String Theory

Increasing usage of English both as a language in business communications and informal communication has given scope of using the language in machinist, twisted and contorted way.
I may have to warn my readers that despite good speaking and writing skills in English i am no fan of the language. Coming to computers there are times when computers spew out terse error messages, welcome messages or communication generated by programs. Many people do not "get it" when computers spew out such messages as they lack personal touch or any sort of clue that the computer is done with processing and has generated the response.

We can see similar pattern when celebrities hire professionals who manage their image/reputation. Press and media always want to get sound bytes from people involved in any incident. Professionals are hired to give out statements or issue clarifications on behalf of their clients. They just read out text which often gives a different version of the matter which protects the interests of their customers. I call this deployment of a string. A classic example that i recall is when A R Rahman(the Mozart from madras) spoke to the media, in his initial career days, he was projected as a quiet and demure person, even going to the extent of being dumb. Image consultants had a torrid time convincing people that the composer does indeed speak.

People always want to be shown in good light or like to be praised. Smt Sonia Gandhi and Pappu-G struggle so much to deliver inspiring speeches, that they are being ridiculed in the social media. Their struggles with delivering speeches including the infamous cheat sheet, is a talk of the town. Indians struggle with speaking good English or getting the American accent right. Sonia Gandhi struggles with getting her Hindi pronunciation right and Nandan Nilekani(Creator of aadhaar, having stood for elections and lost) struggles to speak in Kannada. Linguistically challenged people they may be.

Teachers like me in schools and colleges face a dilemma when it is required to teach the definition of something. Sentences upon sentences to be mugged by the students aka virus style(definition of a machine) in the movie "three idiots". It looks as though people have trains of strings/dialogues/quotes instead of thoughts in their mind. In a study which appeared in the paper today it's found that people are developing amnesia by being addicted to the internet. They don't need to remember any facts when they can just google about it. Information overload is somehow rendering people disabled(intellectually).
Contests are being conducted based on novelty of search strings on google.
Coming back to deployment, we all have been to colleges and been afraid of the ragging. Some of us have been ragged. Once upon a time, the ragged ones were the ones who ragged. Ragging involved "Instructing juniors" to do certain things. This verbal communication of instructions is what i call deployment, obviously against ones wishes.
There can be another kind of deployment a much more positive one by a leader. A leader like narendra modi spells out certain instructions in the form of plain speak or cry or a slogan.
Coming to software, strings are considered to be the basics of any language. In computers strings can be made up of ones and zeros and taken eight or sixteen at a time be interpreted as alphabets or digits. Deployment in some sense of code/software/program is similar to what i described earlier. When software is deployed it leads us to a system. A software/hardware combo.
In one of my classes i joked about a Hindi movie dialogue(again a string) which goes like this=> After having been beaten black and blue paresh rawal says government should make a system, a code of conduct for criminals. Hit where they can hit. Why do they hit where they should not(in the groin).
Obviously with little humor in the example i did not get the students interested in a system.
On another day when i needed to teach software architecture, i had to explain that a system needs to be taken apart and its parts and their interrelationships are to be studied. I gave an example of kumbalakayi or pumpkin in kannada. On auspicious occasions in olden days it was a practice to sacrifice animals. Nowadays they fill red liquid in a pumpkin and throw it on a stone to cut it to pieces. I said do the same for a system. Throw a system on to a big stone and let it break into pieces. Then study the parts. Very little humor again.
Coming back, in list processing/predicate logic every sentence is associated with a truth value and a grammar is a rule to form compound sentences or to deduce from a given sentence(predicate logic). Machines are very close to borrowing intelligence from humans. So we are at a point in history where we should think about all those spheres of life where machine learning and robotics would impact us.

I have gone through books on string theory in physics too. To compound matters further all matter is supposed to be formed of strings. What you are reading is a string too.
I don't have a particular style of writing and agree that there are great writers and poets in this world who create magic out of strings. Perhaps trains of thoughts in our minds too have a music or symphony that can be deciphered some day.

Advantages of Internet banking, mobile banking, wallets and apps

The world around us is enveloped with gadgets of all kinds. We use mobile apps to travel new places, use internet banking to send money to others, mobile banking to do the same with frugal technology and wallets a newly emerging class of bank accounts used to transact for small amounts.

Trends suggest that internet banking is growing at more than 30% in India and the number of unique users crossed 40 million recently(June,2015). This number is nearly 20% of the regular internet users in the country which has crossed 200 million. A majority of the internet users are accessing the internet through their mobiles.

More than 100 million Indians are on Facebook. Internet access remains way too slow and expensive. Its been only five or ten years since common men and women in India other than techies started using the internet.

Apart from keeping in touch with friends via social networks people are using internet for net banking which has caused a lot of excitement in the banking industry. People don't visit banks as much as they would otherwise and there is a perceptible fall in branch footfalls. Tech savvy investors are dabbling in stock markets and benefiting immensely from internet for transactions.

For a large number of internet users who travel in trains, online railway ticket booking is a very useful activity. Several travel and hotel room booking sites like makemytrip, travelguru etc have made travel easier.

Mobile bill payment, Insurance premium payment, movie ticket booking, air ticket booking, electricity bill payments, property tax payments and a variety of  unheard uses of internet banking has made it a must have. I advise those unwilling to take the plunge to try it soon.

Online shopping sites like flipkart, amazon, ebay, snapdeal, myntra etc are doing roaring business. New startups with unique concepts are being launched every day. Students of computer science are gung ho about android app development and working hard to get premium positions in the industry.

Sky is the limit for the digital revolution currently played out and its causing lot of changes in the lifestyle of people. Digital India with the slogan of presence less and paper less governance promises the sky for the people. Aadhaar has been a mixed success so far as its utility as a financial address is yet to be fully realized. It would be good to avoid the pitfalls and use this technology only for the benefits that it promises and not as a tool to harass or intimidate people.

National Informatics Center - At the forefront of innovation-Oh Really?

I just went to the national informatics center website casually thinking that it will just be another government website and what i found really enticed me. Project achievements in individual states and throughout the country looked like a hundred revolutions in a micro universe of its own.

