[Health Tips] A Chat with Dr. Devi Shetty (Heart Specialist)

A chat with Dr.Devi Shetty, Narayana Hrudayalaya
(Heart Specialist) Bangalore was arranged by WIPRO for its employees.
The transcript of the chat is given below. Useful for everyone.
Qn: What are the thumb rules for a layman to take care of his heart?

Ans:
1. Diet - Less of carbohydrate, more of protein, less oil
2. Exercise - Half an hour's walk, at least five days a week; avoid lifts and avoid sitting for a longtime
3. Quit smoking
4. Control weight
5. Control blood pressure and sugar

Qn: Is eating non-veg food (fish) good for the heart?

Ans: No

Qn: It's still a grave shock to hear that some apparently healthy person
gets a cardiac arrest. How do we understand it in perspective?

Ans: This is called silent attack; that is why we recommend everyone past the age of 30 to undergo routine health checkups.

Qn: Are heart diseases hereditary?

Ans: Yes

Qn: What are the ways in which the heart is stressed? What practices do you suggest to de-stress?


Ans: Change your attitude towards life. Do not look for perfection in everything in life.

Qn: Is walking better than jogging or is more intensive exercise required to keep a healthy heart?

Ans: Walking is better than jogging since jogging leads to early fatigue and injury to joints

Qn: You have done so much for the poor and needy. What has inspired you to do so?

Ans: Mother Theresa , who was my patient

Qn: Can people with low blood pressure suffer heart diseases?

Ans: Extremely rare

Qn: Does cholesterol accumulates right from an early age
(I'm currently only 22) or do you have to worry about it only after you are above 30 years of age?

Ans: Cholesterol accumulates from childhood.

Qn: How do irregular eating habits affect the heart ?

Ans: You tend to eat junk food when the habits are irregular and your body's enzyme release for digestion gets confused.

Qn: How can I control cholesterol content without using medicines?

Ans: Control diet, walk and eat walnut.

Qn: Can yoga prevent heart ailments?

Ans: Yoga helps.

Qn: Which is the best and worst food for the heart?

Ans: Fruits and vegetables are the best and the worst is oil.

Qn: Which oil is better - groundnut, sunflower, olive?

Ans: All oils are bad .

Qn: What is the routine checkup one should go through? Is there any specific test?

Ans: Routine blood test to ensure sugar, cholesterol is ok. Check BP, Treadmill test after an echo.

Qn: What are the first aid steps to be taken on a heart attack?

Ans: Help the person into a sleeping position , place an aspirin tablet under the tongue with a sorbitrate tablet if available, and rush him to a coronary care unit since the maximum casualty takes place within the first hour.

Qn: How do you differentiate between pain caused by a heart attack and that caused due to gastric trouble?

Ans: Extremely difficult without ECG.

Qn: What is the main cause of a steep increase in heart problems amongst youngsters? I see people of about 30-40 yrs of age having heart attacks and serious heart problems.

Ans: Increased awareness has increased incidents. Also, edentary lifestyles, smoking, junk food, lack of exercise in a country where people are genetically three times more vulnerable for heart attacks than Europeans and Americans.

Qn: Is it possible for a person to have BP outside the normal range of 120/80 and yet be perfectly healthy?

Ans: Yes.

Qn: Marriages within close relatives can lead to heart problems for the child. Is it true?

Ans : Yes, co-sanguinity leads to congenital abnormalities and you may not have a software engineer as a child

Qn: Many of us have an irregular daily routine and many a times we have to stay late nights in office. Does this affect our heart ? What precautions would you recommend?

Ans : When you are young, nature protects you against all these irregularities. However, as you grow older, respect the biological clock.

Qn: Will taking anti-hypertensive drugs cause some other complications (short / long term)?

Ans : Yes, most drugs have some side effects. However, modern anti-hypertensive drugs are extremely safe.

Qn: Will consuming more coffee/tea lead to heart attacks?

Ans : No.

Qn: Are asthma patients more prone to heart disease?

Ans : No.

Qn: How would you define junk food?

Ans : Fried food like Kentucky , McDonalds , samosas, and even masala dosas.

Qn: You mentioned that Indians are three times more vulnerable. What is the reason for this, as Europeans and Americans also eat a lot of junk food?

Ans: Every race is vulnerable to some disease and unfortunately, Indians are vulnerable for the most expensive disease.

Qn: Does consuming bananas help reduce hypertension?

Ans : No.

Qn: Can a person help himself during a heart attack (Because we see a lot of forwarded emails on this)?

Ans : Yes. Lie down comfortably and put an aspirin tablet of any description under the tongue and ask someone to take you to the nearest coronary care unit without any delay and do not wait for the ambulance since most of the time, the ambulance does not turn up.

Qn: Do, in any way, low white blood cells and low hemoglobin count lead to heart problems?

Ans : No. But it is ideal to have normal hemoglobin level to increase your exercise capacity.

Qn: Sometimes, due to the hectic schedule we are not able to exercise. So, does walking while doing daily chores at home or climbing the stairs in the house, work as a substitute for exercise?

Ans : Certainly. Avoid sitting continuously for more than half an hour and even the act of getting out of the chair and going to another chair and sitting helps a lot.

Qn: Is there a relation between heart problems and blood sugar?

Ans: Yes. A strong relationship since diabetics are more vulnerable to heart attacks than non-diabetics.

Qn: What are the things one needs to take care of after a heart operation?

Ans : Diet, exercise, drugs on time , Control cholesterol, BP, weight.

Qn: Are people working on night shifts more vulnerable to heart disease when compared to day shift workers?

Ans : No.

Qn: What are the modern anti-hypertensive drugs?

Ans : There are hundreds of drugs and your doctor will chose the right combination for your problem, but my suggestion is to avoid the drugs and go for natural ways of controlling blood pressure by walk, diet to
reduce weight and changing attitudes towards lifestyles.

Qn: Does dispirin or similar headache pills increase the risk of heart attacks?

Ans : No.

Qn: Why is the rate of heart attacks more in men than in women?

Ans : Nature protects women till the age of 45.

Qn: How can one keep the heart in a good condition?

Ans : Eat a healthy diet, avoid junk food, exercise everyday, do not smoke and, go for health checkup s if you are past the age of 30 ( once in six months recommended) ...

Great works

Great works are performed not by strength
but by perseverance.

-- Samuel Johnson

Kind words

Kind words do not cost much.
Yet they accomplish much.

Author : Blaise Pascal

living - life

We make a living by what we get.
We make a life by what we give.

Author:Winston Churchill

most difficult to open

The most difficult thing to open is - a closed mind.

Families

Families are the compass that guide us.
They are the inspiration to reach great heights,
and our comfort when we occasionally falter.


-- Brad Henry

Love, Respect and Kindness

Love is bestowed on those you feel it for.
Respect is bestowed on those who earn it.
But Kindness can be bestowed on everyone, regardless!

Author: Dona Oxford

Restlessness

Restlessness and boredom
are the outcome of
a discontented mind.

DREAM

DREAM is not what u see in sleep,
is the thing which
does not let u sleep

[Photo News] GPS Tracking Device in MTC Buses

Recently i was traveling in MTC bus 70 route. i noticed something sticked to the front glass shield of the bus. I could easily judge it as most recent govt initiative of GPS tracking of MTC buses.



When i asked the driver he was saying "Ithu meyla irukirathoda (satellite) connect panni irrukanga... vandi enga pooguthunu TV'la watch pannitu irrpanga. enna perunu theriyala"

[Copy Cat] 6 Firefox Extensions for Web Workers

http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/07/20/6-firefox-extensions-for-web-workers/

I can’t help it. Even though Safari has a nicer looking UI, and the most recent Windows update is leaking memory like a sieve, I keep running Firefox as my primary Web browser. Why? Because no other browser has managed to give me anything like the extensibility story that Firefox extensions bring to my daily web working experience. With thousands of extensions out there, your list may vary, but here’s my own selection of half a dozen essentials:

Faviconize Tab - If you’re like me, you run with a lot of browser tabs open (I try to make time for a cleanup session when I get to 40 or 50 open tabs) and the first eight or ten are always the same. Why waste real estate on titles for those tabs? Faviconize shrinks those tabs down to just the width of the favicon.

Firebug - I feel silly even recommending this one. I don’t see how you could do modern web development without it. I turn to the JavaScript and CSS debugging tools here every time I’m working on a web page. Perhaps it’s less essential to people who write better JavaScript and CSS code than I do.

