Train Accident near Nellore

This morning we received news that a compartment of the Delhi – Chennai Tamil Nadu Express caught fire and nearly forty passengers were burnt alive. This raises serious concerns. The immediate questions are: 

• ·       Are there fire detectors in trains? If passengers are deep asleep at 4:20 AM, and a fire breaks out, how do they find out that before it is too late? How are the driver and guard to find out?
• ·       Why are compartments carrying such combustible materials? Is the foam used in cushions the cause, or is there too much wood?
• ·       Are there adequate fire extinguishers in compartments?

India is getting ready to send a spacecraft to Mars. Why can’t we first learn to send trains safely from Delhi to Chennai?

Are the politicians the cause of the mess railways are in?  Are they treating railways as a vote-bank, playing their populist games, ignoring rail safety and the abominable conditions under which millions travel every day? Are they denying railways officers adequate autonomy to run a public service instead of having to beg their masters constantly for adequate budgets?

If we can import various items from abroad, why can’t we encourage Indian private industry to invest and manufacture quality equipment in India? Why is the Japanese private sector ok, but not the Indian private sector?

Srinivasan Ramani 

Is a computer failure better than a hydraulic failure on an aircraft?

The media reported today that an Air India Airbus 319 made an emergency landing in Pakistan. Visit

http://www.ndtv.com/article/cheat-sheet/relieved-air-india-passengers-back-in-delhi-after-emergency-landing-in-pak-top-10-facts-240992

The first reports said that three hydraulic systems had failed simultaneously. Later reports said that actually wrong information had been given by the computers to the pilot; the hydraulic systems were OK, but the pilot got a misleading warning. He had no choice but to make an emergency landing. How can such a thing happen? Computer systems on modern aircraft are supposed to be protected against failure by redundancy. Multiple computers built by different manufactures and running different software systems are installed on each aircraft. This is supposed to prevent a problem being created by a failure in a single computer. The probability of multiple, independent computers making the same mistake simultaneously is calculated to be negligible. Some information on this topic can be found in the article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A320_family

The references in the article cited above give more information. 

Coming back to India, a speedy investigation should be carried out by the Government of India and the findings made public. There is hope that this will take place; there is a site describing in some detail aircraft accidents over the years in India:

http://dgca.nic.in/accident/content.htm

I would feel happier if complete documents revealing the findings of such investigations are made available over the Web.

In any case, best of luck to you and to me when we take the next flight! I would be taking one soon! 

Srinivasan Ramani 

Are there any rules about ministers receiving gifts?

There have been several Disproportionate Assets (DA) cases against ministers and ex-ministers in India. A recent court ruling in regard to a DA case against Ms. Mayawati has attracted a lot of attention. Visit 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/SC-scraps-assets-case-against-Mayawati/articleshow/14724722.cms

In the past in many (DA) cases, the accused have argued that the millions of rupees they have amassed have come from donations by members of their party. I am not concerned about individual cases – the courts will deal with them; my concern is with the law. Are there any laws regarding acceptance of gifts by ministers, similar to the Conduct Rules for Government employees?

The US Senate rules are quite clear in this regard. Visit http://www.ethics.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/gifts

I quote from the same:
“No Member, officer, or employee shall knowingly accept a gift except as provided by the Gifts Rule.

A Member, officer, or employee may accept a gift, other than cash or cash equivalent, having a value of less than $50, provided that the source of the gift is not a registered lobbyist, foreign agent, or private entity that retains or employs such individuals. The cumulative value of gifts that may be accepted from any one source in a calendar year must be less than $100. Generally, gifts having a value of less than $10 do not count toward the annual limit”.

There is no exception for gifts from party members. This makes sense, because anyone can find a party member who can be used as a conduit to pay a minister. Indian legislatures should consider enacting effective conduct rules for their members, in the interests of their own credibility. A minister is as much a public servant as any government officer. Why can’t ministers be covered by the same conduct rules as government employees? In fact, ministers have a lot more authority than government employees and should, therefore, be well above suspicion. Large amounts received as gifts by a minister should be presumed to be illegal gratification irrespective of where they come from, even if they come as small amounts aggregating to a disproportionate amount.

What about party funds, particularly because they are exempted from Income Tax? That is another matter requiring serious discussion. Why should they not be audited by auditors appointed by the Election Commission and the audit reports published? The anti-corruption movement (http://www.indiaagainstcorruption.org/index1.html ) should consider and comment on these issues.

Srinivasan Ramani

Modern techniques to verify documents communicated online

The question of verifying a handwritten signature has become the subject of a national debate in India. Visit

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/pranab-mukherjees-letter-quitting-kolkata-institute-fabricated-bjp/articleshow/14653088.cms  and

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_congress-calls-bjp-s-letter-charge-against-pranab-mukherjee-scandalous_1710631

The question concerns a resignation letter sent by Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, a candidate for election as President of India, to the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Kolkata. The resignation is from the post of Chairman, ISI. Under Indian law, a candidate for the President’s position should not be holding such a post on the day of nomination. The leading opposition party, BJP, and another candidate Mr. P A Sangma, have questioned if the signature on the resignation letter is a genuine one.

On reading this, my thoughts went back to my blog posting dated Saturday, March 11, 2006, titled “Is handwriting really accurate in identifying people”? This had appeared in my blog http://www.newstudentresearch.blogspot.in/

Let us go beyond the signature that has received a lot of media attention now. Ensuring the verifiability of signatures and their time and date is of great importance to any economy. We cannot burden courts by having them spend days on end listening to arguments on such questions.

Handwritten signatures are no solution to this problem except credible witnesses testify to the signing and handing over of the document to the recipient. (Of course, you cannot ask that this procedure should be adopted for resignation letters!) My blog post mentioned above discussed the unreliability of handwriting recognition. It quoted a judgment of the US Supreme Court which referred to a paper authored by an expert, which gives the results of a study showing experts make errors in approximately 7% of their judgments and non-experts err approximately thirty eight percent of the time!

Sophisticated technology is in use in India by the Income Tax Dept and all banks for online verification. When a bank pays you interest on a term deposit, it has to meet a legal requirement – to deduct a specified percentage of the amount due to you and pay it to the account of the Income Tax Dept, registering the payment with the National Securities Depository (NSDL) Ltd. NSDL is an information technology service provider with a specialization in security for online transactions.

Yesterday I went to my bank to ask for a certificate stating the amount deducted from me and transferred to the Income Tax Dept. The bank officer who handled this request explained to me that they can no longer issue such a certificate themselves. Instead, they have to download the statement form NSDL, which keeps track of all income tax payments registered with it.

Technically, NSDL could introduce in future a system to address the problems of registering and time-stamping documents. Anyone sending an online communication through this system to someone else could have the transmission registered online with NSDL. The sending party would identify himself to NSDL through one or more passwords or a digital signature. The recipient would be identified by the email address given to NSDL to forward the communication. All NSDL would need to do is to send both the sender and recipient a copy of the communication digitally signed by itself. This would serve as an authentication of the message to the recipient and as a receipt to the sender. It is a trivial matter to verify a digital signature with the right software at any time, now or in the future. NSDL does not need to store the communication for future verification at all, as the technology verifies the document if either of the transacting parties produces a machine-readable copy.

I hope that the current high profile dispute would trigger an implementation of a national communication registry. It would contribute an improvement to the velocity of business in India, earn its own costs and turn in a handsome profit!

Srinivasan Ramani