated, make sure that, you let them know in advance that they have to pay. If you don't let them know, there is nothing more unprofessional than that. If you have forgotten, that is completely your problem.

If you do like this, next time, don't expect anybody to listen to you.

KCR's Definition of 'Gandhian Way'

2011-02-23T23:26:00.004+05:30

Not allowing any employee to go to office
Not allowing any student to go to school/college
Not allowing any shop to be opened
Not allowing any bus to come on road
Forcing government to put thousands of police for security

and many more on the same lines....

Effect of Corruption in Business (Real Social Service)

2011-02-17T23:29:00.002+05:30

There are only two types of social services. Politics and Business. Everything else is some variant of begging, where one donates to another.

You are interested in doing business and provide employment to many people and provide better service to many consumers. The rules are vague in that business. You need approval from the concerned minister and the license fee would be around Rs.10 lakh.

You went and met the minister for the approval. He gives you two options.

First option is, pay him Rs.5 lakh as bribe and pay government Rs.1 lakh as fee.
Second option is, forget about the business.

You dont have an option of paying Rs.15 lakh (fee+bribe), because of the intricacies in the system. If the minister brings the rule of paying Rs.10 lakh, then he would lose his authority to approve/reject specific people/organizations. If he brings the rule of paying Rs.1 lakh, then he can decide who can do the business and who cannot.

You dont have any other option other than the two. Even if you pay bribe and start the business, you very well know that you won't save that Rs.4 lakh, and it would be used up immediately to bribe others.

After some time, somebody investigates the issue of licensing and comes to know that, this organization has been given the license for very less fee, and because of that, the government lost Rs.9 lakh per license.

The immediate demands from all the opposition parties and watchdog organizations are,

Cancel all the licenses and give the licenses freshly with the correct procedure.
Some useless demands on the minister, and setting up commission etc. (till now, those never made any difference to the common man.)
Impose wind fall tax on the organization for earning profits till now. (It is a different question that you did not save any money, and used up everything in bribes.)

Nobody talks about the bribes that you had to give out, eventhough you were never interested, and tried your best to get the license without bribes.

People criticize you for paying bribes and getting into business.

They also say that, previously they had a great respect for you, and now, it is no longer there.

Many people send many mails to all their acquaintances about what can happen, if we had those money. The mail says that, if we had that much money, we could have done x, y, z etc. It also says, with that money, few fields would be improved completely as if they were not allotted sufficient money in the last few decades.

When the new Minister declares that, all the licenses would be cancelled, all the opposition parties and watchdog organizations express their happiness for taking preventions against corruption and getting back the money, and nobody cares about the organization which spent lot of money for the cancelled license.

All the politicians easily escape. In the worst case, they make a scapegoat for few days.

Black Market

2011-02-14T23:23:00.004+05:30

Black Market is in existence, only because of two reasons.

Shortage of supply (either artificial or natural)
Price is significantly lesser than what the consumer can pay for that

Only politicians and ignorant media thinks that the problem with the black market can be solved without touching any of the above two.

Should We Eliminate Corruption Completely?

2011-02-11T23:27:00.002+05:30

A travels company has many buses. But, it has permits only for few buses, and does not have permits for many buses.

There are many schools which are operated without any registration. There are many other schools which are registered, but violates many rules.

There is a house which is not constructed as per the plan documents they had submitted.

There is a hotel which uses child labour.

There is a traffic constable, who takes bribe from all the traffic violators. He does not write receipts for anybody.

In all the above cases, the officers who come for regular checkup take bribe and leave.

Should we have a strong Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to punish all the corrupted people very severely?

I don't care about any of the above types of corruption. Because, in all these situations, the corruption is happening because of the other issues in the system. In few cases, the corruption must be there till the root cause is fixed. Otherwise, there may be bigger problems. I don't spend my time or resources to control the corruption in anyway other than solving the root cause. I don't care about the bills on anti-corruption, strengthening ACB, rallies for anti-corruption or many others which try to reduce the corruption in the above cases. Because, they won't improve the country.

The government is controlling the entire transport in the state. Because of their monopoly, the transport is very bad, and causing increase of private vehicles, pollution, consumption of petrol/diesel etc. Unless government increases the public transport significantly, the problems will not be solved. In the present situation, increase in the no.of buses is always good. But, government is not giving permits to everyone. If an officer allows a bus even by violating the rules, that would reduce the pollution, traffic and diesel/petrol. Following rules in this case would increase pollution, traffic and usage of diesel/petrol.

