Articles over E-Governance Initiatives.

Hi Prashant, The links for the articles for E-Governance Initiatives as you asked. I will write the gist of these initiatives when I get some time. For the time being, here is the list.

• Major e-Governance Projects
• E-GOVERNANCE: 20 Hot eGov Projects in India

Hope this helps,

NKC recommendations - Higher Education

Here is an article commenting about the NKC recommendations - Higher education.

Case for more women in Public life.

A very nice article for supporting the cause of Women entering the public life. I am in search of good articles for the following areas. I would be happy if some body contribute in this endeavor.

• Reservations for women on PR institutions.
• Credit delivery models at Rural level targeting Women.

• Bangladesh - Micro finance model.
• India - Self help groups.
• Case for Women reservation in India

Domestic violence - Women situation in India

Some of the articles in Hindu magazine , today cogently put up the feeling of the victims in the cases of domestic violence. This is a common practice in India , where men or women is from a traditional background. The last article here in this post, is a commentary on the new domestic violence act, 2005.

Under a cloud of Abuse - Some tactics

• Isolate a woman from her friends, family, cultural or faith community, care providers
• Prevent her from being independent
• Act jealous or possessive, accuse a woman of having affairs, coerce her into sexual activity to prove her love
• Criticise a woman constantly
• Threaten, intimidate, harass, or punish a woman
• Use the children to control
• Make all decisions in the family, withhold information and refuse to consult her or about important matters
• Control the money, not allow a woman access to financial resources or conversely not contribute to household expenses.

The violence of silence

• There is one significant difference between mental torture and physical violence. The aggressor in the latter case knows he has done wrong. The situation is just the opposite in the case of mental torture. Because the husband does not raise his hand or leave scars on her body, he does not bear the burden of guilt. Such men have a split personality.
• If she raises the issue the response usually is “What has he done wrong?” Because there is no physical violence, everyone fails to recognise the damage caused by silent negligence or verbal abuse.
• A strategy of silence and non-communication is a form of violence. Rarely is the victim able to identify the problem and so it is all the more difficult for a third party to intervene.

Commentary on Domestic Violence Act , 2005

You can read the full articles by clicking on the links here. And some excerpts are presented here.

@ Answers for IT questions

What is your opinion on STPI extension ? Here is a small article describing pros and cons. I am for STPI extension . Gist of the reasons for and against this move have been mentinoed here.

For

• Level playing field for domestic companies w.r.t other country competition.
• Tax advantagaes in other countries like china , irelond , chekoslavakia etc still continue. Taking out our tax sops will make us at backfoot at attracting investment in this sector.
• IT industry is not yet matured enough and still have a lot of potential for enlargement worldwide. India can claim much bigger pie in that expansion If you could provide help to the domestic IT industry.
• Recent economic recession in US is going to effect the bottom line of US tech companies adversely. This will result in a lot of cost cuttings in US which implies more BPO at a cost advantageous location. Tax sops in Inida will fasten this process. And help us in acquiring this business opportunities.

Against

• Loss of revenue to good amount.
• Comparitively less employment growth rate compared to the tax money outgoing.

Best way forward is to -- Link the tax sops to employment and export generation potential of the company.

what are the contingency plans of Information Technology industry to overcome the USA slowdown ?

• Geographic diversification to other continents - Europe, mid east, china & APAC especially.
• Project costs linked to $ fluctuations while negotiating .
• Forex currency $ - hedges
• One good thing is 29% growth in domestic sector
• Have a fresh look at emerging markets.

@ Some Interview questions.

I have been discussing with a close friend of mine, who is going to take interview this year. Evolved answers for some questions.

Why civils after you have such a high paying job ?

• social status , job satisfaction , challenging work as well as secure career,you could always brag about you working towards bottom line of india's developmentdirectly .. We can think of innumerable reasons. You will take the same role as an CEO of a medium sized company in 5-6 years of service.

Why civils after doing Engineering from reputed colleges such as IITs?

Why engineering as base line , drag on resources of government ?

Any undergraduation , engineering in reputed college in perticular, will train you for life skills and just not for technical skills. These skills are infact a lot more helpful for administration.

some skills to note -

• we have worked with ppl from different geographical and cultural back drop.
• we are very good at knowledge extraction. - given a task we know how and whereto get information from.
• Talk about skills you learn at these institutions .. they dont teach you only technical skills definitely.

A cursory look at job profile of our peers in IITs , they are doing jobs in different sectors - in different banks, NGOs, studied in computer science and working for Electronic companies - not exactly what they have trained for.

Interview Preperation for UPSC interviews ( esp for IT background)

From IT field, there can be two types of company backgrounds - Product and Services field. The most of questions will depend on the candidate's company background. Nevertheless, we should expect a lot of general questions. Recently , as the rupee is firming up against the dollar , the profits for services company is under strain. And there have been change in the strategy from all the big companies. And one more thing in news these days is the subsidy time period extension for STPI (Software Technology Parks of India). Some of the questions that come to my mind are ?

