Scenes from India

Great pictures of diverse India from Boston Globe's Big Picture

Includes pictures of vast Monsoon flooding, conflicts in still-disputed Kashmir, and religious clashes between Hindus and Christians - and celebrations conducted by Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh and more

Scenes from India

Nuclear power in India

A lot of details about Nuclear power in India and recent developments with USA. Via World Nuclear Association

India has a flourishing and largely indigenous nuclear power program and expects to have 20,000 MWe nuclear capacity on line by 2020. It aims to supply 25% of electricity from nuclear power by 2050.

Because India is outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, due to its weapons program, it has been for 34 years largely excluded from trade in nuclear plant or materials, which has hampered its development of civil nuclear energy.

Due to these trade bans and lack of indigenous uranium, India has uniquely been developing a nuclear fuel cycle to exploit its reserves of thorium.

Tryst with destiny

61 years! 61 years ago, India won independence on August 15th, 1947. Towards the midnight of August 14th, 1947 Nehru made his "Tryst with Destiny" speech.

It is a fateful moment for us in India, A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed! We rejoice in that freedom,

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.

We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

Did we bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India?

No. No one, including the government and citizens, cares about common man. Agriculture is dying and so are farmers. The government is killing farmers to grab their land and build SEZs.

Did we fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease? Big NO!

Did we build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation?
prosperous - a little; democratic - technically, yes; progressive - what is that?

Did we create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman?
In our dreams, may be.

Did we encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action?
100%, yeah!

Yes, we have made a lot of progress: economy is opened up, middle class is raising. India Inc has made a lot of millionaires and billionaires. But, what about the tasks we set ourselves on August 15th, 1947? We have failed, miserably.

some poet wrote (in Tamil)

"Iravil vaanginom Innum vidiya villai"

meaning

"we got (independence) at night; we haven't seen the sunrise yet"

Amit Varma sums up all my feelings.

The British empire was naturally the focus of that struggle, and when we were rid of them in 1947, the relief must have been enormous. The tragedy is that for most Indians, political independence was freedom enough.

As a nation, we stopped caring for freedom once we gained independence.

The oppressive empire from a continent away was gradually replaced by an oppressive, omnipresent state, and we did not protest. The lack of economic freedom kept India poor for decades, and we did not protest. Personal freedoms were routinely denied to us, and we did not protest. In parts of our country people are treated worse than the British treated us, and we do not protest.

We let our guard down 61 years ago. Perhaps it’s time to fight back?

Bush chuutiya Hai

GW Bush:

there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. That's bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population. And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food. And so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.

How about the facts for food price increase? From SAJAForum;

1. Falling USD rates reduces profit margins for India's or Global food exporters (many of whom are US companies)
2. Prosperity of others is good only because they can afford American goods
3. Food distribution pattern is changing and US is on the other side of the equation which it subjected others to because of strong USD

All Indian consulates outsource operation to US Firm

The government of India had decided to outsource visa services because of the sheer volume of applications received in the consulates. "Travisa Outsourcing was given just 38 days to develop a new and entirely outsourced visa application process throughout the United States, and in doing so we created new technology that is revolutionising the visa application process," Jan Dvorak, CEO of Travisa Outsourcing told India Abroad.

Source
http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/apr/11bpo.htm

Currently, Travisa Outsourcing is the only US firm that handles visa outsourcing for an entire country. India is now one of only two countries that issues same day visas; China is the other, Dvorak said. Travisa has taken care to ensure that most staffers speak at least one Indian language.

It is interesting to see how factors like consumer satisfaction, economy, globalization play out. Globalization is definitely a two way street.

Online Indian Men 2.0

This post by KrishAshok is hilarious on so many levels.

Startup Sundaramoorthy and Venture Venkatakrishnan meet up at Barista, Besant Nagar over some coffee. Actually make that Latte with carcinogenic artifical sweeteners. And they discuss some very disturbing Internet stats. The Indian Blogosphere is also overwhelmingly dominated by women. A look at any comment thread in the Indian Web will convince you of that.

Alarmed by statistics like 60% of Facebook and 55% of MySpace users being women, they wonder how they can reinvent / invest in Web 2.0 for Indian men. They break down the usage pattern of Indian men online.