The government has many restrictions in registering a school. It is impractical for a small player to satisfy all the requirements to register a school. That's why, people are forced to do not register the school, or even if they register the school, they register without satisfying all the requirements. If we go with the rules, we will have to close more than 70% (or is it 90%?) of the schools in the state. Following rules in this case would just increase the illiteracy.

Even to construct a small house, the government has put so many restrictions. It is not possible for many to follow all the rules. If everyone has to follow the rules, then not that many people would construct the houses, the rents would increase drastically and there would be severe scarcity of the houses.

If the government provides free education and hostel facility to all the children who are poor, will any child work? If the government does not provide facilities for children to study, and if it does not allow children to work, what will they do? Following the rules in this case, would simply wastes the time of the children (They can neither earn knowledge nor money).

The duty of the traffic constable is to control the traffic. The fines that are imposed for the violators is to discourage the offenses. The fine should never be seen as an income to the government. Government should strive for zero traffic violators. If the traffic constable takes bribe from all the traffic violators, it is nothing but, he is imposing fine on all the traffic violators (Since, it is bribe, it would be less than the usual fine). If the government does not allow him to take bribe, but allow him only to collect the fine, then I am sure, they would not show that much interest in stopping every offender and collecting the fine. The total money that is collected as fine would be less than, what he would have collected as bribe. Because, many people would work more, if they can get some extra credit. If we follow rules in this case, then the fine would be imposed on less no.of offenders, and the traffic problem would not be solved completely.

There is one IAS officer who is considered as a very sincere officer in A.P. She does not do anything against the rules. She has reduced the corruption significantly in the first two cases. (By reducing the corruption significantly, the suffering/inconvenience of the people increased significantly.) If she contests in the election (even from Lok Satta Party), I will not vote for her. Because, her reduction in the corruption caused only reduction of the services to the common people. If she wins and is in the winning party, then definitely she would get a good post in the government. Instead of trying to solve the problems of the people, she would go by the rules, which are not good for the people. Finally, it will increase the problems of the people.

Related Posts:
Is it Legal or Illegal?
Impractical requirements

Few Tips for Passengers who Travel by Train

2011-02-05T23:24:00.003+05:30

After the Indian Army, I feel the Railway department is the one which does not disclose anything to the general public. It is very difficult to find out on what basis, the tickets are allotted and on what basis the waiting list tickets are confirmed. Many times, eventhough, I had booked the ticket very early, My ticket was not confirmed. Where as, others' ticket got confirmed eventhough they had booked just few days before. I could gather some information on this, but, still there is much more that is hidden.

In each train, the seats are allotted to different railway zones based on some hidden criteria. In each railway zone, the major cities get some quota based on some other hidden criteria. And, there are different waiting lists like, (General) Waiting List, Pooled Quota Waiting List, Remote Location Waiting List, Request Waiting List etc., which are not trivial to understand.

Break Journey

If you are traveling from A to B, and if you are not getting confirmed ticket, then break the journey at a major station between A to B, or at a station where the railway zone changes just before or after. Book two tickets, one from A to that station, and another from that station to B for the same train. That may have more chances to get confirmed ticket. When compared to long journeys, short journeys have more chances of confirming.

If you are traveling by Charminar express from Chennai to Secunderabad, and if you don't get confirmed ticket, then try from Chennai to Gudur and Gudur to Secunderabad. This has more chances of getting confirmed ticket, or less waiting list number than Chennai to Secunderabad. Chennai is in Southern Railway zone, and Gudur and Secunderabad are in South Central Railway zone. There are different quotas from Gudur to Secunderabad and Chennai to Secunderabad. The quota from Chennai to Secunderabad is used up very soon, where as the quota from Gudur to Secunderabad is relatively not used up so soon. So, there are more chances of clearing. You can apply the same logic for Tatkal as well.

Extend Journey

If you want to go from Chennai to Vijayawada by Howrah Express, it is very difficult to get a confirmed ticket unless you book atleast a month in advance. Even tatkal also would be filled up within half an hour to one hour. But, if you book the ticket from Tambaram to Vijayawada, then you will get the confirmed ticket easily. That train has different quotas for Chennai and Tambaram. Many people travel from Chennai and it is difficult to get confirmed ticket from Chennai. Whereas, from Tambaram, not that many people travel, so, you can get the confirmed ticket easily.