• General
• Why Civils after you have such a high paying job ? ( Get ready with sixth pay commission recommendations )
• What are super computers ? Where can they be effectively employed ? ( You can drive them to any field like. )
• What is KPO - EPO ?
• Employment issues - Who are getting benefitted. How you can make it more inclusive ?
• How do you bridge the digital devide ? ( Think of a fresh answer - prepare for subsequent questions )
• E-wastes .
• Economics - Competition
• What is the competitive edge for India in getting the Industry here ? (They are looking for a fresh answer - if you want to give one - get ready for consequant questions )
• Why is H/W parks are not coming here ?
• Rupee - Dollar dynamics ?
• How are the software companies are trying to protect their bottom line ?
• The threat of China , Ireland and other EU countries in Services field ? How can you ward off?
• How can you make synergies with China in H/W field ?
• Opinion about STPI - for & against - how can you present your case for Extension.
• E-Governance Initiatives
• How can you use IT to make India a better place ? - ( A lot of E governance techniques )
• Remember each initiative you utter you should have idea about it . You should be able to explain a lay man how it is useful. - Try to make 2 minute synopsis on each one of them.
• NeGP , MCA -21 , e-Choupal , MCX, Bengalore one etc.

These are some of the questions that come to my mind. I will try to keep updating it as and when any thing else come to my mind. Thanx. Hope this helps.

Few Babus UPSC interviews

Hi , After a lot of promise to Venkatesh, I am putting the interview narrations and gyan given by previous succesful candidates.

• vivek's Interveiw (IFS 2005 batch )
• Gyan by Vivek
• Sundara Rajan's blog (IAS 2006)
• Anurag's Interveiw (IAS 2006)

You can actually traverse to other succesful candidates interviews and other lists from these blogs. One more popular forum for IAS aspirants.

• Interview prep for IAS

This is it from my side. signing off.

Manimala weds Sudheer

To both Manimala and Sudheer, It is very difficult to find a pair who love and understand each other fully. You will become a wonderful pair. Enjoy this curvy and bumpy road of life to the fullest. Wish you a very happy married life to both of you. -- Raj.

Two Telugu novels.

I have read two telugu novels online yesterday. A small description :

• Bommaborusu : This novel describes about male domination of woman in a married relationship. And how some of the small things, that can lead to big problems in a relationship. In this transition in the societal phase, where woman have the financial freedom and independence - for which man has to learn to reconcile with. If he does not adapt to this new role in the society, both the partners has to suffer in the relationship.
• One of my close friends told me this about a relationship. In a relationship, what you require is peace and happiness. It does not matter whom you are with as long as you are happy and make others with you happy. Lets hope he is right.
• 60 days with Beautiful enemy : A typical 90's telugu movie story. But some how I always get amazed by the characterization of the roles by the writer. Nice play write by Yerramsetti Sai. Writers are the gifted souls.

Now some bad news ,

• Anand loses in blindfold with Aronian in Amber chess 08 . Slips back to 4 th position after this round. Five more rounds to go and my champ is down in blindfold. :( . Way to go Anand. Please pick it up . :)
• I am not going anywhere with my preperation. But I have to concentrate as this is now or never situation. I need to start with my Mathematics preparation.

Observation of My Marks Pattern

All most after one year, Today I have got time to sit back and ponder about my performance in Civil service mains examination across the past 3 attempts.

Name : SITHARAMARAJU K

Civil Service(Mains) Examination		Comparison
Subject		Maximum Marks	2004	2005	2006
Essay ( Paper – III)		200	45	118	132
General Studies (Paper-IV)		300	157	153	160
General Studies (Paper-V)		300	127	131	166
Mathematics	Paper-VI	300	138	134	152
	Paper-VII	300	136	138	143
Geography	Paper-VIII	300	117	112	97
	Paper-IX	300	133	129	136
Penalty Marks		0	0	0	0
Written Total		2000	853	915	986
Interview		300	NA	NA	195
Total Marks		2300	NA	NA	1181

Here are few observations :

• I have been improving my percentage of marks in Essay, General studies and Mathematics across the years.
• One pattern is the decreasing tend of marks in Geography. Especially in the first paper of Geography. This shows lack of knowledge and organisation in that perticular paper.
• In Essay , there is little scope for further improvement. More over, I will be tougher to even maintain that level of marks.
• Mathematics and General studies - has to improve atleast about 10% in each one of these subjects.

How do I feel about Sun Microsystems

I have worked about 14 months at Sun microsystems. I wanted to write about my feelings about it from long. Just now, I have organised my thoughts and placed the details here. First a bit of gyan and then my analysis about its future and work place.