E-Governance projects of the government of India have only demonstrated that things can be done and that too despite the system than because of it. That these projects have been successful shows that change can be brought about even by the so called "inefficient" and "lethargic" bureaucracy.

Government departments to share source codes of E-governance apps that they developed. This is a news that should warm the cockles of the heart of any E-Governance enthusiast.

However, Our government is exhibiting myopic vision by relying on the national informatics center for each software that they need. What they should actually be doing is to call for tenders and award to the lowest bidder. A local ecosystem of software developers will emerge who will actively involve in ideating and conceiving E-Governance projects.

The problems of each project implemented by NIC is that it appears more like a technology demonstrator and not some project that was meant to be used. Despite working since so many years on digitizing PDS system progress in many states has been tardy. It seems as though computerization still is resisted in government circles.

There are a few bright spots in the administration like Shri. R S Sharma, Secretary in the Department of IT.
I would like to talk about a few remarkable achievements of the NIC.
Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System is one such project. This project if implemented by every department right down to government schools then it can bring in a lot of efficiency.

Others like Bhoomi project in karnataka and clones in other states called by a variety of names if implemented on a national scale with inputs from ISRO and all departments, it would be awesome.

Some of the projects like the dissemination of information during 2014 general elections are the ones where NIC likes to pat its own back. 

NIC has developed software for automation of courts but this is not being taken up for further enhancement. 

NIC has implemented software for automation in government hospitals. 

NIC has developed software to register marriages. 

It has developed software to register land records. 

It is behind the Direct Benefit Transfer program and the software that supports the DBTL(world's largest social sector scheme) was developed by NIC.

You just name any field the government works in and more often than not you will find an NIC application running.

Please visit this site for more info=> http://www.nic.in/projects

This site mentions about nearly 1096 projects that NIC has dipped its fingers into.

It just needs a grand visionary like Narendra Modi to transform these standalone applications into a single seamlessly unified system served from government owned data centers(cloud).

Booster dose for the economy

Narendra modi government has got down to business with nearly 9 months of his government. There are several moves he made that have caused a great bull run in the market and several more steps expected.

1) JanDhan Yojana:

Within five months between Aug,2014 to Jan,2015 the government got 11 crore poor households to open bank accounts.

2) Aadhaar linked Direct Benefit Transfer:

What congress could not do the narendra modi government succeeded in doing. Nearly 80% of LPG consumers have become cash transfer compliant within a short span of five months from Nov,2014 to March,2015. Not even a whimper of opposition. Commercial cylinder sales have boomed. Diversion reduced.

3) Swacch Bharath Abhiyaan:

There is slow progress on this but the people are getting more aware. Waste segregation and cleanliness are being given top priority. Construction of toilets, cleaning of the ganga all have been given funds.

4) Coal Auctions:

States are going to benefit immensely with auctions of coal mines. CAG estimates of loss of revenue is found to be grossly underestimated. I just don't understand why Iron Ore and other mineral mining licenses are also not auctioned.

5) Spectrum Auctions:

There will be a telecom boom very soon with telco's getting larger blocks of spectrum. 3G data volumes are doubling every six months. ARPMs of telecom players is on the rise.

6) Insurance Bill:

FDI in insurance and pension sector is raised from 26% to 49% and this will lead to huge amounts of FDI come into this sector.

7) Labour Reforms:

Making hiring and firing easier is good for the industry. It raises productivity of the workers and also causes firms to be fitter. Many states are getting on board on this.

8) Liberal share of taxes for the states:

Share of states in the central taxes is raised. This will lead to more money with the states and help them in better management of their economies/budget.

9) Ammendments to the Land Aquisition Bill:

Much needed ammendments of those provisions which were anti-industry need to be made. Keenly following the developments on this.

10) Dilution of the FSA:

Food Security Act went overboard with its 69% population beneficiary cutoff. This is proposed to be pruned to 40%. Better targeting using aadhaar enabled DBT is proposed.

11) Budget:

Lots of incentives to the middle class to save. A few concessions here and there. Nothing much otherwise. Still the general and railway budget need not do anything as most of the steps/changes are being done outside the budget.

12) IRCTC to become like flipkart:

Nearly everyone who browses internet in India has an account with the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation in case you did not know. So this portal which is always busy is not upto the mark in terms of handling traffic or monetizing its traffic. Railways can make big bucks by launching a wallet for purchases of ticket and also trying to branch into retail-shopping.

Striving for legitimacy

I remember a dialogue by govinda(A popular actor of bollywood in the 90's) in some movie of his where he declares first two floors of a multistory building as illegal. In india a majority of people err and brush the law in a wrong way either wantonly or due to ignorance.

I remember another incident where a son of a leading political figure of yesteryear declare that his father is illegitimate, after DNA tests confirm that he indeed is his fathers son, something which his mother claimed all along, and his father denied.(illegitimate father of a legitimate son)

Free dictionary defines illegitimate as

a. Being against established or accepted rules and standards

In India, Seemingly lawless state and constant media hype over issues big and small has resulted in more awareness among the people.

People strive for legitimacy and want things like money, land, buildings and marriages to be pucca (legal,regular holding,legitimate ownership and solemnized by the society respectively).

Most of the agricultural land in the country is documented in paper which is getting eaten by pests fast. Digitization of land records is seeing resistance from landlords. Buildings are getting constructed without any concurrence with plan.....

Without legitimate holding there is more orphan money. When black money gets created it gets used in lavish spending under constant fear of the law. Sahara episode showed that improper documentation and inadequate KYC lead to people loosing their hard earned money. Undocumented people without proper addresses(read land or buildings) are hard to trace. Supreme court is scratching its head over how it can return money taken(by Sahara)from people when even their names are not properly documented let alone addresses.

Aadhaar(unique identification number) can act as a financial address and a point in space which can map to a person on earth one to one. From there any money that person earns can be returned to him in case it needs to be. Not only this any land or building record with aadhaar number seeded will be easier to establish ownership of.
Hence many city corporations and transport departments etc are going for linking building records and driving licenses with UID-Aadhaar.

Digital India to rely on Aadhaar

The story so far is nothing short of a thriller. We had a change of government and the new government has broadened the scope of the aadhaar project.

Let me list out a few of the initiatives towards a greater reliance on aadhaar.