The extension of journey is useful, only if you can get a confirmed ticket at the time of booking. If you get waiting list, be very cautious. The waiting list from small stations would be cleared in different way, and the waiting list won't go down like how it goes if you have booked normally. In case of this type of booking, if I get waiting list ticket, I will not depend on that, since, it has very less chance of clearing, because of less quota.

This is mainly useful in case of Tatkal quota. For Tatkal quota, in the main line, the quota would be filled up by 8.15 - 8.30 AM on the opening day. Where as, if you extend the journey, you would get some more time.

Book two tickets, in case of RAC or Waiting List

At the time of booking, if the status is waiting list or RAC, and if you would like to travel comfortably, then book two tickets per person. At the time of chart preparation, if that becomes RAC, then two passengers would be allotted one berth. So, you would get a berth. Before chart preparation, you can check the status, and if it is confirmed, then you can cancel one. After the chart preparation, if both are confirmed, then it is a long procedure to cancel just one ticket.

Tatkal for the trains that start after midnight

If the train that you are traveling starts little after midnight, and if that station is not the starting station, then for the previous station for which starting time is before midnight, the tatkal quota would be opened one day before your starting station. You can book the ticket three days before (instead of the usual two days for Tatkal) from the previous station.

In case your starting station and the previous station have the same quota for the journey, then you must book from the previous station (unless, there are vacant berths even after one day). For example, Chennai express departs from Ongole for Chennai little after mid night, and from Guntur, it departs little before midnight. The tatkal quota is opened for Guntur one day before Ongole, and both have same quota to Chennai. On the first day, if the quota from Guntur is used up, then there will not be any berths available by the time tatkal is opened for Ongole. In this case, if you want to travel from Ongole, you have to book the ticket from Guntur three days before.

If you are booking the ticket at the railway counter

If you are booking ticket for which the starting station is in different railway zone, and if the ticket is in waiting list state, then think twice before booking it. I feel, it is just waste of money. It will not be confirmed so easily. If the starting station is in the same railway zone as the booking counter where the ticket was booked, then it would be given much higher preference than the ticket booked outside the railway zone. Once, I booked a ticket at a booking counter in different zone one month before and it was not confirmed. Another person booked in the same zone (for the same train and route), just 4 days before, and it was confirmed.

I don't know how it works online. When I booked wait listed ticket, I got all the possibilities like Waiting List, Pooled Queue Waiting List (PQWL), Remote Location Waiting List (RLWL). What I observed was, except General Waiting List, everything else would clear very slowly. So, if you get waiting List no.of 10 in RLWL or PQWL, don't be happy. At the time of chart preparation it may stop at 2 or 3, where as general waiting list 40 may be confirmed.

If you want to travel by somebody else's confirmed ticket

If the chart has not been prepared for that train

Then book another ticket for that train for yourself, even if the waiting list number is very big. With that ticket, you can board the reservation compartment. Make sure to mark the confirmed ticket with TTE (may be by somebody else, and not by yourself). With the waiting list ticket that you have, you can travel without any problem in the reservation compartment, and with the confirmed ticket, you can have berth.

If the chart has been prepared or even the waiting list tickets are not issued.

In this case, you need help of somebody else who is traveling in the same compartment. Take a general ticket, and make sure that, TTE is not aware that, you have a confirmed ticket. Mark the confirmed ticket by somebody else, and don't appear to TTE at all. In case, if you have to face TTE, face him at a different berth and ask him for a berth. He will say, there are no berths available (unless you are traveling on Diwali night). When he is not around, just go and sleep in the exact same berth that was allotted to that confirmed ticket. Don't try to change the berths unless those were also marked by the TTE and the actual ticket holders of that berth are around.

Technically, in these cases, TTE can twist in whatever way he wants. If you have only a general ticket, then TTE can impose fine of Rs.250 and the reservation charges for that route. However, if TTE is allotting a berth to you, he would collect only the reservation charges (and some bribe). If the TTE comes to know that, you have a confirmed ticket of somebody else, then, he will ask you for the maximum fine. The TTE just won't listen, if you ask him to allot the berth that was confirmed on the other ticket. Finally, you will be end up paying bribe which is more than the technically possible fine.

You are an educated person. Don't you know that it is computerized?

