May be they misread that Indians wanted an affordable car. Was that a misconception? Are we not buying the best product in the category that is within the budget of each of us – be it an LCD TV or a washing machine or a car? If you see a guy on a two-wheeler, take a close look. He has bought the best in ‘his’ class. He needs the approving nods from his peers and neighbors, just as his middle-upper-rich counterparts aspire to.

How does Tata Motors promote the product in  its ads, especially on TV? city slickers taking off to the far-away hills or to the village family home. Not that of a village clerk taking his family to the nearby ‘big town’ on a movies-and-shopping expedition. Not that of a rural family doing the rounds of their favorite deities, with all the family members in tow (a la pack-the-car). Think about it- Tata Nano’s markets are deep inside Indian villages, not among  the impossible to satisfy city consumers. They will see value for money, prestige and most importantly, the much-wanted mobility. Unlike city arrivistas who are spoilt for choice, whose status symbols are the Audis and the BMWs, not the puny Nano. If a two-wheeler rider decides to upgrade, he would probably pick at least a Maruti Alto over the Nano.

So, who should Tata Motors expect to sell to in the over-populated Indian cities? the answer is – the youth, the teeeny weeny itsy bitsy ones. Its time for Tata NanoSport. In vibrant colors of the youngsters – inside out. With sexy graphics that arrest the attention. That comes with automatic memberships in NanoSports Online communities that promote fun and adventure. That would look so irresistibly cute that kids would drive them to the campuses with their heads held high.

NanoSport, where are you?

Like it or not, this anecdote does depict the typical malayalee’s inclination to live beyond his means, to project a lifestyle out of his reach.All sorts of scamsters make hay in Kerala while the malayalee chases his dream lifestyle, instant riches and social acceptability.The most recent were money-chain scams, running into hundreds of crores. Then there are Nagamanikyam scams – again, running into crores.Real estate scams, dime a dozen and on such large scale, it forced the state govt. to spin a new law to deal with them.

‘Gold Loans’ – which are actually pledge of gold for cash – is a business that Malayalee moneylenders have perfected and exported out of the state. Every financial institution, bank is into it now. Why, even India Infoline, a financial intermediary/brokerage from Mumbai, has got a gold loan book now.Kerala firms account for about 50% of all such loans business in India, who offer upto 90% of the gold value in loan. This is pure windfall for the consumer – if he sells the jewelry, he will not get anything anywhere close. To such an extent that some of them find it more ‘rewarding’ to default and forgo the gold stock!!

All this works fine as long as gold roars. If it tumbles, it could very well prick a bubble.Watch it, it won’t be that far away.

There is indeed a reverse brain-drain, almost approaching that of China. More Indians want to stay back in India, as living conditions look up and incomes shoot up. when one can have a ‘foreign’ standard of living right at home, minus the need for cultural adjustment, why not stay back?

Here’s the official scrap from Google:

A new way to communicate

The mouse and keyboard were invented before the Internet even existed. Since then, countless technological advancements have allowed for much more efficient human computer interaction. Why then do we continue to use outdated technology? Introducing Gmail Motion — now you can control Gmail with your body.

How it works

Gmail Motion uses your computer’s built-in webcam and Google’s patented spatial tracking technology to detect your movements and translate them into meaningful characters and commands. Movements are designed to be simple and intuitive for people of all skill levels.

Motion Guide

Familiarize yourself with some of the basic functionality of Gmail Motion using this printable guide of sample gestures. With it, you’ll be able to start writing and responding to emails – with your body – in no time.

Safety precautions

Using Gmail Motion is not only safe but also healthy and fun. As with any physical activity, certain precautions are recommended. First, make sure to clear the area around you. Second, try to take short breaks every 30-40 minutes, just as you would if you were typing. And finally, take time to stretch after each session to give the muscles you’ll be using some relief.

Coming soon to Google Docs

This new motion detection technology doesn’t stop with Gmail. We’re excited to announce that Google Docs Motion will be coming later this year. Learn more

And here is how it looks like:

The next big thing !

Standing on a my apartment’s terrace, I can see a pretty hillock a few kilometers into the west. On the south are a row of small hillocks. The one on the west is already under attack. Quarrying has eaten away almost half of it, as it is mostly solid rock. Well, that could be the only reason it lasted so long. Nonethelss, a temple has come up on one side of the hillock, blasted and flattened. There are two small ‘templets’ on the top and a ‘churchlet’ for competition! All of them will grow in size with time and steal the hill from the society.

