New Railway Web Site - erail.in

I came across a very nice web site today. It is dedicated to the Indian Railways and is absolutely great. Go over to eRail.in and experience it yourself. I have added a couple of screen shots below.

The site seems to use AJAX heavily and is intuitive. I could quickly figure out how to use the features and kept discovering new things to do. The site is fast and displays a ton os useful information on the same page. I was particularly impressed with the "Get Details" function. It displays a list of all stations where train stops, plus the fare. And you can set the number of adults, the number of children etc! Cool!

Some features have not been implemented yet. I look forward to seeing this evolve. It has been a long time since I have seen something this nice about the Indian Railways. The idiots who run the IT department of the Indian Railways are the biggest morons ever to be unleashed on the Internet.

Ram Setu: Advani questions Center on affidavit (video from IndiaTimes)

A video from the IndiaTimes web site showing a Times Now News about L. K. Advani, the leader of Opposition speaking about the Ram Setu issue and the Lord Ram.

Original video web page. Copyright resides with original copyright owners.

Indian Central Government Says No Proof Of Ram's Existence

The Indian Central Government in New Delhi claims that there is no historical proof of the existence of Lord Ram, the King of Ayodhya and of the hearts of all Hindus the world over. The beloved God of a billion Hindus never was. The shining beacon of Truth & Dharma is a mere hero in a fairy tale. He was not of this earth. He did not walk the land, with his brother and wife, fighting Ravana, He Who makes The Universe Scream, and his demon hordes that threatened the very existence of life on earth.

He did not exist!

He did not show the world how to live a life of Dharma. He did not show how compassion, truth & love conquer all. He did not show how even the Gods suffer from human frailties when they walk the earth among us as men and women. He did not show what it means to stand & fight shoulder to shoulder with the forces of Dharma & Good regardless of the nature of the being fighting alongside him. He did not show that humans alone do not own this world. That Vanars and all other beings also have a place and a right to live a life of Dharma.

He did not exist! 

 

Rise ye, all you Hindus! Rise! This is blasphemy! An attempt to subvert the very faith that our lives are based on. A blow to every Hindu. Rise now and bring them down! Throw out these people that dare to say that our Lord Ram did not exist! Rise now before it is too late!

Indian Govt. Blocking Blog Sites

The Indian Govt decided to block certain blogs that spread hate for India in an attempt to fight back against terrorism. They ended up blocking all sites on Blogspot.com and other blog sites. For example, my photo blog, Mo-Chitra, is blocked. I can of course still access it from work because our gateways are in Japan & Singapore. It is only from home that I am unable to access my blog.

I ran a tracert to mo-chitra.blogspot.com and got the following output:

d:\>tracert -w 20000 mo-chitra.blogspot.com

Tracing route to blogspot.blogger.com [66.102.15.101] over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 13 ms 8 ms 8 ms 172.30.69.1
2 25 ms 10 ms 12 ms 203.109.92.1
3 18 ms 26 ms 22 ms 125.16.0.73
4 24 ms 23 ms 24 ms 59.145.0.226
5 43 ms 34 ms 25 ms 202.56.223.109
6 59.145.11.73 reports: Destination host unreachable.

Trace complete.

Querying the IP Whois tool for the last two IPs shows that they belong to Bharati Tele.

inetnum: 202.56.223.0 - 202.56.223.255
netname: BTNL
descr: Bharti Telenet Ltd.
descr: Bhopal
descr: India
country: IN
inetnum: 59.144.0.0 - 59.145.255.255
netname: BHARTI-IN
descr: BHARTI INFOTEL LTD.
descr: ISP Division , Long Distance Group - Telesonic
descr: 234 , Okhala Phase III
descr: NEW DELHI
descr: INDIA
country: IN

So Bharati is blocking access to blogspot.com... Mr. Mital, I assume you are not a fool. With this assumption, I hope that you will instruct the idiots in your IT department to work a little harder and not block legitimate web sites. It takes a few seconds to block an entire domain. It takes a lot longer to block specific web sites. Somebody in your organization is cheating you of the salary you pay him.

I managed to access my blog inspite of your blocking access by the simple device of using TorPark. Only a fool tries to stop the Ganga from flowing to the sea. Are you one of them Sonia, Manmohan and Mittal?

Spiraling Electricity Bills @ Hyderabad, A.P., India

For the past year or so I have seen my monthly electricity bill rise from about Rs. 300/- to about Rs. 1700/-. This increase has happened without a corresponding increase in the number of electrical appliances in the house. In fact, I have replaced all incandescent bulbs with CFL bulbs and the old fridge has been replaced with a new one. No other change in appliances & consumption patterns.

And yet my bill has increased by a factor of 5!

I was somehow not surprised when I read about other people at work having similar bill increases. It seems to be very common to have had one's bill doubled or tripled.

In my quest for answers I visited the local APTRANSCO sub station at Srinagar Colony, Hyderabad. There I met an official called Venkatesh. This person asked me about the number and nature of appliances I use at home and then finally directed me to another APTRANSCO employee called Jagadeesh. I called the number I was given and Jagadeesh came to take a look at the electric meter in our apartment complex. He pronounced it okay and told me that I should have an electrician take a look at the wiring in my flat. He also told me that he knew a good person and would bring him over.

