The need for and benefit of owning a Car - depends on where

For over 5 years, I have not had a car for my visits to Chandigarh and I have rarely missed it. Even after the age of  70, I can easily walk and do most of  my  work. On occasions when  I did need a vehicle, Uber/Ola have been very useful. Usually, I get a taxi in a short period of time. It is the advantage of living in the center of the city and my trips are to places from where taxi driver will have no problem getting a new customer.

I wish I had the option of a taxi on demand in Goa, whenever I needed it. But I don't. So, I continue with owning a car which I will need to replace as it will be reaching retirement age of 20 even though it is not driven much and runs well. In stead of  using a taxi, when my children were also here, it was simpler to rent a car for 2 weeks!

It is obvious that a taxi will not be economical from the perspective of the consumer in Goa for either the short distances that I need or even an evening trip to a nearby beach. There just isn't enough volume of traffic throughout the day for a driver to make enough money.

In Delhi, I used Uber more this time than I usually do. I normally use metro only and walk and this time, an auto driving over my wife's foot had made the option of  walking impossible. 

Stuck in traffic, I would wonder how  much the driver could possibly be making. It couldn't be much. The condition of the taxis in Delhi reflected that. 

Uber is a terrible model. The society needs something better. Uber represents a need; however, the people who profit from it are NOT the ones providing the service.

The difference in the cost of using a car and taxi has the following parts:

• Operational cost. In this case, it makes little difference whether it is  a personal car or a taxi.
• Capital cost. In all likelihood, a taxi is used a lot more than a personal car. So, the effective cost per km should be lower for a taxi.
• Driver's earnings. We don't pay ourselves for driving, so this is indeed the big challenge.

If we want the ownership of personal cars to reduce, the  society must agree to guarantee a minimum income to the drivers - at least until self-driving vehicles replace them. 

Something like MANREGA for the urban areas?

 

Why I look forward to robots as waiters

I am somewhat guilt ridden. Should I have tipped more? It has been quite some time since a person seemed to be so desperate and pleading for more tip. It wouldn't have mattered to me but may have made a difference to him. But it brings up the same dilemma of giving to a beggar. I may help a person and feel good about it; but I may actually be contributing to the preservation of a bad and unjust social setup.

It was the last leg of our trip to Kerala. We took the Trivandrum Rajdhani from Ernakulam to Margao. It was painful to watch 3 attendants sleeping in the corridor outside the compartment - one on the proper berth and the remaining two on the floor.

I wondered why was there a need for three attendants and whether they were actually employed by the contractors.

• Was it just the easy option of hiring extra people at a very low cost in order to 'improve' service? 
• Could it be that railways insist on the extra staff to make sure that one person is not overworked for the long journey? 
• Wouldn't it be desirable and better to have the staff change midway?
• Or does the actual employee outsource his job to desperate youngsters for no wage but tips?

Since I can do little about it, I would rather not have to think about whether to tip and how much to tip. That would be easy if the server were a robot.

India should stop building roads and spend on autonomous transport

The surprising message for me after hearing this talk Keynote - AltCars Expo was the great reduction in the road space needed.

Assuming that this technology enables us to have a far better movement of traffic with the existing road infrastructure, we in India should be actively pursuing this future rather than building ever more roads. Can we make it work in India?

The cost of NOT doing it is visible in the example of Delhi:

I recall having a sore throat on every trip I took to Delhi by the time I reached my office from the airport. This was on trips to  Delhi prior to the introduction of CNG. The experience after that (2002 onward?) was far better  for some years. Meanwhile, Delhi built more roads, more flyovers, and even a metro, but the net result is that it has achieved the status of the most polluted city in the world!

How can autonomous vehicles share the road space with the current Indian traffic? It just seems impossible when even in the US, humans tend to hit the autonomous vehicles from the rear.

We should start with autonomous public transport, both buses and taxis, and create a legal framework which disciplines the human drivers harshly.

How about legally treating any human driver who hits an autonomous vehicle as attempting suicide. All legal responsibilities of insurance companies would be exactly the same as in the case of a suicide.

We can experiment with such a law today with riders on motor bikes  who are not wearing a helmet. I am pretty sure it will introduce social pressures and modify the behaviour of the riders. It may even help create a market for air-cooled helmets.

Andher Nagari Chaupat Raja - Software to The Rescue

Finally, a closure to closing a bank account! I was reminded of it by the title "Impersonal Government is Good".

