Month: July 2006

We take great pride in criticizing failures, but do we devote even 10% of that efforts in praising successes? In a way we create an environment where if you move your finger, you might press the wrong button and will be shot for that. Hence sit tight and be complacent.
I agree that due to corruption and mismanagement, there are colossal wastages of the relief and development funds, but that does not justify us doing nothing. Either one should suggest and alternative, remedy or one should keep the mouth shut. Simply criticizing will only demoralized the people who are working for improvements.
Not all schemes are designed to serve the vested interest of the politicians, and if you think that the case, then why the hell do you not vote and throw them out of power. A rupee sitting ideally in the treasury is better than the 30-40 paisa that actually reaches the needy.

Take two wonderful schemes Employment Guarantee schemes and midday meal schemes. In my opinion they were revolutions in itself, but most people do not know about it.

Midday meal: parents are poor so they force the kids into child labor instead of school dooming the kids future. The poverty also leads to malnutrition, while government granaries have huge stockpile of grains which is rotting. By a simple solution, we solved all 3 problems together. In some cases more kids turned up for school then the number of students that could be seated. I should say every rupee spend in this scheme gave us benefit of three.

Employment Guarantee scheme: (Manmohan Singh’s pet project) Indian rural areas are still dependent of farms and most of them are landless. So there is elongated periods where they are unemployed. By EGS, you get a huge pool of minimum wagers who are ready to work in the most backward districts. Not only the local economy is boosted, but also you give the panchayats and district collectors resources to build roads, canals and infrastructure. Hence laying a strong foundation. In 2 years, lot of the backward districts from congress ruled areas got benefited, but media found those places to be too remote to cover.

Spam is the annoying mails and messages which have no value to you, yet consume your time or resources. Traditional outlook opens up a image of Viagra, discount stores, promotions of things you have never heard of and even phishing. I am least bothered about these email, almost all browser has and can filter them out.
1) forwards: There are a bunch of people who are more than happy that they do not have to pay postage charges for the emails. They will forward you the same joke for the 10th time, send you news flashes with incorrect news etc. If any mail has a FWD in the subject bar, I do not even care to open it.
2) Occupational spam: Its part of the office politics, who is important who is not, communication gap that if you send a mail you need to address it to a bunch of 100 guys. (From your manager to the recipient’s manager)

This is the reason why you are surrounded with all data but no information. These are the kind of mails which even the most advanced SPAM software is not addressing. I will give you some simple solutions.

1) Use folders. Each group and mailing list mail should lie in their respective folder and only mails which explicitely mention your name should come directly to your inbox.
2) Separate mails addressed to (only) you from those which were send to groups, or larger audience.
3) Make a separate folder forwards for people who regularly send useless stuff to you.
4) Never even bother to look at mails which are cc to you. 99% of them is just because the sender wants to use you as a CYA gimmick. If you clear these lowest priority mail once a week, it is more than sufficient.

For the webmail providers I request you:
1) There should be an expiry date in the mail. Certain mails like the travel itinerary, meeting timings have no value past a certain date and should automatically be deleted after a certain date.
2) Nobody is interested in a year old fax/telex message. So each time a user gets a mail, give him an option to select the day of deletion. My mailbox still has some last year’s Christmas greeting cards.

Essentially smuggling requires a market opportunity involving huge difference of prices, demand-supply mismatch and relaxed border checks. You open up your border/trade routes and all 3 incentives vanish overnight. I will give you 4 more reasons.

1. Ability to do an illegal activity depends largely on how much your conscious approves of it. Betting rings, gambling rings are easier to create and operate than a narcotics dealership.

   Basically. its easier to recruit and convince people to ignore them. Even the authorities are more likely to let go a better off with a warning/bribe than a drug/arms dealer.

Its just the same with smuggling. Its easier to convince someone to smuggle mangoes, medicines or machines than drugs and arms even though both involves currying a 20kg load on your back across the border. That bag of medicines can always contain some contrabands, after all nobody is going to check it. But if the mangoes, cd player etc is priced same in both places, under what pretext are you going to bootleg?

1. Smuggling has terrible supply chain management. Your goods gets confiscated, bootleggers charge exorbitant logistic charges, delays are common, you have no control over inventory and payments. Wallmart will tell you how many zillion dollars you could recover by improving it.

2. All the profits of smuggling is shared between the smuggler and the buyer and none of it goes to the seller (who in many cases is unaware of the final destination). Also you cannot advertise across the border or provide after sale services. So the manufacturer and marketeer have all reasons to promote legal channels over illegal ones. No wonder Nokia is fighting so hard to curb the grey market of its cellphones in India.

3. The revenue generated through customs is something that was earlier profit of the bootleggers. So you can fight them better with their money.

Last, but not the least anything that goes underground becomes messy. Take film industry or land mafia for example. The anarchic laws do not provide for a way for financing of movies and transfer of land so it becomes a breeding ground of goons. Same was true with casinos in Las Vegas, or businesses during license raj. If you open up these sectors and stream line the laws, not only do these industries boom, but crime is combated.