Monday, February 19, 2007
Monday, February 05, 2007
Frugality is India’s Tradition. Modernity sees India’s frugality as Poverty
Well saw this picture in the forest office at Dandeli – Just got moved by this one really. What really is frugality – Many mistake it to be miserliness or poverty. Frugality, on the other hand, is a tendency to possess less and what is absolutely necessary. It is this intelligence to understand what is really essential for us – is lacking and this is what makes us co-relate frugality and poverty. Well common sense is really uncommon. Mahatma Gandhi was an apt example for this trait. He always remarked that a khadi dhoti was enough for him to cover his body and in remarking so wore only dhoti for nearly half of his life, after his return from South Africa. Yet many of us very casually remark “Majboori ka naam – Mahatma Gandhi”. He is the same father figure, who is admired all over the world for his principles and values and yet many of my comrades don’t give him his deserved share of respect.
When I read this quote and started thinking over it, I remembered this particular anecdote (Can’t guarantee the authenticity though) from the Cold War era. NASA (USA) spent a decade and millions of dollars developing the high-tech Astronaut Pen, to solve the problem of writing in zero-gravity in a space ship. The Soviets solved the problem another way: They used a pencil. Were the Soviets poor in opting for pencil – a better solution than the hi-tech pen? Theres another example – when Motorola or GE came up with the Six Sigma concept, people started finding examples of Six Sigma processes. Only a handful of processes qualified like the airplane safety / reliability may be. But the most effective of them all had its roots in India – Yes the Mumbai Dabawallahs had achieved a six sigma level even before the quality concept was known to the world. Well, the dabawallahs are now world famous and feature in most of the case studies, but their secret in achieving those quality levels lied in 2 color dots and 5/6 digit code. I bet any consulting company in the world can come up with a better solution to this problem of supplying home made food to the appropriate people in their respective offices. I thought may be – I can have a go at it, so I closed my eyes and started visualizing the process and the intricacies of it and the first thing I saw was barcodes, bar code readers and an RDBMS to support these.
The great Indian elections of 2004 – brought 2 surprises; well the results were a big surprise but this is not a topic of our concern today, but the other surprise was more meaningful. The world’s largest democracy had surprised the entire world by announcing the results in a mere 4 hrs span (Poor Pranoy Roy did not have the time to digest the figures and present the analysis – He normally would it for 72 hours at a stretch). How many of you knew this fact – that India was the first of all the countries to use the fully electronic voting machines. Well there were a few attempts made by USA to start using electronic voting machines, but even the Americans were not able to deploy this across the country. USA had used touch screens, encryption techniques, backup servers, voice-guidance systems, modems, storage cards and a Windows based operating systems to come up with a state of the art of the technology voting machine which were networked to the central server. God knows, how much amount of coding would have gone into it. The Indians on the other hand, came up with a electronic machine – which looked like a Casio music synthesizer may be. The scientists at work never had any fancy expectations from it apart from its basic function of adding those votes efficiently and accurately. These machines were not even programmed about the candidates and only small slips of candidates and their symbols were just clipped besides the buttons. The electronic voting machines were never wired off together and were kept stand alone – This apart from keeping the system simple and cost effective, helped in avoiding problems if any one of those EVMs were captured. It was only one EVM that was vulnerable in case of booth capturing and the rest were unaffected. Now many of my Indian friends would already have a question in their minds – Its true they worked, what was their failure rate. Of the 1 million EVMs deployed, about 1800 of them malfunctioned for whatever reasons – this is an acceptable quality figure, considering that there were spare EVMs available in the booths and in the entire elections, hardly a few of the precious votes were lost in the process. In fact, the same philosophy is being prophesized in the Japanese Kaizen principles – Come up with simple solutions and continuously improve.
