Things that we don't switch off

Refrigerator, Mobiles, Office Computers, Office AirConditioners, Network devices ...

These are some of the things that we rarely switch off or sometimes never.

My prediction is that this list would be expanding immensely in the future. I am also wondering about the size or the number of items that would get added up to this list, if technologies for generating cleaner and greener power is in place with less or zero harmful emissions.

One more extension of this thought is that, there may be a 'day' celebrated/recognized in future so that on that day, all these things are switched off!. - Any takers for this ?

Remembering Professor RN

Prof. R Narasimhan (known as RN), was a pioneer in the field of Computer Science; and considered as the Father of Computer Science in India. He joined TIFR in the 1950's and was the senior member of the team that built the India's first indigenous electronic digital Computer known as TIFRAC (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Automatic Computer). He was a director of NCSDCT (National Centre for Software Development and Computing Techniques) in TIFR for a decade between 1975-1985, and this institution later turned into a separate autonomous organization called NCST (National centre for software technology; which I joined in 2001 in NCST as a Staff Scientist) and now part of CDAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing).

Prof RN, has authored many books and papers, and had interests in AI and linguistics. He had won many awards and has played the role of informal advisor on many occasions to the Government of India. He was instrumental in the formation of CMC, now part of the Tata group. In one way, he was also instrumental for the development of this niche IT sector in this country.

He passed away on 3rd of September 2007, and a number of them whom he had mentored and/or worked with attended his funeral, Myself and many of my senior staffs were also present on that day. A lot about him and his work could be found at: http://prof.r.narasimhan.googlepages.com/

I had an opportunity to do a small task for him, a few years back, while he was writing his book on 'Artificial Intelligence and Study of Agentive Behaviour'. He was nearing 80 years at that time, and wanted to help him in scanning a few photographs for his book. The photographs were containing 'kolams' (similar to rangoli), where he was trying to illustrate the concept of patterns being created by joining different dots, as done in a kolam. He was always insisting for perfection, and as I was doing, was questioning about the technicalities of the scanner such as the depth, color, and time taken etc... for the process of scanning. I understood that he was a soft man, seeking absolute perfection.

It was ironic, that I compiled his photographs into a silent film to be played while observing silence as a mark of respect to his soul, by a huge gathering of Who's who of the Indian computer science researchers, at the annual CSI National Convention held last month. In this regard, I also got an opportunity to work with yet another leader in the field of research in Indian computer science - Dr. S. Ramani.

Drastic Changes in Indian Agriculture

Last month, I was invited to be part of a State-level workshop at Madurai, convened to identify the information needs of the farmers in the region, so that they can be explored further to be addressed by ICT. It was a good workshop that threw light on the current scenarios and the plight of Indian Agriculture or atleast the Agriculture in Southern India. Here are a few:

Indian Agriculture is facing a severe labour crisis
Most of the agricultural labourers have gone to work for fire/match industry, textile industry, construction works, Granite Mining, etc... where they get job and salary regularly and adequately.

Expectations of the farmers have gone high!
They require high yield from their farms to sustain themselves in the changing modern India. Therefore, they tend to use hybrid seeds, insecticides and pesticides as given by the shopkeepers without knowing much about them!.

High up-front investment is required to do farming

A consequence of the previous point. Farmers tend to buy costlier seeds, costlier chemicals and ofcourse the rising cost of labour, to get the maximum yield.

Middlemen are turning as Financiers
Middlemen are the people, who buy the goods from the farmers and sell in the market. As the costs of farming is increasing and profits declining, the farmers have started to look at these middlemen as 'Financiers', who finance to some extent at the beginning of the season, and then procure the produce from them and give them (farmers) on whatever is left-over.

Lure by sellers of Medicinal Plants
Some people make business by selling/marketing medicinal plants to these farmers. However, they need proper care and environment to grow. The farmers buy these crops at higher prices, and eventually the crops fails, resulting in losses

Many are aware of Contract Farming, and seem to know names like Reliance and ITC
However, it seems that they (corporates) have studied and understood about the soil, water, suitable crops, market, meagre land size etc... much better than the others! They are ready to buy the goods based on the grade at a higher price than prevailing in the market

Precision Farming along with Cooperative Farming seems to be the new ray of hope!
A technique (developed in Israel) currently being explored in India, that feeds the plant/crop exactly its required water, food, and chemicals. It requires the use Drip-irrigation system. Cooperative Farming means that the small chunks of farm lands owned by different farmers are integrated to facilitate cooperative precision farming techniques.

Well, this article/blog might have shed some light on the issues surrounding the Indian Agriculture in today's context.

Theory of Relativity in Real Life

Last month, I was helping a friend and two friends of him, to find a single BHK (Bed room, Hall and Kitchen) house in the costlier area of BTM Layout in Bangalore. We took the help of the brokers / middlemen to help us to find out a house in that area within our budget of around 6K per month.