FoxClocks - This one makes it much easier to work with distributed teams. FoxClocks understands time zones, and can put as many little clocks as you like in your browser status bar, so you can see at a glance what time it is for team members in Bangkok, Bolivia, and Berlin. A great aid to scheduling and figuring out who’s likely to be online.

MenuX - If you’re a fan of maximizing your actual web site real estate, take a look at this one; it gives you toolbar buttons for a raft of things. It’s sort of like running Firefox in fullscreen mode but with access to your toolbars. You can also just grab individual buttons from it to have on your main toolbar; I use it to give me one-click access to “View Source” because I’m too lazy to memorize keyboard shortcuts.

Nightly Tester Tools - Don’t let the name scare you. There’s one good reason to grab this even if you don’t test alpha and beta versions of Firefox. Too many other extensions are coded to assume a maximum version number even though they don’t break on higher versions of Firefox. The Nightly Tester Tools adds a “Make all compatible” button to the Add-Ons dialog box that will tell all of your extensions to ignore version checks. If you’ve ever lost a much-loved extension due to a Firefox upgrade, this may get it back for you.

View Source Chart - A great little extension for understanding the structure of a complex web page through a nested, collapsible chart using color and graphics. If you use a framework that generates complex HTML (and who doesn’t, these days?) this is another indispensable debugging aid.

[Cover Story] MTC travel costing a rupee more

Now, traveling in MTC is costing more for me

As a regular passenger of chennai's MTC , now a days i am spending more for the ticket fare. The reason is not a hike in ticket fare but the addition of different types of bus services . For my daily commute to my office in guindy I usually take the 170c bus service from anna nagar west, which used to be a white board costing Rs.4/- between anna nagar and guindy. Now i am wondering why the ticket fare is a rupee extra (Rs 5/-) for the same distance.

Many of us can think what matters if the ticket is just one rupee extra, but that 2 rupee extra for to and fro ticket adds up to Rs. 50/- monthly, which really concerns people who travel regularly. Anyway i was very curious to know why the ticket is costlier now. The MTC website shows up a different service called "M" service, which has flat rates of 3,5,7 and 9 which i think is the reason for this. The next day i could notice just a letter "M" added in the white board as "M170c". This is really clever that most people wouldn't notice this letter added, as usually people board the bus looking at the color of the board and they have to pay a rupee extra.

Adding up new services is surly a good move, but they shouldn't have reduced the regular services. I could see more yellow line and blue line buses, which costs double than the regular service. Making these services more frequent in peak hour would obviously make more profit to MTC, but puts the burden on the common man.

Instead of directly hiking the ticket fares they have reduced the regular service and made our traveling costlier.

கிளி ஜோசியம்

கிளி ஜோசியம்

கிளி ஜோசியத்தில் நம்பிக்கை இல்லை தான்

ஆனாலும் பார்த்துத் தொலைக்கிறேன்!

கிளியின் 1 நிமிட சுதந்திரத்திற்காக

(§) Tamil2Friends@googlegroups.com

Technology to make you fair looking

[Cover Story] SSN campus to go wi-fi - News

SSN Institutions have announced their latest initiative aimed at promoting excellence in education through new technology to augment the teaching-learning process. Each student will be provided with laptop and the entire campus will be Wi-Fi-enabled. This is a reinforcement of SSN's vision of being a centre of excellence, said Kala Vijayakumar, president, SSN Institutions.

"Recognising the technological advances of the 21st century and challenges of engineering education of the 21st century, SSN Institutions have decided to adapt advanced wireless technology to enhance the teaching and learning process through E-Learning Initiative," she said, adding that "the E-learning initiative will enrich classroom teaching. This initiative will supplement classroom teaching. Starting with the academic year 2007-08 coverage will be given to the first year B.E., B.Tech. , M.E. , M.B.A., and M.C.A (first year of all under-graduate and postgraduate programmes being offered in the SSN Institution) ."

The entire campus win be Wi-Fi-enabled; students and the faculty members will be provided with laptops; an intranet server will be maintained on the campus where the faculty members will upload the lesson plans, lecture notes and the reading material. The students can go through the material along with their class notes to learn at their own pace and participate more actively in the class. Each student will access the E-Learning Framework using their own user IDs and will be able to access the assignments and submit their assignments online.

Kala Vijayakumar said, "We are creating an infrastructure which will permit students to engage in a much more interactive manner with the learning and teaching process in an environment that is enjoyable and seamless."

Special workshops will be conducted for the faculty to enable them to develop and manage the course content. Workshops will also be held for students to enable them to sharpen their skills for e-learning.

The expected cost for this initiative is expected to be approximately Rs 2 crore.

The unique benefits of the new teaching learning process will be:

* The wireless learning and teaching environment through chat sessions will enable the faculties to answer seamlessly any queries that students may have.
* Using wireless intranet, the student can reserve a book from anywhere on the campus without having to go to the library personally.
* The educational process will become more 'learner driven' giving its benefits to the students.

SSN Institutions comprise SSN College of Engineering (SSNCE), SSN School of Management & Computer Applications (SSNSoMCA). The institutions are managed by the SSN Trust (Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar Educational and Charitable Trust). The trust was instituted in 1994 by Shiv Nadar, founder, HCL and (late) Justice Pratap Singh in honour of Shiv Nadar's father. The SSN Institutions are ideally located on Old Mahabalipuram Road , known as the 'Cyber Corridor' of Chennai.

The campus is spread over 250 acres with a built-up area of over 1 million sq ft and is equipped with state-of-the- art infrastructure for learning including computers and Internet facilities networked by optic fibre links, modern workshops and labs, seminar halls, auditorium, libraries, gymnasium, a sports complex and separate hostels for men and women.

The total students strength is 2,600. The faculty student ratio is a favourable 1:12. SSN Institutions offer significant student scholarships to encourage merit and to make education accessible to students of all economic strata. The institution has initiated a thriving tradition of over 250 scholarships offered every year to meritorious and deserving students.

----Published on June 2nd, 2007

Amazing stereo effect! You need headphones for this to work, listen to these clips.

Get your headphones, close your eyes, kick your feet up and hit play:

Virtual Barber Shop


Match it


Shhh..


Clips stolen from David's blog here

Greatest good you can do

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his own”

-- Benjamin Disraeli

Why nothing works for programmers

Theory is when you know something, but it doesn't work.
Practical is when something works, but you don't know why.

Programmers combine theory and practical :


'Nothing works and they don't know why'

The way we think = the way we are

The way we think = the way we are
We live in a complex and often negative world. Our days are colored by the (mostly) bad news we read in our newspapers and hear on TV. Not surprisingly, many of us develop a permanent frown, spending most of our energy just trying to get through a supposedly dark and unforgiving existence. By doing so, we fail to see all the beautiful things around us, missing out on happiness and optimism.

If you realized how powerful your thoughts are,
you would never think a negative thought.
- Peace Pilgrim

When negative feelings are suppressed
positive feelings become suppressed as well, and love dies.
- John Gray

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity.
The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill

Bruno's commentary
We have no control over our destiny, but we do have control over the here and now. It is never too late to start enjoying the positive things in life. If you are part of a happy family and have a few good friends and a satisfying job, then you are among the fortunate few on this planet and have reason to be thankful and enjoy life. Remember, the way you think = the way you are

Love - Universal law

Universal law:

"Love can neither be created nor be destroyed; only it can transfer from One girlfriend to another girlfriend with some loss of money "

Man is great by...

"A man is great by deeds, not by birth." - Chanakya

Best friends

"Everyone hears what you say. Friends listen to what you say.

But Best friends listen to what you don't say”.

Bunch of Roses

A bunch of Roses make a morning fresh

A bunch of friends like u keep my lifetime afresh

Life is raw material

Life is raw material, we are Artisans.
We can sculpt our existence into something beautiful, or debase it into ugliness.
It's in our hands…so make your Day into a Beautiful one! J

Have a Nice Day!!!

Life is raw material

Life is raw material, we are Artisans.
We can sculpt our existence into something beautiful, or debase it into ugliness.
It's in our hands…so make your Day into a Beautiful one! J

Have a Nice Day!!!

