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.

Enn Virupam

Silapair santosha thai thedi Nimmathi ai ezhakindranar
Nanoo ellarum nimmathi aga irrukka
ennn santhoshathai izhaka virumbukirain

என் ஆைச

எல்லொரும் பொய்யய் மெய்யென நினைத்து வாழ்கிறாற்கள்
ஆனால் நானொ மெய்யய் பொய்யாக நினைத்து வாழ் ஆைசப்படூகிரென்

No one believes God

I do not find real Christians
US does not believe in Christ
If it believes why to attack small countries
Let USA do a prayer
God will punish them

Indians do not believe Rama
If they believe why to build a house for him
Let Rama build his own house

Even Muslims do not believe in God
Why to attack their enemies with bombs
Why to do terror why to cut their brothers' head

Religion is a Business

Religion is a Business
Cheating is the Business Logic
Temples are the shops(or offices)
Priests are sales executives
Festivals are the exhibitions
Miracles are themes used for advertising
Sinners are the customers of other shops
Holy wars are Business Competitions
Holy books are user manuals
Symbols are the trade marks
Prayer is unheard request of the customer
Heaven is the highest benefit guarenteed to customer
Hell is the the Product warning
Saints are the victims

Alas! God is the product

Kamakura Buddha

The horrible thing in this photo is that just before taking this photo the sun shine was on the buddha's face. it looked like a enlightment around his face, which is the very reson of taking this photo. But in fraction of seconds the sun shine passed away.

Walking thru Chennai Roadsides

A horrible thingh that i face day to day is walking thru the roadsides of chennai, specifically in Inner Ring Road, which i use daily. The following are the horrible things that i remmembered

1. Dust, pollution, which is common to all metros but its worse here
2. Unregulated traffics
3. Irregular traffic signals
4. There is no proper pedestrian pathway in the roadsides, so people used to walk on the roads itself. Either the platforms itself is not their or occupied by the vendors or some tree are grown inbetween
   
5. Their is no lane system followed, every one is rushing to the platform at the signals
6. The horrifying MTC buses which itself doesnt follows the traffic rules

(more to come...)