Rupee appreciation...may be deliberate by the government?

A few months ago, the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has requested the private sector to consider the job reservation in it. There was no response (at least publicly) from any of the industry leaders. However, TATA’s have declined the request and clearly stated that is not possible. Again few months ago, the PM had expressed concerns over high salaries of executives of private firms.

With these two things in mind, consider what is happening now. Which private sector has maximum potential to offer jobs in the current circumstances? IT. All of you know that IT companies are what they are today, because their services are export oriented. Especially to the US. To be clear the dollar difference is what makes them superior to other firms. Over the past several years, dollar was hovering around 42-46 rupees. Last year during August/September dollar was around 47. Now it is around 40. What kind of growth would make it increase so sharply? I am not an economist. However, let’s see few things. We all know Indian economy is growing at 9-10 percent. And the US is growing at less than 4 percent. Even the last year also we have grown at the same rate. The job market in US is also good at present. But, why there is so drastic difference in the exchange rates with in a year?

Our PM is an economist more than a politician. And he has some best economists with him at the government. Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia are his team. The PM, in my opinion is doing a crucial and careful experiment. If it was not deliberately by the government, I don’t see such drastic changes in the exchange rates. No doubt we are a developing country, we have a lot to learn, lot to do in terms of infrastructure, power projects, irrigation and agricultural sectors. Population control, education, literacy etc also need lot of improvements. Unless we see some developments in those areas it is hard to believe the economy’s health as it is being stated today. Coming back to reducing dollar difference, clearly we see the pressure on the technology companies. Already there are lots of predictions on salary cuts etc in the tech firms. See hasn't PM achieved what he expressed as a concern?

I may be wrong, but definitely there is something fishy going on.

Politics again: Current affairs update!

1. Now Pratibha Patil is our President. She is one of the charged by the court in the case of Co-operative bank that she was running years ago. Charges are that lot of money invested by the poor in this bank was misused or disinvested during the term of few directors appointed by her. Hugh sums of loans were given to close relatives of her that were never recovered. In one of my earlier blog I have opined that she has prior administration capabilities that former President Kalam did not had when he became president, and that would be a positive point for her. While I still maintain the same opinion, I seriously oppose a person with this kind of back ground becoming a president. But it’s over. She is now sitting in the top seat. Again, thanks to our constitutional structure, a president does not possess any prowess that she can do to affect nation’s interest. But the person sitting there typically represents our country. There is still a lot to come as long as we have that party with power at the center that is often known for its politics without ethics.

2. Andhra Pradesh chief minister Rajashekhar Reddy and the opposition party leader Chandrababu Naidu were in the news. The CM had made some controversial statement in the assembly against the TDP leader. The statement can be considered as a cheap talk that one would not expect from a politician and being a CM of a state. There were protests in AP, later the CM has apologized to him and clarified what he meant. This is again some cheap Politics.

3. Rains lashed the Bangalore city last few days making up for the poor start of monsoon. While most of the rivers are running full in the state, Bangalore did not receive good rains in June. But looks like its catching up. Go Bangalore Go!!!

PS: I have been writing excess politics stuff of late, I will have to write some thing else also. But, what to do, these are some of the incidents that make me think where our country is headed.

Bangalore Traffic Watch, Driving Directions

Having used online maps for driving directions in US, I was wondering if such a facility will be available in India too. I was looking at Google maps regularly, and observed they had updated themselves with Bangalore map also, but it would not calculate driving directions etc. However, Google is extremely good at making the technology spread especially internet. They make several things which were developed by them available to you without any cost. You can insert Google map yourself in your website to show a particular place, city etc. I kept wondering if this could be extended to using it for Bangalore transport purposes.

It was then I found this site Bangalore Transport Information System (BTIS). BTIS is at still nascent stage as it requires lot of improvement. Nevertheless, it has already some cool features like Live Traffic conditions, Area look up (locating an area in Bangalore) and driving directions…hurray! Yes. I tried some driving directions and it was relatively OK. You can not expect door to door directions (may be impossible) but this is something more than anybody would expect in the current circumstances. Apart from driving directions, one can also get the distance, estimated travel time and auto rickshaw fare. You can have this delivered to your mobile phone if you are so willing. AirTel users can avail this facility by sending SMS to 54321. There is a specific format for this, and I suggest you get that from the BTIS site itself.

This is an initiative from Bangalore City Traffic Police. The site is developed by another entrepreneurial initiative at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore campus called MapUnity along with AirTel.

These are the initiatives that put the technology to good use. We should encourage them in whatever the way we can. BTW drive safely.

Online Quizzes

While surfing the other day, I accidentally bumped in to this website. Being a fan of small quizzes (like Tickle) my self, I found this pretty interesting and useful. The site is pretty cool, no registration required, not many ads and has plenty of quizzes. You can try a quiz or two, depending up on your time, and the results can be placed in your web site/ blog as I have placed in the right side bar. I found most of them to be reasonable, with a fair judgment of your current mind set. There are of course few of them that would be less relevant if you are not living in the US.

There are no IQ testing quizzes though (or did I miss them). If you have not heard or never visited, and want to try some IQ based quizzes, I suggest you try Tickle. It requires registration etc.