Charles Schultz - world coming to an end today

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia." (Charles Schultz)

யாதும் ஊரே ; யாவரும் கேளிர் ;

யாதும் ஊரே ; யாவரும் கேளிர் ;

தீதும் நன்றும் பிறர்தர வாரா ;
நோதலும் தணிதலும் அவற்றோ ரன்ன ;
சாதலும் புதுவது அன்றே ; வாழ்தல்
இனிதுஎன மகிழ்ந்தன்றும் இலமே; முனிவின்,
இன்னா தென்றலும் இலமே; 'மின்னொடு
வானம் தண்துளி தலைஇ, ஆனாது
கல்பொருது இரங்கும் மல்லற் பேர்யாற்று
நீர்வழிப் படூஉம் புணைபோல, ஆருயிர்
முறைவழிப் படூஉம்' என்பது திறவோர்
காட்சியின் தெளிந்தனம் ஆகலின், மாட்சியின்
பெரியோரை வியத்தலும் இலமே;
சிறியோரை இகழ்தல் அதனினும் இலமே.

192, எட்டுத்தொகை நூல்களில் ஒன்றாகிய
புறநானூறு - பாடியவர்: கணியன் பூங்குன்றன

To us all towns are one, all men our kin.
Life's good comes not from others' gift, nor ill
Man's pains and pains' relief are from within.
Death's no new thing; nor do our bosoms thrill
When Joyous life seems like a luscious draught.
When grieved, we patient suffer; for, we deem
This much - praised life of ours a fragile raft
Borne down the waters of some mountain stream
That o'er huge boulders roaring seeks the plain
Tho' storms with lightnings' flash from darken'd skies
Descend, the raft goes on as fates ordain.
Thus have we seen in visions of the wise ! -
We marvel not at greatness of the great;
Still less despise we men of low estate."

Kanniyan Poongundran in Purananuru,
Poem 192 - written in Tamil 2500 years ago
English Translation by Rev. G.U.Pope
in Tamil Heroic Poems

திராவிட் உலகக் கோப்பை பற்றி .......... Dravid on India's Failure....

நவ்ரச நாயகன் திராவிட் ' பராசக்தி' பாணியில் பேசினால்?!!

"உலகக் கோப்பை. பல விசித்திரமான போட்டிகளைச் சந்தித்திருக்கிறது.. விசித்திரமான ஆட்டக்காரர்களைப் பார்த்திருக்கிறது. ஆனால் , இந்தப் போட்டி விசித்திரமும் அல்ல. நான் விசித்திரமான ஆட்டக்காரனும் அல்ல. போட்டிகளிலே கலந்து கொண்டு சர்வசாதாரணமாக தோல்விகளை எந்தக் கேவலமும் இன்றி் தோளிலே சுமந்து வரும் சாதாரண இந்திய கேப்டன் தான் நான்.

பங்களாதேசிடமும் , இலங்கையிடமும் தோற்றேன். உலகக் கோப்பையைத் தவற விட்டேன். குற்றம் சாட்டப்பட்டிருக்கிறேன் இப்படியெல்லாம். பங்களாதேசிடமும் இலங்கையிடம் தோற்றேன் - அவர்களிடம் தோறக் வேண்டுமே என்பதற்காக அல்ல. ஆனால் நேரு வகுத்த பஞ்சசீலக் கொள்கையின் படி அண்டை நாடுகளோடு அன்யோன்யமாகப் பழக வேண்டுமே என்பதற்காக. உலகக் கோப்பையைத் தவற விட்டேன். அது தூக்குவதற்கு சிரமமாக இருக்கிறதென்பதற்காக அல்ல. ' தன்னைப் போல பிறரையும் நேசி ' என்று இயேசுபெருமான் சொன்னதை மற்றவர்களுக்கும் உணர்த்துவதற்காக.

உனக்கேன் அக்கறை ஊரில் யாருக்கும் இல்லாத அக்கறை என்று கேட்பீர்கள். நானே பாதிக்கப்பட்டேன் நேரடியாக பாதிக்கப்பட்டேன். ஆறு ஃபீலடரை ஆஃப்சைடில் நிறுத்தி விட்டு பந்து போடச சொன்னால் லெக்ஸ்டம்புக்கு வெளியே பந்து போடும் பரதேசிகளால் பாதிக்கப்பட்டேன். செத்த பாம்பு போல பெர்முடா கிடைத்தால் ' சாத்து சாத்தென்று' சாத்திவிட்டு தேவை வரும்போது மட்டும் 'வெயில் தாங்கலை 'ன்னு பெவிலியனுக்கு ஓடும் 'மாஸ்டர் பிளாஸ்டர்களால் ' பிளாஸ்டர் போட்டுக் கொள்ளும்படி பாதிக்கப்பட்டேன்.

கேளுங்கள் என் கதையை. என் வீட்டில் கல்லெறியுமுன் தய்வுசெய்து கேளுங்கள் என் கதையை....."


"நாயகன்" பாணீயில் இந்திய அணியின் நாயகன் பேசினால்..??!!

" அவனை நிறுத்தச் சொல் நான் நிறுத்துறேன்.
கங்குலி அடிச்சபோது பூசணிக்காய் உடம்பை வச்சுக்கிட்டு அரைகிலோ மீட்டர் ஓடிப் போய் பந்தைப் புடிச்சான் பாரு முரளிதரன் அவனை நிறுத்தச் சொல் நான் தோக்குறதை நிறுத்துறேன். ஆஃப்சைடுலதான் அடிப்பான்ன்னு தெரிஞ்சு எலிப்பொறில மசால்வடை வைக்குற மாதிரி 'ஸ்லிப் ' வைச்சு சேவாக்கைத் தூக்குனான் பாரு ஜெயவர்தனே. அவனை நிறுத்தச் சொல நான் நிறுத்துறேன். நாலு அடி நடந்து வந்து பந்து போடும்போதும் 'நோபால் ' போட்டான் பாரு டெண்டுல்கர். அவனை நிறுத்தச் சொல். நான் நிறுத்துறேன். இல்லாத ரன்னுக்காக நாயா ஓடி வந்தான் பாரு யுவராஜ் சிங். அவனை ஓடாம நிக்கச் சொல். நான் நிறுத்துறேன்.எந்தப் பக்கம் அடிச்சாலும் அந்தப் பக்கம் ஃபீல்டரை வச்சிருக்கான் பாரு. அதை நிறுத்தச் சொல். நான் நிறுத்துறேன். எங்க தூக்கி அடிச்சாலும் புடிக்குறானுங்க பாரு. அதை நிறுத்தச் சொல் நானும் நிறுத்துறேன். புறப்படும்போதே "க்மான் இந்தியா"ன்னு அபசகுனமா பாட்டு பாடி உடனே திரும்பி வரச் சொன்னான் பாரு சங்கர் மகாதேவன். அந்த பரதேசியை நிறுத்தச் சொல். எல்லாத்துக்கும் மேலா , எங்களையெல்லாம் மனுசங்களா மதிச்சு ப்ளாக்ல பொலம்புறானுங்க பாரு வெவஸ்தை கெட்டவனுங்க. அவனுங்களை நிறுத்தச் சொல். அப்புறமாவது தோக்குறதை நிறுத்தலாமான்னு யோசிக்கிறேன்.. "


நீங்கள்தான் தேசத் துரோகிகள் - ராகுல் திராவிட் அறிக்கை

" இப்ப என்ன குடிமுழுகிப் போச்சு? நாங்க தோத்ததுனால இனிமே பசங்க பரிட்சை நேரத்துல டிவி முன்னால உக்காராம படிப்பானுங்க. ராத்திரி முழுக்க கண்முழிச்சு டிவி பார்த்துட்டு காலைல ஆபிசுல தூங்காம இருப்பானுங்க( ?!) ராத்திரி முழிக்கிறதால நாட்டுக்கு மின்சார செலவு மிச்சம். வேளாவேளைக்கு தூங்குறதால உடம்புக்கு நல்லது. நடுராத்திரில டிவிபாக்குறதுக்காக டீ ,காப்பி , நொறுக்குத்தீனி மாதிரி வெட்டிச்செலவு கிடையாது. வேளைகெட்ட வேளையில் தூங்கப்போறதால ஜனத்தொகை பெருக இருந்த வாய்ப்பும் கொறஞ்சு போகுது. இப்படி எவ்வள்வோ நாட்டுக்காக எவ்வள்வோ பெரிய தியாகம் செஞ்சும் என் வீட்டு மேல கல்லடிக்குற நீங்க எல்லாம்தான் தேசத் துரோகிகள்" - என்று ராகுல் திராவிட் உருக்கமாக அறிக்கை விட்டிருக்கிறார்

யோசிப்போர் சங்கம்

செருப்பு இல்லாம நாம நடக்கலாம்

ஆனா,

நாம இல்லாம செருப்பு நடக்க முடியாது.


