Comparing the recent floods in bihar

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displayStory.cfm?source=hptextfeature&story_id=12036399
Many things have changed and so many haven't ...

Should unhappy people get divorced

http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12000969

Should unhappily married people split up? Ms Scarf addresses this question in a chapter called "Does Divorce Make People Happy?" The short answer seems to be, rarely. She quotes a study of people in unhappy marriages which followed up the couples five years later. Its conclusion: unhappily married adults who divorced or separated were no happier, on average, than unhappily married adults who stayed married to the same partner. Only one in five of them was happily remarried. More surprisingly, a majority of those who remained married pronounced themselves happy at the end of the five-year period.

Interesting article ... Seems the Indian way of sticking with it does work finally :-)

US Visa - My Take

I recently went for a US visa interview and thought will share my experience since a US visa interview is shrouded in mystery with multiple opinions and lot of rumors.

Firstly, you have to be prepared for extremely bad queue management and infrastructure at the chennai consulate. You may get lucky (I wasn't) but be prepared for long wait in the chennai heat with no place to sit outside the consulate. You are advised to carry an umbrella and a water bottle. There is no locker facility so you will have to throw the bottle outside the consulate and most likely you will be carrying a mobile phone which you will have to request a security guard to retain for you (some baksheesh is expected for this). I sincerely recommend not taking visitors along since the time spent inside is not predictable. Ask friends to wait in a hotel or a mall (city center is not far). In case you have your interview in the afternoon, have your lunch since it may be evening by the time you get out.

The process is three step

1. Pre scan - a manual check of your application and passport to see if all fields are OK and there is no glaring error. You may be asked to write your name in your native alphabet.
2. Finger printing
3. Visa interview
   

Because of the long wait I overheard many interviews and actual cases of people being rejected or granted visas. Lets get the motivations right first - the visa officer's motivation is make sure that you are going to US for a genuine reason and she (we will assume a women) is not your enemy. She could make a mistake like any other human so just give the officer all necessary information asked for as accurately as you can. Supportive documentation for any claim that you make may be asked for. Making unsubstantiated claims may result in rejection of your application.

There are obviously many fraudulent applicants also. Due to the shortage of H1B (work permits) visas, many companies send people on B1 (business) visas when some urgent/unplanned work comes up. I have heard stories of deportation a few times. I think restricted travel is one of the biggest obstructions of software outsourcing. Investing in great communication equipment and in general getting into the mindset of teleworking is what is needed. There are really very cases these days where you need to work at the same location. Modern development processes can totally remove the need for location and open source software proves the point very successfully.

The problem because of the above chaff I think is that genuine applicants also get rejected. Because of the huge talent shortage in the industry it is common for companies to send young engineers for client meetings. Sometime due to the huge attrition, a person who has no clue about a project has to travel on a short notice to meet a client. These are well understood ills in the industry and business as such is usually not affected by them. However, a visa officer has trouble understanding how this young, inexperienced guy with little project context and who cannot even hold a lucid conversation about this project is eligible for this trip. Many of the people being rejected fell in the category. I think an organization like NASSCOM could conduct sensitization courses for both consulates and companies to reduce the gap in the understanding. The understanding that Indian engineers are often not the best verbal communicators in english is also necessary for the consulate. Most of the visa officers are extremely good communicators and I think do have some minimum expectation from a person claiming that he will gather requirements from a US client. The fact is that engineers do not always communicate very well but mostly get the job done quite well.

In case you are wondering I did get my visa.

DISCLAIMER: Refer to the embassy's website for the latest procedure and guidance. This post is just a recount of personal experience and thoughts.

Peopling of India

Interesting paper on indian demographics. Especially its insights on absence of genocide in India (it doesn't say so in these terms though)

What the Indian population is remarkable for is the segmentation of this large population into thousands of endogamous groups. The People of India data recognizes 4635 such ethnic communities. Many of these are however clusters of endogamous groups with similar traditional occupations and social status. The actual number of endogamous groups is decidedly much larger, of the order of 50 to 60 thousand (Joshi, Gadgil and Patil 1993; Gadgil and Malhotra 1983). This persistence of tribe like endogamous groups, characteristic of hunter-gatherer-shifting cultivation stage all over the world, in a complex agrarian, and now industrial society of India is a unique phenomenon. It seems to be a result of a peculiarly Indian tradition of subjugation and isolation, rather than the worldwide practice of elimination or assimilation of subordinated communities by the dominant groups.

Nice quote

[3] As a rule of thumb, the more qualifiers there are before the name of a country, the more corrupt the rulers. A country called The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably the last place in the world you'd want to live.

Interestingly the most corrupt indira gandhi govt added the prefix socialist in our preamble :-)

Bhagat singh and the revolution

Found this nice article on this site. Have been thinking about bhagat singh since rang de basanti especially about his young age. I am sure the age of 23 in 1930 is not comparable to a youngster of 23 in 2006. I mean people would often have kids going to school by that age though bhagat singh did not marry (my grandma was a mother at age 16).

I did not know of bhagat singh's communistic leanings though and the article was extremely educative. If bhagat singh would have been successful in igniting a communist movement what would have happened? The most impressive part of bhagat singh's vision is his thinking of what kind of a country we should have rather than just have a narrow objective of throwing out the british. Although I respect so many of the freedom fighters but we have had only one hero - bhagat singh.

Murder attempts on Gandhi

I didn't know there had been a lot of murder attempts on gandhi, most by nathuram godse himself. So it wasn't just a killing in rage after partition. Its a pity that he wasn't arrested earlier but gandhi was lucky too that he survived all of the earlier once. This should also break the myth that gandhi was murdered sue to the partition. As tushar gandhi puts it

... Mahasabha as well as their off shoot the Rasthtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have always claimed that the Mahatma was murdered because he was partial to the Muslims, because he was responsible for the vivisection of India and because he forced the government of India to give Pakistan 55 Crores Rs (550 million). Apart from the last two attempts on 20th January 1948 and His murder on 30th January1948. Bapuji had not shown any alleged partiality towards Muslims, the country was not divided and there was no question of giving 55 Crores (Rs. 550 Million) to Pakistan. Yet the Hindu Mahasabha and the Godse Apte gang of murderers were hell bent on killing the Mahatma ...

All known murder attempts listed are also described on the site.

Aero India 2005

I went to see the the Aero India show held at Yehelanka Airforce base (just outside Bangalore). The show ended this sunday and the road near my apartment was jammed for hours. Many people saw the show with cars/scooters parked outside (saving on the Rs 150 ticket). The show was enjoyable both for the quality of the air display and for the pride that you feel when so many Indian designed and manufactured crafts take to the sky.

Recently a series of articles by Kaushik Kapisthalam gave a nice insight into the achievements of DRDO. I think fighter aircrafts and space missions are the frontiers of technical achievment and it was a treat to watch the Sarang team perform stunts with the Advanced Light Helicopter - Dhruv. Also on display were LCA - Tejus, Saras, Intermediate Jet Trainer. The LCA may have taken a long time but the learnings have made it possible to speed up development of IJT and the CJT (which will replace the Hawks we are buying from britain).

The biennual show itself started small and has grown bigger with each edition. There are reports of lot of business deals happening and the civil aviation industry too taking part next year. These will add another worldclasss show to the list of international events happening in Bangalore.

The show ended with the splendid display of aerobatics by the suryakiran team (including a heart with arrow through it). The suryakiran team recently came third at one of the international air shows for their brilliant aerobatics.