If you start arguments with any of the railway officials on anything on the tickets, their reply would be the above only. But, the fact is, till the time of chart preparation, the railway officials can change many things. They can give you a confirmed ticket, they can confirm your waiting list ticket, they can change the names of the ticket, and they can change the boarding station from a completely different place. All are possible. But, you cannot approach them directly. You need to go through the appropriate brokers for that.

TTE can do, if you are ready to pay enough

After the chart preparation, TTE can arrange the berth, if you are willing to pay enough. Almost all the long journey trains have atleast three TTEs for different compartments. If the TTE is allotted to the compartments which have the quota of tickets from the starting station to the last station, then he may not be able to help you that much. But, other TTEs would be able to help you, if you are willing to pay enough.

Delay in Train Timings are as Designed in Small Railway Stations

When the railway department publishes the timings of the trains, the most important requirement for them is, no train departs before the published departure time. It is also not possible for the trains to travel with the uniform speed everyday. When they publish the timings, they fix the timings at the important stations by the average in the last few months. Between the two important stations, the (published) timings are distributed in such a way that, it appears that, the train travels very fast for the first 75-80% of the journey, and goes very slowly for the rest of the 20-25% of the journey. By that way, the train never departs before the published departure time. If the train reaches an important station little early, they can let it wait till the published departure time. Whereas, they cannot do that for small stations. That's why there is discrepancy in the published times and actual times at small railway stations. This also gives the impression to the passengers that, initially, the train was late, but the train driver managed to reach the destination on time. Where as, everything was as designed. If you have to board a train at a small station, and if you are late, don't change the plan of your commute immediately. Check whether the train had already left from that station or not, and then only change your plan.

I think one can easily do a Ph.D. on the Railway reservation system.

Recent Politics in Andhra Pradesh

2011-02-02T23:28:00.000+05:30

Almost all the news papers are writing differently on the situations that can happen, if there is a motion of confidence/no-confidence. After reading the news on this in many news papers, I felt pity on the reporters for their lack of knowledge on the constitution.

The present situation in A.P. is very interesting.

Jagan MLAs are asking Congress government to have vote of confidence.

Congress Party is saying, if anybody wants, they can call for vote of no-confidence.

TDP is saying, they will not put vote of no-confidence, just because somebody has asked.

Everybody is blaming on others. Many news papers/channels are not giving correct analysis.

Why will a party that is in power call for vote of confidence or vote of no-confidence? They will never, and there is no need to ask them. Congress does not need to prove their majority. If others want, they have to call for it.

To have a vote of confidence, the MLAs have to request the Governor saying that, the government does not have enough majority, and convince him. Traditionally, the MLAs give signed letters to the Governor. Generally, they do this, if they can get support of more than 130-140 MLAs.

To have a vote of no-confidence, atleast 40 MLAs have to give notice to the speaker, and then the speaker will call for vote of no-confidence. If less no.of MLAs give notice to the speaker, then it is at the speaker's discretion, and most probably, it would be ignored.

In the present circumstances, it is not possible to call for vote of confidence, since, getting 130 MLAs together is not possible.

The unofficial news is, Jagan has a support of around 25 MLAs. Jagan's close associates say, they have the support of 50 MLAs or so. If they have support of 50 MLAs, then they can call for vote of no-confidence. But, the issue is, once the MLAs give notice to the speaker, they would come under anti-defection law. If the speaker wants, he can disqualify them before the vote of no-confidence. If the speaker disqualifies those MLAs, then the government can easily defeat the vote of no-confidence. That's why Jagan MLAs cannot move forward for vote of no-confidence.

During the vote of no-confidence, if Jagan MLAs vote against Congress party, then they would fall under anti-defection law, but only after the voting. Their vote would still be valid. If the government falls, there is no use of that law. If the government wins, then Jagan's MLAs would lose their MLA seats.

Congress party is planning to use anti-defection law on the present MLAs who are with Jagan. But, it will not be so easy. Just a press statement or talking negatively may not warrant for anti-defection law. The member has to disobey the whip, or resign from the political party, or should do something tangible which proves that he/she voluntarily left the party, and did not leave because he/she was asked to leave. Even if those MLAs are disqualified, it is difficult to win in the court.

TDP has 92 MLAs and it can call for vote of no-confidence, and no other party can call, because, other parties do not have enough no.of MLAs.