- தீவிரமாக யோசிப்போர் சங்கம் (எங்களுக்கு வேறு எங்கும் கிளைகள் கிடையாது)





இட்லி மாவை வச்சு இட்லி போடலாம்.

சப்பாத்தி மாவை வச்சு சப்பாத்தி போடலாம்.

ஆனா,

கடலை மாவை வச்சு கடலை போட முடியுமா?

- ராவெல்லாம் முழ்ச்சு கெடந்து யோசிப்போர் சங்கம்


பஸ் ஸ்டாப் கிட்ட வெய்ட் பண்ணா பஸ்ஸு வரும்.

ஆனா,

ஃபுல் ஸ்டாப் கிட்ட வெய்ட் பண்ணா ஃபுல்லு வருமா?

நல்லா யோசிங்க! குவாட்டர் கூட வராது!!!



என்னதான் பொண்ணுங்க பைக் ஓட்டினாலும்,

ஹீரோ ஹோன்டா, ஹீரோயின் ஹோன்டா ஆய்டாது!!
அதேமாதிரி,
என்னதான் பசங்க வெண்டைக்காய் சாப்பிட்டாலும்,
லேடீஸ் ஃபிங்கர், ஜென்ட்ஸ் ஃபிங்கர் ஆய்டாது!!!

டிசம்பர் 31க்கும்,
ஜனவரி 1க்கும்
ஒரு நாள்தான் வித்தியாசம்.

ஆனால்,

ஜனவரி 1க்கும்,

டிசம்பர் 31க்கும்,

ஒரு வருசம் வித்தியாசம்.

இதுதான் உலகம்.



பல்வலி வந்தால் பல்லை புடுங்கலாம்,

ஆனா கால்வலி வந்தால் காலை புடுங்க முடியுமா?

இல்லை தலைவலி வந்தால் தலையைதான் புடுங்க முடியுமா?

(டேய்! எங்க இருந்துடா கிளம்புறீங்க?!)





பில் கேட்ஸோட பையனா இருந்தாலும்,

கழித்தல் கணக்கு போடும்போது,

கடன் வாங்கித்தான் ஆகனும்.



கொலுசு போட்டா சத்தம் வரும்.

ஆனா,

சத்தம் போட்ட கொலுசு வருமா?



பேக் வீல் எவ்வளவு ஸ்பீடா போனாலும்,


ஃப்ரன்ட் வீல முந்த முடியாது.


இதுதான் உலகம் (ஐயோ! ஐயோ!! ஐயோ!!! காப்பாத்துங்க!!!)



T Nagar போனா டீ வாங்கலாம்.


ஆனால்


விருது நகர் போனா விருது வாங்க முடியுமா?



என்னதான் பெரிய


வீரனா இருந்தாலும்,


வெயில் அடிச்சா,


திருப்பி அடிக்க முடியாது.





இளநீர்லயும் தண்ணி இருக்கு,

பூமிலயும் தண்ணி இருக்கு.


அதுக்காக,

இளநீர்ல போர் போடவும் முடியாது,

பூமில ஸ்ட்ரா போட்டு உரியவும் முடியாது.



உங்கள் உடம்பில்


கோடிக்கணக்கான செல்கள் இருந்தாலும்,


ஒரு செல்லில் கூட


ஸிம் கார்ட் போட்டு பேச முடியாது.





நிக்கிற பஸ்ஸுக்கு முன்னாடி ஓடலாம்


ஆனா


ஒடுற பஸ்ஸுக்கு முன்னாடி நிக்க முடியாது.



வண்டி இல்லாமல் டயர் ஓடும்.


ஆனால்...


டயர் இல்லாமல் வண்டி ஓடுமா?



இது மல்லாக்க படுத்துகிட்டு யோசிக்க வேண்டிய விஷயம்.

சைக்கிள் ஓட்டுறது சைக்கிளிங்னா, ட்ரெய்ன் ஓட்டுறது ட்ரெய்னிங்கா? இல்ல பிளேன் ஓட்டுறது பிளானிங்கா?

என்னதான் நீ புது மாடல் மொபைல் வச்சிருந்தாலும்
மெஸேஜ் Forwardதான் பண்ண முடியும்,
Rewindலாம் பண்ண முடியாது.




"Tea"க்கும் "Cofee"க்கும் என்ன வித்தியாசம்?

"Tea"ல ஒரு "e" இருக்கும். "Coffee"ல 2 "e" இருக்கும்.

Understanding Service Oriented Architecture

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) promises to provide us with the ability to assemble complex, distributed systems by selecting and creating compatible parts called services. So far, SOA has delivered a lot of hyperbole to the Web. Gartner recognized it as one of the five hottest IT trends in 2005, claiming that "By 2008, SOA will provide the basis for 80 percent of development projects." At JavaOne 2005, 82 of the 168 technical session PDFs contained "SOA." In July of 2005, there were 1.4 million Google hits for "service oriented architecture." By February, 2006, there were 72 million. SOA is riding a rising tide as the next big thing for enterprise developers.

Unfortunately, most developers find it hard to cut through this tide of hype to learn just what service oriented architecture is about. Forests of three-letter acronym (TLA) standards sprout, bloom, and are overgrown before any of us can learn enough about them to decide if they are appropriate for our own projects. The standards compete for our attention and allegiance. Further, most articles and presentations focus on a specific TLA, and how to make some legacy system fit within someone else's favorite web service plumbing. "Legacy" seems to mean "the software that has to keep working to keep the system alive and useful to the business."

I started working with distributed messaging systems in 1995 and can understand most of the articles, but I find the volume of hype daunting and largely irrelevant. This article focuses on what you can get out of SOA to make developing and maintaining software easy, and help your businesses run better. Here's what you can get out of service oriented architecture:

• Better understanding of the system being developed.
• Better-organized, better-focused incremental development.
• Easier integration with each others' systems.
• Well-defined boundaries for tests.
• More big-block reuse of code by reusing services.
• Scaling up by creating systems of systems.
• More reliability via restartable services.
• Development focused on executable business plans.

That list is a huge promise. No wonder there's so much hype. Unfortunately, the list doesn't hold anything we can code. Aside from being able to restart a service, it's not specific at all. Service oriented architectures bring together specific good ideas from the 1980s and 1990s to create a complex system from simple parts. Service oriented architectures have these characteristics:

• Services have strong software contracts.
• Services are encapsulated.
• Messages are documents.
• Services share a message bus.
• Services are loosely coupled.
• Services have a life cycle.
• Systems of services are assembled at runtime.
• Services can be discovered.
• Systems of services can grow into systems of systems.

read more

DVD Formats Explained

When DVD technology first appeared in households, users were simply popping DVD discs into their DVD players to watch movies — an attractive option to the then-conventional VCR. But just as compact disc technology evolved so that users could record and erase and re-record data onto compact discs, the same is now true of DVDs.

With so many different formats — DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-ROM — how do users know which DVD format is compatible with their existing systems, and why are there so many different formats for DVDs? The following information sheds some light on DVD's different flavors, the differences between them and the incompatibility issues that the differing technologies have sprouted.

The crucial difference among the standards is based on which standards each manufacturer adheres to. Similar to the old VHS/Beta tape wars when VCRs first hit the markets, different manufacturers support different standards.

DVD+R and DVD+RW
DVD+R and DVD+RW formats are supported by Philips, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Ricoh, Yamaha and others.

DVD+R is a recordable DVD format similar to CD-R. A DVD+R can record data only once and then the data becomes permanent on the disc. The disc can not be recorded onto a second time.

DVD+RW is a re-recordable format similar to CD-RW. The data on a DVD+RW disc can be erased and recorded over numerous times without damaging the medium.

DVDs created by a +R/+RW device can be read by most commercial DVD-ROM players.

DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM
These formats are supported by Panasonic, Toshiba, Apple Computer, Hitachi, NEC, Pioneer, Samsung and Sharp. These formats are also supported by the DVD Forum.

DVD-R is a recordable DVD format similar to CD-R and DVD+R. A DVD-R can record data only once and then the data becomes permanent on the disc. The disc cannot be recorded onto a second time. There also are two additional standards for DVD-R disks: DVD-RG for general use, and DVD-RA for authoring, which is used for mastering DVD video or data and is not typically available to the general public.

