What I Learned

Are you struggling to find developers with expertise on Java technology platform? You are not alone! Many companies with legacy or new software systems to be maintained or developed using Java technologies are experiencing a similar situation. They are also struggling to keep their Java developers from leaving for greener postures due to a surge in demand for Java developers. I am observing this trend for last about 12 months before venturing into writing about it with confidence. Today, the situation looks similar to the one for COBOL developers during Y2K crises in 1999. There was acute shortage of developers with expertise on mainframe technologies like COBOL, AX400 and CICS. Emerging and newer technologies like Java script frameworks like Bootstrap, JQuery; Big Data technologies like MongoDB and Hadoop, and mobile apps development on Android and iOS are competing with Java EE, and offer alternatives to developers to make their career in. These newer technologies make i...

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 ...

Below is an idea for developing a location-based mobile app. In India, RBI allows customer of any bank to use ATM of any other bank to withdraw money, check balance, get a small statement of account etc. Banks are supposed to settle the transactions between them and pay each other some fee when their customer uses ATM of another bank (similar to telecom companies paying landing charges). So, banks incur a cost when their customer uses ATM of another bank, which they recover from the customer as transaction fee (free up to 5 transactions from ATMs of another bank). The proposed solution would detect if a customer of a bank is standing within 5 meters (configurable) of an ATM of another bank and would proactively send SMS to the customer with address of the nearest ATM of the bank where the customer has an account. This way, a bank may save money by informing their customers about their nearest ATM when a customer is likely to use ATM of another bank. The bank using the sol...

Though I am not an expert in banking, I am wondering why we can’t have a common bank account for multiple asset classes like different currencies, gold and silver. If possible, also stocks in the same account? This may bring a lot of dormant wealth like gold and some foreign currency lying in households into the banking system. This makes even more sense in a country like India that is largest consumer of gold globally where huge amount is converted from currency to gold and silver every year. We may also allow an account holder overdraw cash by automatically marking a lien on the gold or silver held in her account. This way, loan against gold and silver may be automated for banked population. This may provide flexibility to an account holder and safe lending for banks. Rate of interest may vary based on the asset class (cash, gold or silver) and currency, as part of business rules for the account. This may also encourage financial inclusion by providing depositors a cho...

My 3 learnings from AAP’s success in Delhi … 1.        Being stubborn for a right cause is good. Conviction! 2.        Agreeing to disagree, with elders (Annaji) on approach to solving an issue is key to success 3.        Understand the difference between the cause/goal and means is key to focus on the goal and not on means as long as the means are clean!

After many years, since childhood days, I feel like dancing on the street again today! Seeing Arvind Kejriwal as a Chief Minister of Delhi is like a dream come true for many like me who wholeheartedly supported the cause he fought for. In fact it was my own cause that he was fighting for. It is so proud to see something that we all believed in, succeed against so many odds and skeptics. I feel almost as if I won the election in Delhi and I am partly responsible for the victory of AAP! AK truly gave a voice and a movement to many like me who are against corruption but didn't have the courage, family support and leadership qualities required to pull on a fight as big as this! Even after winning 28 seats and being short of a majority to form the government, the way AAP team handled the pressure and made the right decisions is commendable. I am so proud to be a small part of the India Against Corruption movement and AAP! It is my victory in Delhi and I am sure ...

We have a strong relationship for over 3 years with a reputed client, with 2 mission critical systems delivered and being maintained by us. We get multiple repeat orders from them every year. I thank them for their business. We were recently restricted from bidding for a relatively large project by the client saying that we are too small to bid for the project. The BRD for the project is written by us. This almost felt like a slap for providing delighting service to the customer over years at a price no one can beat! I don’t know how to react and hence this blog post. The lesson I learned from this is that its not always timely service at reasonable cost with good technical capabilities (overall, proven track record) and personal relationships, that help you grow. There are other factors at play beyond pure value-proposition that determine the choice of a vendor. Immediate reaction to this was that we increased our pricing to make sure we increase our profitability, as that i...

I am perplexed with all the hoopla around Agile methodology in IT Services industry. I know the industry thrives on a new  wave of jargon every few years but sometimes we need to ask ourselves if it really makes sense to create this much ado about something, as if there is a new life-form arrived from somewhere in the universe! To me, Agile is just a natural way of developing software that we all did while learning programming in college or elsewhere. While buying a car how many of us bother what methodology was followed to manufacture it? Or what methodology or technology is followed for building a new building or bridge as long as we get it done on time? Do we ask the way concrete will be mixed or the bricks will be built or the grade of steel used or type of pipes used? I am not sure. We focus on results while relying on the developer for this knowledge and expertise. Don’t we? Is anybody in the industry promising results and outcome on time by following whatever meth...