I had resubmitted the papers again. I had visited the bank branch two days later before leaving Chandigarh, but the officer concerned was on leave. Obviously, no one else could help.

I hoped the officer would honor the commitment.  What else could I do anyway. She didn't as I found out online a few days later.

Fortunately, I found a form to submit a complaint. It took a few days but I got a call from the branch in Chandigarh asking to speak to my late mother!

After a bit of explanation, I could over-hear her talking to the officer concerned - "But it is in my CRM". Anyway, she told me it wasn't done but will be by next day and it was.

So, may be Manna should indeed be THE solution for Indian public services.

Is Silicon Valley too hyped?

After I came across "Where is Europe's Silicon Valley?", it has been bothering me. If I were young today, I would be very reluctant to come to Silicon Valley based on the comparison of my visit 2 years ago and now.

I had come back to San Francisco area for the first time after over 40 years 2 years ago. I was surprised by how little it had changed. The public transport was similar though the street cars were replaced by light rail. They were traveling on the same paths, except that now light rail was underground on Market street. I could follow the same routes I used to take as a teenager and a student here. The houses in Sunset district seemed the same. The house we had rented for US$200 probably rented for a lot more but it was still better than the fall in the value of the rupee during the same period. I had liked the visit.

So, what has happened in the last two years to make me unhappy about this place? It has to be the rate at which the rents are increasing in comparison to the salaries. If a person was already paying 40% of take home on rent, obviously the quality of life is going to suffer.

Hence, it was nice to read "Jimmy Wales: London is Better for Tech Than 'Dreadful' Silicon Valley"

“I meet people around London and they ask ‘when do you go back to San Francisco?’ assuming I’m here for a few days, but I live in London,” he said at the launch of Tech.London.

It takes time for people's mindset to change and it will.

Even in India, housing remains a big issue. When I started, as my uncle told me that even his colleague at a newspaper, who was a committed communist, had to pay black to buy a flat. Hence, buying a place was a very difficult proposition for young people without family money. No longer thanks to loans and organized builders catering, in particular, to the IT boom.

The bottom line - the direction of change matters more.
In India, we see hope as our standard of life keeps improving. In the west, we can look forward to the deterioration of our life in comparison to that of our parents. 

No wonder I am happier in Goa or Chandigarh or even Pune :)

Google - please collect caller id's of fraudulent callers because the banks won't

The cumulative time  I must have spent even on blindly clicking that I know that the bank does not ever ask for pin numbers or passwords must have crossed a working day. Yesterday, I got an idiotic call from my 'bank' regarding my 'atm' card. I wanted to report the number for further action by 'someone' and didn't after recalling my previous experiences.

I had received a call offering me a 'bonus' for an insurance policy as the company had made an excessive profit. I decided to send the details to the insurance company. I got a prompt response that as I knew, these were fraudulent calls and not to give them any information.

But that was not the reason I had informed the insurance company. I was hoping that the insurance company could initiate action against the crooks using the phone number. After all, what is purpose for all the documentation the government insists on before a telephone number can be allotted and used.

Since the insurance company was not interested, I located the service provider to whom the phone belonged but they were not interested either as my number was not from their company. On second thought, such calls may even contribute a significant sum to their revenues.

Google makes it so easy to report phishing attempts on emails. For calls,  the only data that is needed is the caller id and whether spam or phishing. No one need look at this data. A monitoring program can raise alerts as and when a statistically significant event occurs.

So, I can't understand that while the banks make so much effort to tell their account holders not to respond to phishing attempts, they are yet to make any effort to collect the caller id data and then use the data to stop the fraudsters before they can cause any damage.

May be Google will find a way to collect this data and monetize it and I can have the satisfaction of doing my neighbourly duty of reporting a phishing attempt. 

Getting Lost on the Highway - Again!

After the previous experience of getting lost, we were far better prepared. I had looked at the maps, estimated the times, noted the small town names to make sure that we did not take the wrong path.

Our problems were compounded by a poor choice the data network supplier. I had incorrectly assumed that one supplier would be a reliable alternate and backup in the interiors. I had also not realised how expensive data usage with maps is if you are roaming on a 'partner' network. Our balance in the prepaid account had been exhausted even before we found our hotel in Jaipur.

