Communist America?

A forward from Shyam made my day today :-D

Bet on the stand Obama is going to take ;-)

CM's wife drives into polling booth!!

Today's WTF moment-
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Badals-wife-apologises-for-driving-into-polling-station/articleshow/4494829.cms

Dance of Democracy!!

'Dance of Democracy' surely is a catchy punch line to describe the Genaral Elections of the world's largest democratic country!! (TOI)

And today starts the First Phase (April 16th) of the grand competition!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_general_election,_2009

Follow the elections with Google

Now that is one revolutionary effort on behalf of Google for the upcoming Indian Elections.
http://www.google.co.in/intl/en/landing/loksabha2009/

A small step for Google and a giant leap for India in the direction of e-Elections.

Sock and Awe 3 !!

After American President George W. Bush and the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, its our Home Minster Chidambaram's turn now.
http://ibnlive.in.com/photogallery/1316-0.html#view_start

The trend seems to have really caught on.... Wonder which brand of shoe it was. Will there be another Sock and Awe game released with Chidambaram in it?

Too tired about 3 tiers!!

One of the most touturous things to ever happen in Indian Railways recently is the introduction of extra side berths. ie, previously each coupee area had six berths and 2 side berths (total 8 people). Some smart alec devised a plan to increase the number of people travelling in each bogey thereby increasing the revenue. He decided to introduce a third berth on the side; obviously he was not one who travelled much by train I assume.

The idea was put into effect from Jnauary and the extra seats were installed in a lot of trains. But the way they reorganized the numbering of the seats in the train was done in the most slip-shoddy manner. Usually numbers are put in 3 places:

a) on the side walls of the coupee indicating the sleeping berths ie. upper, middle and lower

b) same way on walls of the side berths also indicating the sleeping berths ie, upper and lower

c) just above the lowered seats indicating the order in which the people can sit.

After the 3rd side berth had been fixed in the trains, all the above 3 seat numberings were done in 3 different ways. Example a person having seat number 44 had no.44 written in marker ink in 3 totally different places. Added to this, the seat allocation in the tickets also became a big mess as the manual system of ticket booking did not match with the electronic system (tickets booked through IRCTC websites). Many seat numbers were duplicated!!!

This created a lot of confusion and havoc among the travellers and during those couple of days and even the TTC was also missing!!! (fearing for his life maybe) which just had the travellers settling in different places wherever the fellow passengers allowed. I had reason to travel a couple of times in January and it was well after midnight when finally everyone sorted out their differences and went to sleep.

Another issue which came up due to this new system was that it brought about extreme discomfort for the passesngers getting the side berths. The person on the top had to lie almost sqashed near the roof of the coach and the side seats were very uncomfortable for people who were taller than 5'9ft. Only children could be expected to lie comfortably in the side upper berths.

All these problems resulted in the entire idea being valued as a too chaotic and futile and the Railway department decided to revert back to the old system. They just simply decided not to use the middle berths. Doing that will avoid the problem of confusion but still it wont solve the problem of the stifling side upper berth. Now every TTC who comes gives the passengers a different order to sit and to avoid any more confusion the people dont stand to fight with each other. They just shift places.

The problem persisted for a couple of more weeks and by now everyone has got used to being back to the old system. But now there is a convenience for any extra people travelling in the train like RAC. They can just snuggle in one of the extra middle berths. :-)

http://www.keralatips.org/2008/08/07/indian-railways-to-offer-more-torture-adds-extra-berth/

(Here is a person who is facing the same ongoing ruckus as myself every time he travels. I have taken the photograph of the berth from this blog.)

http://www.enidhi.net/2007/12/indian-railway-goes-crazy-adds-extra.html

(A very detailed article)

http://indianrailways.informe.com/forum/retro-fitting-of-side-middle-berths-in-sl-and-3-ac-coaches-dt181.html

(The official indian railways forum with passengers baying for the blood of railway personnel!!)

Evolving e-Governance in India

The power of the net and its hold over the youth of today has made every political party sit-up, take notice, and refresh their websites!! There are facebook groups, orkut communities, fan followings etc all over the place. Has india reached a stage where it is ready to finally acknowledge that the internet has become an integral part of our lives? The government certainly seems to have realised it. Now with the election process coming to a fever pitch my inbox is getting flooded with all sorts of emails about political parties and their candidates and about groups that have now woken up at this last moment to create awareness and fight against certain issues prevalent in politics today.