Technically, only Chandrababu can issue for vote of no-confidence. Probably, he is not confident that, vote of no-confidence will win, because PRP and MIM are ready to support Congress. Both Congress and Jagan are experts in buying MLAs. If all those happen, there is no guarantee that, vote of no-confidence will win. Going by the previous track record, I am sure, Chandrababu is looking for the right time to take the next step.

Gandhi's Death - Hey Ram

2011-01-30T17:15:00.000+05:30

Few Excerpts from the book, The Men Who Killed Gandhi by Manohar Malgonkar.

On 20th January 1948, Madanlal had exploded a bomb at Birla House, where Gandhi lived.

When Lady Mountbatten, who had come to see him soon afterwards, had congratulated him on his coolness he had explained to her that he not even realized that something had been exploded in the grounds of Birla House. 'If somebody fired at me point blank and I faced his bullet with a smile, repeating the name of Rama in my heart, I should be deserving of congratulations.'

On 30th January 1948,

No one noticed whether Gandhi's face bore a smile as he faced his assailant. But Gurbachan Singh, a Sikh businessman from Panipat who was a devotee of Gandhi and who was only a few steps behind him as he fell, deposed that Gandhi's last words were, 'Hai Rama!'. Karkare, on the other hand, who stood within a few feet of Gandhi and saw him as the bullets struck him swore to the other that all Gandhi uttered was a cry of pain, a guttural rasp, 'Aaaah!'

It is of course, possible that both are wrong, and that what they heard, or say they heard, was conditioned by the one man's veneration for Gandhi and the other man's contempt. Then again it is possible that both are right, and the invocation 'Hai Rama!' uttered with his last breath may have sounded to Karkare like a cry of pain.

Awards

2011-01-27T23:23:00.000+05:30

When an Italian is controlling India, Human Resource Development Ministry worried about a great indian chess player getting doctorate citing reasons that he has the citizenship of Spain also. Finally, he has rejected the doctorate, and he may not take it in the present government's rule.

Maharashtra Government and Prime Minister's Office have recommended Bharatha Ratna for a great Indian Cricket Player. But, he was rejected citing reasons that, he is too young to receive Bharatha Ratna. But, there is no problem in making 41 years old person as the Prime Minister of India, with a single reason that, his father, grand mother and great grand father were Prime Ministers of India.

One Prime Minister of India gave Bharatha Ratna to a Chief Minister after his death. Unfortunately, he did not give the Bhartha Ratna for his contribution to his state, but, he gave it to form the alliance with his party. Had that Chief Minister been alive, he would have rejected the Bhartha Ratna, because, it is written in Hindi only, and he does not like that.

Dr.S.P.Bala Subrahmanyam and P.Suseela are basically from Andhra Pradesh, and they are the top most singers of Telugu cinema and sang many songs in many other languages. Unfortunately, A.P. government is always busy with giving awards to the supporters of their party, and never cared about people like Balu and Suseela. Balu received Padmasri in 2001 and Padmabhushan in 2011. P.Suseela received Padmabhushan in 2008. All the three nominations were from Tamilnadu government only and not from A.P. government.

Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi have received Bharatha Ratna when they were Prime Ministers of India. Pranab Mukerjee received Padma Vibhushan when he was the Finance Miniser of Union Cabinet (After Prime Minister, he was the second most important person in the union ministry). Don't they know what is Conflict of Interest?

Gandhi's Policies On Governance

2011-01-25T23:28:00.000+05:30

An army should be non-violent.

Majority party should voluntarily withdraw from the business of governing.

Economy should reject all technological advances.

A society should abide by his own standards of austerity as well as humanitarian ideals.

Gandhi also wanted to close Congress after the Independence, since it served it's purpose. But, none of the other top leaders agreed to that.

Gandhi wrote the following in the Hind Swaraj.

India's salvation consists in unlearning what she has learnt during the last fifty years. The railways, the telegraphs, hospitals, lawyers, doctors and the such like have to go; and the so-called upper classes have to learn consciously, religiously and deliberately the simple peasant life, knowing it to be a life-giving true happiness.

Source:
The Men Who Killed Gandhi by Manohar Malgonkar
Gandhi - A Sublime Failure by S.S.Gill

Philosophical Speech By Mahathma Gandhi

2011-01-21T23:30:00.001+05:30

On 20th Jan 1948, Madanlal had exploded a bomb at Birla House, where Gandhi lived. After Madanlal was arrested, Gandhi said the following in the evening prayer meeting.