Maps mention routes by the highway numbers - even paper ones if one find one these days. Often there are multiple numbers for the same highway, especially the state highways. However, I don't recall seeing many highway signs with highway numbers. Certainly not at the junctions. Why is that so hard? May be as a programmer, a simple code as a key is the obvious first choice and I can't see the administrative and decision taking complexities involved :)

My preparation helped. We were on our way from Udaipur to Anand. About midway, there was a turning for a highway to Vadodra bypassing Ahmedabad. The road was 'straight' after that.

When expected, there was a turning. However, all the signage mentioned was - 'Modasa'. There was no mention of Vadodra. Obviously, there was no mention the state highway number. Because of my planning, I knew 'Modasa' was on the correct route! So, we took the turning and were pleasantly surprised by an excellent highway. Once we got on it, we knew it was headed towards Godhra and Vadodra!

I didn't realise it but somewhere the highway turned! The road was excellent and we knew we were moving fast in the right direction. And then the realisation came. There was a small sign which indicated that we were still on state highway number 5! In the absence of data connection, we relied on the good old network of asking people. Their directions were remarkably clear and precise.

We kept asking for directions at suspicious crossings. In a small town, even a slightly wider road may be the highway you want. We reached an hour later than expected but enjoyed the experience of asking for directions. Especially, just near the end.

One person was very confident and asking us to turn in the direction from which we had come! Fortunately, the shop owner knew better and gave us the correct details. As we moved, we could hear him still explaining to the enthusiastic, helpful by-stander!

I hope someone in the highway planning department wakes up and realises that putting highway number of exit signs does not require much space and may even help his family and friends one day :)

Nuclear power and human reaction to risks

Yesterday, I saw a documentary "Gentilly or not to be" about the closure or refurbishing of a nuclear power plant in Quebec. I was deeply affected. Was the increase in the risk of cancer in children being deliberately ignored? I spent a couple of hours searching and reading various articles, especially related to the German study.

I then went for a walk and while reflecting on it, started to wonder about my fear of flying. Even today, as the plane takes off or lands, my stomach tightens, my heartbeat increases. I am unreasonably stressed. I think it is related to the minimal survival chances should there be an accident. The true risk is the probability of not surviving and there is an accident! Our emotions seem to ignore the second factor!

I started to look at some numbers to, at least, get a non-emotive perspective.

• Mortality rate for children under 5 per 1000 live births  (2012)
  Canada 6, India 56
• Reasons for these deaths:
  According to UNICEF,^[6] most child deaths (and 70% in developing countries)^[7] result from one or more of the following five causes:

acute respiratory infections
diarrhea
measles
malaria
malnutrition

• Childhood Cancer

The most common cancers in children are (childhood) leukemia (34%), brain tumors (23%), and lymphomas (12%).^[11] In 2005, 4.1 of every 100,000 young people under 20 years of age in the U.S. were diagnosed with leukemia, and 0.8 per 100,000 died from it.^[5]

The issue is not just cancer. It is overall health. I think I will still choose to stay close to a nuclear power plant than downstream from a dam or near a thermal power plant.

International missed calls a fraud?

I had once returned a call only to find out that I was calling some place in Africa with an absurd calling rate. It wasn't a pay per minute type of a call. The person who picked up the phone was an Indian and seemed as confused by my call as I was.

I now look at the country code before responding. Though once I almost made a mistake but the Indian telecom authority cautioned me that I was making an international call.

Yesterday, I got a call with an Indian voice saying that she couldn't hear me. Today, a missed call from the same or similar number. Being a little smarter, I didn't call back Tanzania.

I suspect that it is not an accidental wrong number call but a deliberate racket. However, I keep wondering, who makes the money on such calls?

No power, all the fault of the 93% consumers

I read such news and get depressed(though depression may have its advantages). Not because people not reporting the connected load is the cause of not getting stable, continuous power.

Flipkart, Amazon, Google, Facebook - I could go on and on - do not ask for anything about what equipment or resources we have which can use their services. And the scale at which they operate is a bit larger than the electricity department.

I feel depressed because I expect the electricity department to be giving me information about my consumption and not the other way around. It is a critical need for energy conservation, e.g.

Building technologies and smart meters can allow energy users, business and residential, to see graphically the impact their energy use can have in their workplace or homes. Advanced real-time energy metering is able to help people save energy by their actions.

The collection of papers which state all the equipment one has is a waste of the trees and money. The cost of processing those papers, if ever done, would also be high. Even filing the papers costs! I was amused to read a letter to the editor requesting help from the electricity department to fill the forms!