Is it not possible for a city to spare its hills and hillocks as it grows cancerously? Would our coming generations have to travel several hundreds of kilometers to see a hill? Who gives the authorities the right to demolish and apportion hills, which are common heritage?

This is the message that you see if you ask for the toolbar on your chrome.

I’m feeling pretty handicapped since I’m unable to open my stored bookmarks with Google.

Isn’t it funny that the folks at Google haven’t noticed it so far….? That’s a slim chance.

It may be great going for the fairly new browser - http://internet-browser-review.toptenreviews.com/. But, to me, I’m still a big fan of Firefox. Perhaps I got so used to it. Perhaps all browsers suddenly started looking firefoxy..and so I don’t see any reason to shift loyalty. However, my Firefox has some problem opening pictures especially if lightbox is used for zoom. So, oftentimes  I find myself getting on to IE or Chrome.

As long as I can’t carry my bookmarks around, I will still swear by FF. I’ve no love-hate relationship with any browser.

I paid around Rs.4,300 last year for a Rs.2 lakh floater. And the renewal premium this year? Rs.26,000 ! Isn’t that eye-popping?

So, what is going on in the name of insurance sector  ’liberalization’? An carte blanche to rip off the public? Well, it doesn’t appear to be anything else at all.

What could be the logic behind this racket? Is it because almost all insurance companies got hit by fraudulent claims, especially from executives with MNCs who were liberally covered by corporate  policies and now they want to make up for the losses? Aren’t the insurance companies themselves to be blamed for playing into the hands of these corporates, only to use health cover for staff as a bait for selling hugely profitable fire and other policies?

What is the Insurance Regulator (IRDA) doing? Apparently, watching the rip-off from the sidelines and claiming that ‘we’ll take action if we get a complaint’ ?

My sense is that there is a need to sue all these insurance companies and the IRDA. A Class action suit. Anyone?

Apparently, the main reason is that we are still bound by very fuddy-duddy, outdated laws. Laws that have not kept with the enormous social change over centuries. Laws that have all but failed to notice the need for newer definitions for Crime, and Punishment.

In what way does heinous crime stand out from other offences? It is mainly the intent, the motive behind the crime itself apart from the visible consequences of that act. If someone shoots or stabs another with an intent to kill, that is felony. There could be circumstances that made him take this extreme step of taking the life of another -but it does remain a felony.

Compare that with financial offences, corruption and all that sort. Where there is no intent to cause physical harm  to anybody, but is borne out of plain greed. Such crime impacts the lives of several people in the form of money losses. But, it hardly kills.

Well, that is  a major differentiator. There is no enduring physical trauma. Those affected by the crime may go through mental suffering. But, they can, and will, piece their lives together and get on with it.

In several cases involving financial fraud or corruption, there are chances of making good most of the losses to the affected – be they private citizens or the government. Unless it is  a market meltdown.

What is the system trying to say by sending financial offenders and the corrupt to jail? It is very unclear. Is it trying to say that well, we had fantastic laws to deal with such crime, that we had fantastic sleuths who could unravel the crime and fantastic judiciary who could pronounce  the accused  guilty?

The best form of punishment for non-heinous crime is community service. This could mean cleaning the bus stations and public toilets, sweeping the road, clearing the garbage or even teaching at a local school. But, that sort of a punishment sends a much stronger message across, as it inflicts more severe social humiliation on the offenders – a heavy coming down from their dizzying heights. It is much more effective than several years of obscurity and disappearance from the public eye.

Let’s  sentence A.Raja- if proved guilty- to 5 years’ upkeep of all bus shelters in Delhi. That involves sweeping them clean every day, right in the public glare, with no pay but only food and shelter. Let us make all those army men behind the Adarsh scam-again, if found guilty- to several years on the streets as traffic cops, again with no pay but only food and shelter.

Drag every corrupt civil servant, minister, elected rep, financial defrauder out into the glare of daylight, not into the dark cells inside  a jail.

Well,you can. And it is so easy.  There are free tools on the web that even cops use to hunt down culprits.

Step 1:  copy the header of your email. This is simple, if you are a Gmail user.

Click on the drop-down arrow on the right of  the mail’s title, as shown in the picture.

From the menus shown, choose ‘ ‘Show Original’. You will see something like this: 

Step 2:  Copy this and go here. Scroll down and paste the copied text in the box shown with the caption ‘header’.  You are done!. This is what you get:

Print this out and take it to the police station or the cybercops, if  your place has such.