No one should look down upon the misguided young man who had thrown the bomb. He probably looked upon me as an enemy of Hinduism. After all, had not the Gita said that, whenever there was an evil-minded person damaging religion, God sent someone to end his life?

Source: The Men Who Killed Gandhi by Manohar Malgonkar

Paying Advance and Canceling - Who is Benefited?

2011-01-16T23:24:00.000+05:30

I was searching for a house, and found one house, which suited many of my requirements, but not all. The rent for that house was Rs.6,000 and a deposit of Rs.35,000. I was not sure, whether I can get better house than that. So, I decided to take it, and paid an advance of Rs.1,000. After few hours, I realized that, it may be little difficult to adjust in that house, and I continued my searching for five days, and found another house. Immediately after finding the house that satisfied all my requirements, I told the previous house owner that, I would not take that house, and I lost the advance.

Who got benefited out of this?

The room rent is Rs.6,000 per month. For 5 days, it would be around Rs.1,000. Since, I reserved that room for 5 days, I paid Rs.1,000 for that. So, I was not in loss. The same thing with the house owner. But, the house owner might have more loss, if he was using paid advertisements, and he might have lost few potential tenants.

Many people do not understand this and think that I lost money in this, where as I did not lose anything.

Uncapped Players in IPL

2011-01-13T23:21:00.001+05:30

IPL did not put the players who never played for India in auction. Players like Ambati Rayudu, Manish pandey have never played for team India, so they were not put in the auction. By the rules of IPL, they can get at max of Rs.30 Lakh and Rs.20 Lakh respectively. Those players can directly talk to the franchises and make agreements.

In the last few days, I have read so many news items and cartoons sympathizing them for getting so less money in IPL, where as players who played very few matches for team India are getting in crores.

If an important player comes just for Rs.30 Lakh, who would not want him? Every team would fight for him. If more than one team fights for him, what would he do? He would increase his price. Since, IPL does not allow him to take more than Rs.30 Lakh, he would take the extra amount as black. Finally, whoever can give him more money, he would play for that team.

The difference is, in the auctioning, the teams can spend at max Rs.45 crore for buying the entire team, where as in this case, there is no cap for the players. (That's why these players are called as Uncapped players. ;) )

There is no need to sympathize the uncapped players. All of them get good amount of money for their capability.

Shortcuts in Excel For Select, Add and Delete

2011-01-12T23:38:00.004+05:30

Shift + Space -> To Select Row
Ctrl + Space -> To Select Column
Ctrl + + -> To add the selection (If you had selected a row/column, then a row/column would be added.)
Ctrl + - -> To delete the selection

Had I known these shortcuts few years back, I would not have hated Excel this much.

Excerpts of Sri Krishna Committee's Report

2011-01-07T06:26:00.002+05:30

(v) Bifurcation of the State into Telangana and Seemandhra as per existing boundaries with Hyderabad as the capital of Telangana and Seemandhra to have a new capital
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Therefore, after taking into account all the pros and cons, the Committee did not think it to be the most preferred, but the second best option. Separation is recommended only in case it is unavoidable and if this decision can be reached amicably amongst all the three regions.

(vi) Keeping the State united by simultaneously providing certain definite Constitutional/Statutory measures for socio-economic development and political empowerment of Telangana region creation of a statutorily empowered Telangana Regional Council
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The Committee discussed all aspects of this option and while it acknowledges that there will be certain difficulties in its implementation, on balance, it found it the most workable option in the given circumstances and in the best interest of the social and economic welfare of the people of all the three regions.

Reading a committee report is definitely not like reading a news paper or a book.

Full Report of Sri Krishna Committee in PDF format (8.1 MB) http://www.tnsatish.com/srikrishna.zip

Full Report of Sri Krishna Committee in TXT format (950 KB) http://www.tnsatish.com/srikrishna.txt

Why Did Dr.JP Contest From Kukatpally?

2011-01-02T23:23:00.000+05:30

This is the question that is raised by few politicians. They say that, since, Kukatpally has more people from his caste, he contested from there.

For this, Dr.JP answered just in one statement.

If they are going to decide, where we have to contest, let them decide at all the places. We will decide where they have to contest.