1) The big news is that the election commission has voted in favour of linking aadhaar with electoral rolls. I experienced it in the site www.nvsp.in. Possibly electronic voting may be introduced for the armed forces.

2) The other news is that passport office will speed up issuing passport for aadhaar card holders. Those with aadhaar cards are expected to get passport within 10 days and the time consuming police verification step is going to be undertaken after issuance of passport. Needless to mention if the PCC(Physical Police Verification-Police Clear Certificate) is not obtained then a passport may be revoked.

3) The budget is a very eagerly awaited exercise this month as it may spell out a new way of disbursing fertilizer subsidies. Kisan Credit Card, Soil Health Card, Aadhaar and other documents like the jan dhan account may be relied on to directly transfer fertilizer subsidy.

4) Cellular Operators Association of India(COAI) is piloting a method of issuing sim cards by instant aadhaar verification. The earlier method of filling up the Customer Acquisition Form(CAF) will be done away with.

5) UIDAI has started a new method of retrieving lost aadhaar cards. In this the biometric details of the person is taken and then a match is made in the database. Out of ten nearest matches demographic data of the person is entered and successively narrowed down to a perfect match. No information from the database is disclosed until the aadhaar number of the person is found.

6) Central government is scaling up the Aadhaar enabled Biometric Attendance System(AEBAS). March 1st is the deadline for all employees to get into the system.

7) Employees Provident Fund Organization(EPFO) has created a Universal Account Number(UAN) majorly relying on the aadhaar number. This UAN will not change even if the employee changes his job/employer. Namo government has decided to give back the 27,000 crore rupees accumulated in the inactive accounts of the PF offices back to its true holders. Number of claims for PF has increased in recent days and the PF offices across the country are currently overloaded with work/claims processing.

8) NPCI(National Payments Corporation of India) has piloted a new unified interface for payments linked with aadhaar number. This may use the details like the email id, mobile number and aadhaar number along with bank account number to wire money from one person to another.

9) Digitallocker.gov.in

This is a digital locker that can be opened using the aadhaar number/mobile phone combo. We will soon have 1GB of storage space per user to store important documents like certificates etc.

These are some major initiatives. Other pesky little uses the aadhaar is being put into are yet to emerge.
My earlier posts on aadhaar.... Poor Economics .... Giant Tsunami of aadhaar apps ..... Aadhaar Roundup-4

A few reasons for being proud of India on Republic Day Eve

1. IEEE has proved what has been a century old suspicion in the world scientific community that the pioneer of wireless communication was Prof. Jagdish Bose and not Marconi.

2. The Indian Software Industry has grown from a mere US $ 150 million in 1991-92 to a staggering US $ 5.7 billion in 1999-2000 a growth of 35 times. No other Indian industry has performed so well against the global competition. By 2010 this number has grown 14 times to 80 billion dollars.

3. India is the world’s second largest producer of small cars. It is the largest newspaper market in the world.

4. India has the largest number of news channel in the world. It is the fastest growing telecom market in the world and has the lowest call rates on earth.

5. World’s largest electronic ID program, the aadhaar is underway in India.

6. Bollywood with about 400 films every year is the largest centre of film production in the world.

7. India is the 3rd largest producer of solar photovoltaic cells in the world. India is the world’s 4th largest wind power user.

8. India is the largest producer of milk, cashew nuts, coconuts, tea, ginger, turmeric and black pepper, in the world. It also has the world’s largest cattle population (281 million). It is the second largest producer of wheat, rice, sugar, groundnut and inland fish.

9. By volume of pills produced, the Indian pharmaceutical industry is the world’s second largest after China.

10. India’s contribution to scientific research and innovation has been constantly rising since 2000 according to a study. The number of articles published in global science journals by Indians has increased from around 17000 in 2001 to more than 27000 in 2007.

11. India has the second largest pool of Scientists and Engineers in the World.

12. India Exported a record $35 billion worth of food and food products in the year 2013-14, the third largest exporter of food. In six years we will be number one.

Poor Economics and Food Subsidy

Book Excerpts from Poor Economics by Abhijit V Banerjee and Esther Duflo. While the book talks about things like healthcare, education, entrepreneurship, micro-credit, poverty etc but i did not find much about food. An omission. I have added something to this narrative which is a revolutionary approach to solving the problem of subsidy delivery.

Every year 9 million children die before their fifth birthday. A woman in sub-Saharan Africa has a one-in-thirty chance of dying while giving birth - in the developed world, the chance is one in 5,600. There are at least twenty-five countries, most of them in sub-saharan Africa, where the average person is expected to live no more than fifty-five years. In India alone, more than 50 million school-going children cannot read a very simple text.

The problem seems too big, too intractable. Students shown images of sick and dying people out of food shortages in Malawi donated more generously when a victim chosen randomly was shown. When told that the two images they were shown of had something special in them, and that people are more likely to donate to an identifiable victim, students donations more or less became the same. We feel our contribution will be a drop in the bucket, and that the bucket probably leaks.

This book is an invitation to think of the whole set of problems which when once properly identified and understood, can be solved one at a time. The western world is roughly divided into two groups, one lead by Jeffry Sachs, advisor to the United Nations, director of the Earth institute at Columbia University in New York City. He Says poor countries are poor because they are hot, infertile, malaria infested, often landlocked; this makes it hard for them to be productive without an initial large investment to help them deal with these endemic problems. But they cannot pay for the investments precisely because they are poor- they are in what economists call a “poverty Trap”.

The other side represented by William Easterly, who battles Sachs has become one of the most influential anti-aid public figures. Dambisa Moyo has joined her voice to Easterly's and both argue that aid does more bad than good: It prevents people from searching for their own solutions, while corrupting and undermining local institutions and creating a self-perpetuating lobby of aid agencies. The best bet for poor countries is to rely on one simple idea: When markets are free and the incentives are right, people can find ways to solve their problems. They do not need handouts, from foreigners or from their own governments. They say poverty is a white man's burden which he has to live with.