There is another example – that I would like to pick up straight from my home town – Belgaum. When we were studying our Engineering, the Belgaum traffic police came up with a novel concept of solar traffic lights – they deployed this across all the major circles in Belgaum. After 2 months, they had to discontinue with the traffic lights in the most centrally located circle in the city – the traffic lights just did not serve the purpose because it would not be programmed in accordance with the complex traffic situation there and brought in new problems of traffic congestion and starvation at the same time. Then, we had thought this to be a backward step, to move away from the traffic lights. In fact we had thought this to be a project for our final year engineering to help the traffic police to get over the problem. Now we realize the wisdom that went behind that decision of going back from those traffic lights. The circle, after 5 more years, still doesnot have a traffic signal.
India has traditionally been a rich country and that’s the reason for all those sieges right from Mohammad of Gazni to the Lord Mountbattens of the East India Company. But our forefathers were wise enough to have never been behind those technologies. This is evident in all our Indian dishes – an Indian woman would never want a mayonnaise sauce or vinegar to spice up her yummy dishes. The Indian home remedies for all sorts of medicinal problems justify this again. Try this yourself, the next time you cut your finger / bruise your leg, apply turmeric – the blood stops more instantly than when you apply Dettol. I am now convinced that the high priced glitzy solutions are no more efficient than their easily found, common counterparts. Friends, after having written so much, let me confess that I am not against technology. I am as big a technology buff as many of you are, but we got to be simple in our problem solving approach, we got to apply that wisdom to justify the use of technology. We Indians have a rich tradition and culture that we got to pass over to our successors – Lets pass this as it is as we have inherited it, if not add any value to it.
Well saw this picture in the forest office at Dandeli – Just got moved by this one really. What really is frugality – Many mistake it to be miserliness or poverty. Frugality, on the other hand, is a tendency to possess less and what is absolutely necessary. It is this intelligence to understand what is really essential for us – is lacking and this is what makes us co-relate frugality and poverty. Well common sense is really uncommon. Mahatma Gandhi was an apt example for this trait. He always remarked that a khadi dhoti was enough for him to cover his body and in remarking so wore only dhoti for nearly half of his life, after his return from South Africa. Yet many of us very casually remark “Majboori ka naam – Mahatma Gandhi”. He is the same father figure, who is admired all over the world for his principles and values and yet many of my comrades don’t give him his deserved share of respect.
When I read this quote and started thinking over it, I remembered this particular anecdote (Can’t guarantee the authenticity though) from the Cold War era. NASA (USA) spent a decade and millions of dollars developing the high-tech Astronaut Pen, to solve the problem of writing in zero-gravity in a space ship. The Soviets solved the problem another way: They used a pencil. Were the Soviets poor in opting for pencil – a better solution than the hi-tech pen? Theres another example – when Motorola or GE came up with the Six Sigma concept, people started finding examples of Six Sigma processes. Only a handful of processes qualified like the airplane safety / reliability may be. But the most effective of them all had its roots in India – Yes the Mumbai Dabawallahs had achieved a six sigma level even before the quality concept was known to the world. Well, the dabawallahs are now world famous and feature in most of the case studies, but their secret in achieving those quality levels lied in 2 color dots and 5/6 digit code. I bet any consulting company in the world can come up with a better solution to this problem of supplying home made food to the appropriate people in their respective offices. I thought may be – I can have a go at it, so I closed my eyes and started visualizing the process and the intricacies of it and the first thing I saw was barcodes, bar code readers and an RDBMS to support these.