DVD-RW is a re-recordable format similar to CD-RW or DVD+RW. The data on a DVD-RW disc can be erased and recorded over numerous times without damaging the medium.

DVDs created by a -R/-RW device can be read by most commercial DVD-ROM players.

DVD-RAM discs can be recorded and erased repeatedly but are compatible only with devices manufactured by the companies that support the DVD-RAM format. DVD-RAM discs are typically housed in cartridges.

DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL
Dual layer technology is supported by a range of manufacturers including Dell, HP, Verbatim, Philips, Sony, Yamaha and others. As the name suggests, dual layer technology provides two individual recordable layers on a single-sided DVD disc. Dual Layer is more commonly called Double Layer in the consumer market, and can be seen written as DVD+R DL or DVD-R DL.

DVD+R DL (also called DVD+R9) is a Dual Layer writeable DVD+R.
DVD-R DL (also called DVD-R9) is a Dual Layer writeable DVD-R. The dual layered discs can hold 7.95GB

The dual layered discs (DVD+R9 and DVD-R9) can hold 7.95GB and double sided dual layer (called dvd-18) can hold 15.9GB.

HD-DVD
Short for high definition-DVD, a generic term for the technology of recording high-definition video on a DVD. In general, HD-DVD is capable of storing between two and four times as much data as standard DVD. The two most prominent competing technologies are Blu-ray and AOD.

Blu-ray Disc (BD) - uses a 405nm-wavelength blue-violet laser technology, in contrast to the 650nm-wavelength red laser technology used in traditional DVD formats. The rewritable Blu-ray disc, with a data transfer rate of 36Mbps (1x speed) can hold up to 25GB of data on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. On a 50GB disc, this translates into 9 hours of high-definition (HD) video or approximately 23 hours of standard-definition (SD) video. The Blu-ray format was developed jointly by Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Thomson, Hitachi, Matsushita, Pioneer and Philips, Mistubishi and LG Electronics.

Advanced Optical Disc (AOD) - AOD and Blu-ray are similar in that they both use 405nm-wavelength blue-violet laser technology. while Blu-ray has a storage capacity of 25GB on a single-layer disc, AOD has a storage capacity of 20GB on a single-layer disc. and the capacity to hold 30GB on a dual-layer disc. AOD was developed jointly by Toshiba and NEC.

DVD-ROM
DVD-ROM was the first DVD standard to hit the market and is a read-only format. The video or game content is burned onto the DVD once and the DVD will run on any DVD-ROM-equipped device.

A Note on DVD Burners
Until 2003 consumers would have to choose a preferred DVD format and purchase the DVD media that was compatible with the specific DVD burner. In 2003 Sony introduced a multi-format DVD burner (also called a combo drive or DVD-Multi) and today many manufacturers offer multi-format DVD burners which are compatible with multiple DVD formats.

refer

Staying Alive In a Software Job !!!!!

IT Survivors - Staying Alive In a Software Job

Written by Harshad Oak

Before I started working for myself, I spent some years in some of the top IT companies in India and still have many friends working in various software companies. I wrote a blow recruiting like crazy, about the same time last year about how Indian companies are recruiting like there's no tomorrow and the possible consequences. However I was avoiding writing this particular piece as it seems like an unpatriotic thing to do, to tell the world how bad the working conditions in software companies in India have become. And there's always the risk of excerpts being used out of context to bash up IT in India .


I am now writing this because I just keep hearing horror tales from the industry and it doesn't seem like anything is being done in the matter, so I thought I will do my bit and write.

First and foremost, before stereotypes about India kick in, I would like to clarify that I am not saying that Indian software companies are sweat shops where employees aren't being paid and made to work in cramped uncomfortable places. The pay in software companies is very good as compared to other industries in India and the work places are generally well furnished and plush offices. India being a strong democracy, freedom of expression is alive and well and Indians are free to express their opinions and voice their concerns. Yet, I say that the software industry is exploiting its employees.

IT work culture in India is totally messed up and has now started harming the work culture of the nation as a whole. Working 12+ hours a day and 6 or even 7 days a week is more the rule than the exception.

Consequences:

·A majority of IT people suffer from health problems. As most of the IT workforce is still very young, the problem isn't very obvious today but it will hit with unbearable ferocity when these youngsters get to their 40s.

· Stress levels are unbelievable high. Stress management is a cover topic in magazines and newspapers and workshops on the subject are regularly overbooked.

· Most IT people have hardly any social / family life to talk of.

· As IT folk are rich by Indian standards, they try to buy their way out of their troubles and have incurred huge debts by buying expensive houses, gizmos and fancy cars.

Plush offices, fat salaries and latest gizmos can give you happiness only if you have a life in the first place.

The reason I feel this culture has emerged, is the servile attitude of the companies. Here's a tip for any company in the west planning to outsource to India. If you feel that a project can be completed in 6 weeks by 4 people, always demand that it be completed in 2 weeks by 3 people.

Guess what, most Indian companies will agree. The project will then be hyped up as an "extremely critical" one and the 3 unfortunate souls allocated to it will get very close to meeting the almighty by the time they deliver the project in 2 weeks. Surprisingly, they will deliver in 2-3 weeks, get bashed up for any delays and the company will soon boast about how they deliver good quality in reasonable time and cost. Has anyone in India ever worked on a project that wasn't "extremely critical"?

I was once at a session where a top boss of one of India’s biggest IT firms was asked a question about what was so special about their company and his answer was that we are the "Yes" people with the "We Can Do It” attitude. It is all very well for the top boss to say "We Can Do It "... What about the project teams who wish to say "Please....We Can't Do It” to the unreasonable timelines...I was tempted to ask "What death benefits does your company offer to the teams that get killed in the process?". I sure was ashamed to see that a fellow Indian was openly boasting about the fact that he and his company had no backbone. The art of saying No or negotiating reasonable time frames for the team is very conspicuous by its absence. Outsourcing customers more often than not simply walk all over Indian software companies. The outsourcer surely cannot be blamed as it is right for him to demand good quality in the least cost and time.

Exhaustion = Zero Innovation

· How many Indians in India are thought leaders in their software segment? - Very few

· How much software innovation happens in India? - Minimal

· Considering that thousands of Indians in India use Open Source software, how many actually contribute? - Very few

Surprisingly, put the same Indian in a company "in" the US and he suddenly becomes innovative and a thought leader in his field. The reason is simple, the only thing an exhausted body and mind can do well, is sleep.

I can pretty much bet on it that we will never see innovation from any of 10000+ person code factories in India.

If you are someone sitting in the US, UK ... and wondering why the employees can't stand up, that's the most interesting part of the story. Read on...

The Problem

The software professional Indian is today making more money in a month than what his parents might have made in an year. Very often a 21 year old newbie software developer makes more money than his/her 55 year old father working in an old world business. Most of these youngsters are well aware of this gap and so work under an impression that they are being paid an unreasonable amount of money. They naturally equate unreasonable money with unreasonable amount of work.

Another important factor is this whole bubble that an IT person lives in.. An IT professional walks with a halo around his or her head. They are the Cool, Rich Gen Next .. the Intelligentsia of the New World... they travel all over the world, vacation at exotic locations abroad, talk "American", are more familiar of the geography of the USA than that of India and yes of course, they are the hottest things in the Wedding Market!!!

This I feel is the core problem because if employees felt they were being exploited, things would change.

I speak about this to some of my friends and the answer is generally "Hey Harshad, what you say is correct and we sure are suffering, but why do you think we are being paid this much money? It's not for 40 hours but for 80 hours a week. And anyway what choice do we have? It's the same everywhere."

So can we make things change? Is there a way to try and stop an entire generation of educated Indians from ending up with "no life".

Solutions

1) Never complement someone for staying till midnight or working 7 days a week.

Recently, in an awards ceremony at a software company, the manager handing over the "employee of the month" award said something like "It's unbelievable how hard he works. When I come to office early, I see him working, when I leave office late, I still see him working".. These sort of comments can kill the morale of every employee trying to do good work in an 8hr day.

Companies need to stop hiding behind the excuse that the time difference between India and the west is the reason why people need to stay in office for 14 hours a day. Staying late should be a negative thing that should work against an employee in his appraisals. Never complement someone for staying till midnight or working 7 days a week .

2) Estimates:

If time estimates go wrong, the company should be willing to take a hit and not force the employee to work crazy hours to bail projects out of trouble. This will ensure that the estimates made for the next project are more real and not just what the customer has asked for.

