Comat is a small company operating in rural India. They  “bridge the digital divide” by bringing computing benefits to villages. They are looking for programmers to work with them. The long recruitment mail is inspirational and I am sure they will get a lot of candidates! Check it out.

Consider this: the average village that we operate in receives four hours of power supply a day. The supply is often at 150V, far too low to power a computer or charge a UPS battery. The place is also a good four hours from the nearest urban centre, and given the state of roads in much of the country, that’s four agonising hours for anyone who must go attend a support call because the operator complained that his web browser is saying “Page Not Loading” and he’s got a long queue of agitated customers who are threatening a riot because that printer is not producing the document that will determine their livelihood.

You, the hotshot Web 2.0 and assorted buzzword compliant web developer, must produce an app that will keep that crowd happy. You’re not going to get away by telling them that your JSON-spewing Ajax application requires a low latency internet connection. You’re going to have think this through very carefully.

Indeed!

I stay in Kerala, southern state of India. Kerala is unique in many respects. I won’t go into details but in short, day to day life here is a challenge!

Today I came back from work early since I was not feeling well. Summer is at its peak and there was no electricity when I came home. My father told me that power was down from morning. I called electricity office to check on the status. Here is the conversation,

Me: Hello
Electricity office guy: Hello, electricity office

Me: We don’t have power in area “xyz”
Electricity office guy: We have switched off electricity in the entire “abc” area

Me: Why? What happened?
Electricity office guy: We are painting the transformer

Me: eh? painting? oh! When will it be over?
Electricity office guy: No idea, probably by evening

As you can guess, power came back after 12 hours of painting! You can imagine how challenging it is to run a business around here

For personal tax payers, budget this year turned out to be depressing. No tax limit increase even though inflation has gone up. Yesterday I came across this funny look at tax system. In Kerala context, this can be applied to lot many things! This is apparently written by David R. Kamerschen, Professor of Economics, University of Georgia.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until on day, the owner threw them a curve.

“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.”Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20,”declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got TEN times more than I!”
“That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

My office is about 25Kilometres away from my home. There is a company bus from a stop about 2 Kilometres from my home. If I am on time, I take this bus or otherwise I drive my Maruti 800 to office. 

Of late I am trying to take the bus more often. The morning 2KM walk is a good exercise for the body and mind! Bus starts at 7:45, so I start around 7:30 from home. It is a pleasant time to walk - cool weather and plenty of fresh air

This short walk of 15 minutes is a good time to reflect on the life. Today as I was walking, I noticed a mother scolding her young child. The child is refusing to go to school. Mother tells him - “I will call the police and let them take you”. Suddenly child was very afraid and he became submissive.

This reminded me my first visit to UK. One of the things that surprised me most was the fact that british generally had no fear of their police. They respect them, but fear? - I doubt it. This is just opposite to India or Kerala where Police has a very bad and fearsome reputation. They do command some respect, but most people consider them as some kind of monsters.

Now the people themselves are to blame for this. Indiscipline is so part of our life that only a fearsome police force can control us. It is the fear of police that keeps most of the anti social activities in check. 

Recently there were some attempts to give a humanistic face to Kerala Police. Some videos were made  by public relations department which showed how politely police should handle people. When it was publicly screened, people were laughing it off. It was as if people expect the police to be brutal!

In Malayalam, there is a saying - “yatha praja thatha raja”. This translates to - “as the ruled so the ruler”. I guess it applies to our police force as well.

Ebay India offers a lot of good electronics stuff. You can find a lot of stuff that is difficult to find in the neighbourhood electronics shop. It is also easy to pay (Paisapay) if you have an account in a “new generation” bank such as ICICI. But there are some things you need to be aware before buying any stuff on Ebay India. You should not use the number of positive feedback alone before making a decision. Here is why,

Final price may be different from item price
Since the competition is high, sellers tend to underprice the item and then increase delivery or other charges. So always check the total price you need to pay before making a decision.

Check the seller feedback
This is a no brainer. Sometimes you will see that people have given positive feedback even though there are problems with the stuff. Indians generally are ready to swallow minor problems! So read feedback carefully. An example is this positive feedback - “Checked everthing works fine, does warranty needs a card or the bill is enough?”. The real question he is trying to ask is - “Where is my warranty card?“.

Beware of the warranty trap
You will notice that a lot of items are advertised with a warranty. In reality, this is not manufacturer warranty. They don’t give any manufacturer warranty (I suspect some of the items are smuggled or refurbished items). What they mean is that if there is a problem, you need to send it to the seller and get it repaired! As you can imagine it is a big hassle.

Beware of pirated items
If you see something really cheap, chances are that it is a fake or an old item. This applies not only to games and software but even to memory cards (CF or SD cards)! There is no effective way to identify this beforehand. Leave it to your luck!

Never deal outside Ebay
If you started a deal in Ebay, close it in Ebay. Some tend to negotiate outside to minimize Ebay fees. But if something goes wrong, you are screwed. Also pay for your item using “PaisayPay”. This gives you some protection from rogue sellers.

I live in Kerala, a south indian state which boasts very high literacy rate. But intellectual property rights is not a big issue here. It is quite common for people to pirate software, movies and music.

Then came Rishiraj Singh. He is a senior inspector general (IG) in Kerala police and is known as a tough officer. So when he was put in charge of the anti-piracy cell it was natural that things would turn ugly.

Rishiraj singh started raiding CD/DVD shops frquently and lot of fake/pirated CDs were destroyed. But he then took it too far. He had sent notices to police offers saying that all video lending libraries are illegal! CD/DVD lending library owners filed a petition in the Kerala high court and high court ruled that lending libraries can operate as per law. But the matter is not yet closed and the whole issue is a hot debate in Kerala.

Copyright law is intended to protect innovation. It ensures that somebody’s hardwork is not stolen and sold. Obviously lending videos is a completely different issue. If we apply the same law to books, all existing book libraries will have to be closed!

I did a quick look at the Indian copyright act (1957). Now here is a paragraph from the act.

51.When copyright infringed:- Copyright in a work shall be deemed to be infringed —
b) when any person —
(i) make for sale or hire, or sells or lets for hire, or by way of trade displays or offers for sale or hire, or

This statement indicates that video lending libraries (and book libraries) are illegal if we strictly apply the law. But again, if we apply Indian law strictly, atleast 90% of the population will be in jails

But there is some reference to book library in the law.

The following acts shall not constitute an infringement of copyright, namely…
(o) the making of not more than three copies of a book (including a pamphlet, sheet of music, map, chart or plan) by or under the direction of the person in charge of a public library for the use of the library if such books is not available for sale in India;

I think an amendment is required to clearly provide an exemption to libraries(video and books). It is pretty obvious that if someone likes a movie or an audio album, he will buy it rather than take it on rent frequently! I don’t think libraries will have any impact on the revenue streams available to copyright owners.