Whom should we believe? Rwanda received generous aid after the genocide and prospered. Now president Paul Kagame has started to wean the country off aid. Should we wait and watch for the final word to see if there is another economic downturn or consider the good that aid has done and lay pipes from the rich countries to the poor. There is data on a couple of hundred countries in the world to show that those that received more aid did not grow faster than the rest. Perhaps the opposite can be true too and that the aid helped them avoid major disaster, and things would have been much worse without it. We simply do not know; we are just speculating on a grand scale.

In the book authors try to answer if particular instances of aid did some good or not and nothing about whether aid is good or bad per se. Authors cannot say anything about efficacy of democracy but they have something to say about whether democracy could be made more effective in rural Indonesia by changing the way it is organized on the ground and so on.

What really matters is not so much were the money comes from, but where it goes. No one really disagrees that we should help the poor when we can. A philosopher observes that most people would willingly sacrifice a $1000 suit to rescue a child seen drowning in a pond and argues that there should be no difference between that drowning child and the 9 million children who, every year, die before their fifth birthday.

Philosophers agree that poverty leads to an intolerable waste of talent. Poverty is not just a lack of money; it is not having the capability to realize one's full potential as a human being. A girl from Africa may not get the nutrition to be the world-class athlete she might have been, or the funds to start a business if she has a great idea.

She could become sick and make traveling people from the developed world sick. Had she gone to school she might have turned out to be the person who invents a cure for a disease or perhaps, she would end up as a business tycoon employing thousands of others. And even if she doesn't what could justify not giving her a chance?

Implicit in the argument is that we know how to help people in distress. Yes we do, we know we need to supply education and health care in heavy doses, how to do them while turning the outcomes to your liking is the real matter. The point is simple: Talking of the problems of the world without talking about some accessible solutions is the way to paralysis rather than progress.

The book talks about malaria affecting millions in Africa and a simple solution of a bed net and the economics of its supply and demand. It asks, What is the best way to make sure that children sleep under bed nets?

Moyo tells the story of how a bed-net supplier was ruined by a free bed-net distribution program. When free distribution stopped, there was no one to supply bed nets at any price.

To shed light on this debate we need to answer three questions.
First, if people must pay full price(or at least a significant fraction of the price) for a bed net, will they prefer to go without?
Second, if bed nets are given to them free at some subsidized price, will people use them, or will they be wasted?
Third, after getting the net at subsidized price once, will they become more or less willing to pay for the next one if the subsidies are reduced in the future?

Significance of the book for India:

Products or services such as education or healthcare or micro credit are good to have but people do not seem to value them enough to demand larger public outlays. The problem is compounded by mediocre services currently being offered by the government health and education departments. Bed net protects us from diseases and its demand may fall if mosquitoes menace is tackled. Food is something which will never go out of demand.
Regarding food in the Indian context, our farmers are in distress.
The problem is manifold. Reducing farm incomes and land holding sizes due to sub-division among family members. Increasing number of landless laborers on farms, informal tenancy agreements and lack of tenancy registration. Water shortages and other environmental factors like drought and floods. Lack of soil testing and adequate use of fertilizers in appropriate ratios. Illiteracy of farmers and inability to shift to industry or services. Regulatory restrictions and monopolies in agricultural produce marketing yards. Overemphasis on rice and wheat production as a result of increasing MSPs year after year to the detriment of other crops.
If we were to help our, what would be the best way? They need help but the way we provide help matters. Food prices are a factor of demand and supply and due to vagaries of nature Indian Food Prices experience a lot of volatility. Farmers are at the mercy of the middlemen.
How can governments incentivize the markets to pay remunerative prices to the farmers unless it intervenes. A little bit about the context in which i speak needs to be told.
India has a large organization with multi-billion dollar budget to procure, store and release grains in the market. This organization called the Food Corporation of India(FCI) controls the market. Another purpose of this organization is to maintain a buffer of grains in case of shortages and export excess grains in case of bountiful harvest.
The problem is that FCI due to operational and budgetary constraints is not able to procure from all farmers across the country. It does major portion of wheat procurement from Punjab and Haryana and rice from the southern states. So some of the farmers are at the mercy of traders.
If FCI has to work effectively its losses have to be reduced. Major losses occur due to high prices at which FCI procures grains and low prices at which it sells them. Procurement prices and prices at which FCI issues(Issue price) grains to the states are both determined by the agriculture/food ministry. States manage the public distribution system through the fair price shops and the country as a whole has nearly only 450 thousand fair price shops. While market prices for food grains are higher fair price shops sell grains at lower rates. This naturally creates incentives for diversion. In poorer states there is large scale diversion and trucks laden with grains never reach the FPS. In some Fair Price Shops(FPSs), managers cheat too.
Technocrats have looked at the problem and suggested several measures. One of them being direct benefit transfer. Direct benefit transfer involves selling grains to customers at market rates and then getting a rebate into the bank accounts equal to the difference in the subsidized price and market rates. They argue that once grains move at market rates from the FCI to the consumer there is lesser incentive for diversion.
There are several opponents of the cash transfer idea. They argue that bank branches are scarce in the villages and the villagers would lose a days pay to travel to the nearest city to withdraw the benefits. Experience has suggested that people first have to go to the bank to withdraw money and then to the shop to purchase grains. A big country like India has only about 80 thousand bank branches out of which only 38 thousand are in rural areas. Another problem is power and telecom coverage is not available in all villages, something which is needed to operate the POS and in receiving the PIN. Some opponents contend that if money is transferred to accounts of the women in the household, women abuse would rise as most villagers are alcoholic and may spend this extra money on drinking. Another argument against DBT is that villagers fingerprints are worn out due to hard work and high biometric authentication failure may lead to some amount of corruption.
Regardless of the opposition the government thinks the DBT scheme works. An elaborate IT system to gauge demand and supply in real time would be needed. Aadhaar enabled PDS(AEPDS) would be one such system where the fair price shops dispense grains and create an electronic record of the sale. Servers would then read these records and authorize banks to disburse benefits to the correct beneficiary.