3) Employee organizations / forums

NASSCOM (National Association for Software and Services Companies) and CSI (Computer Society Of India) are perhaps the only two well known software associations in India and both I feel have failed the software employee. I do not recall any action from these organizations to try and improve the working conditions of software employees. This has to change.

I am not in favor of forming trade unions for software people, as trade unions in India have traditionally been more effective at ruining businesses and making employees inefficient than getting employees their rights and helping business do well. So existing bodies like NASSCOM should create and popularize employee welfare cells at a state / regional level and these cells should work only for employee welfare and not be puppets in the hands of the companies.

If the industry does not itself create proper forums for employee welfare, it's likely that the government / trade unions will interfere and mess up India 's sunshine industry.

4) Narayan Murthy, please stand up

Top bosses of companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, etc. need to send the message loud and clear to their company and to other companies listening at national IT events that employee welfare is really their top concern and having good working culture and conditions is a priority. Employee welfare here does not mean giving the employee the salary he/she dreams of.

Last word

I am sure some of my thoughts come from the fact that I too worked in such an environment for a few years and perhaps I haven't got over the frustrations I experienced back then. So think about my views with a pinch of salt but do think about it.

--Harshad Oak

How to Lose Your Fear of Being Fired

The risk of being fired is the biggest axe a company or a manager holds over an employee’s head. It’s a well-known fact that if an employee gets too far out of line, they will be fired. We have tacitly accepted as fact the idea that being fired is a terrible thing which should be avoided at all costs. For this reason, many of us will accept untenable conditions at work and go to extraordinary lengths to keep our jobs.

Steps

1. Refuse to live under the threat of being fired. Fear is oppressive and threatening, and it may cause one anxiety over every action or thought. Anxious employees are less productive, because they fear making the wrong decision or saying the wrong thing. They are less productive because they avoid complaining about any problems they encounter. Make a resolution that being scared at work is unacceptable.
2. 
   Learn not to feel as if being fired is such a horrible or embarrassing situation. Do not walk around with your head hanging down, fearful that someone will find you sitting in the park instead of being on the job. Many are fired for reasons other than their job performance or ability to function in the office environment. Often being fired is a blessing, as it actually enables you to get out of a rut and find a job more to your liking and better suited to your abilities.
3. Understand that the most common reasons people get fired are not solely the employee's fault. The only exceptions are people fired for harassing or abusive behavior, or people who have a history of being fired for reasons that are never their fault. If you get fired for one of the following reasons, would any of them reflect badly on you?
   
   
   • Personality mismatch - You remained because of the money, but actually you were not happy with the surroundings. The attitudes of the people around you were not compatible with yours. The work was repetitious and became boring, the staff were not friendly and the entire environment was not comfortable. Being fired is probably a blessing, as it frees you to search for employment that is a better match for your experience and personality.
   • Skill mismatch - When you applied for the job, you were not aware of the full responsibilities of the job, or the person who hired you did not accurately judge whether your skills and experience would match the job description. It did not work out, but at least you tried.
   • Refusing to go along - Standing up for your beliefs, refusing to be dishonest or to overlook faulty business practices and being fired for it is not a slur on you; you should be proud for standing up for what is right.
   • Downsizing - Thousands of people are downsized every day. It's not their fault.
   • Unreasonable - If you became pregnant or needed to take time off to tend to a sick child, and if you put in a request for a short leave of absence and were fired, it had nothing to do with you. Do not blame yourself. You might even be able to sue the company in this case for job discrimination.
     
     
4. 

   
   Make being fired less of a problem even though it creates problems. Economic uncertainty is the most difficult result of being fired. Not knowing how you will pay the bills or how to tell the kids you cannot buy them the new computer they wanted can cause many sleepless nights. Suddenly your mortgage payment seems even larger, and you are concerned about your kids' college savings.
   
   
   • Increase your employability by keeping your personal and professional skills up to date and cultivating a solid network.
   • Keep your private expenses as low as you possibly can, so that you’re not 100% dependent on that pay check every month. That means not eating out or going to the movies for awhile. You may even have to give up smoking. That probably would be the best thing that could come out of being fired.
     
     

Tips

• 
  Explaining to a prospective employer that you were fired is always a concern. If you are ashamed of losing your job or believe that having been fired reflects badly on you, it will come out in in your job interviews. Hold your head up high and explain the circumstances exactly. Convey an attitude of: “Yeah, I was fired. So what?” Some employers will care, some won’t - provided you explain it correctly.
• It is not smart to be willing to spend your work life going along with just about anything simply to hang on to a job that isn’t good for you in the first place.

Warnings

• If you're miserable at work, don't wait to be fired. Do yourself a favor and quit! There is a better job out there for you. Free yourself to find it.

Related wikiHows

• How to Cope with Being Fired
• How to Choose a Suitable Job Position
• How to Deal With a Bad Boss
• How to Turn Around a Bad Day at Work
• How to Resolve a Conflict at Work

External Links

• Positive Sharing Original source of this article. Shared with permission.

Jo'e Animation

Joythika's Face Animation

Titanic Songs with Indian remix - Titanic Kuuthu

The Stock Market simply illustrated ...

Once upon a time in a village, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for Rs10. The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them.

The man bought thousands at Rs10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. He further announced that he would now buy at Rs20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms.

The offer rate increased to Rs25 and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey let alone catch it.

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at Rs50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. "Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at Rs35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell it to him for Rs50."


The villagers squeezed up with all their savings to buy the monkeys. Then they never saw the man nor his assistant, only monkeys everywhere!!

Thank God, India's out of Cup - Great savings...for india

Thank God, India's out of Cup

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2007 12:17:08 AM]

NEW DELHI: There’s a brighter side to India’s exit from the World Cup. Something that can cheer up disappointed fans and angry advertisers. Sri Lanka has done a great favour to Indian economy by ousting the cricket team from the World Cup. There are about 80 million cable and satellite viewing homes in India.

According to TAM ratings, the average viewership of all World Cup matches held till now stands at about 3%, with India vs Bangladesh touching a high of 7.25%. To reach the finals, India would have played at least seven more matches.

Considering a TV Rating of 7.25%, at least 5.8 million people would have watched the match. This would have resulted in a productivity loss of 371.2 million man hours (5.8 million x 8 hours x 8 matches), apart from stress faced by mothers during exams.

About 3% of 81 million TV viewers (2.4 million) were ardent cricket fans and would have sat through all eight hours in the remaining 28 matches. Thus overall, Indian team’s ouster would result in a productivity gain of 481 million man hours of work (28x2.4x8 man hours), if put to use.

The Sri Lankans have given a boost to the Indian economy by saving 54,902 man years of work (one year = 8,761 hours). Indians can build seven phases of the Golden Quadrilateral connecting Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai spread over 5,846 kilometres all over again, with this time saved.

A daily wage skilled labourer in Delhi earns Rs 17 per hour. If put to productive use, the 481 million man hours can produce Rs 817 crore of GDP, which is 63% more than BCCI’s annual revenues of Rs 500 crore, last year. It’s 401% more than the Rs 163 crore losses, corporate India has predicted to incur due India’s ouster.

The state electricity boards are also thanking Sri Lanka for the great favour. A TV consumes 45 watts per hour. Assuming a viewer will now switch off his TV by 12 midnight, it will save Rs 135 watts at least per viewer (not considering the electricity consumed by other appliances running simultaneously.)

This will save the electricity boards 324 million watts of electricity ( 3.24 lakh kilowatts) in just 28 days. According to estimates, SEB losses in India will touch Rs 1 lakh crore by 2008.

If disappointed viewers completely switch off their TVs for eight hours, it will save the government at least 8,64,000 kilowatts, along with many more lives — at least three Indian citizens have been reported to die due to cardiac arrest or suicide after India’s defeat at the hands of Sri Lanka.

Global View -The Trouble With India (Crumbling roads, jammed airports, and power blackouts could hobble growth )

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_12/b4026001.htm
MARCH 19, 2007
COVER STORY

The Trouble With India
Crumbling roads, jammed airports, and power blackouts could hobble growth

When foreigners say Bangalore is India's version of Silicon Valley, the high-tech office park called Electronics City is what they're often thinking of. But however much Californians might hate traffic-clogged Route 101, the main drag though the Valley, it has nothing on Hosur Road. This potholed, four-lane stretch of gritty pavement—the primary access to Electronics City—is pure chaos. Cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, taxis, rickshaws, cows, donkeys, and dogs jostle for every inch of the roadway as horns blare and brakes squeal. Drivers run red lights and jam their vehicles into any available space, paying no mind to pedestrians clustered desperately on median strips like shipwrecked sailors.