Here’s a link to get your email’s header.

Try this on some of the spam mails that land in your spam folder. Get ready to be shocked if the email is traced back  to your own PC ! Well, that’s how spammers work. They hijack unprotected computers and turn them into Zombies, which will obey their orders.

Millions of PCs in the world have been turned into zombies, without even the owners knowing about it. If you want to avoid that trap, get a  good antivirus. Keep the virus database updated regularly, which most of them do by themselves unless you meddle.

A service probably as old as our civilization itself, it is a well-deserved  special day for the people,  whose services the society never paid back for  in the right measure.

A thought  that used to amaze me  is  about what makes  a person, more aptly a girl, choose nursing as a lifetime job? The courses,  if run by a good institute,  are not so easy to do; the training and internship periods are taxing and once you enter the ‘regular’ duty cycle in a full-time job, you could be working in the day or  at  night or both. You need to deal with people in various stages of living or dying, various temperaments, various social starta..

I am not sure how well their training gets them set with the ‘soft skills’.  I used to guess that however you train, most of it is intrinsic to the person and part of it may also be acquired over the years.  Probably, you could be  trained to speak in a soothing, modulated manner.  But, can you teach someone compassion and empathy? I doubt that.  Those are  traits that majority of women are born with,  innate to them.

The point that I’m trying to make is that all said, this is one job men can never beat women at.  These days,  a number of  teenage girls in Kerala - the tiny southern state in INDIA, perhaps the largest exporter of nurses globally – may be taking to the profession driven by goals that have hardly anything to do with caring,  compassion  or empathy.  Most of them are only getting into it for its truly global market.  This has been India’s biggest service export, years before  ‘tech coolies ‘  made their appearance.

For most of the parents who send their kids into nursing,  it is a means to escape poverty.  They  fly off to Europe and the U.S in large numbers, once they have gained good experience in India, joining the large pool of  Indian diaspora who talk in dollars or pounds and who yearn for the annual or biennial leave.  Most of them will also make sure that a few of their siblings also join them soon there.  In a few years, they would have made their small home in India a remittance powerhouse !

It also probably gets their daughters good suitors.

How good are guys at nursing? My sense is that they are rather well off as attenders, good for heavy-duty pushing and pulling, but not as bedside caregivers. They are rough, reckless and in a hurry. They have hardly any time to watch the patients or listen to them. They are mere machines.  Programmed to start talking in dollars  or pounds after ‘n’ years at work.

As for the womenfolk, hats off to them ! May their tribe who join this noble profession multiply !

Tailwind:

I was in one of those crammed third-class sleeper boxes of the great Indian Railways, on way to our home state of  Kerala, with my family in tow.  As expected, the ticket examiner (TTE)  comes calling. Two teen girls in our opposite seat hand over a computer printout to the TTE.  Well, that was  a print of their online electronic ticket.  The TTE asks them for their ID proof.  Here comes the crunch – someone else bought the tickets for the girls and didn’t tell them that they need to carry with them one of the ID proofs that the railways ‘accepts’.

That’s when we got to know that they were nursing students at one of those hundreds of  ‘nurse factories’ in Bangalore. The only ID proof they could pull out was their college IDs.  The TTE nods his head in disapproval.  No, not accepted. Is there a way out? No, you need to pay twice the fare  as penalty.  Is there a absolutely no way out? Er, what if we could ask their parents to produce their ‘acceptable’ ID proof  at the destination, I ask of him? NO, absolutely not possible; we’re coming across impersonators in large numbers.

Now, the girls are  completely at sea.  We could sense that they do not have enough cash on them – just 200 bucks short of  the ‘official penalty’ amount. Let’s help them, I told my wife.

One of the girls murmured ‘thanks’ – take it or leave it. The other one just kept quiet, face down, befuddled.

One of the girls calls up her home. My wife told me later that she overheard her saying that they paid a penalty of  1000 bucks, while actually it was 1200 bucks including our small helping bit.  Well, that was very clever, I reacted.

Perhaps they were naive village kids, perhaps they never learned to say ‘thank you’, perhaps…

I was left speculating: would these girls make good nurses? Would they become honest people and restore their integrity? Or would they claim that, yes, I did give the medicines to the patient exactly as the doc had ordered though they were  in fact busy on their mobiles  for several minutes,  as the patient gasped for breath and died in the next few seconds?

Only time will tell.