Randomized trials that are used in medicine to evaluate the effectiveness of new drugs can be tailored to answer certain questions regarding the design of this system. Research by NYU Stern professor Dr. Arun Sundararajan and NEC Faculty Fellow & Doctoral Coordinator & Professor Ravi Bapna of the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management has shown that UID is reaching the Underprivileged who had no previous IDs. Government has a few alternatives before itself. If you tinker with the food chain that is vital for the economy the damage that may happen may be unacceptable. So rather than supplant the market forces by an elaborate IT driven backbone why not explore other options to maximize choices that people have in procuring food. We could for example have competition for the fair price shops and let people buy food from private shops too while getting the subsidy in their account.

The idea that finance minister Mr. Arun Jaitley hinted is that procurement from the farmers will be made at minimum support prices and the goods move through the pipeline at market rates. At the point of sales the consumer pays the market rates and gets a subsidy in his bank account. Initially this would be done in cities with higher banking coverage. Progressively the scheme may be rolled out in the villages later.
Another problem related to food is that the government incurs heavy expenditure(nearly 72 thousand crores) on fertilizer subsidy, a vital ingredient for agriculture. Urea subsidies are a major component of this. Solution suggested here too is  DBT by increasing prices of urea to market rate(stopping subsidies) and subsequently increasing the MRP to a level at par with those of our neighboring countries. The fertilizer DBT is much more difficult to implement as the subsidy is given to the fertilizer producers and farmers are purchasing them from the market. Sales are not tracked. Fertilizer companies are lobbying with the government to start DBT in fertilizers as they stand to benefit by market price sales. Currently the fertilizer companies get paid the subsidy with months and sometimes years of delay. India is a large importer of fertilizers too. Several fertilizer manufacturers had closed factories due to losses. The modi government has successfully revived majority of the factories recently.

The government has also deliberated on paying farm subsidies directly to farmers at a rate of say Rs 4000/- per hectare of land holding. This means on an average farmers are going to get nearly 10k into their accounts annually(At an average holding of 2.5 hectare per farmer) to buy the expensive fertilizers. This dole may be tied to the farmer getting his soil tested every three years by making a soil health card. The problem is more than 60% of the laborers working in the fields do not own the farm. This subsidy may be pocketed by the landlord.

The Namo Govt has concentrated on increasing efficiency and reducing leakages in PDS by digitization. e-POS machines have been installed in most of the FPSes and aadhaar has been linked with all ration cards. Aadhaar linking has reduced scope for ghost lifting. There was talk of BAPU (biometric authenticated physical uptake) which seeks to ensure real sales. The government can now think of increasing the issue price to market rates and give the states cash in lieu of subsidized grain. This makes the role of states crucial and states need to behave more responsibly.
The previous congress government had enacted a law to guarantee food to the citizens called the national food security act(NFSA). The new government has amended the act with the FSB(food security bill). In the new bill government has reduced the number of beneficiaries in from 68% of the population to 40% of the population. It believes it can target the poor effectively and cover most of them for this benefit.

Hence farmers are going to benefit by a passive income even if they do not cultivate as the government will pay them to apply fertilizers. If they cultivate they will get a high MSP. To ensure that farmers get the government stipulated MSP an IT solution can be employed at the rural level. So the question before us is really this. Is there a central Food Corporation of India really required? The farmers can sell their produce to the market and the market supplies the food grains to the fair price shops. The role of the market should not be overlooked. It transports the goods, grades them according to quality and securely stores them till such time that they are ready to be sold to the highest bidder. Where IT comes in is at the point where farmers sell the produce and the point where the people purchase the goods. E-tendering could be used at the village level to sell goods over the Internet. Then the government procures the food from the market and supplies to the fair price shops. The government just incurs the cost of the IT infrastructure, the cost of subsidy that is transferred to the end consumers and the fertilizer subsidy as a dole. Needless to say every state can have its own MSP. Everything else is left to the market forces.

I don't claim to be an expert on the subject but have made my best effort to collate information from diverse sources into a coherent story.

PK and Krish3 - their relevance to science and religion

A movie when it grosses the highest box office collections in any industry deserves to be discussed threadbare. The movie plays on the emotions of people and introduces humans to an alien civilization much advanced than our own. It questions our beliefs. It has a message of indo-pak brotherhood. It hits out against hypocrisy and strikes a chord making people think about the definition of religion.

Indian movies more often than not have depicted aliens as friends of our civilization as against the paranoid Americans. In this movie excepting minor differences in appearance an alien falls in love with a human disregarding genetic differences/compatibility. The hero descends to the earth naked. In the humorous last scene several males descend to earth looking for females to marry making you wonder whether competition for females was less on earth that we have aliens with supernatural powers to compete with. Why is there a depiction of a horny alien civilization esp at places where women are in short supply? Why don't naked alien females descend and solve some of our problems.(quip)

The hero has child like behavior and questions everything. He comes in contact with a sex worker and guess what(the weakest link in the movie and the most unscientific) in an unbelievable way downloads all the memory from her into himself. That there can be flying saucers riding which aliens come to earth is more palatable. This USB like download of past experiences is an example of fantastic Indian imagination. Something similar was spoken by the prime minister in the science congress.

People apply various meanings to existing things and science is a misunderstood term here. So you have science of religion too.

Here is a sequence of dialogues from the movie Krishh 3:

Wah papa yeh sab kya hai... Mere saalon ki mehnath Ek koshish kyon ki dhoop zindagi deti hai Light gives life... aur mujhe lagta hai ki Maine finally aayinon ke zariye light ki energy ko reflect karke use multipy karneka perfect combination bana liya hai. Kudrath mein bhi aisa magical combination maujoodh hai par ham log use dekh nahin paathe isliye mera yeh khaas pen jo actually ek electronic device hai is pen ke aas paas kahin bhi aisa magical combination ho toh yeh acivate ho jayega beep karne lagega aur phir saari kiranon ko samet ke unhe multiply karega aur ek subject pe daale ga aur phir ham dekh sakenge ki kaise dhoop zindagi deti hai.

Hard to digest indeed.

So with bollywood movies performing last rites of science and poking fun of religion one is left to wonder where people are being led to. Atheism? While western world is taking support of science and the developing world religion our movies are poking fun of both.

Giant Tsunami of Aadhaar Applications

There is a wave of aadhaar applications getting launched and it has turned to a tsunami already.

Here are some excerpts from the leading dailies of the day between Dec,1 2014 to Dec,28 2014. Its the year end and aadhaar has assumed high importance for Indians and a must have document.

