What I Learned

The other day, I was discussing with a friend, about using solar power at large scale, considering the huge potential India has for solar power generation. India has great potential and Rajasthan, Gujarat alone can take care of all India requirement (Evacuation infrastructure to be planned and executed). For rooftop solar power generation like at parking lots, airports, bus ports, commercial buildings, canals, malls, and railway stations (all rooftops), just need regulatory support called "Net Metering". I feel, though net-metering would be ideal, and is required for large scale production of solar energy and requires regulatory support, and hence it may take a few more years as government typically takes its own sweet time for any regulation to pass. I feel we should strive to meet all out energy needs using Solar power and it may happen soon with falling prices of panels and improving technology! I have a dream of having zero electric bill at home and office and d

I restarted swimming after a gap of many years, thanks to my son, Om, as he is learning to swim these days. While swimming this morning, I was looking at all the half-naked co-swimmers in the pool and wondering about their names, religion, sexual orientation etc., and I knew none of this about them. Still I was there in the open pool with them with minimum clothing required. For national integration, we should promote and encourage swimming across the country. Everybody in the pool is naked with bare minimum clothing. So, most of the physical barriers between us are gone. We hardly know anybody’s name, cast, religion and other attributes except that they are fellow humans who love to swim. The more we swim together, more we live together as humans. We should make swimming our national sport. It may even help reduce water pollution and increase water conservation as people will have more emotional connect with water as a vital resource beyond drinking and bathing. We all s

I was a booth volunteer on booth 52 (Tilak Vidyalay, Dhantoli) in Nagpur on April 10th when polling for 2014 General elections took place in Nagpur. We came across many voters having valid voter ID cards but their names were missing from the voter list provided by the election commission. They were moving from one booth to another to check their names in the list. These voters could not cast their votes in the election in spite of having valid IDS. Next day we read in the newspapers that there are about 60000 voters whose names are missing from the list in Nagpur. I request the election commission of India to look into the matter and correct the voter list ASAP. On a different note, currently polls are being done in phases and I heard that the EVMs will be stored at the safe and secured place to be opened on the day of counting. How about attaching data/SIM cards to EVMs to securely transfer voting data to a central computer server at the end of the voting day so that the data for a

When I see proliferation of digital devices and increasing use of those in e-learning, I wonder if the generations a few years later would be writing with hands or using digital devices. I guess, the biggest sacrifice for using digital technologies would be our ability to write with hand and pen. Manual writing may become an art-form like painting or a sport like horse riding, archery and shooting. Pen may join swords, guns, tape cassettes, floppy discs and CDs in museums a few years from now. It may join calligraphy as a special skill set one learns out of interest than out of a need.

After reading the report of the committee to recommend data format for furnishing of credit information to CICs, below are a few of my comments. 1.       The report repeats many of its recommendations several times and could be made concise to save time for a reader 2.       How about recommending making CIR available on mobile devices of consumers who have subscribed for those? 3.       How about a  separate value added product for consolidated CIR for a whole family living at the same address? This may make it easy for CIs to get CIR for a family seeking credit jointly. 4.       Similarly,  How about a  Commercial CIR for a group of companies run by members of a family, as a separate value added product? 5.       Wherever possible, with their consent in loan application forms, how about providing links to social media profiles of users to CICs and into CIRs? This may help CIs learn more about a borrowers’ ‘likes’, 'circles' etc. for better informed decision maki