After looking at stats, they decide to launch these Web 2.0 companies:

Pigg.mc

An exclusively male social platform where men can share, discuss and vote up ideas on how to restore male hegemony on the Indian blogosphere.

Mattr - beta

Flickr for Indian Men - I used to be a Flickr user, but now there are too many women there. They and their enhanced visual sensitivities, passing judgement on my weak reds, insubstantial beiges, poor shadows and anaemic contrast. Bah. I have always wanted an all-male Photosharing app where real men can post photos without all this critical commentary from women, where we can also privately share images of item girls we secretly love.

JolluTube

An exclusive social video site dedicated to videos/songs we cannot watch with the family.

FeetBurner

A social platform, where rural machismo is on central display. I’m talking Kaavadi, extreme piercing, Jalli kattu and of course, walking on coals.

Source

Online Indian Men 2.0

Great post Krish...as always!

Sadly, there is a lot of reality in KrishAshok's post. A very important lesson for Web 2.0 aspirants in India is:

1. The Web 2.0 in India is way different than the Web 2.0 community elsewhere
2. Indian users just want to hang out; they are not interested to express themselves or create content

There is not even a single online forum or digg-like blog. I think some Indian company even tried and failed. Even if it was successful, I highly doubt there will be any useful information sharing. If you look at the Rediff forum discussions, you will never go back to that site. I'm also positive that most guys stalk gals on Orkut and leave "can I be your friend?" messages.

Writes one frustrated blogger about the Orkut testimonials

She is a good girl. Absolutely fantastic. If you haven't met her you don't know what you are missing" insists one testimonial writer on a orkut profile. As a reader - I am not sure how to react to these testimonials. They make me feel like a customer. I like what I am seeing.

But what confuses me more is that these Shailaja's of the world have allowed these testimonials to do a fantastic marketing pitch for her but she wont let boys have 'fraanship' with her. In the 'about me' column she writes 'please dont request friendship from me if you dont know me' (this is really really common in most girl's profiles).

And the boys in orkut. Boys in general. I mean God had a wicked sense of humor when he created such a sex starved species such as the male homosapien. I guess most men in orkut are walking hard-on's. Most men enter orkut , browsing through profiles, internet, skype directory thinking " i need to get laid. will she work".

Plugdd.in writes on why Indians flock to social networks and do nothing

The 53% who want to make friends are obviously part of the desperate-for-dating gang members, but the rest of the stat is important for one reason:

To understand What is it that Indians do not use a social network for?
The answer, as I understand is “Hanging out”..

Unlike the US kids who spend a good amount of time on myspace hanging around and “expressing themselves”, Indians aren’t the usual hangout (or ‘cool’?) kind, and instead use socionet for a defined purpose.

Now, this obviously goes against several socionet startups’ mantra (who want Indians to express themselves by uploading cool pics/videos and more..) and a clear reason why few of them have folded (like jhoom.in) and others are almost on the verge of dying.

I don't want to imply that building an online community is impossible. I don't see enough websites that facilitate fun and content generating ideas. Almost all of them seem to be ripping off crappy MySpace. I haven't seen a original, content generating site...yet.

That's the state of India Web 2.0. If anyone is dreaming to build an online community, build content, get a lot of traffic, monetize it and be a successful company, it's really hard. Good Luck with that.

No products for you India...not yet

Here is an interesting take on why India doesn't have many good product companies.

You [IT Service companies] have changed our image from being a land of snake charmers to the land of software programmers. But my thanks stops right there. You are also the culprit of taking away complete attention from other important industry. You rob us of passion of the young minds to make them Xerox machines. Your growth is welcome, but its avarice and appetite is overwhelming. We are not able to proceed to the next step. Our fear is we will get stuck right here

Word! But we only have ourselves to blame :(

Does the situation change with all the VC money pouring in? $1 billion invested in VC money in 2007 alone

NO. The reality is totally different.

From the comment section, I found these statements :

1] In India most of the Graduates are self-contended with any type of Job, they compare with their neighbors & start fantasizing to become like them. Example: If A & B are Friends, If A got the Job in Infosys [pakka service], B starts fantasizing about A & B feels himself inferior and degrades himself. In this scenario B never thinks of starting a company.

2] In India, parents never encourage us to start a company because they want us to marry a good family girl as soon as we get the Job.