The broker took us to a house that was spacious enough (around 300+ Sq.ft) to be called as a single BHK house. The rent was acceptable around Rs. 5500/- per month and all of us liked it. But then we came to know that it would take another 3-4 days to get the possession of the house, and my friends were so desperate that they required a house immediately.

The broker took us to another house, that was just ready and available for immediate occupation. It was quite smaller (around 200+ Sq.ft) than the previous one, but the rent was around Rs.5000/- per month. Two of three friends were not satisfied with the house and said that they wanted to check some other house.

The broker again took us to another house, that was also available for immediate occupation but was really and relatively smaller (around 100+ Sq.ft!!! In fact, one has to see it to believe that it is 1 BHK house ) and the rent was around Rs. 5700/- per month.

Left with these options, now my friends, immediately wanted to take the second house for rent (around 200+ Sq.ft and a rent of Rs.5000/-) and did it immediately!. This explained me the theory of relativity in real life!, because, if the third house shown by the broker was not relatively smaller and/or costlier, there is no chance, that they would have picked up the second house. Perhaps that broker too would have had an understanding of this psychology!!

Right and Wrong - Adding more thoughts

I was dwelling more on the thoughts of Right and Wrong. I think this has to be treated as a bigger subject, just like 'Truth' (Absolute Truth has been dealt by many people, including MK Gandhi.) and I hope somebody does good research on it.

The subject of Right and Wrong is directly proportional to 'Change'. Change means the change in time, environment, society, thoughts, mindset, culture etc... and therefore varies from person to person, society to society.

Right and Wrong - View from Rights

A lot of thoughts and info had come to my mind to blog on!. But the constraints of time, had limited them. So, here, let me start with a thought!, written from a philosophical view point.

Everybody is right in their own right!

In my childhood days, I used to think that 'What is right and What is wrong' are so obvious to everyone, and everybody knows it by default!. But, as I grew up, I slowly realized that, What I perceive as right may not be right from other's point of view. If there is a list of universal right things, then we could have easily said what's right and what's not!. So, it dawned upon me, that these things are highly relative, and would vary from individual to individual.

An individual's list of right and wrong would be influenced by a whole gamut of factors like his/her environment, circumstances, society, thought patterns etc... As you can see these factors are so generalized and it actually means, the culture you have been brought up, your friends and peers, your family, the society in which you live, the religion you follow, and the government and it's policies etc... all influence the individual in evolving his/her list of right and wrong!.

So, the groups, societies and the nations across the world, try to define directly and indirectly what's right and wrong, for their people/flock, though they like to impose their list of right and wrong for the entire world.

However, as you can see, there are people within the groups, sections, societies and nations that fall out and have their own list of right and wrongs. Practically speaking, most of them, would be differing from their group's list, atleast by a smaller degree. It is then they are qualified by adjectives, (ex: radical/rational/) depending on what extent their change affects others! and how it affects them (positively or negatively! - again this is an another debate!)

To conclude, everybody would have drawn up their own list of right and wrongs, (influenced by the above mentioned factors) and therefore becomes a kind one's own right!. Such lists could change over time, and could be empty too or could be completely synchronous with their society or group at times!. The concept of freedom (from an individual's perception) can then be defined as how much he/she is free to deviate from their group's list / define their own list

The year 2006 - for me

A New Year - 2007. Another year passed by.

Though, I had a couple of things in my mind to blog, I could not find the time to do it. And the new year has come and almost one month over!.

So, this post is to recollect the events in 2006.

• Birth of my daughter
• Giving my daughter a name, by us
• Got registered for my PhD, after doing good amount of work over the years, and after a long wait!
• Invested in Mutual funds for the first time!
• Two of my colleagues - Kailash and Ponraj - who were working with me, quit in April and December respectively - ofcourse in search of better positions! Another friend and colleague - Mayank also quit.
• Lost my Nokia mobile phone (that my wife gifted!) in a crowded bus - to a thief!
• Purchased Sony Ericsson Mobile Handset, and had a terribly bad experience with it for a couple of months (I already had a bad experience with Sony Ericsson Mobile earlier; but foolishly I trusted the brand again! - Probably 'Fate' played!)
• Trips to Hyderabad & Delhi - for Project work & Conferences; Personal Trips to Madurai, a couple of times
• Got my home PC upgraded to an additional 256 MB RAM and a new 80 GB Hard disk
• Coordinated and lead the Corporate Training Programme in Computer Networking
• Opened an account in Orkut - after ignoring it for some time!
• Handled many sessions for the students of the courses conducted here
• Worked on Project Proposals, Papers and lot of Presentations
• Learned a lot as usual - but more from a Techno - Research perspective (thanks to my PhD, Paper, and Proposal efforts)
• Overall it was another eventful year