BPL = Bogus Poverty Line?

That could be possible. Especially in India...err...in Andhra Pradesh to be precise. If I show you the face of this lady and tell you that she is actually belongs to a BPL family, would you believe it?

I know. Even I wouldnt. But if our beloved Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Mr. Y. Rajasekhara Reddy and his honourable elected State Government of Andhra Pradesh is to be believed, she is below poverty line. Read this:

A special ration card for poor people carrying Mirza's name and photograph has been recovered during investigations, officials say.

The id card was issued in Vizianagaram the report says. Remember the bogus multi-state voter identity card issued to some people in Adilabad during General Elections 2009? Ok lets put some imagination to work here. If bogus ration cards and voter id cards are possible, there is certainly huge possibility for bogus PAN cards, bogus Passports, bogus Driver's Licences. No wonder why so many terrorist attacks happened in last 5 years of UPA rule. Ohh and we already had one after the government formed, if you remember! Imagine a person living with you infrontof your eyes with a death certificate issued by a Government Hospital. Ohh sorry for redundant information if you know that all these have become part and parcel of Indian lifestyle!

But seriously speaking, there is difference between building machines and building systems. Systems have cross-checkers and whistle blowers. Machines dont! So when somebody cries out foul about EVMs, it doesnt evoke surprise!

Nathanael Paul and Andrew.S.Tanenbaum published their article "Trustworth Voting: From Machine to System" in IEEE Computer Magazine for the month of May 2009.

The authors describe an electronic voting approach that takes a system view, incorporating a trustworthy process based on open source software, simplified procedures, and built-in redundant safeguards that prevent tampering.

They also put up a website for taking the task further. They are looking for a student who could take up the task and implement the ideas. The role of academia in building systems using technology is enormous. Unfortunately, in India, academia are just academia! Nothing more, nothing less! The administration tries to bring down the value of academia to a mere political playground while the alumni try to keep it high through their invaluable contributions, thus keeping the academia as academia only! Ohh and I forgot, the ever thinking Sibal Saab has got ideas and India, it seems, is applauding - atleast TOI is! Only time will tell if these ideas have any merit or if there are some other intentions in talking of such ideas! But if statistics are to be believed, their ideas for the last 60 years, have not had any affect whatsoever!

Update: Not to anybody's surprise, Reality Check India does a piece on Sibal Saab's grand ideas for Education in India. Surely, one has to ask if TOI feeds its employees with! It isnt rocket science! Its just plain simple. You have got to take the rot out! Just by calling it in a different name, the problems wont be solved! GoI instead of being a spectator should pump funds in, should encaurage research. Ahh I dont want to get into it now. The whole thing is terribly complicated!

After effects

The storm came and died out but it left lot of uprooted trees and brought down buildings. Advani ji who was loh purush some time back is being called names. The question of where BJP failed seems to have too many answers some contradicting the others, some making no sense. Koenraad Elst put it best so far in his piece in Pioneer.

In these circumstances, only a clear ideological profile, mature but distinct, could have won the election for the BJP. If it didn’t want that ideological distinctness and was content to remain the Congress’s B-team, the party could have learned from Mr Sarkozy to show this only after the election. Before, it should at least have kept up the pretence of being a party with a difference.

Many BJP supporters, eminent scholars, journalists and political analysts called for a change in ideology. The questions seem to be these

1) Should BJP forgo Hindutva as its core ideology?
2) Should BJP severe its ties with RSS?
3) Is there an urgent need for BJP to get back to the grass roots and strengthen the organization from the grass roots through transparent democratic system of electing office bearers?

My views on these questions are as follows:
1) I agree with Koenraad Elst when he says BJP tried to do a congress (yes I know what congress means)! However moving away from Hindutva is not the solution. Infact, the deliberate attempt to call Hindutva as extremist form Hinduism gave a nice escape route for those Hindus who wanted to call themselves secular! There is an urgent need to correct this. The only way to do it is to educate people that Hindutva is essentially a manifestation of Hinduism and a much needed tool to keep the cultural integrity of India. Yes, in my view India - Hinduism is euqal to post 1991 USSR. When I go to Maharastra or Rajasthan, the first thing that I do is find a Ram temple or a Krishna temple and I am sure to find one. This makes me feel at home even in a differnet state where the language, food, lifestyle differ greatly from my hometown. This feeling is enabled by Hinduism and Hindutva. Once you remove this, Rajasthan or Maharastra is as much a stranger to me as a US or UK! This very elemental notion that Hindutva ties a untieable knot between Indians of whatever religion or caste, has to be revoked by BJP in avarage Indian.

2) Keep in mind that once BJP moves away from Hindutva, it is essentially moving away from RSS and thus loosing a moral support base, a guiding force and brotherly care-taker! My view regarding this is simple. RSS can exist without BJP. Can BJP be a really "Bharatiya" Janata Party without RSS? I doubt! However I agree with Yossarin, that there should be more transparency in electing office bearers within BJP.

3) Certainly! This is an urgent need. Advani ji in my view, has had enough. He himself should become a more of advisor and be a moral guru for the BJP. The very notion that there is no Gen-Next in BJP is an oxymoron! When one looks at Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj or the likes, there seems to be no dearth of ability. It is just that some one should iron out the differences. L.K.Advani ji should take up that task under the moral guidance of RSS.