Pass through the six-foot-high concrete walls into Electronics City, though, and the loudest sounds you hear are the chirping of birds and the whirr of electric carts that whisk visitors from one steel-and-glass building to the next. Young men and women stroll the manicured pathways that wend their way through the leafy 80-acre spread or coast quietly on bicycles along the smooth asphalt roads.

With virtually no mass transit in Bangalore, Indian technology firm Infosys Technologies Ltd. spends $5 million a year on buses, minivans, and taxis to transport its 18,000 employees to and from Electronics City. And traffic jams mean workers can spend upwards of four hours commuting each day. "India has underinvested in infrastructure for 60 years, and we're behind what we need by 10 to 12 years," says T.V. Mohandas Pai, director of human resources for Infosys.

India's high-tech services industry has set the country's economic flywheel spinning. Growth is running at 9%-plus this year. The likes of Wal-Mart (WMT ), Vodafone (VOD ), and Citigroup (C ) are placing multibillion-dollar bets on the country, lured by its 300 million-strong middle class. In spite of a recent drop, the Bombay stock exchange's benchmark Sensex index is still up more than 40% since June. Real estate has shot through the roof, with some prices doubling in the past year.

But this economic boom is being built on the shakiest of foundations. Highways, modern bridges, world-class airports, reliable power, and clean water are in desperately short supply. And what's already there is literally crumbling under the weight of progress. In December, a bridge in eastern India collapsed, killing 34 passengers in a train rumbling underneath. Economic losses from congestion and poor roads alone are as high as $6 billion a year, says Gajendra Haldea, an adviser to the federal Planning Commission.

For all its importance, the tech services sector employs just 1.6 million people, and it doesn't rely on good roads and bridges to get its work done. India needs manufacturing to boom if it is to boost exports and create jobs for the 10 million young people who enter the workforce each year. Suddenly, good infrastructure matters a lot more. Yet industry is hobbled by overcrowded highways where speeds average just 20 miles per hour. Some ports rely on armies of laborers to unload cargo from trucks and lug it onto ships. Across the state of Maharashtra, major cities lose power one day a week to relieve pressure on the grid. In Pune, a city of 4.5 million, it's lights out every Thursday—forcing factories to maintain expensive backup generators. Government officials were shocked last year when Intel Corp. (INTC ) chose Vietnam over India as the site for a new chip assembly plant. Although Intel declined to comment, industry insiders say the reason was largely the lack of reliable power and water in India.

Add up this litany of woes and you understand why India's exports total less than 1% of global trade, compared with 7% for China. Says Infosys Chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy: "If our infrastructure gets delayed, our economic development, job creation, and foreign investment get delayed. Our economic agenda gets delayed—if not derailed."

The infrastructure deficit is so critical that it could prevent India from achieving the prosperity that finally seems to be within its grasp. Without reliable power and water and a modern transportation network, the chasm between India's moneyed elite and its 800 million poor will continue to widen, potentially destabilizing the country. Jagdish N. Bhagwati, a professor at Columbia University, figures gross domestic product growth would run two percentage points higher if the country had decent roads, railways, and power. "We're bursting at the seams," says Kamal Nath, India's Commerce & Industry Minister. Without better infrastructure, "we can't continue with the growth rates we have had."

The problems are even contributing to overheating in the economy. Inflation spiked in the first week of February to a two-year high of 6.7%, due in part to bottlenecks caused by the country's lousy transport network. Up to 40% of farm produce is lost because it rots in the fields or spoils en route to consumers, which contributes to rising prices for staples such as lentils and onions.

India today is about where China was a decade ago. Back then, China's economy was shifting into overdrive, but its roads and power grid weren't up to the task. So Beijing launched a massive upgrade initiative, building more than 25,000 miles of expressways that now crisscross the country and are as good as the best roads in the U.S. or Europe. India, by contrast, has just 3,700 miles of such highways. It's no wonder that when foreign companies weigh putting new plants in China vs. India to produce global exports, China more often wins out.

China's lead in infrastructure is likely to grow, too. Beijing plows about 9% of its GDP into public works, compared with New Delhi's 4%. And because of its authoritarian government, China gets faster results. "If you have to build a road in China, just a handful of people need to make a decision," says Daniel Vasella, chief executive of pharmaceutical giant Novartis (NVS ). "If you want to build a road in India, it'll take 10 years of discussion before you get a decision."

Blame it partly on India's revolving-door democracy. Political parties typically hold power for just one five-year term before disgruntled voters, swayed by populist promises from the opposition, kick them out of office. In elections last year in the state of Tamil Nadu, for instance, a new government was voted in after it pledged to give free color TVs to poor families. "In a sanely organized society you can get a lot done. Not here," says Jayaprakash Narayan, head of Lok Satta, or People Power, a national reform party.

Then there's "leakage"—India's euphemism for rampant corruption. Nearly all sectors of officialdom are riddled with graft, from neighborhood cops to district bureaucrats to state ministers. Indian truckers pay about $5 billion a year in bribes, according to the watchdog group Transparency International. Corruption delays infrastructure projects and raises costs for those that move ahead.

Fortunately, after decades of underinvestment and political inertia, India's political leadership has awakened to the magnitude of the infrastructure crisis. A handful of major projects have been completed; others are moving forward. Work on the Golden Quadrilateral—a $12 billion initiative spanning more than 3,000 miles of four- and six-lane expressways connecting Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Chennai—is due to be completed this year. The first phase of a new subway in New Delhi finished in late 2005 on budget and ahead of schedule. And new airports are under construction in Bangalore and Hyderabad, with more planned elsewhere. "We have to improve the quality of our infrastructure," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told a gathering of tech industry leaders in Mumbai on Feb. 9. "It's a priority of our government."

Singh, in fact, is promising a Marshall Plan-scale effort. The government estimates public and private organizations will chip in $330 billion to $500 billion over the next five years for highways, power generation, ports, and airports. In addition, leading conglomerates have pledged to overhaul the retailing sector. That will require infrastructure upgrades along the entire food distribution chain, from farm fields to store shelves.

Envisioning a brand-new India is the easy part; paying for it is another matter. By necessity, since the country's public debt stands at 82% of GDP, the 11th-worst ranking in the world, much of the money for these new projects will have to come from private sources. Yet India captured only $8 billion in foreign direct investment last year, compared with China's $63 billion. "Having grandiose plans isn't enough," says Yale University economics professor T.N. Srinivasan.

Just about every foreign company operating in India has a horror story of the hardships of doing business there. Nokia Corp. (NOK ) saw thousands of its cellular phones ruined last October when a shipment from its factory in Chennai was soaked by rain because there was no room to warehouse the crates of handsets at the local airport. Japan's Maruti Suzuki says trucking its cars 900 miles from its factory in Gurgaon to the port in Mumbai can take up to 10 days. That's partly due to delays at the three state borders along the way, where drivers are stalled as officials check their papers. But it's also because big rigs are barred from India's congested cities during the day, when they might bring dense traffic to a standstill. Once at the port, the Japanese company's autos can wait weeks for the next outbound ship because there's not enough dock space for cargo carriers to load and unload.

India's summer monsoons wreak havoc, too. Even relatively light rains can choke sewers, flood streets, and paralyze a city, while downpours are devastating. Two years ago, Florida-based contract manufacturer Jabil Circuit Inc. saw shipments of computers and networking gear from its plant near Mumbai delayed for five days after an epic storm. "In our business, five days is a really long time," says William D. Muir Jr., who oversees Jabil's Asian operations.

Companies often have no choice but to make the best of a bad situation. Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO ), the American networking equipment giant, has had a research and development office in India since 1999 and already has 2,000 engineers in the country. To supply the country's fast-growing telecommunications industry, Cisco decided last year to try its hand at making some parts locally. In December it contracted with another company to build Internet phones in the southeastern city of Chennai. Although Cisco says the quality of the workmanship is up to snuff, it has to fly parts in because the ports are so slow—and getting them to the factory right when they're needed is proving nettlesome. "We believe in manufacturing in India, but we don't believe in logistics in India—yet," says Wim Elfrink, Cisco's chief globalization officer. Elfrink adds that unless the Chennai operation demonstrates it can run as efficiently as Cisco setups elsewhere, it won't go into full production as planned this summer.

