Tell the world that the corrupt pay a big price in India

India has had a bad name for the corruption that prevails here. The ways by which netas and their pliable bureaucrats grab resources of the country are well-known. It is rarely that we get a chance to tell the world that this will not go on, that we are changing. Sending a message like that in a loud and clear manner is very important.

Now the Mumbai High Court has given us a judgement that is priceless. Visit 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Bombay-High-Court-orders-demolition-of-Adarsh-Society-building/articleshow/52040562.cms

All we have to do is to obey the orders of the court, when the appeal process comes to an end. If the judgement is upheld during the appeals that will surely follow, the illegally built building should be demolished by men who fought side by side with the Kargil martyrs in whose name the building was conceived and then diverted. We should announce a date and time and then an army unit should carry out the demolition using explosives, with minimal damage to neighboring structures. World media should be invited to record the spectacle. It is very likely that this will be the loudest message any country has ever sent about its determination to rid itself of corruption. Every TV channel in the world will carry a clip of the demolition and every newspaper will carry a photograph. What better way to tell the world that we are no longer a soft state?

Lathi charging students and others you don’t like

 There is a 'quaint' word – "caning"; the practice is sometimes referred to more bluntly as lathi charging. “Caning” had the nice ring of the “Raj”, but you may not agree if you have been at the receiving end of the treatment. A lot of people wearing khaki in India seem to have the fundamental right to beat up others using sturdy sticks possibly weighing a kilo, about four feet in length and approximately an inch in diameter. Authorities seem to have set a limit of six men for beating a student at a time, because of their concern for the younger generation.

You see the practice being liberally used in different parts of India when you turn on TV news. This is a barbaric practice unworthy of a democracy. I wish that someone would consider using the public interest litigation route to have our courts civilize the men in khaki.

I suggest an alternative way for police to disperse people who have assembled against legal prohibitory orders by using indelible ink. Color sprayers used during Holi could be used by the police to spray members of the “mob” with this ink. Firstly, this will cause consternation because the spray would need to be removed by multiple washes. Secondly, it would stain the skin as well, providing proof the person’s involvement in a prohibited assembly. All that police would have to do would be to catch a few “stained” persons and prosecute them.

I guess I am not going to be a very popular inventor! Let me assure you, however, that I publish this only to save you from having your bones broken by angels in Khaki! 

A word about indelible ink. I don’t think anyone has done research on possible risks of putting this on people’s skin. The election ink used in India is said to contain silver nitrate. Before the angels in Khaki adopt the practice suggested above, they should get some research done to develop an ink that will cause no harm to the eyes and no permanent harm of any type to the victim. Further, I would hate to see any "indelible" permanently ruin someone's clothes. An ink that does not go when washed in water, but can be removed by dry cleaning would be ideal.  

For information on the hazards associated with silver nitrate, visit

http://nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/1672.pdf

Regulating the Pharmaceutical Industry

Jug Suraiya’s blog post titled “Sick Industry” makes very interesting reading (March 25, 2016, Jug Suraiya in Juggle-Bandhi, Times of India). Visit

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/jugglebandhi/sick-industry/

What should be an indicator of a person being diabetic? Fasting sugar level? Yes, but who decides the threshold? Jug Suraiya says that “experts” redefined the threshold a couple of times during the last two decades and have caused the world to think that the number of diabetics is now more than 200% of what it was earlier.

There are lots of interesting reports about how uncontrolled commercialism can endanger public health. For, an example, visit

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/21/how-an-obscure-drugs-4000-price-increase-might-finally-spur-action-on-soaring-health-care-costs/

We need the media to be alert to all kinds of dangers. Governments can subvert institutions like Lok Ayuktas as and when they wish. Media have become our only hope for demanding high standards in public life. Society needs to worry about commercial interests and corrupt members influencing professional bodies. The “reputation” the Medical Council of India enjoys is an example of what can happen. Visit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_Council_of_India

In this context I should share a joke about world of telephone companies – landline as well as mobile. What happens if the percentage of calls landing on wrong numbers increases? Profitability goes up!  