Having issued 12-digit individual identification number, or Aadhaar, to over 72 crore residents in the county so far, the UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) is now looking to cross 100-crore mark in the coming year 2015.

Along the way, it has become a base tool for doling out various government benefits including subsidies and is even being used for issuance of basic services like mobile numbers by private players. There are also talks about matrimonial websites insisting on Aaadhar-verification to root out fake profiles of prospective brides and grooms from such platforms.

The Indian Election Commission (EC) is in talks with the unique identification authority on a process that would link the country’s biometrics-backed ID number system with electoral rolls to delete duplicate records and prevent voter fraud.

Recently a report from panaji said the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) will start verification of fishermen by using card readers to avoid a 26/11-like situation where terrorists entered India via the sea route. It has also intensified patrolling to plunge the gap left due to non-installation of radards. Around 2.5 lakh boats are operating in Indian waters out of which nearly 80,000 boats go to sea everyday, according to ICG.

Speaking to mediapersons on the sidelines of the launch of a Coast Guard offshore patrol vessel at Goa Shipyard Ltd, Vasco, ICG director general, vice-admiral Anurang G Thapliyal said that physical verification of each boat is desirable but actually not possible "because if we go physically on board each of the boats and investigate, checking the papers with the crew would be a daunting task".

He said that if the identity cards fishermen have and their Aadhaar cards are integrated, then it will help conduct verification through card readers. "Card readers have been given to the Coast Guard and the Navy on a trial basis.

Market research firm Research and Markets has released a new report on the prospects for India’s biometrics market. It is titled “Biometrics Market in India 2015-2019“, the report predicts growth of 33.6 percent (CAGR) between 2014 and 2019.

The Ministry of Minority Affairs is all set to adopt a direct benefit transfer-based regime for its two key scholarship programmes, which cater to around 10 lakh students.

“We are doing it because a lot of times when the money was given to the state government, it would not reach the students or there would be a delay. That is why we will now directly transfer to the students’ account. The Prime Minister’s Jan Dhan Yojana and Digital India plans will power our plan – everybody will have bank accounts and access to the Internet. We also want to move to the DBT model for pre-matric scholarships. Obviously, it is difficult to ensure primary school students have bank accounts and so the money will be moved to their parents’ accounts,” said Minority Affairs Minister Najma Heptulla said. Around 40 lakh students receive the pre-matric scholarships every year.

 Payments banks a revolution in the waiting

Earlier, a Paytm user could only send cash to another Paytm user, and an Oxigen Wallet user was similarly limited to making payments to others who use Oxigen. This meant that an offline merchant would have to support all these different services, for wallets to be useful.

That will not be the case with Payment Banks - if you have an account with a Payment Bank, then you will be able to send money to any other Payment Bank's account, the way you can already transact between different banks right now.

You can already see smartphones and virtual wallets being used to pay for things like taxis and food delivery. Recently though, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has published guidelines for Payment Banks. This could well help bring a vast section of the previously unbanked population of the country into the financial system, through the use of technology.

According to the RBI notice, the primary objective of setting up Payment Banks is to further financial inclusion by providing small savings accounts and remittance services to migrant labour workforce, low-income households, small businesses, and other unorganised sector entities and users. Now that the RBI has released the final guidelines, companies can start to apply for licenses to create private banks, with the deadline for applications set for January 16.

Payment banks-a big chillar party

Banks that cater to small payments are a radical step that will greatly enable financial inclusion of the poor.

At a recent function of the Bombay Management Association on financial inclusion, the speaker asked the audience, "How many of you pay your household help, or driver, by cheque?" Nobody raised a hand. "How many pay directly into the driver's bank account?" Only one or two people raised their hands. This shows something about the way we transact.

The main reason could be the hassle of opening a bank account. And thereafter, the hassle of withdrawing money when you need it. Certain parts of large cities like Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru are overbanked and saturated with ATMs. But, even in these cities, there are areas which do not have conveniently located cash dispensers or bank branches. The country has many such "dark spots". This problem is a self-fulfilling one. Many people will not use electronic payment because they need ready cash to pay others who want cash, who need to pay others who want cash and so on. If everyone is willing to switch to electronic or cheque payment, much of this problem would be reduced.

Hence, To reduce the reliance on cash the Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), where he set a target of 75 million new bank accounts by Republic Day. This target has now been revised upward by the finance minister. That's because the PM's earlier target was reached in September itself, and that achievement was called a "roaring successs". But, as revealed by RTI, almost 74% of the 70 million accounts opened so far, have zero balance. And no transactions.

Enter payment banks. This week, the RBI announced guidelines for setting up new banks, which will predominantly cater to small savings accounts, small payments and remittances, especially by migrant workers and small businesses. These banks can issue ATM and debit cards, but not credit cards. They can also distribute products like mutual funds and insurance. This is a huge radical step towards financial inclusion. It is now possible that telecom companies like Airtel, or retailers like Flipkart and Big Bazaar, or India Post, or even the railways and oil companies will set up payments banks. All of these handle small-ticket payments and receipts.

India has 950 million cellphone subscribers, of which 90 per cent are prepaid customers who pay cash. Same is true of railway tickets as well. Suddenly the country will have a proliferation of banking "touch points", reducing one major hassle of "accessibility". If opening an account is made easier (say by using an Aadhaar card), then usage of these bank accounts will go up as well. As a greater portion of the country's nonfinancial savings get routed through the conduit of formal banking, that much more credit becomes available to investments and new projects, housing and infrastructure.

Payment banks are expected to electronify small transactions. These small-ticket transactions in payments banks can lead to a big revolution for financial inclusion. Chillar party indeed!

