This article was there in The Times of India on Page 6 of the 19th February 2007 edition. My friends who work in the IT sector read it and wanted me to publish it onto the Internet so that they can suggest it to others. It is a good article and shows the dark side of the IT/Software Industry in India.
A myth called the Indian programmer-The Times of India This is the online link for the article.
The famous BMTC - Bangalore Metropolitian Transport Corporation which has a very high success rate compared to its counterparts in Mumbai and Delhi has been working very hard. They have been improving there services and facilities as they might little later on stand in competition with the Metro Rail which should be function by 2009 and fully active by 2013 (If no delays are seen). Until then BMTC is really working out their options.
Recently they have started off with the Volvo bus service within the city for some 5 routes. Mainly catering the ITPL area in Whitefield and also Electronic City from Kempegowda Bus Station near the City Railway Station. It has shown a great response among people due to the congested and polluted air on the streets. This has let BMTC to increase the amount of round trips on a route. I guess things are really looking up for Bangaloreans who wish to have an A/C feel on the streets of Bangalore.
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There has been some improvement with the new buses which are completly in Blue. These buses have mentioned major bus stoppages on the side of the bus in English and Kannada. This is amazing as most of the buses have only Kannada writing on the top of the buses. These could easily improve over a period of time. In this city the bus transportation is going to play a major factor even in the future. One should travel during the early hours to really enjoy a bus trip as it avoid crowding in the bus and can get people to the destination on time due to the traffic problems.
This topic comes late but at a time when everyone around the world is worried about power generation and especially Nuclear Power generation. With any other kind of Energy source no country in the world has problems except taking the above mentioned. Sanctions, negotiations, treats to economically isolate and others words and phrases are being brought into the picture.
First of all what right does one country have on another to decide who should utilise some kind of resource or not. This becomes a dictatorship only but with the country taking the place not a person. India's power generation through Nuclear is hardly 5-10% but does India need to answer USA for whether it is using for Military or Power generation. Does USA disclose whether they are using Nuclear for Military or Power generation. USA has millions of documents which are classified and are related to nuclear weapons. It posses so many nuclear weapons that can destroy the world over. Then who gives USA the power to question any other country until it solves its own problem.
India whereas should learn that for 5-10% power generation through nuclear should not make it bend before any country. It has been busy trying to purchase fuel for the power stations which has been provided by Russia. First policy of Power-generation is that the source should be available then only should the project be considered. We are on such cross-roads that we need to purchase nuclear fuel for power stations. It sounds like what the Maharashtra government has done with ENRON. They made a power plant which runs on some kind of synthetic fuel which by the way led to the price of power generation go upto Rs 8/unit. So the whole ENRON company went bankrupt and Maharastra government suffered.
What the whole point here is that first of all we have to weigh our options. We need not bend before any country for listening to them as long as we are using our own resources for our own benefits. This point is not valid for our country itself but for all others in the world.
An article in the Times of India March 27th, 2006 talked about people applying for jobs through CVs are now being scrutinised by search engines like Google and Yahoo through their prospective employers. This has come as a concern for job-seekers as many informations which are not related to the work are seen and checked out by the prospective employers and these influence their decision in hiring them. Many people have already been rejected due to this.
The problem is that job-seekers are worried that whatever will pop-up in the search engines will result in deciding their future even if it were true or not. Also their are somethings which are personal to people and should not be taken into consideration while hiring for a job.
Now the employeers are finding this useful as they think that knowing the person better for a job is important and then again while searching one can come across their blogs which give a lot of insight into a person's characteristics. As one person stated, "With google you can check a person's CV, but ofthen you want to find out what makes them tick, dig behind the CV and see whether they will fit culturally withing the organisation."
Curriculum Vitae (CV) which is important for any person who wants employment irrespective of their work experience. It is also known as Resume or Biodata. This topic is being brought into the picture only for one reason, that is many people who faked their CV's are paying the price dearly by losing their jobs. Recently Wipro has fired some employees for faking their CV's and also has filed police complaint against several recruitment agencies for helping these employees falsify CV information.
Manipulation of resumes, often in active collaboration with the recruitment agencies and sometimes with the knowledge of the recruitment personnel of the IT companies, is assuming alarming proportions. IBM India recently sacked amny employees for the same reason. Some are said to have worked there for nearly two years. TCS, also facing the same problem has from this year outsourced the entire process of CV verification to a specialised agency.
The main reason for the above problem is due to the huge and fast recruitment process as companies have many projects than they can handle. So the recruitment process has been undermined, enableing people with manipulating CVs to get in. Also recruitment agencies are into this due to the commision they receive on getting a person recruited. Therefore for fast making money they compromise with the situations. The only best solution to stop all this is at the company level where stricter cross checking of CVs are to be undertaken.