What Sun does for its Living ?

For those non technical friends of mine, Sun is an systems/hardwared company to start with, but nowhas the complete stack of the system. Its product list include Solaris OS, Java , J2EE, Net beans on Software side, Niagara , V40Z , Starcat and other systems on the Hardware side. The major source of revenue for them is from their Systems business at present, Despite they are being famous for JAVA language.

What do I do at Sun ?

I worked as a performance analyst for their Niagara line of systems. For non techy guys, I have to drive Oracle database on these systems to its limits to achieve the system's full potential. For which , you need to excel at the complete stack of the system. Thanks to my mentor , RAVI - In this short duration of One year, I have got a very good feel of this great company.

Why sun is not financially performing to its potential ?

Sun was its best in 98-2000 period, just before 2000 dotcom burst. The post 2000, Sun was in losses for about five years because of two reasons.

• Hardware business is low margin high volume business. And it had betted big on SPARC architecture.
• Two or three failed products will made it bleed. And did not entered the X64 and X86 market at the right time.
• Bad investments it made during the dot come period.

How ever, the last two years growth was good. And things are looking bright.

What about the future of Sun ?

Three significant steps taken by Jonathan at SUN in last year. Which can leverage Sun's strengths into financial benefits.

• Entered in to new avenues of X86 and X64 architectures in System business
• Fastet supercomputer on earth now is RANGER at TACC [ Which was produced with SUN hardware and collaboration.
• Acquisition of MySQL.

All these actions can help to both sun's topline and bottom line directly. And Its bet on Solaris is also looking good as it has reached about 7 Million downloads recently. However, its going to take time for converting these downloads into money.

So What do I think about Sun and working at Sun?

To put it briefly in two sentences,

• Sun is a very great company technologically. But some how always loose out in cashing the money for those innovations.

Sun is a great place to work. I have quit Sun because of my personal reasons. For people who are motivated to work in Systems area, its one of the companies to work with. With this note, I am signing off.

Madras HC quashes UPSC's merit lists of 2006-07

The position of UPSC merit lists for 2006 and 2007 by Madras High court can be found here.

Observations :

Here I would go along the center's view as the service and the posts are not equiavent, against the essense of the present judgement. For each service , there will be a set of posts reserved for OBC, SC and STs.

The reserved candidate entered in to the merit list on his own can always get into better service, If he chooses so. Most of these aspirants prefer some services to the others. So they will take the reserved seats for such categories. So in effect, these vacancies so produced should give way to the unreserved candidates in the merit list. As the unreserved post got vacated.

How ever in these judgement , As the learned Judge interpreted both the service and post as the same. It will make sense for me only if there is no priority between the Services. But in reality , because of the difference between people perception towards services the present condition arises.

If you go by the present judgement , One painful reality will be the number of people who has utilised their caste based reservations to get into the posts will be always higher than the number of posts reserved for them in those services as per the constitution. This goes against the spirit of Art. 335 {It states that there should be a balance between the administrative efficiency and the affirmati ve action }.

Now, The Govt of India and UPSC will any way move against this order to the Apex Court to clarify their position, we have to wait and watch out for the final results.

For aspirants who think they are in those wait lists , It is going to be even longer wait than expected. Why dont these petitions directly taken by the APEX court itself, as it gonna save lot of time and money for the lower courts, governments ,UPSC and most importantly for people who filed these petitions.

India - Africa Relations

This article succintly describes the India - Africa relations in the recent past and the future. Gist is here.

• Required AU support for UNSC Permanent place.
• Solidarity with AU for mutual benifit in WTO doha development round negotiations.
• AU can be alternate energey source for India - Ex. Nigeria,Sudan,Ghana.
• Trade is booming and reached about 25B$ in 2006-07. [ Focus Africa ]
• Intiatives in the field of Trade agreements - Negoatiations with SACU , COMESA.
• AU support for complete convention on Terrorism.
• Need for other sources of minerals and resources for Indian economic growth.
• PAN African e-Network established by India to connect universities and hospitals in Africa to promote telemedicine and tele-education initiatives.
• Joint fight to AIDS control.

Only things missing from here is - NEPAD , NAASP , TEAM-9 , Focus Africa , ACBF

• NEPAD - New Economic Partnership for Africa Development.
• TEAM-9 - Techno Economic Apporach for India-Africa Meeting.
• ACBF - Capacity building for Africa Human resource to compete in the globalized world.
• Focus Africa - A program aimed at boosting trade with african countries
• COMESA - Common Market for East and South Africa.
• SACU - Southern Africa Customs Union
• SADC - South Africa Devt community
• ECOWAS - Economic cummunity of West Africa States.
• NAASP - New Asia - Africa strategic partnership - it hinders on 3 pillers -

1. Political solidarity
2. Economic cooperation
3. Socio-Cultural relations