Read more: Mumbai Mirror-Ajith Ranade

A multiwallet solution to the aid of NSDC

Ever since its launch in 2010, the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), a not-for-profit public-private partnership, has been trying to re-skill young people with the help of training partners from key industrial sectors such as retail, manufacturing and automobiles in order to make them more employable. It successfully trained 1 million youths aged between 16 and 25 years last year and aims to take the number up to 3.3 million by the end of 2014. In return for training the youths, the training partners take a nominal fee—paid for by trainees from a reward amount they earn from NSDC for completing the training under the Standard Training Assessment & Reward (STAR) scheme, in partnership with the Bank of India. However, problems arose when training partners complained they had not received payments on time—and sometimes not at all. With the incentive to train drying up, NSDC had to quickly find a solution. The solution came in the form of a multi-wallet prepaid payment solution—India’s first— run by TranServ Pvt Ltd, a three-year-old electronic prepaid payments company in association with the Bank of India. This not only ensured that NSDC’s training partners got paid on time, but also helped the youths take charge of their own finances.
Under the multi-wallet solution, TranServ opens two wallets for trainees: one for payment to the training partners, which is not accessible to the trainee, and the other a general savings wallet. The fee for the training partners is automatically deducted from the token sum that the youths are paid every month. The second wallet is linked to the Bank of India account, and gives the trainee a debit card which can be used at ATMs and points of sale, and also allows them account holder privileges so they can check the balance on phone, enquire about the last few transactions, report loss of card, ask for a statement or new ATM PIN, etc. Alternatively, card holders can check the balance from usage alerts that are sent to their mobile phones after each transaction.

TranServ was also awarded the Aadhaar Governance Award instituted by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) in 2012 for its work in large scale financial inclusion and direct benefits transfer (DBT) programmes, enabling real-time transactions through VISA and RuPay, which could also be authenticated by Aadhaar. According to a Reserve Bank of India report in April, only 10-15% of the 369 million debit and credit cards in the company are used for online transactions. TranServ’s Aditya Gupta believes such multi-wallet solutions could help greatly in increasing the awareness and ease of use of online transactions. Besides, this solution also helps in the government’s plans for financial inclusion by empowering millions of youths to take charge of their own finances, with their own bank accounts, said Gupta.

Read more at: http://www.livemint.com/Companies/DwUs65IIJYzP9Rr1dpcRvO/A-multiwallet-solution-to-aid-NSDCs-mission.html?utm_source=copy

India planning to create 1.2 digital identities

India is planning a vast digital identity database that will store public records for each of its 1.2 billion citizens and enable them to access a range of e-government services. As if this is breaking news but wait digital identities is a broad term and does not just mean a number for everyone.

R.S. Sharma, secretary of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology told Bloomberg in an interview that the database will integrate police, court and criminal files, and that the government will also build a platform for uniform payment, property registration and social assistance systems.

Job Search made more easier for villagers

Monster.com has tied up with CSC eGovernance Services India Ltd, a governance portal by the Department of Information and  Technology, to launch a new e-KYC based job portal for rural India.

Through this portal, Village level entrepreneurs (VLEs) can help job seekers who have an Aadhaar number upload their resume and access the services of the Common Services Centres (CSC) for jobs. The website can be accessed at csc.rozgarduniya.com.

Mobile Sim to be linked with aadhaar : A discussion

The Unique Identification Number (UID) project, also known as Aadhaar number, is a government project that aims to provide a unique 12-digit number to all the citizens of India which will serve as their identity and address proof. Recently, Indian government has decided to link a person’s SIM card with the Aadhar Number. In a few months, it will mandatory to produce one’s Aadhaar number to get new mobile connection or retain the existing one.

Let’s have a look at the pros and cons of this decision:

Arguments in favour of SIM with Aadhaar card

1)    Authentic and genuine traceability of people: Unique Identification Number (UID) of a person is his or her identity and address proof. Linking SIM card with it will mean that ghost users will disappear. It will become easier to trace users who misuse their mobile phones for anti-social activities.

2)    Access to facilities: Earlier, the Supreme Court had suspended the decision to make Aadhaar card necessary to procure cooking gas. But, now the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has been directed to generate Aadhaar numbers for over 100 crore residents by December 2014. Till now, about 70 crore Aadhaar numbers have already been rolled out. Linking UID with SIM card will mean a strong verification factor for the government.

3)    Corruption-free Society: Functioning of government departments will also become more transparent and scope of defaults will be greatly curbed.

4)    Monitor activity of foreigners in India: Government has proposed to issue Aadhaar card to foreigners so that their social and financial data can be at the fingertips of the government.

Arguments against SIM with Aadhaar card

1)    Threat to confidentiality of data: With all the data in the hand of the government, its storage and retrieval can be an issue. Hacking and online tampering of data may be a challenge for several corporations.

2)    Telecom operator may suffer loss of subscriptions: Each telecom network operator wants to increase their subscriptions. Hence, they come up with different promotional offers, reduced prices and make SIM available with minimal number of documents. Linking SIM with Aadhaar may be a cause of concern for them.

Conclusion

SIM with Aadhaar can be a good reform and make our society corruption and crime free to a large extent, if it is used with care. The government will have to make reforms to ascertain SIM ownership and set up a wing to safeguard and timely retrieval of data.

Healthcare mission NHAM to ride on aadhaar tide

The proposal to launch National Health Assurance Mission is currently under examination. The proposal envisages that under the proposed Mission, Unique ID card could eventually become the means for establishing identity as needed by the system.

Based on decision taken, the Central Government has issued instructions on 16.10.2014 to Telecom Service providers to collect Aadhaar Numbers along with Customer Application Form while issuing mobile telephone connections and to store the same in their database along with other data.

The Health Minister, Shri J P Nadda stated this in a written reply in the RajyaSabha here today.

Officials rapped for tardy progress in linking aadhaar with property tax payments

Regional Director of Municipal Administration Muralikrishna Goud has asked the Municipal Commissioners in the district to initiate measures to link Aadhaar cards with property tax payment.

At a meeting with Municipal Commissioners and sanitary inspectors here on Friday, Mr. Goud insisted that the civic officials collect the Aadhaar card details of property tax payers.

Expressing displeasure over the failure of civic bodies to maintain the data pertaining to online property tax collection, he said officials of Pulivendula, Rajampet, Badvel, Jammalamadugu and Rayachoti municipalities had not updated the details of the same in the last 10 years.

PDS and RSBY will be linked with aadhaar during enrolment itself

Raipur: The seeding of beneficiaries in Chhattisgarh for Public Distribution System and Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna will be done during the registration for Aadhaar cards.