Why can’t we be more efficient?

I did a trip by car recently from Bangalore to Neyveli and Thanjavur and came back via Tiruchirappalli. In one place, Bangalore, I paid the toll electronically. Everywhere else the car had to stop and the toll had to be paid manually. I paid a total of Rs 619 at 11 places. The whole trip was about 1100 km long. This made me read up on reports of such inefficient practices elsewhere in India. This country prides itself on its software export earnings, but its own domestic economy is often a decade or more behind adopting simple technology to save its people time and money. It is a bit like the case of workers in the construction industry, who build huge multi-story apartment complexes for others. But they and their children usually live in the buildings under construction, often without drinking water, lighting and access to toilets. Sometimes their toddlers wander around such buildings, fall down and die.  

The Centre for Internet & Society has done us a service by republishing in its February 2016 Newsletter an insightful article by Shyam Ponappa in the Business Standard of Feb 3, 2016 http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/shyam-ponappa-bottled-up-national-assets-116020301314_1.html

Ponappa points out that the Indian Highways Management Company was tasked in 2012 to implement Electronic Toll Collection (ETC). He also reports that a study by IIM-C and Transport Corporation of India in 2012 reported an annual loss of Rs 87,000 Crores due to delays of the Delhi-Mumbai truck traffic. The study is reported to have indicated that the average speed of the Delhi-Mumbai truck traffic to be 21 kmph! It would be worth reading up the basis for these loss calculations; they seem to be of the order of 2% of India’s GNP in 2012!

ETC is reported to have been introduced in 2014, but the goal of having it implemented all over India remains a dream as of now. The transportation sector contributes over 5% of the GNP and the road sector handles over 60% of the freight movement (these numbers are based on relatively old information – visit http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/SOUTHASIAEXT/EXTSARREGTOPTRANSPORT/0,,contentMDK:20703625~menuPK:868822~pagePK:34004173~piPK:34003707~theSitePK:579598,00.html )

While doing research for writing this article I came across this website of ICICI Bank

http://www.icicibank.com/Personal-Banking/cards/prepaid/fastag/list-of-active-toll-plazas.page?#toptitle

It says that an electronic tag can be bought for use on the Bangalore-Chennai route at Hosur, but the publicity for this has been very poor. I have travelled on this route several times but have never seen a sign advertising this tag. I am a Bangalore customer of the ICICI bank but I have never received an email about this.

There are many other examples in the Indian economy, as readers can guess, of poor management causing huge losses. Major reforms pose their own problems, but a concerted effort to identify easily addressable problems could speed up the growth rate of the GNP by one or two percent. There was a time when productivity was given national attention, but now we hear little about productivity in general. The Niti Aayog seems to be concerned with agricultural productivity, but we do not hear about attempts to improve productivity in other sectors of the economy.

Public Sector Banks – fight the disease, not merely the symptoms

A lot of noise is being made of a businessman being given questionable loans. Is this the first such case? Or is it going to be the last such one?

The basic problem is that netas can always influence public sector banks to give loans that no one else will give. That is why netas will keep these banks going, even when they are inefficient. The bank staff are not inefficient; it is the leaches that bleed off the banks that make them weak.

The solution seems to be partly in bank staff serving as whistle blowers – protecting public interest by alerting the media in early stages of scams.

It is partly in the public taking their deposits out of public sector banks. It is also in selling off shares in these banks. We need to vote the only effective way we can vote – vote with our feet!

Navagraha and the heliocentric theory

Most Hindu temples have a corner for the "vigrahas" representing nine heavenly “bodies”. Not only planets; they include Sun, Moon, Rahu and Ketu. The whole assembly is a model of the solar system as perceived by the builders of temples. The Sun is in the center, facing east. The others are facing different directions. This suggests that people who adopted this style of worship had accepted that the Sun was the central body. It also suggests that they recognized that each planet revolved around its own axis independently. Wikipedia offers an article on Navagraha Temples. 