When Arun Jaitley resigned as General Secratary, many news papers shouted "Is BJP crumbling?". Well they either are fools themselves or are fooling people. It is clear within BJP's constitution that no memeber of party will occupy two positions at a time! Arun Jaitley was made the leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha. Unlike Congress, BJP follows "be the change you want!" and unlike the office bearers of Central and State Governments of India, many members of BJP simply dont say "no office-of-profit" but follow it.

In the closing, read this brilliant piece by S.Gurutmurthy. Even Gurumurthy says

If the BJP fails like the Congress did, it knows it will join the ranks of the grand old party as one more party. It also knows that if there are two Congress parties, pople will chose the original, and not the carbon copy. There are many profound minds in the BJP who know what the failure of the BJP means to them and to the country.

If BJP does fail and perish, it will be resurrected in a new form because like S.Gurumurthy and many others of his ilk, lot of people in the country have had enough with the Indian (anti) National Congress!

Post Script: Continue to follow the discussions on Kanchan Gupta's blog, Swapan Dasgupta's blog, FriendsofBJP site. Only time will tell whether this country's fight against congress would continue with BJP or some other party as a tool!

14000 demons, 72 minutes, one man!

No this is not a blog-ad for an upcoming Hollywood action movie or ready to release Tollywood super star movie. These are the statistics from Ramayana.

In Aranya Kanda, Rama faces Khara and Dhushana and their Army of 14000 guise changing demons. The war is the result of Surphanaka's provocation of Khara and Dhushana to war with Rama. Rama orders Lakshmana to take Sita to safe, far off place and guard her while he wars with the demons. Maharshi Valmiki explains in this Shloka.

artha adhika muhuurtena raameNa nishitaiH sharaiH 3-30-30
catur dasha sahasraaNi rakshsaam kaama ruupiNaam
khara duuSaNa mukhyaanaam nihataani mahaamR^idhe 3-30-31

Meaning:

And those gods and other celestials in their amazement said among themselves that 'in one and half hours, say seventy two minutes of this extreme crack-down Rama with his sharp arrows has eradicated fourteen thousand guise changing demons, including their chieftains Khara and Duushana. [3-30-30b, 31]

One Rama, 14000 guise changing demons, one hour 12 minutes!

Do your math....the numbers are not surprising but they certainly provoke amazement!

Rama who is budhimaan, jithkrodho, poorvabhasi, madhura bhashi, the one who respects everything and everyone dharmic kills 194.4444 demons in one minute i.e., 3.2407 demons in one second!

I keep bumping into people (even brahmins) who feel it fancy to say all these are just creations of the respective authors but might have never happened! As an example, they cite various verses questioning the numbers. "Would a normal human being have such capabilities?" they ask. One counter-argument against this goes like "couldnt it be that our ancestors had such capabilities?". This counter-argument is not convincing.

However, the shloka mentioned above is a very good example in such counter argument because unlike stories of legends such a Beowulf, all numbers and timing look very very real! 3.24 demons in a second is not very difficult to comprehend because the distribution curve of number of demons killed in those 72 minutes by Rama certainly cant be a uniform curve. Rama takes some time to kill Khara, Dushana and other valiant warriors while others in the army were killed by Rama in packs but not individually. So, a mean of 3.24 per second is not so diffucult to achieve.

The next big product

Recently, I came across CrunchPad through google news alerts. TechCrunch says CrunchPad is simply a deadly simple tablet which boots directly into a browser for easy internet access. My prediction is this is going to be next big innovation after iPod.

Wikipedia entry for CrunchPad says:

CrunchPad is a hardware prototyping initiative created by Michael Arrington, Louis Monier, and Singapore based design studio FusionGarage, that aims to build a low-cost ($200) Web Tablet.

The product runs a Ubuntu Linux stripped down to its bare minimum on a Via Nano and uses a custom webkit based browser. The idea is simple, you just start the system and browse. Period!

I have started following the website closely. The best part is the CrunchPad intends to make the design of hardware as well as software OpenSource. This is what they say their plan is:

We’ll organize a small team of people to spec this out. First is the marketing document that just outlines what the machine will do - we have a first draft of that already and will post it soon. Then we’ll spec out the hardware and get people to help write the customized Linux and Firefox code. Once we’ve completed the design we’ll start to work with the supply chain company to get an idea on the cost of the machine (the goal is $200), and hopefully build a few prototypes. Anyone who contributes significantly to the project would get one of those first prototypes. If everything works well, we’d then open source the design and software and let anyone build one that wants to.

One might be wondering what is the business plan behind this product, which is supposed to go Open! Well we might have to wait and see but I am quite optimistic that this is going to be next big innovation!

Remember Simputer? Only if folks IISc had the marketing skills, they would have made it a good product. The irony is best of marketing gurus are coming out of Indian B-Schools and yet our eductional institutions are not able to collaborate to bring out a simple product with some impact on the orientation of the industry.

Some time ago, Intellibriefs posted an item on innovation. In this post, John Kao's book Innovation nation is discussed. In a video embeded in the post, he predicted that Singapore would be a better innovation center than US in coming few years. The prediction might well come true, given the kind of simplicity with which CrunchPad is being built. Simple things work. Simple! 

If this product is the next iPod, it is a big boost to the OSS movement. As I had mentioned in my previous posts, FOSS is the way to go!