However the transparent a system is, there are few things that are not disclosed, and few others are not disclosed after certain level. If you are giving awards, or doing performance review for your employees, or selecting the employees for different projects, you will not disclose everything that happened in the closed rooms. If you do that, it will lead to disaster only.

Let's suppose, you are planning to give awards to few great scientists. You thought, who are better than the scientists who received Nobel prize, and decided to give the awards to all the scientists who won Nobel prize. Since, it is not a good idea to disclose the criteria of the awards, you did not disclose it. Now, I criticize you that, you are biased to Jews, and you are discriminating others. [Jews won 20% of the Nobel prizes, but, they comprise of only 0.2% of the population.] After my criticism, would you change your criteria, or go-ahead with your original plan. If you are planning to change the criteria, you are a stupid.

Let's suppose, if Dr.JP contests from a different place, what would those politicians say? If he contests from Serilingampally or Malkajgiri, they would give the same reasons as of Kukatpally. If he contests from Khairatabad or any other high class area in Hyderabad, they would find appropriate word and criticize with that. If he contests from any part of Coastal Andhra or Rayalaseema (irrespective of whether it is his hometown or the places where he worked as collector), the same politicians criticize him as the supporter of United Andhra in a big way. Right now also they are criticizing him as a supporter of United Andhra. But, if he contests from outside Telangana, it would be even more. If you are going to change the place you contest, just because of some criticism from some leader, then next time you will not find any constituency.

For any political party, the transparency of selection of the candidate should be there within the working committee and to some extent to the potential candidates. For everyone else (even if they are senior members of the party), it is none of their business. If they make it transparent to everyone (or atleast to the other political parties), that party will not be there by the next elections.

For the question on why did Dr.JP contest from Kukatpally only, Namasthe Andhra has answered in a very nice and simple way in it's article. Educated people can easily understand the new politics and the politics without money, so he contested from Kukatpally and not because of caste.

If you still have not understood why I wrote about giving awards to the Nobel prize winners, read it once again.

Gift Vouchers and Gift Cards

2010-12-30T23:29:00.027+05:30

Whenever I get an invitation for any function, the first trouble that I face is, "What gift should I give?" I am very bad at selection, and I used to chose something random. Most of the time, the recipients told me that the gift was good, and I am 99% sure, they told that out of courtesy.

Some time back, when I was moving out of the team that I was working, I came to know that, the team members were thinking of some gift for me. I was 100% sure that, whatever they give, I would put it in my suitcase safely atleast for the next 5 years. But, I was 100% wrong.

They had given me gift vouchers of Crossword Book stores. Very soon, I visited the store, and spent equivalent money of the gift vouchers by purchasing the books equivalent to the double the value of the gift vouchers.

After they gave me the gift vouchers, one of the team members said, if I am going to buy a book of Rs.350, then, I can give two Rs.250 gift vouchers, and the shopkeeper gives back a credit note of Rs.150, and I can use that credit note to buy another book in 6 months time. When, he was telling that, I did not say anything to him. But, I was 100% sure that, I will never need to take a credit note, and I did not take.

Thanks to (in no particular order)

Anurag N
Krishna Doss
Parag Bhand
Praburaj Thiagarajan
Raghavendra Babu
Santosh Javagondanahalli Padaraj
Sravanthi Rajanala
Srikrishna Mutnuru
Srinivas Patnaik
Tanu Singhal

This was the second gift that I had received that was useful for me.

Gift Voucher is a very good gift that can be given to anyone who is staying in a city. Recently Canara Bank introduced Gift Cards which can be used like a credit card. That is also a very good option to give it as a gift.

Extra Storage For Mails

2010-12-27T23:25:00.000+05:30

Those who are old enough would know that, 10 years back, yahoo used to offer 4 MB of email space, and by paying some amount, one could upgrade to 10 MB. (If you are a kid, you are reading the numbers and measurements correctly.)

At that time, I thought, why would anyone upgrade the email account? Everybody would just register another email account and forward all the old mails to that account. In 2004, Gmail started giving 1 GB, and in couple of years, it increased to 6 GB and then to 7 GB. That is a lot of storage. Till two years back, I was under the same impression that, we never need to buy extra storage for the mails, and in the worst case, we can register another email id.

Now, I have upgraded my Gmail account, and I am paying money for my personal email account. Ignoring how much I am paying for the extra space, even two years back, I thought, there was no question of paying money for my personal email account. But, it became invalid in just two years.

