blog@Yantrajaal

There are many, often contradictory, definitions of success of which the most obvious and in-your-face one is that which hinges on wealth, power and social recognition. And if we temporarily delude ourself and accept this definition ... then the next question is how does attain this success. It is very obvious that native ability, basic competence or any other natural attribute, has very little co-relation to success. There are too many incompetent people who are successful and there are too many very able folks who languish in the shadows. I believe that there are three steps to success. 1] Destiny or Divine Grace : is the first and the most important. In mathematical terms D & D is the necessary and sufficient condition for any success. 2] Perseverance : This falls in the necessary but not sufficient category. A lot of effort, painful effort, goes into the crafting a success story. and finally .. 3] Unscrupulouness !! .... another necessary but not sufficient condition. To be ...

Gayatri Yantra That is me ...

India's economic resurgence & the Gayatri Mantra Sorry if you have been misled into believing that there is some connection between the two items in today's heading but the fact is that the only thing that is indeed common is that I have been thinking about both for the past few days. First the simple stuff. What is the mystery behind India's current ecomonic resurgence ? It is kind of uncanny, the way India's economy is booming .... not only the software / ITeS .. but also things like construction, roads .... and other infrastructure. Who on earth is paying for all this ? How do we suddenly have the money to pay for so much infrastructure ? The forex reserves that are piling up belong to the shareholders of exporting companies .... not the goverment and certainly not the aam-janta .... who are in anyway struggling to survive. Frankly I do not enough about this. At a basic level I can translate India export led growth into (a) higher disposable income in the hands o...

Services Science : A new discipline One of the "Breakthrough Ideas" identified by the Harvard Business Review for 2005 is the emergence of a new academic discipline called "Services Science". This is certainly a very interesting and important concept because of two reasons. First "services" is something that is gaining prominence from a financial perspective as the focus of the global economy moves from goods ( or products ) to services ... and an increasing proportion of corporate revenue is being derived from the latter. Simply put, that which brings in the moolah is worthy of my attention. The second reason is that the definition of services is now expanding to include an ever expanding gamut of tasks. From pizza delivery to tax-return processing, from clinical design to hair stying there is a vast area of economic activity that falls into this category. This is precisely why we need to a theoretical basis that isolates the core essentials of this elusi...

What is panspermia ? It is a theory ( and process ?) which states that the transition from inanimate organic material to animate organisms is NOT something that happens in every planet or global society. Instead, it has happened ONCE somewhere and subsequently life forms are carried between galactic and intergalactic space either randomly or through the co-ordinated activity of sentient and intelligent agents. I had heard about this somewhere but it was brought home through a very powerful book that I read over the weekend. "Titan" by Stephen Baxter is a very powerful novel that talks about how human travel to Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, and then from there even further. What makes the book immediately current is the the fact that the Cassini-Huygens probe has just deposited the Huygens part of the spacecraft on Titan's methane and nitrogen environment this year itself ... and this forms a very integral part of the story. Wonderful ( though rather melanchol...

For labour intensive BioInformatics processing July 20th 2001 / February 11, 2005 Prithwis Mukerjee, Ph.D. Introduction India has become a favourite destination for multinational companies setting up back-offices for large volume data processing activities. This involves creating a world class computing infrastructure that is used by a large number of low cost resources to churn out a high volume of repetitive transactions based on data collected, electronically or physically, at high cost client locations. The people who perform these transactions are not highly skilled, but they work under the supervision of very experienced and knowledgeable supervisors and with the help of detailed instruction sheets and easy to use enabling technology. This model can be extended into the area of biological data processing. Concept Contemporary research in the area of life sciences has revealed the need for extensive usage of computers for ultra large volume dat...

It has been quite some time since I have written on this blog and that is kind of unfortunate. Fact is that I am generally bursting for ideas but unfortunately there is no platform where I can put these up. From that perspective, these blogs could be the equivalent of a Hyde Park corner .... In any case, what is my big idea of the day ? You would have guessed it by now from the title of the blog .. Every year the Finance Minister tinkers with the tax rates. But let him also focus on the collection strategy. The income tax department is generally viewed with suspicion and there are many stories about corruption, extortion plus rude and irrational behaviour. Identical behaviour was the hallmark of DoT and the nationalised insurance companies. However there has been a sea change with the introduction of private operators in these fields. Both BSNL and LIC and it sisters are now far more user friendly AND efficient. Let us adopt the same strategy for tax collection. Let there be Tax Collec...

That is me in a Pugree in Pune That is me ...