Even the world's largest maker of infrastructure equipment is constrained by India's feeble underpinnings. General Electric Co. (GE ) last year sold $1.2 billion worth of gear such as power generators and locomotives in India, more than double what it billed in 2005. To meet that surging demand, it is scrambling to find a location where it can manufacture locomotives in partnership with India Railways. But when GE dispatched three employees to survey a potential site the railway favored in the northern state of Bihar, the trio returned discouraged. It took five hours to drive the 50 miles from the airport to the site, and when they got there they found...nothing. "No roads, no power, no schools, no water, no hospitals, no housing," says Pratyush Kumar, president of GE Infrastructure in India. "We'd have to create everything from scratch," including many miles of railroad tracks to get the locomotives out to the main lines.

But there is a silver lining for GE and other international giants: India's infrastructure deficit could yield huge opportunities. American executives who traveled to India last November on the largest U.S. trade mission ever were tantalized by the possibilities. Jennifer Thompson, director of international planning at Oshkosh Truck Corp. (OSK ), viewed construction projects where swarms of workers carried wet concrete in buckets to be poured. That told her there's great potential in India for selling Oshkosh's mixer trucks. "There are infrastructure challenges, but we see a lot of opportunities to help them meet those challenges," she says.

That explains why so many multinationals are flocking to India. Take hotel construction: In a country with only 25,000 tourist-class hotel rooms (compared with more than 140,000 in Las Vegas alone), companies including Hilton (HLT ), Wyndham (WYN ), and Ramada have plans for 75,000 rooms on their drawing boards. Or consider telecom. Because of deregulation and ferocious demand, India boasts the fastest growth in cell-phone service anywhere, with companies adding some 6 million new customers a month. No wonder Britain's Vodafone Group PLC (VOD ) just ponied up $11 billion for a controlling interest in Hutchison Essar, India's No. 4 mobile carrier. U.S. private equity outfits also want in on the action. On Feb. 15, Blackstone Group and Citigroup announced they are teaming up with the Indian government and the Infrastructure Development Finance Corp. to set up a $5 billion fund for infrastructure investments in India.

But while the laws of supply and demand would argue that India's infrastructure gap can be filled, that logic ignores the corrosive effect of the country's politics. To gain the favor of voters, Indian politicians have long subsidized electricity and water for farmers, a policy that has discouraged private investment in those areas. That's what wrecked the now-infamous Dabhol Power plant. In the late 1990s, Enron, GE, and Bechtel spent a total of $2.8 billion building a huge complex near Mumbai capable of producing more than 2,000 megawatts of electricity. But a government power authority set prices so low that it was uneconomical for Dabhol to operate, and the whole deal fell apart. (The plant, taken over by an Indian organization, now runs only fitfully.) A 2001 law was supposed to create a framework to support private investment in power generation. But according to American construction company executives, it's not working well. "Everybody knows what needs to be done, but they have great difficulty doing it," says one of the Americans. "If the party in opposition offers subsidized power, the party in power has to give subsidized power to get reelected."

Politicians who refuse to play the game pay a steep price. N. Chandrababu Naidu, the former chief minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh, transformed the state capital of Hyderabad from a backwater into a high-tech destination by building new roads, widening others, and aggressively carving out land for factories and office parks. Google (GOOG ), IBM (IBM ), Microsoft (MSFT ), and Motorola (MOT ) have all built R&D facilities there.

His reward? Voters tossed him out of office two years ago. During his decade in power, Naidu didn't do enough for rural areas, and his challenger promised to channel state funds into irrigation projects and electricity subsidies. "Naidu thought economics were more important than politics. He was wrong," says V.S. Rao, director of the Birla Institute of Technology & Science in Hyderabad. Naidu, 56, is plotting a comeback in elections two years hence. This time, he's preaching a new gospel. "You can't just target growth," says a chastened Naidu. "You have to create policies that make the wealth trickle down to the common man."

But even when politicians say they're beefing up infrastructure, it rarely helps the poorest Indians. Agriculture is stagnant in part because of a lack of the most rudimentary of roads to get to and from fields. N. Tarupthurai, for instance, scratches out a living from a five-acre plot in Jinnuru, a village in northeastern Andhra Pradesh. But his fields are more than a mile from the nearest paved road, so each day the 40-year-old Tarupthurai must carry his tools, seeds, fertilizer, and crops down a dirt path on his back or on his bicycle. "I have asked for a road, and the government says it's under consideration," says the mustachioed, curly-haired farmer. Then he shrugs.

One reason little practical help makes it from the seats of power to India's impoverished villages is that so much money gets siphoned off along the way. With corrupt officials skimming at every step, many public works projects either go over budget or are never completed. "You figure that 25% of the cost goes to corruption," says Verghese Jacob, head of the Byrraju Foundation, which promotes rural development. "And then they do such a bad job that the road falls apart in one year and has to be patched over again," Jacob says as he jostles along in a car on a potholed byway outside Hyderabad.

None of the solutions to India's infrastructure challenges are simple, but business leaders, some enlightened government officials, and even ordinary citizens are chipping in to make things better. The most potent weapon India's reformers have against corruption is transparency. Last October a new right-to-information law went into effect requiring both central and state governments to divulge information about contracts, hiring, and expenditures to any citizen who requests it. The country is also putting to work its vaunted technology prowess to police the government. Officials in 200 districts are using software from Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. to help monitor a government program that offers every rural household a guarantee of 100 days of work per year. Most of this labor goes into public works. To minimize "leakage," the TCS software tracks every expenditure—and makes all of the information available real-time on a Web site accessible to anyone.

Sometimes frustrated Indians take matters into their own hands. Tired of spending four-plus hours a day in traffic, Aruna Newton last fall helped organize something of a women's crusade to speed up infrastructure improvements. Nearly 15,000 volunteers now monitor key road projects and meet with state officials to press for action. They even enlisted the state chief minister's mother, who helped get his attention. "It's about the collective power of the people," says Newton, a 40-year-old vice-president for Infosys. "I just wish building a road was as easy as writing a software program."

Increasingly, companies trying to expand in India have the government as a willing partner rather than a roadblock. The state of Andhra Pradesh rolled out the red carpet last year for MAS Holdings Ltd. of Sri Lanka, South Asia's largest garment manufacturer. It promised subsidized electricity, new access roads, and even a deepwater port if the company would place a huge industrial park on the southern coast. Now MAS Holdings plans to build a cluster of factories that will eventually employ 30,000 production workers. And it chose India over China. "The government support was absolutely vital," says John Chiramel, India director for MAS Holdings. "If we can work together, there's no stopping growth in this country."

A key to getting massive projects off the drawing boards is forming public-private partnerships where the government and companies share costs, risks, and rewards. In 2005, India passed a groundbreaking law permitting officials to tap such partnerships for infrastructure initiatives. Developers ante up most of the money, collect tolls or other usage fees, and eventually hand the facilities back to the government.

The first project to take advantage of the new law is the $430 million international airport scheduled to open next year in Bangalore. The facility is designed to handle 11.5 million passengers per year—nearly double the capacity of the overburdened existing airport. It will be owned by a private company, which will turn it over to the Karnataka state government after 60 years. Global engineering and equipment giant Siemens (SI ) is helping to build the facility, and Switzerland's Unique Ltd. will manage it. These companies are also equity investors. The state had to contribute just 18% of the cost. Without such an arrangement, Karnataka wouldn't be getting a new airport.

A lot of India's hopes rest on the airport deal's success. If it proves the viability of public-private partnerships, more such ventures could come pouring in. A visit to the site instills confidence. Project manager Sivaramakrishnan S. Iyer is a crusty veteran of mammoth infrastructure ventures throughout South Asia and the Mideast. Wearing a scuffed hardhat, with a two-day growth of white stubble on his face, he surveys the site from a 2.5-mile-long bed of crushed granite that will be the runway. Work goes on seven days a week, 18 hours a day. Iyer is intent on wrapping up on schedule in April, 2008. "We have the will to do it, and it will be done," he says.

Will the airport open on time? That's not within Iyer's control. Two government authorities are responsible for building the road that leads to the airport, and they're locked in a dispute over how to do it. Work hasn't started.

And so it goes in India. Unless the nation shakes off its legacy of bureaucracy, politics, and corruption, its ability to build adequate infrastructure will remain in doubt. So will its economic destiny.