The great Indian elections of 2004 – brought 2 surprises; well the results were a big surprise but this is not a topic of our concern today, but the other surprise was more meaningful. The world’s largest democracy had surprised the entire world by announcing the results in a mere 4 hrs span (Poor Pranoy Roy did not have the time to digest the figures and present the analysis – He normally would it for 72 hours at a stretch). How many of you knew this fact – that India was the first of all the countries to use the fully electronic voting machines. Well there were a few attempts made by USA to start using electronic voting machines, but even the Americans were not able to deploy this across the country. USA had used touch screens, encryption techniques, backup servers, voice-guidance systems, modems, storage cards and a Windows based operating systems to come up with a state of the art of the technology voting machine which were networked to the central server. God knows, how much amount of coding would have gone into it. The Indians on the other hand, came up with a electronic machine – which looked like a Casio music synthesizer may be. The scientists at work never had any fancy expectations from it apart from its basic function of adding those votes efficiently and accurately. These machines were not even programmed about the candidates and only small slips of candidates and their symbols were just clipped besides the buttons. The electronic voting machines were never wired off together and were kept stand alone – This apart from keeping the system simple and cost effective, helped in avoiding problems if any one of those EVMs were captured. It was only one EVM that was vulnerable in case of booth capturing and the rest were unaffected. Now many of my Indian friends would already have a question in their minds – Its true they worked, what was their failure rate. Of the 1 million EVMs deployed, about 1800 of them malfunctioned for whatever reasons – this is an acceptable quality figure, considering that there were spare EVMs available in the booths and in the entire elections, hardly a few of the precious votes were lost in the process. In fact, the same philosophy is being prophesized in the Japanese Kaizen principles – Come up with simple solutions and continuously improve.
There is another example – that I would like to pick up straight from my home town – Belgaum. When we were studying our Engineering, the Belgaum traffic police came up with a novel concept of solar traffic lights – they deployed this across all the major circles in Belgaum. After 2 months, they had to discontinue with the traffic lights in the most centrally located circle in the city – the traffic lights just did not serve the purpose because it would not be programmed in accordance with the complex traffic situation there and brought in new problems of traffic congestion and starvation at the same time. Then, we had thought this to be a backward step, to move away from the traffic lights. In fact we had thought this to be a project for our final year engineering to help the traffic police to get over the problem. Now we realize the wisdom that went behind that decision of going back from those traffic lights. The circle, after 5 more years, still doesnot have a traffic signal.
India has traditionally been a rich country and that’s the reason for all those sieges right from Mohammad of Gazni to the Lord Mountbattens of the East India Company. But our forefathers were wise enough to have never been behind those technologies. This is evident in all our Indian dishes – an Indian woman would never want a mayonnaise sauce or vinegar to spice up her yummy dishes. The Indian home remedies for all sorts of medicinal problems justify this again. Try this yourself, the next time you cut your finger / bruise your leg, apply turmeric – the blood stops more instantly than when you apply Dettol. I am now convinced that the high priced glitzy solutions are no more efficient than their easily found, common counterparts. Friends, after having written so much, let me confess that I am not against technology. I am as big a technology buff as many of you are, but we got to be simple in our problem solving approach, we got to apply that wisdom to justify the use of technology. We Indians have a rich tradition and culture that we got to pass over to our successors – Lets pass this as it is as we have inherited it, if not add any value to it.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Ramblings from Dandeli
3 holidays in a trot (and that too a non Diwali offering) is a rarity, particularly for us, those who are associated with the manufacturing industry. The grey cells start to slog faster than they normally do and the plan is on. Dandeli, a wild life sanctuary was supposed to be Aarohi’s ** next destination. The internet search engines were pumped to find out the best possible route, the spots & the hang-outs in and around Dandeli. Resort accommodations were abundant and their charges were also exorbitant. An apt time for some of us to utilize their networking skills - we got hold of two possible options. The one that finally got materialized was a farmhouse about 6 kms from Dandeli and some 20 kms from the actual forest limits, but I still believe, the second option of the tents offered by Karnataka forest departments were by far the best - authentic and rich forest experience and yet cheap to the core (me plannin' to visit there on a yearly basis). Its not that the farm house was any less compared to an experience, but I still woo the fact that we couldnot get those tents, since they were booked about a month ago. The farm house, I personally felt, was crowded with people (another group shared the accommodation with us) and a variety of insects as our hosts (God knows - how did they manage to know that we were supposed to visit that place). The nights at the farm house were extremely vocal with filmy songs, PJs and the laughter associated with them around that camp fire. Luckily we were far off from the forest or else we would have some elephants and tigers knocking on us and yelling at us "bhai sahab!! abhi humara sone ka time hain - can you please slow down your voice".