The details of smart card issued under Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY) and ration card under Public Distribution System (PDS) would be enrolled at the time of registration of Aadhaar card in camps being organised for the purpose, an official statement here said today.

While preparing Aadhaar card, the smart card and ration card related information would be linked with the Aadhaar number of the beneficiary, it said.

E-Locker facility for citizens on the way

The Maharashtra government has started testing an Aadhaar-linked  e-locker service on a pilot basis, which can store important documents such as birth certificates, passports, and educational qualifications, reports DNA.

The service called Maha Digital Locker will allow citizens to access these documents, which are frequently required for government services and applying jobs. According to the website, the service will help to pre-populate most of the fields from an XML file which is kept in the e-locker. It also includes a folder to upload your old certificates and the service will also push any certificate issued by the Maharashtra Government.  The service will allow citizens to fill up government forms with a single click.

Door-to-door survey launched in Gudivada as a pilot project

The door-to-door survey to get information about driving licence and vehicle registrations for linking it with Aadhaar cards was launched as a pilot project in Gudivada municipality on Monday.

The Aadhaar card is back in business.

The scheme launched by the UPA government did not find support with the succeeding NDA regime, but during the last few weeks, the Union as well as the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana governments, have been asking for Aadhaar cards for various facilities, schemes and subsidies ranging from pensions to property registrations.

Word is around that Aadhaar cards might also be required for passports in the near future.

Street kids to be identified using aadhaar

Hyderabad: Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Saturday said that his department is currently working on a project to create a website which will help track missing children in the country.

"We see many children from poor families go missing in this country. Rich people can find their children if they go missing. Poor people are not able to do so due to poverty. So we decided to make a portal for lost and found children," said Prasad.

"If you see some poor children on the streets wandering, please take a picture of them and upload that photograph. We will put that in the portal. That picture will be verified on an all India-basis. I have told my officers to work on this project," the Minister for Communications and IT said in his address at a program organised by NGO Tech for Seva (TFS) here.

Tragedy linked to Uber taxi hailing service

The tragedy linked to the Uber taxi hailing service and the government's subsequent ban is a good example of just how much democratic India's governance is not for the people.

NFSA implementation only in selected states

The ambitious initiative to provide subsidized foodgrains to a vast swath of India’s population is struggling as states go slow on identifying beneficiaries, digitizing records and taking steps for doorstep delivery, forcing the Centre to threaten coercive action to get the ambitious plan rolling. After a review meeting with food secretaries of states and union territories, Union food minister Ram Vilas Paswan said many states have requested extending the deadline to implement the National Food Security Act (NFSA), which was enacted last year. “Even after extending the deadline twice, states have failed to complete formalities. Unless they finish identification and digitization of beneficiary list and Aadhaar seeding with ration cards, in future, we will ensure that food subsidy is availed of by only those who complete the procedures,” Paswan said. “We will not allow states to avail of subsidies under the above-poverty-line (APL) category if they do not complete procedures under NFSA by April 2015,” he added. As of now, only 11 states including Delhi, Haryana, Chandigarh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh are implementing NFSA. Others have not yet identified beneficiaries entitled to wheat at Rs.2 per kg and rice at Rs.3 per kg guaranteed under the Act. NFSA entitles 75% of the rural population and 50% of the urban population to five kilos of food grain per person per month at subsidised rates. When the law was enacted in July 2013, states were asked to finish implementation procedures by June 2014. The deadline was later extended by six months and has been further extended to 5 April. “Today, Jharkhand informed that they will be ready to implement NFSA by June next year while Odisha said they will take till August 2015,” Paswan said.

Reimbursement based subsidy or DBTL for LPG

The Union Government has fixed the deadline for LPG cylinder consumers to avail the Reimbursement-based subsidy (RBS) was December 31 with a grace period for another three months till the end of March 2015 for those who failed to registered their LPG ID numbers provided to them under the PAHAL (DBTL) scheme.

Deputy Commissioner Vipul Bansal who briefed the presspersons about the procedures followed in registering for the LPG ID numbers for availing the RBS in Kalaburagi on Wednesday said that from January 1, 2015 the shift to the new regime of RBS would take place throughout the country and those who have registered their LPG ID numbers under the scheme would get the reimbursement of the subsidy directly to their bank accounts.

Mr. Bansal said that the LPG consumers who have not registered their ID numbers with the dealers under the DBTL scheme either with their Aadhaar Numbers or the Bank Account numbers would not be eligible to get the subsidy from April 1, 2015 but would be given another opportunity to register their names till June 31.

Hackathon on aadhaar

Khosla Labs was setup by Vinod Khosla and Srikanth Nadhamuni in 2012 as an innovation lab to focus on solving large scale problems driven by technology and entrepreneurial zeal. At a press meet yesterday, Vinod Khosla announced the the Aadhaar hackathon which is scheduled for 10th-11th January at the Khosla Labs office in Bangalore. The hackathon is aimed at creating awareness amongst developers about digital identity and how to build solutions on top of Aadhaar.

SIT proposes aadhaar and PAN everytime you buy for more than 1 lakh

NEW DELHI: The government on Friday said it had so far detected nearly Rs 4,500 crore deposited by Indians in HSBC's Geneva branch and brought around Rs 3,000 crore of it under the tax net, the finance ministry said in a statement.

The latter amount involves 79 assessees. Penalty proceedings have been initiated against 46 while penalty has been levied against three. Prosecution for "wilful attempt to evade tax" has been initiated in six cases. Show-cause notices for filing prosecution ..

Read more at:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/45509240.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Meru to verify driver’s identity biometrically

Radio taxi service provider Meru Cabs is planning to put in place the next level of driver verification, one liked to biometric identification tool Aadhaar. This follows the alleged rape of a woman passenger who had booked a cab through the Uber mobile app, by the driver, and the subsequent ban of all app-based taxi services across states.

In introducing Aadhaar-linked verification, Meru might get the first-mover advantage in the absence of app-based services Uber, Ola Cabs and TaxiForSure. However, other radio taxi companies are likely to join the bandwagon soon. For the plan to be put in place, all cabs will require a biometric system to verify the identity of drivers.

If you read till here then you must be feeling dizzy. Take rest.
If instead you want to read more then read my aadhaar roundup-4