If the department really needs the connected load, let people fill that ONE value online though it would amaze me if it leads to any better planning of the load.

Here's an example or two they could examine.

Value for Society versus Economic Value

As I read about the smallest banking trojan in circulation, I was pleased that I will soon be converting one of our neighbours to Linux. I managed to fix her Windows problem. I also installed the open source Clam anti-virus after removing a commercial product which kept scaring and nagging her to pay for renewal.

However, she said that she wanted me to install Linux on her free partition as I had mentioned that I have never needed to use an anti-virus software!

The entire anti-virus industry would not have appeared had it not been for Windows. Obviously a loss to the economy, but would it have been a loss to the society?

Since I do not have to make effort to make money, I can spend my time learning. Thanks to open source, I can, without having to spend anything over and above my internet connection, learn OpenStack, Hadoop, Zotonic(an Erlang based Web framework), and whatever my mind decides is exciting or useful to know this week or month! My experimentation does not add any value to the economy. I like to think that the open source universe does add value to the society as it makes it possible for anyone to learn.

There is little doubt that windows has created a lot of economic wealth. I am not so sure it would be even a fraction of the social wealth created by Linux and open source software. That is, if we could find a way to measure social wealth! E.g. see or read "The Clothesline Paradox" though I would like to think that we can find a way to measure wealth without resorting to money.

Irony of paying less tax for making money from money by doing nothing

As I get older, I would have expected to become more conservative. Instead, I am more likely to be upset by Arun Jaitley promises more income tax relief if economy improves and discussions on tv where it is taken for granted that India has a high rate of taxation, which needs to be brought down. Rare left wing economists talking about the low tax to gdp ratio are brushed aside.

I find it ironic that I pay less tax now thanks to a major part of my earnings coming from divindends in mutual funds than I did when I worked 9 to 5. What is  so special about earning money from money?

In fact, the government takes a 20+% on dividends of non-equity funds, which benefits the richer people far more than people like me.

I suppose, the motivation is supposed to be an incentive for people to invest, but what will I or any person with surplus money do? Can't be kept under a mattress. People like me may put it in the bank instead but the motivation for investing in equity funds is hardly the low tax rate. It is the gambling instinct of riding a bull run :)

No one starts a factory in the hope of paying low tax on profits! Yes, the richer people can move the money to other countries. I would say let them. How much can Cayman Islands and other tax havens consume?

Since I was not going to get a government pension, it was obvious that I needed to save and not spend. However, if the government taxed me more but had a negative income tax for my old age, would it have mattered?

We need to worry about what will happen as we can't stop the following from happening - "Hi, I’m a tablet. I’ll be your waiter tonight".

As a consumer(in US), I do not want to pay the waiter 15% or more tip. I do not want to feel guilty about not paying the tip because the person is probably being paid a minimum wage. As a consumer in India, I am immune to the treatment of such workers in Udipi-like joints. I have learnt to close our eyes as the alternate would make me far too aware of my own incompetence and helplessness and make it impossible to eat out (or do anything) at inexpensive places. Even in the US, I wonder what are the earnings of fast food joint workers but they were supposed to be students working part time to supplement their pocket money.

We need to re-think the importance of money - investments increasingly no longer imply wealth for the society but only for some individuals in the society.

I recall reading a comment. There will be no shortage of things to do for humans in future. The issue is whether they will be paid for it. No one can deny the importance of raising children and the effort involved in it. Today, does the society pay a mother (or father) who has chosen to stay at home for this task beyond the maternity leave?

UPDATE: Longer holding, higher tax takes sheen off debt funds
Better, but wouldn't it be simpler to just treat it as interest from bank deposits no matter what the duration? No special treatment and treat dividend distribution tax as "tax deducted at source" to be treated like any other income.

While at it, do the same for equity funds.

I wish the exercise of increasing capital gains tax was philosophical rather than just a way to collect more tax.

Incomprehensible Customer Service

One more bank tries to make me happy :)

"Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

I found that I could not carry out online transactions.

I had recently disabled sms alerts as it bothered me that they started deducting quarterly for SMS alerts without any intimation. From the branch, I came to know that the procedure for getting rid of SMS alerts is to delete the mobile number!

So, online transactions need me to enter a number sent to a mobile phone, which never reaches me as there is no mobile number! Ah, the system assumes that the phone number exists and no need to check.