Walk on footpaths

Few days ago, new footpaths were laid in several parts of Basavanagudi area, Bangalore. They were built with good quality stone tiles of size 3 foot by 2 foot. Several roads looked quite pleasant with the new footpaths. However, what’s the use? Many seem to agree laying footpaths is a laudable work. How many of us really use them? Most of the time we walk on the road causing the vehicle users to honk, stop and exchange looks. Before the municipal corporation begins to do some infrastructure related activity, the people need to be educated. How many of us who otherwise would have protested for wanting them, are using them? Very few. Yesterday I walked along a road where the new footpath was laid. It is a busy street and being near to a school-college combo, there were lot of pedestrians. Only three to four people were walking on the footpath. If you question anybody walking on the road, they will come out with myriad reasons; while some of them are justified most of them are not.

The reasons what I think footpaths are unusable to some extent are like this. Most of the footpaths have become property of their respective homes. They use it for parking vehicles, dumping, etc. And thanks to the real estate boom every other house has some construction activity. Either they are building an extra floor to get that extra rent or remodel the current house so it can have one more bed room. So, you will see construction material of all sorts on the foot path. In commercial places footpaths have become extra storage space for the shop keepers. If they don’t have products to flaunt they sub-lease the foot path space to some street vendor.

We all should collectively work against such encroachments. Before that we should cultivate the habit of walking on the footpath instead of road, wherever applicable. Next time before we start criticizing the government’s failure to address public needs, we should learn how to use the existing utilities in the best interests of us.

Travel time

This weekend, when mom proposed to visit Kotilingeshwara Temple, I did not hesitate. The temple is located around 100 Km from Bangalore on its east side. Around 25 Km from Kolar towards Bangarpet. You need to take old Madras Road (NH-4) towards Kolar and from there take a diversion to this place. The road is very good all along. One thing drivers should be wary of is this road (NH-4) does not have a median. Most of the overtaking vehicles do not follow basic road safety measures. They try to come over you and force you to leave the road. This is bad and you should be extremely cautious on this. Do not go on a ‘lets see who wins!’ campaign at all. OK, barring that, the drive should be cool. Sunday was pleasant with clouds coming on and off without any downpour.

What’s special with the temple? Well, as the name suggests, it has one crore shiva lingas. Wait, that’s what they want to achieve. They don’t have that many already. The temple currently has 84 lacs of lingas. It aims to complete one crore. So, it’s a treat to your eyes to see the lingas all over the place. Initially they have installed with in the temple and then extended to a huge site (few acres) where you find a 108 feet shiva linga and lacs of smaller ones. They have them primarily in three sizes, small, medium and big. One can install a linga with their name, with a fee of 1750 rupees for the smallest one. The belief is your wishes will be fulfilled if you do so.

The temple’s entrance fee is five rupees. There are three main temples within it viz Manjunath temple, Brahma Vishnu Shiva temple and Venkateshwara temple. There are very few places in India where Brahma is worshipped. This is one of them. The priest briefs about the puranas. Because of Bhrugu Maharshi’s curse, Brahma is not worshipped. So, the pooja is done to Saraswathi, wife of Brahma but not to himself.

There is good parking facility available for your vehicles. Parking fee is 10 rupees for a four wheeler. There are no good hotels in and around. So, carry your food.

Digital Camera shopping tips

If you are visiting US for the first time or your friend is visiting, there is onething that you will think of. Shopping! In this blog I specifically give tips that I know about shopping for a Digital Camera. Suggesting which digital camera is good for you will be a quite difficult task and need to be taken up separately. Here are few things you can do. Read and learn as much as you can about them in various sites dedicated for them. For example: www.dcresource.com www.steves-digicams.com, www.dpreview.com , www.imaging-resource.com etc You will need to spend at least couple of weeks to a month to get a good feel of what is good for you and what is not. There is a lot of technical theory stuff that is vital for your camera decision. When we are in school or college we read a lot of theory without any practical. Unfortunately when we become adults, everything is practical and suddenly either we don’t have time or willingness to update theoretical knowledge. This is why several times we end up buying products that may lack some vital features that you thought it will support. While price will be the main criterion that decides your camera choice many a times, there are other important ones that you will learn by regularly visiting these sites. Important elements are maximum resolution, optical zoom; image stabilization/anti-shake etc. Just to warn you digital zoom is a highly useless feature, and ignore it for your criteria of selection.

The next thing is where to get the camera. Most of these sites give ads with seller lists for the same. They show their price too. Some times the price will differ a great deal between any two sellers. This is where you will need to be careful. Not all the sellers that quote ‘less price’ are good. You will have to check their credibility too. In case you are in US for a short period of time, the delivery time becomes important. The problem with these non-reputed sellers is they take the order and persuade you to buy more accessories. In case you deny, they unnecessarily delay shipping of your order. Sometimes, at the end (after say one week or so) they even say you need to cancel the order because they don’t have them in the stock etc. In US it is called bait and lure business model. The money would have already been debited from your card so, you have to keep calling them for refund. www.resellerratings.com gives you ratings for a seller. Check your seller’s rating is at least 7 or more. Here are some online shops with very good ratings: www.beachcamera.com , www.buydig.com , www.bhphotovideo.com One more popular site is Dell’s small business site where the products are priced a little higher than elsewhere. However, this site works on coupons which will be available for you in sites like www.deals2buy.com or www.edeals2day.com etc. Coupons savings might get you best deal compared to any other seller sometimes. Though this is not rated well, its relatively reliable compared to others in the same class. I have bought goods worth 2000 dollars from this site without any bad experience anytime. Another way to compare prices from various sellers along with their ratings is to visit www50.shopping.com. Once you choose a product, you can see prices by various sellers along with their ratings.

It’s always better to wait and research a bit first hand, before you buy anything. It’s not with digital cameras, and not with in US, it’s for any product anywhere. Don’t you agree?