Fauna - That we Could Capture
Jungle Walk
We went to the Kawala caves – another piece of nature’s wonders. It’s a 500 mtr crawl in the caves with all those gods sitting there, inside to watch us resorting back to the 4 legs. The 4 legs stance is supposed to be the most natural for all the living beings, and we, homo-sapiens, have literally forgotten the art of walking with 4 legs. The funniest part for me was that, after that 500 mtr drill exercise, we ended up in an opening which was merely 18 inches apart from the opening that we started off. The 200 stair descent to Kawala caves and its corresponding ascent back to the point was not enough for Ashu, who forgot his camera near the Kawala caves – Had to sprint those stairs to catch hold of a group who were busy clicking photos with his camera.
** “Aarohi – The climbers” for me personally, means a recreational group with values in pursuit of the nature’s offerings - More to be featured in this space.
Supa Dam - GaneshGudi
3 holidays in a trot (and that too a non Diwali offering) is a rarity, particularly for us, those who are associated with the manufacturing industry. The grey cells start to slog faster than they normally do and the plan is on. Dandeli, a wild life sanctuary was supposed to be Aarohi’s ** next destination. The internet search engines were pumped to find out the best possible route, the spots & the hang-outs in and around Dandeli. Resort accommodations were abundant and their charges were also exorbitant. An apt time for some of us to utilize their networking skills - we got hold of two possible options. The one that finally got materialized was a farmhouse about 6 kms from Dandeli and some 20 kms from the actual forest limits, but I still believe, the second option of the tents offered by Karnataka forest departments were by far the best - authentic and rich forest experience and yet cheap to the core (me plannin' to visit there on a yearly basis). Its not that the farm house was any less compared to an experience, but I still woo the fact that we couldnot get those tents, since they were booked about a month ago. The farm house, I personally felt, was crowded with people (another group shared the accommodation with us) and a variety of insects as our hosts (God knows - how did they manage to know that we were supposed to visit that place). The nights at the farm house were extremely vocal with filmy songs, PJs and the laughter associated with them around that camp fire. Luckily we were far off from the forest or else we would have some elephants and tigers knocking on us and yelling at us "bhai sahab!! abhi humara sone ka time hain - can you please slow down your voice".
One thrilling experience (unlucky me, couldnot be a part of the team) was when a few of us visited that stream flowin’ some 500 mts behind our camp, in the midst of a dark, silent yet vocal (birds and animals engaged in making some of the threatening voices) night. I can imagine the group’s plight in fear, since I couldn’t stop from getting afraid myself, even though I went there in the morning. Very true!! – Man may be the king of all the living beings in the city, but in the forests, it’s the beasts that call the shots. The birds around that stream were just unimaginable – plenty of them and in varieties that we may not have imagined. Early morning – we had to reach the forest office at 6 am, wherein our contact had arranged to take us in the forests in a forester tempo. That 20 km ride in the early morning was just unbelievable and scary to the core – we were able to trace 2 foxes and rabbits enroute to the forest office. The tragedy was that these were the only beasts that we would be seeing in our entire trip to Dandeli. It’s the forest office, where I caught up with the “Frugality is India’s Tradition. Modernity sees India’s frugality as Poverty” poster – the theme for my next blog. Thanks Ashu!! for capturing that for me, I doubt whether me in that cold and sleepy mood, that I was in would have bothered to click a snap. The tempo ride was fun, even though it did not fulfill our original aim of having a glance of those wildies – It offered a rich blend of flora – even thought the fauna part (except for those birds, butterflies, insects and a snake) was missing.
The 45 Rs. for a 5.5 hr ride / walk in the jungle were well spent. The safari route has become so common now, with all those resorts and private vehicles doing their rounds on a daily basis that the path has submerged down by 8 inches below the ground level and is much smoother than a Pune road, may be. Over a period time, the animals would have passed on this route’s information to all their offsprings – that this is the route that you must not venture into even before they told them about the water sources, near by.