I had to call the call center about a solution to this dilemma. How to carry out online transactions without subscribing to sms alerts?

It took a while for the call center employee to appreciate my predicament. The complaint is registered and I got a complaint number. Then came the solution which was beyond anything I could have imagined.

"Call back after 7 days. Tell your complaint number and we will let you know what the solution is".

I suggested that the call center can send me an email - they do not have that facility.

Simply amazing.

I would definitely achieve happiness if I succeed. I have already made a lot of effort. I will have to make some more effort and I am sure, I will need of creativity to get around their system :)

Oh, the site has an email option and, now, even a grievance monitoring option. So far my experience indicates that these services are connected to a black hole. I have never got even an automated acknowledgement.

High tech company: Wrong emails containing wrong email address to contact if a problem

I got a very cryptic and confusing email from a mobile company. It took me a while to confirm that I had never had a sim with the mobile number mentioned. So, I was the wrong recipient. I ignored it.

I got a second time the same email. Wanting to be helpful, I tried the following:

1. Replied to the email. It bounced.

2. Noticed that there was a helpful message to forward the email to mailman... in case it is not meant for me. Guess what. It bounced as well :)

It can't be that hard to make sure that a 'helpful' message attached to each email contains correct information.

I kept getting financial statements for a loan by someone in a small town. Since no one bothered to do anything about the replies I sent, I added a filter to direct all mails from that company to the bin.

Should do that for this company as well!

fyup - What's the fuss other than the awkward abbreviation

My experiences with conventional higher education have been disillusioning. The Delhi University's Four Year program was at least an effort to be different even though it did not address the centralized examination system which, in my opinion, is the single most important cause of lack of learning and waste of time.

Education in US forced me to study various subjects across disciplines though I would have opted out of them at that age. I was definite that I would spend my life at a university teaching and researching physics and nothing else mattered! Fortunately, it wasn't to be.

However, there is little doubt in my mind that the most useful courses for me have been philosophy (ethics), psychology (especially behavioural) , social sciences (e.g having to read Nathaniel West's A Cool Million in a capitalist society).

Had I succeeded in the corporate world, I may have even found the Physical Education course I took(Golf) useful, which incidentally brought down my GPA.

The whole discussion seems to be entangled and procedural. I did not find it interesting except that there seems to be a feeling that foundation courses and exiting after 2 years are of no use at all.

Our society is accustomed to hiring over-qualified people just because they are available cheaply. However, what are the skills needed for most service sector job, e.g. retail, sales people, customer facing staff in any organization, general call centre employees, etc.

• Communication skills
• Ability to deal with people (psychology)
• Functional mathematics
• Ability to work with computers
• functional literacy  - keyboard usage, GUI interfaces, browsing skills, understand error messages, etc.
• NOT programming skills.

What else are the foundation courses?

However, can any university prepare us for the robotic future?

If the debate focused on education for the future in a world where software eats all jobs, that would be enlightening! Optimistic, Inequality, Plausible and likely, Pessimistic, and Bleak fiction by Marshall Brain.

Create Sovereign Wealth using an Inheritance Transfer law

Income inequality is growing and is now considered as the most serious risk to global stability. Sovereign wealth may be a way to fund and manage the growing economic inequality especially in view of  jobless growth.

While countries with natural resources or surplus income may be able to create sovereign weath, how can a country like India create one?

One of the valuable taxation tool to reduce the obvious advantages of being born rich is the inheritance tax. India stopped the inheritance tax in 1985. It is easy to understand the implementation problems. Aside from estimating the value of the assets, how will the inheritors convert assets into cash so as to pay the government?

Current capabilities of technology and software make new options possible which would have been unthinkable using manual systems.

One way would be that a proportion of the assets as per the inheritance tax rate is transferred to the sovereign fund of Govt of India. Operational control of the assets may continue to remain with the legal heirs. However, the appropriate proportion of any income derived from the assets would belong to the sovereign fund.

For example, any residential property would continue to be in the possession of the heirs with no liabilities except when they sell it. Keeping all such records on the computers is trivial.

Such a mechanism would make it possible to have a law which is not riddled with exceptions to minimize unfairness.  Furthermore, as an asset it will provide long term income to the government rather than additional income which is likely to be wasted especially around elections.

Any  issues related to improper reporting of income are no worse than the current experiences and practices in collection of taxes.

If such steps are not taken, it seems inevitable that more and more wealth will be in the hands of increasingly fewer people.
 