This is another type of energy which is not much publicised due to many factors. The amount of intial investment is very large and also the requirement of wind to flow throughout the year in the same place is very less. Also the cost of maintenance is high as the blades of the windmill is to be really taken care off. Usually installation of these are done on large scale to cut down on the overall costs of the windmill. When many number of such windmills are put then they are known as wind farms. With wind farms, production of power is done on large scale to meet the power demands.
Currently in India those places which have a very good possibility of having winds flowing throughout the year are taken into consideration. Tamil Nadu state is one of the best locations were winds flow throughtout the year. This state produces 60% of the total wind power produced in India. It' s current status is 1600 MW and is planned to increase by double soon. These quantities of power donot contribute much to the national power generation but it is way better than burning that much fossil fuel to gain that energy. Sooner or later better renewable energy will be taken into consideration.
Better ways to perfect and gain more from these wind energies are still underway. Hopefully in the future better solutions can be found for harnessing wind energy. Also lately offshore wind energy farms are being made. These are in experimental stages to check out the after effects of such projects to the surroundings and environment. Example like conditions where ships or boats colliding with the windmills; also effects seen by birds and fishes on these windmills have to be seen and determined. But this could be another future prospect if we are running out of land. Even there is 20-40% more wind energy detected in the sea compared to the land.
Let's see the round about figures for the height of the windmills and blade sizes with the amount of power produced. A Windmill with 3 blades are attached at 120 degrees are taken into consideration. The height of the windmill is from the ground to the center of the blade joints. The following will give the data (these windmills should be set up at good wind flowing locations) :
I was going through an article in 'The Hindu' regarding solar energy. Its main focus was to use solar energy for street lights and also how to use it in homes to cut down on the electric bills and power problems. The main reason about power cuts is that there is an overload somewhere, that is somebody is using excessive power some place. Hence, we ourselves are slightly a reason for the power cuts. So we have to work on the problem.
It is estimated that nearly 5 lakh homes in Bangalore city consume 3 Million units of power everyday between 6 am & 9 am for water heating alone. If just 20% of the households in Bangalore switch to solar energy to heat water, about 150 MW of power will be saved during peak hours everyday. Also 75% of total expenditure of Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) goes into keeping streetlights glowing. (Courtesy to Metro Plus, the Hindu, March 20, 2006)
Water heaters are a good investment in a long run. Intially the cost will be heavy than an electric water geyser but then again we need not pay any electric bills for the water heater. The life time of a water heater is also long. So intial investment is everything. In Bangalore itself there are more than 50 companies dealing in solar water heater and will install it in 2 days period. This is just one example.
In many new types of Solar energy experimentation, a solar furnace has been created. But in this instead of Solar cells, concave mirrors are used to divert the sunlight to a single point like pointing to a top of a tower. This way large scale temperatures can be attained. One such example can be seen in France.
This is the future, where we need to use clean source of energy and sunlight is in abundance, so more practical use should be implemented. This way we can meet the demand of power generation that keeps on rising. More things like solar heaters should be implemented for human use.
Stanford university gets $88 million annual royalty for its inventions; Massachusetts Institute of Technology gets a huge royalty from optical mirror technology which alone can run the university for the next 10 years; Oxford has invested 10.7 million pounds in research. In India, despite having more than 250 universities, 800 engineering college and 1300 research and development facilities, IIT's are the only educational practising patenting thoroughtly. (courtesy to Times of India, March 17,2006)
The question here is that in every college there are many students who are capable of inventing or perform amazing research projects. There are many things that stop a student from performing something amazing. One is the college and staff do not support the student in there endeavours and in many cases I have seen sometimes the staff taking the full credit to what the student is performed and sidelining the student.
The second thing is as mentioned in the above article. Not knowing the knowledge of patents and other things. Even if one patent is done to a college in India, it will give popularity to the college and also can get funds for the department and college. The colleges in India should encourage there students and assist them. In the end, it is the name of the college that will gain popularity.
Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS) has crossed the $ 1 Billion turnover and for celebrations is gifting there employees. People who have joined before 30th June 2005 will be given Apple Video Ipods which has a capacity of 30GB. The company wants to gift its employees who are mainly in the 20-30 age group a techie gift.
Looks like other companies will have to do some good competion with CTS by providing better bonuses or gifts for their employees. These Ipods are usually costly but since being purchased in a whole set and imported by CTS will be very cheap for the company. With each company providing better perks and services, the competition for better jobs is on full flow.