मेरी पहली हिंदी कवीता. भाषा कवीता ने खुद चुनी, मैने सिर्फ कागज पर उतारा है। जिंदगी फिर आज एक चौरहे पर खडी है ... कुछ साथी बिछुडे, कुछ नये जुडे कुछ समीकरण बने, कुछ बिगडे आज फिर एक मोड चुनना है सही या गलत, वक्त पर छोडा है कुछ पाया, कुछ खोया बहुत कुछ सिखा, बदला नजरिया आज फिर कुछ फैसले करने है प्राथमिकताएं बदलनी है फिर एक कदम बढाना है कुछ नया कर दिखाना है फिर खुदको साबीत करना है औरो की तो पर्वा नहि, पर ....... फिर अपनो कि तसल्ली के लिये कुछ कर दिखाना है

Ever wondered why free float indices have become so popular of late, particularly, with increasing proliferation of ETFs? Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are based on the concept of ‘passive investing’ by just following an underlying benchmark for investment, to reduce cost of research and investment decisions. Simply put, ETF are mutual fund units whose portfolio mimics the composition of a benchmark index like S&P500 by investing in stocks that form the index in the same proportion as the weightage of these stocks in the index. This way, performance of the fund fluctuates with the index performance. ETFs provide investors with facility of a mutual fund with Liquidity like stocks to invest or divest at will in the market. ETFs are the primary customers for licensing indices. What is free float – free float or investible weight of a stock is the percentage of the total issued shares of a stock that is available for trading or investment (floating) in the market. This factor...

Let me start with a disclaimer that I am not an expert in Banking or Finance. In fact, as my family and some of my friends know, I am pretty bad at handing and managing money. Having admitted that, while thinking about subprime crisis and reading about ponzi schemes and loan defaults by some of the well known so-called Indian industrialists, I started wondering if the idea of lending and borrowing and the greed is the root cause of all this evil. Being a hardcore Hindu, the best thing I like about Islam, is the principle that lending and borrowing for interest are sins! Perfect! I think at least half the financial troubles in the world may disappear if just this one rule is put in place. If not complete ban at least there has to be a ceiling on the amount that can be borrowed or lent, to help in case of emergencies, and education for deserving student. Below are some of the consequences I could think of, of such a move. Farmers in India may stop committing suicide be...

Today while studying geography, my son, Om asked me about Earth’s orbit around the Sun, the distance earth travels around the sun in a year. I didn't remember it and hence I searched on Google and read it on Wikipedia within a few seconds (many thanks to the Internet, the Web, Google and Wikipedia, and to the people who created these technologies and sites – this would have easily taken me at least over an hour without these to buy/find a book and read the information). The answer is … hold your breath, the Earth rotates around the Sun at the speed of 30 Kms/second (1800 KMs/hour) to cover a distance of about 946,080,000 KMs in a year, while rotating around its own axis at 25 KM/second (1500 KMs/hour)! ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_orbit ). Now I know why they say, fact is stranger than fiction! Facts are anytime more surprising, fascinating, amazing than fiction. Who needs fiction to get amused? And this is just one example! The world is full of such astonish...

I explaining how what is market capital, market cap index, free float or investible weight, adjusted market cap, index divisor, formula for computing market index etc.

Now since differences of opinion are public (which is a sign of an intellectually matured society), I got thinking about whose path seems more correct at India Against Corruption, Annaji or Arvindji. Good people replacing bad ones in the parliament, seems to be the only practical way to clean the political ‘system’ to me and hence I support the path of political alternative chosen by Arvindji. I  am sure at the same time that Annaji also has an elderly role to play to ensure that people who are good today don’t become corrupt tomorrow. So, we need both. If Mamta, Maya, Raj and Jagan can form separate political parties what’s wrong with an Arvind forming one? At least Arvind has a proven track record of activism and being absolutely clean, transparent and open! Aren’t these qualities required in the politics today for a change? As Gandhiji said, you must be the change you want to see in the world! If it requires giving a political alternative, so be it. And we are doing thi...

Being a studious one :-), for an assignment from our real estate firm in the family, over the weekend I read guidelines by the Indian ministry of environment and forests for environment clearance of building, construction, township and area development projects in various states of India . The guidelines provide a standardized process and requirements for environment impact analysis of these projects. It is heartening to see such a comprehensive document made available by a government ministry. It will help reduce subjectivity in the environment clearance process across 25 states that have formed State Environment Impact Assessment Authorities (SEIAA) and state export appraisal committees (SEAC). The guidelines make 2 categories of projects. Building and construction projects, and township and area development projects. Building and construction projects involve construction of one or more standalone buildings sans the infrastructure development while Township and area developme...

Here is my response to all who call Anna undemocratic. What was parliament doing for last 42 long years? Parliament itself is responsible for reducing its own sanctity by being inactive on this issue of corruption for so long! People of this country have given enough time to the parliament and successive governments to ACT on this matter and now only thing acceptable is ACTION and NOT JUST WORDS and that is not negotiable. Politicians are hiding behind the parliament and constitution as an excuse for inaction and to buy more time to continue their own corrupt practices as long as they can. Anna is right when he asks why suddenly the parliament got concerned about his health after 10 days of his fast. It is only because of the power of the number of people supporting him made the parliament and politicians take him and the movement seriously. We have been cheated long enough and now we refuse to provide more time to the government and the parliament. Just in case the politicians of Ind...