The present government seems to have taken pains in creating a number of websites. But they have hardly bothered to give them any publicity or advertisment. So they remain less known and hardly used. I hope they are not classifed Top Secret!!

Here just three very small ones:
http://pgportal.gov.in/ (Online Greivance Portal)
http://smartweb.keralamvd.gov.in/kmvdnew/services/registration/Dereg_details.php (Kerala RTO)
http://125.17.140.50/BPSFineDetails/BPSFineDetails.aspx (Bangalore RTO)

The Kerala government has a very good and comprehensive website http://www.kerala.gov.in/ they even have a section called 'Mail to Minister" :-P hmmppff... if u threaten to drop dead in front of them they wouldn't listen to your pleas against an issue; so the very thought that pains would be taken to redress an issue after reading emails seems extremely funny.

Thrissur district has 2 official websites!! One maintained by the Kerala Government and one by the Central Government!! and both seem to be equally futile :-P anyway they are not used much by anyone.. so then whats the big deal ... right??

http://www.tsr.kerala.gov.in/ & http://thrissur.nic.in/

Will there ever be a time when we will never even have to step out of our homes to get government stuff done??

My personal Favorite website is http://www.irctc.co.in/ It has really truly revolutionized our ticket booking process. Hoping other websites will have achieve almost same or even wider reach than it.

PS: Praying that Jaagore reaches their target of a billion votes!! :-)

Liquor saves the day!! Now becomes 'Gandhi-Red'.

“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Well, the government didnt do anything and Mallya showed us what he was capable of doing, and now that has solved the problem of who would end up owning Gandhiji's long lost articles!!!

Now Mallya owns a part of the Mahatma; or rather thats what he wanted to do. As he doesnt have a chance to do the former, he settled to buy/ grab what he could afford to at a given moment. He has declared he wants to donate it to the Indian Government and is right now looking very smug in between all the hype and hoopla.

Maybe he wants to stick Red Kingfisher tags onto the specs.

Maybe insert special soft red colour leather wrap for it in the specs-case.

Or maybe the government offered him a special advertising space for UB group in and around the museum where the items would be kept for display in the future.

Anyway, the good news is that Gandhijis memorabilia has been bought with liquor-money, the one thing he was always opposed to second only to his abbhorance for Violence, and the government is patting itself for the 'efforts' put in.

Oh!! How far Gandhijis 'Bharat' has moved away from his ideals and dreams!!

Phone-a-loo-loo

In school a couple of my classmates used to take a method called Loo-ing- A variation of copying. The textbooks/notebooks were kept in the school loos instead of keeping tiny chits hidden all over the pace or risking keeping the book under the desk. Once the question paper has been distributed the student would then ask for a loo-break. Take a peek at all the important points and rush back to jot down everything before it is forgotten all over again. Consequently, an upset stomach is not a rare scene in an exam hall :-D

It seems the Election Commissioner Navin Chawla was also a good hand at Loo-ing at school and maybe college also. But hes special as he managed to perfect the art to be applied into his profession also!!!
http://www.rediff.com/news/2009/feb/02chawlas-loo-breaks-led-to-congress-phone-calls-cec.htm
This article would bring a smile to anyones face :-) Maybe the Congress leadership can build a new educative loo in their head quarters to further the art and training important people to specialize in it!!

Bye-Bye-Bush

As the controversial pair of shoes continue to make it to headlines all over the world, here's another piece of news :-) a person who's happy about the incident for a totally different reason!!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/22/turkey-george-bush-shoe

Sock and Awe

George Bush got aimed at with a shoe only 2 days back and theres a computer game of the same doing its rounds in the web :-) Now you dont have to be Muntadar al-Zaidi to aim a shoe at Bush and the best part is the game helps you to take a better aim at him than the Iraqi Journalist. You just cant miss :-)
Her's what yahoo has to say about the game not the incident!!http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/-quot-sock-and-awe-quot-pits-players-against-president/1274922
You can download the Excel version of Sock and Awe which i got as a fwd from the below link :
http://www.4shared.com/file/76664810/f99c5f45/Shoe_Game.html

God's own e-State

That should be kerala governments next e-aim i guess, but for now its funded and run by UNESCO.
http://kannur.entegramam.gov.in/
They have managed to get onto the web every possible detail of even small consequence of a typical kerala village. like even the coconut climbers contact number!!!! how to get house help. jobs available in houses in the village etc. its all there for all to access.
For a start its a very good effort. As about 10 'gramams' of Kannur has been put on the web thru this initiative.
If turns out to be a success then we can hope to see more of such sites coming up soon... :-)