One famous quote that is misattributed to Bill Gates
640K ought to be enough for anybody.

The Case Against Lord Krishna

2010-12-24T23:23:00.008+05:30

A nun in Warsaw, Poland, filed a case against ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness). The case came up in court.

The nun remarked that ISKCON was spreading its activities and gaining followers in Poland. She wanted ISKCON to be banned because its followers were glorifying a character called 'Krishna', "who had loose morals," having married to 16,000 women called Gopikas.

The ISKCON defendant to the Judge: "Please ask the nun to repeat the oath she took when she was ordained as a nun."

The Judge asked the nun to recite the oath loudly. She did not.

The ISKCON man asked whether he could read out the oath for the nun.

"Go ahead", said the judge.

The oath said in effect that "she (the nun) is married to Jesus Christ". The ISKCON man said, "Your Lordship! Lord Krishna is alleged to have 'married' 16,000 women only. There are more than a million nuns who assert that they are married to Jesus Christ. Between the two, Krishna and Jesus Christ, who has a loose character?"

The case was dismissed.

Source: http://durgeswara.blogspot.com/2010/12/blog-post_23.html (Don't know the authenticity)

Sent by Rajesh Tiruveedula

One common misconception everyone have is, Krishna married to 16,000 Gopikas. Actually, Krishna did not marry Gopikas. He married 16,100 queens of different kingdoms who were captured by Narakasura. After Krishna killed Narakasura, the queens said, since, they were captured by Narakasura, and no one would marry them now, they asked Krishna to marry them. And, Krishna married all of them. Another misconception that people have is, Satyabhama killed Narakasura. It is not correct. Satyabhama helped Krishna, and she even fought with Narakasura for some time. But, at the end Krishna himself killed Narakasura.

Doctors - Responsibilities

2010-12-21T23:22:00.000+05:30

Drinking 2 liters of water everyday morning before brushing with empty stomach
Eating sweets regularly to maintain sugar levels
Drinking warm salt water in case of stomach pain

The above three health tips saved me from lot of pain, money and time. Unfortunately, doctors did not give these advices, but my friend and relatives have given. (one of them is a doctor, but, she has not given the advice as a doctor.)

I have met many doctors, and I have told them all my problems. All the doctors gave the medicines that solves the problem for the time being. But, none of them gave any health tips by which the disease will not come back in future. A doctor giving just an advice without medicine as the treatment is too much to expect. The doctors should give treatment in such a way that, the patient does not need to come back. But, I hardly met a doctor who does treatment like that. When I ask for the root problem, almost everyone tells in very abstract terms, which are not at all useful. I feel many doctors are not doing what they are supposed to do.

Drinking 2 liters of water everyday morning with empty stomach before brushing cleans the stomach, and many problems related to intestine would be solved by that.

If the sugar level goes down, then one may get frequent headache and feel stressed even by small work. One must maintain sugar levels for good health. Except those who have high sugar levels, everyone should take enough sugar or related products regularly to maintain the sugar level.

Courtesy: Panchakshari Damerla, Krishnan Sundaram and Dr.Usha Rani Vinnakota

Bug in Blogger in Alignment in HTML Mode

2010-12-15T23:28:00.000+05:30

Sometimes, in blogger, when you post in edit HTML mode, the alignment fails partially/fully. The partial/full text is shown in a single paragraph. That is due to some bug in blogger, where it stops converting the new lines to <br>. In that case, wherever you want new lines, use <br> tags yourself and don't depend on blogger for converting automatically.

Anonymous Feedback Without Anonymity

2010-12-12T23:41:00.000+05:30

I know a company which takes regular anonymous feedback. They have enough checks to make sure that, the feedback is really anonymous. The feedback is conducted by a third party, and it contains many objective questions. The third party aggregates all the responses at the senior manager level for each question and gives it back to that company. All the senior managers and above would know the aggregated feedback, and they are obliged to publish the aggregated feedback to his/her team.

In that company, some time back, under one senior manager, for the question, Intent to stay in the company, nobody said, they would stay in the company.

Where is the anonymity in that? If there was atleast one person who intended to stay in the company, the anonymity would have been there for everyone. But, now, it is clear that the entire team under that senior manager wants to leave the company soon, it would be too embarrassing for everyone in that team.

By the way, soon after publishing the results, the senior manager left that company.