We went to the Kawala caves – another piece of nature’s wonders. It’s a 500 mtr crawl in the caves with all those gods sitting there, inside to watch us resorting back to the 4 legs. The 4 legs stance is supposed to be the most natural for all the living beings, and we, homo-sapiens, have literally forgotten the art of walking with 4 legs. The funniest part for me was that, after that 500 mtr drill exercise, we ended up in an opening which was merely 18 inches apart from the opening that we started off. The 200 stair descent to Kawala caves and its corresponding ascent back to the point was not enough for Ashu, who forgot his camera near the Kawala caves – Had to sprint those stairs to catch hold of a group who were busy clicking photos with his camera.
Kawala Caves
While that was not enough, Amya dropped his cell phone back en route to the forest tempo - thought that one of those monkeys would get it back to him and very truly a group of monkeys actually saw that cell and gave it back to him – the group was actually headed by me, with pd, aj and amlya the rest of them. When we actually reached the forest office back we were so hungry, that the 8 of us actually ended up eating a whole canteen literally – 14 dosas, 12 idli plates was not enough that we ended up eating up buns and cakes to fill our tummies.
Our next spot was the Cyntheri rocks and as rightly read somewhere about this spot, we literally felt that we were a microscopic single celled organism in the presence of the 300 foot tall monolith of called Cyntheri Rocks.
Our next spot was the Cyntheri rocks and as rightly read somewhere about this spot, we literally felt that we were a microscopic single celled organism in the presence of the 300 foot tall monolith of called Cyntheri Rocks.
Syntheri Rocks
This is on the banks of river Kaneri, which is a small river that eventually merges into the Kali. Its beauty is breathtaking which is accentuated by the small waterfall that gushes into a deep rocky ravine. An interesting take away from this spot was that billboard alerting the people not to swim there – an innovative way of putting your say.
One blip spot was that we as a group was never able to come to a consensus on the white water river rafting – Nevermind Shrivijya, you and me have to return to Dandeli to have that experience again – Cannot miss out on that action anyway!! The night to be followed was to be spent in darkness – as 8 engineers failed in connecting the wiring to the main electricity supply (Ironically, the group of masons was able to do that the earlier night). Sunny – our local guide (how can I miss out on this character, for so long) tried his hand in connecting the wires, ended up creating a fire around the electric pole – the fire which literally bought the whole of the village together in fear – we ended up as heroes, by extinguishing the fire – the fire that we were responsible for – a corporate lesson for all, create a fire, extinguish it and become a hero. Ah!! Back to Sunny. Boy!! the food that he gave us on both of those 2 nights would just remain a memoir for the whole of my life, first night – the cabbage vegetable, the dal and the pappad and the the night to follow – something more tastier – the chicken fry and the gravy – huuun yummy.
Sunny's Place
He was more of a “one-stop solutions” for all of us – Be it the travel guide, the chef, the light man. He provided it all - that essential lantern, the snacks the battery charger and the cricket scores updates. Jagya, I still wish he might be able to find out those spectacles of yours. The return journey was more of a nail-bitter than anything else – 120 kms to be reached in 120 mins – We made it back safely, but not without those scares that PD provided me with at the end of the journey. PD, next time se khayal rakh baba, meri shaadi nahi huyi hain, abhi tak. At the end of it all, thanks to the helmet rule in Belgaum, Ajya was able to lose his red cap. That’s all folks, time now for me to sign off for today – but before we leave, heres have a look at the some of the photographic sunset memories of the Supa Dam at Ganeshgudi, which we clicked on our way to Dandeli.
Sunset at Supa Dam - Ganeshgudi
** “Aarohi – The climbers” for me personally, means a recreational group with values in pursuit of the nature’s offerings - More to be featured in this space.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
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