Future - A Very Convenient Society but without Jobs

I can't imagine a security guard who can hope to match the skills of even current robots, e.g. Knightscope's K5 beta. Such devices will replace security guards in, at least, high risk areas and soon.

Drones will deliver pizzas and our packages in case the delivery person is unreliable or expensive. The obvious implication is that such jobs cannot be anything other than low paying.

Robotic telemarketers may be a joke at present but reduction in the growth of call centers is inevitable. Call centers were probably the most important transformation in job market for the educated in India.

Who wouldn't like to see, at least, bad drivers replaced by driverless vehicles? 

Statistics as in "Unemployment in the Era of Jobless Growth" show that unemployment rate in India increases sharply as the level of education rises and is over 25% for graduates and above. It is not going to be cured by improvements in education. For example, I would expect that there is a far greater chance of some smart programmers replacing the need for programmers than most of the software engineering graduates being productive enough to be employable.

So, is any political party anywhere in the world talking about the needs of the society once a fair proportion of the society will be unemployable and a fair amount will work for low wages with little hope of improvement? We will need more government intervention and not less. Europe is probably better prepared for the future and India should emulate European welfare states rather than the US.

The bus protests in San Francisco may be just the beginning as the implications of a very convenient, tech driven society sink in.

We shop using computer programs, pay using computer programs. A computer program and a robot communicate and pack what we have ordered. A drone is informed of the delivery address and the package arrives at our doorstep!

Robots, Software, Internet destroying jobs?

Although the Foundation Trilogy made no mention of robots, in the Foundation series, it becomes clear that it is a robot which is guiding and preserving the human race. It would appear that Asimov had greater faith in robots.

It is easy to trust software and robots as they would act as per the laws implemented, whereas humans may state allegiance and adherence to some laws while disregarding them in practice. (This obviously leads to the corollary for software to be open source otherwise how can we possibly trust it.)

My faith in software was emphasized yesterday. I got a call from my satellite tv service provider. I did not understand what the point of the call was and paid little attention. It appeared to be a confirmation of my renewal just two days earlier.

However, I have no idea how the human being interpreted what I said and changed the subscriptions and got rid of the English channels, which are about the only ones I watch on satellite tv - other than Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha TV's.

I now have to struggle with other human beings to get the subscriptions rectified. It is not yet painful enough to switch service providers.

This personal experience illustrates the predicament for human societies. What will most people need to do to live a comfortable life?

Unknown tomorrow - no jobs, no place to stay and no destination for migration

It is nice to see a TED talk which confirm one's opinions. The nature of jobs is changing so rapidly that a fairly substantial number of people will be unemployed or poorly paid. It is hard to expect that all humans can become successful at the jobs which seem likely to survive. However, those with wealth do not need to worry. They will be able to own robots and earn a very comfortable living from the work done by the robots.

One wonders what even the near future holds given that there is a lot which is wrong, e.g. in US. The following about China would easily apply to India.

For the outsiders, governmental officials have an "iron bowl" – a steady job and they enjoy relatively high welfare ... each year millions of Chinese applicants sit for exams to become civil servants and compete fiercely for popular posts

Ultimately, rich people choose to emigrate because they feel unhappy living in China. There are too many things that money can't buy, such as good education, clean air, safe food and an investment environment protected by a legal system.

This is a lose-lose situation. Everybody feels unhappy.

It is hard to imagine the quality of life improving in India. The following news item illustrates the desperation:

The day he died, his wife was assured by the police top brass that one of her children would be given a job on compassionate grounds. Much to her chagrin, her two representations requesting the police authorities to grant a job to her 21-year-old daughter have been turned down.

This seems like like an unfortunate example of paternalism - arbitrary action on the part of government using "compassionate grounds" as a justification.

The real reason for a job on compassionate grounds is " she is looking for ways and means to retain the accommodation given by the police department". The value of government accommodation is obviously very high.

Given the strain of our population, I find it hard to be optimistic that the future is brighter for those who chose to stay in India.

May be migration to Mars is an option worth considering.

How to hide from Big Data?

Fortunately, I am not using twitter so I am safe for a while from marketeers targeting my personality  :)

I am looking forward to a blogger providing a list of words which I may use in the blogs to ensure that the new software is assured that I am a part of the "neuroticism" segment of no commercial value to direct marketeers in conformity with 

the new software has the potential to serve people as individuals rather than “vague demographic blurs”.