Well, this electrician did come over today (July 1, 2007). Along with Jagadeesh. They poked around with the meter for a while. When I asked them to look at the wiring they had a whispered conversation among themselves and then informed me that they had a solution to my electrical woes:

"We will replace the meter with a older, rotary type meter, one with a plastic body. No body from TRANSCO will come to inspect. You should not tell anybody about this. The new meter will work 60 - 40. That is, it will suppress 40% of whatever bill you have. If somebody inquires, then just claim that this is the meter that has always been present. Cost Rs. 3000/-. Plus baksheesh for now, say about Rs. 200/-"

By now I had figured out that I was being conned. I ended up paying 150/- to these APTRANSCO employees to get rid of them, with the promise that I would call them tomorrow about the change of meter.

I have no intention of hacking my meter or changing it illegally. Now I am looking for ways to measure my electrical consumption independently of the APTRANSCO meter installed in my flat. Any ideas?

Reservation in higher education - Improve primary education instead

The politicians have done it again. They, as one columnist rightly said, are going to ram the 27% reservation in higher education down the throat of the nation, whether India gags on it or not. And knowing India and it's people, we will gag for a while and then continue as usual.

There has been a lot of debate on this topic. I am sitting at work dressed in black because of an email campaign being cirulated through most of India's IT companies. However most people seem to miss the basic point here. Why do we need reservation?

We need reservation in colleges and other higher education because our primary education system is a complete failure. The backward classes, which is supposed to mean the economically backward; the ones that are so because they belong to an underprivilaged section of Indian society, cannot afford to pay the fees of private tution colleges. These tution setups are required because our students don't learn anything at school. So they need help to pass the entrance exams to the IITs and the IIMs. And since the fees charged are beyond the means of most, we need reservations so that the students who fare badly because of the education system that failed them in the first place, can now go on to "higher education".

How many good teachers do we have in our schools and colleges? One in a ten thousand? And why don't we have good teachers? Because the profession does not pay enough to make a decent living. So the brightest and the best leave our shores and go teach at the MITs of this world.

What faclities do our schools provide? Most primary schools in our villages don't even have basic equipment. Drop out rates are unbelievably high. And those that don't drop out end up not learning anything of value.

If only the govt of India would pay more attention to primary education! I am a tax payer and I have been paying a 2% Education Cess (surcharge or tax on tax) on everything I buy for the last few years. Where has this money gone? After paying for education for so long, why is my children's future jeopardized?

I am a Brahmin, and proud to be one. My parents have struggled to pay for my education just like most other middle class parents. I am an IIT Kharagpur graduate and I entered the IIT based solely on my own merit. Long live India! However if this continues, I will not hesitate to take my family to another nation that values us more and gives us a better future.
Ask your local govt why primary education is still as bad as it always was. And where has our 2% cess gone?

(Posted via Thinga Web)

Indian Railways Web Site

Today I visited the Indian Railways web site to look up berth availability on a train from Bhubaneswar to Hyderabad. The web site itself is pretty stupid but it works, at least most of the time. Anyway, I found the information I was looking for and then spent some time lookin at emails. I had left the railways page open in a FireFox tab. I came back to it with the intention of closing the tab and somehow pressed the Ctrl key. Guess what happened? I got a message box saying "Sorry, you do not have permission to press this key."

(click to see full size image)

Who designs these things? The Indian railways has done a good job in getting the ticket reservation, seat availability, ticket tracking and other functionality online. They also have e-tickets that you can print out and carry (with photo ID) instead of the normal paper ticket. But their web sites suck. There are too many advertisements. The layout and navigation sucks. And the error messages are funny to say the least. At least after you get over the initial shock!

In this case I suppose somebody is trying to be clever and prevent users from viewing the HTML code or something like that.

(Update - 8.53 pm)

I am not able to get the message box again! Tried a number of times but it hasn't happened again. Luckily I took a screen shot the first time!

Consumer Online Resources & Empowerment Center

The Consumer Online Resources & Empowerment Center or CORE Center is the one of the best thing that has happened to Indians of late. This web site is maintained by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, a Govt. of India dept. They are really really good. I had heard reports of their effectiveness before and I recently experienced it first hand.

Those of you who have read earlier posts on this blog must have seen my rants against ICICIDirect.com, ICICI's web based stock trading setup. These guys are pathetic; with a capital P. Anyway, I finally reached breaking point and filed a complaint with CORE. Received an email acknowledgement in minutes from the website. Then 3 days later (March 30, 2006) I received another email from them. They had sent a letter to ICICIDirect with a copy to me. A very stern letter. Polite but stern. They gave ICICIDirect a fortnight to make amends.

And boy, did it work? I received a letter from ICICIDirect on April 1 asking me for some additional information that they need to complete the process I had requested via a letter dated January 13 2006 :-) It was apparent from the contents and tone of their letter that after they heard from CORE they had dug out my Jan 13th letter from wherever they had consigned it.

Needless to say, I have sent the missing data and am waiting to see what happens next.

SAY NO TO BAD SERVICE! If you have paid for it then you deserve the very best. If your service or product is faulty and the provider is trying to pull a fast one then go to CORE. These people are good!

I will post about developments on the ICICIDirect complaint as events unfold.

(Posted via Thinga Web)