3] In India, most people rhapsodize other’s success but never get self motivated enough to start his/her own concern.

4] There is a lack of awareness about entrepreneurs in India. Only those who have entrepreneurship in their blood begin to search for information due to his Interest in Entrepreneurship.

5] There is tremendous lack of awareness about new technology in India. Very few in India know about Ajax, Web 2.0 & the upcoming Adobe’s Apollo project [ which i am much interested in].

6] People are very very reluctant to learn new things.

7] Most of the graduates don’t know HOW important product companies are and why.

8] There is trend in India which is inherited like this: Senior to his Junior [who wants to start his own company] “First get experience for about 4 to 5 years and when u become PM you can get your own Clients [again Service company mentality] and start developing your own company”. After 4 to 5 years he is almost 30; Parents start urging him to marry. Once married he never again thinks about starting a company.

9] The person who wants to become an entrepreneur will fail to become one after getting a job in a good company because of the hefty salary.

10] It is hard to find similar mindset [Entrepreneur & Techie] in India. When they think starting about product company they begin to compare with GYM and the rest, forgetting they too were startups once.

I think I'll have to agree with those statements.

There is hope. Few percentage of youngsters are trying to make a difference. My favorite is DhanaX. It is a startup by ex-employees of Oracle and GE, in the Micro-finance area. A startup to make a difference and makes a lot of business sense in an economy like India.

Informationweek covers DhanaX

India is outsourcing outsourcing

I blogged about the impact of appreciating Rupee on Indian Outsourcing firms sometime back. After sinking below 40 rupees, one USD is back to 40. To keep the profit margins, one of the obvious options Indian IT companies have is to move to other cost effective countries. In the last 6 months, they have been really busy.

In May, Tata Consultancy Service, Infosys’s Indian rival, announced a new back office in Guadalajara, Mexico; Tata already has 5,000 workers in Brazil, Chile and Uruguay.

Cognizant Technology Solutions, with most of its operations in India, has now opened back offices in Phoenix and Shanghai.

Wipro, another Indian technology services company, has outsourcing offices in Canada, China, Portugal, Romania and Saudi Arabia, among other locations.

And last month, Wipro said it was opening a software development center in Atlanta that would hire 500 programmers in three years.

Link

I was so sure that I would read this one day, not so soon:

Such is the new outsourcing: A company in the United States pays an Indian vendor 7,000 miles away to supply it with Mexican engineers working 150 miles south of the United States border.

I never expected to read this though:

Ms. Adams graduated last spring from the University of Washington with a business degree, and rejected Google for Infosys.

oh, please!!! any need?

Broadband blues

How is broadband experience in India? Read these

Tata Indicom sucks

MTNL sucks

Reliance sucks
It sucks bigtime

Airtel gives 8 Mbps but No Unlimited plan

According to this TRAI report of Telecom performance during April-June 2007:

There are 64 broadband service providers having subscriber base of 24.22 lakhs subscribers. Among these 64 broadband service providers 10 service providers (who are having subscriber base more than 10,000 broadband subscribers) have the total 23.67 lakhs subscribers i.e. about 98% of total broadband subscriber base.

The number of Broadband subscribers (with a download speed of 256 Kbps or more) was 24.22 Lakhs for the quarter ending June 2007. Out of these 1984193 are DSL based; 264904 Cable Modem; 83521 Ethernet LAN; 20594 Fibre; 20466 Radio customers and 48541 Others. The growth rate of broadband subscribers in this quarter is 3.55% as compared to 13.85% in the previous quarter.

On page 45, the report measures all the broadband providers on various parameters:

1. Service Provisioning/ Activation Time
2. Faults Repair/Restoration Time
3. Billing Performance
4. Response Time to the Customer for assistance
5. Bandwidth utilization/throughput
6. Service Availability/Uptime
7. Packet loss
8. Network latency

Here is the shocker: ALL the providers failed to meet all but two benchmarks.

Service availability of 90% (?!) is met by each provider. What about 100%? Why do the customers possibly have 10% non-availability?

Network latency is less than 120 milliseconds for all the providers.

At least the TRAI report represents some truth (how I wonder). I guess the big broadband providers just don't care. Just like they told their customers, "take it or leave it".