Credit is given to Aristarchus of Samos for proposing a model of the solar system with planets going round the Sun, in the 3rd Century B. C.  The world seems to have largely ignored his model over many centuries. It was left to Nicolaus Copernicus to propose this model again in the 16^th century and trigger off a revolution in scientific thought. The invention of the telescope and its use by Galileo in the 17^th century to report the sighting of the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus settled the issue and made the Heliocentricism an accepted scientific theory.

The scientific world has not accepted any argument that Hindu astronomers had adopted the Heliocentric Theory before Copernicus. Can archeologists prove scientifically that the Navagraha corners as described above were built as parts of Indian temples earlier than the 16^th century? This would have great significance and give a lot of credit to Hindu Astronomy.

Why all this fuss about Heliocentrism? It is because Heliocentrism did a lot to upset the traditional belief that religious texts were reliable sources of information about the nature of the universe. It promoted the scientific view that “sacred literature” is no substitute for scientific findings. It was a victory for believers in reason. The extraordinary precision with which heliocentric models could predict the movement of planets and the occurrence of eclipses using simple laws of motion and gravity earned a lot of respect for the scientific method.

We have to recognize that no such revolution took place in India, irrespective of the time of adoption of the heliocentric theory there.  Belief in astrology continues to have an influence over large numbers of people. Visit Prof Shivaji Sondhi’s article at https://www.princeton.edu/~sondhi/nonphysics/writings/astrology.pdf  for a discussion on the thoughts of a former education minister of India and his efforts to provide funding for university courses in astrology. Mixing dubious beliefs with ancient knowledge that stands up to scientific investigation ruins our credibility. The baby gets thrown out with the bath water! Rejecting beliefs that fail repeated attempts at verification is as important as accepting verified knowledge.

A search indicates that at least one university in India advertises degree level courses in astrology. Visit

http://sastra.edu/distanceeducation/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=100&Itemid=256  Their website says “Astrology, the study of the stars and their influence upon human life on earth, has been in vogue since Vedic times”. 

Yes, this institution is in the University Grants Commission’s list named “Total No. of Universities in the Country as on 14.12.2015” as item 549.

TRAI is against discriminatory tariffs

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has taken a stand against discriminatory pricing for Internet services. This is a step forward towards net neutrality. Visit 

http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/WhatsNew/Documents/Regulation_Data_Service.pdf

The Internet was born with much opposition from vested interests. There was a protocol war with the Internet protocols on one side and protocols favored by the telecom monopolies of the world at that time. A lot of effort was expended to try and save the monopolies from competition from new technology-oriented companies. The victory of a set of ideas promoting competition and innovation has brought rich dividends to the large global community of Internet users.

Many arguments had been used against net neutrality in India. One of them was that if you can have first and second class on trains, why can’t you have differential pricing for Internet services? Why can’t we give better services to those who pay us more? I would like to ask a question in this context: Can a taxi service tell me that they will take me free to one hotel but will charge me 50% more than usual fare to take me to other hotels? May be the first hotel is willing to pay you more; but you are a licensed service regulated in the public interest.

The existence of discrimination in one sector is no argument for introducing discrimination in other sectors. For instance, one cannot argue that even temples discriminate against women; therefore, telecom service providers should be free to charge women more for Internet services!

I have written earlier against the most severe form of discriminatory pricing that frightens away many potential users of the Internet. This is the business of charging a novice user several times the rate that is charged to those who pay a sizable monthly fee for a package. I am not talking about 50% or 100% higher cost for small users, but large multiples that are effectively punitive charges. It looks as the service providers are saying “How dare you small fry tread on the toes of mighty companies like ours and our big users?” Visit

The internet and education in the developing world - hopes and reality

In the article mentioned above, I have also discussed the foolishness of ignoring all other factors and expecting technology alone to solve major problems. For instance, 55% of the websites on the Internet show English as the language of their content. Indian Languages, including Hindi and Tamil, are among languages accounting for less than 0.1% of the websites each, but the bulk of the people in this country prefer to read information in their own languages, not in English. Newspaper statistics show this clearly. Challenges like this have to be understood and addressed if Internet usage in India is to become widespread among all sections of society.