She

A naughty smile and pursed lips

in between the nibbles and the tiny sips

One white hair that clearly shows

A little out of shape, and this she knows

Forever wanting me to be there

and then plundering me with no stone to spare

Gifts costing her a fortune, or her priceless looks

or even when she is lost in between her books

Where ever I go where ever I roam

When I get back, she feels like home...

911 vs 100

Yes. I plan to compare the two numbers. There are many factors to look at, and I will try to sum them up as precisely as possible...

Ask any American, or watch enough Hollywood movies and you will see that 911 is something that Americans use very frequently, for things as small as sticking your hand to something very embarrassing (in American Pie) to something much bigger as in Die Hard... But you get the picture... as soon as there is any situation of any kind and severity, 911 is one of the first things they will think of. Efficiency of this system is so good that you are almost assured a response in minutes wherever you are in the country. There is proper research done while making roads, to ensure that any part of a city is reachable in 2-10 minutes from the nearest Police patrol ( my ex roommate was working for a firm that did this research)

100 on the other hand usually has a fleeting reference in the heads of Indians. Should something go wrong, the first set of people we think about are our neighbors, or friends. In some cases, we probably don't even want to get involved with the police. Like Hollywood in previous case, if you watch enough Bollywood movies, you will see that people do not usually want the police to get involved, or the police any how comes only when the hero has beaten the crap out of the villain, despite the absence of police. what I imply from this is that police is at least considered inept, or inconsiderate, or untrustworthy.

But if I think deeper about this, the differences don't just stay as mere facts and jokes as above... They begin to show the vast difference that exists between the two countries.

To implement a system like 911, a few basic things are needed. First it needs to be such a dependable system, that time and again, anywhere, anyhow, should there be an emergency, some help should be able to reach the victim. It is only then that a person will trust this 3 digit number so much to remember, and call, this number when their life is in danger. In addition, this number should be able to give you the warmth that you would have no inhibitions in trusting them for any situation of any sort. Third, the versatility of this number should be such that any kind and severity of situation can be handled by this number.

These are just a few components that go into making this system work. Any person in Process Management would tell you that this calls for operational efficiency, and that too of a very very high standard. Coz it deals with lives of people. Implementing this, even in a small society of 200 apartments is such a huge pain. I can tell you this by my experience in getting an electrician to fix a power cut in my apartment in Delhi.

Now imagine implementing this at the level of a nation. One of the world's biggest nations by land size and population. But this has been implemented here in the US. And everytime I think of this system, and dare to compare it to 100, I first get awestruck, and then get upset.

Why can't India implement a system like that? What's stopping us? Don't we deserve to have such a system to help us lead a better life? Must our loved ones die waiting for help to arrive? Or worse still. die waiting coz the PM is visiting the Hospital?

It needs will. Easy to say, much much more difficult to implement. Political, bureaucratic or whatever. Will. But all these are dependent on how strongly people ask for this, and make this (instead of speaking marathi in maharashtra) a political issue. And that comes from social awareness. That is VERY different from education, which is again VERY different from literacy... A nation of 1 billion, with most people not even knowing the significance/value of such a system. And I think the most critical role here is to be played by the middle class in India. I belong to it, and by having studied in US now, I know what we lack. There are many more middle class students who have been lucky enough to see and understand the difference between the two systems. Now that we are 'aware' we must pass this on, and strive to make everyone aware of this.

It is only when people are aware of this that leaders will rise, and take this issue further, and even take it on to them to implement this. And then we will have someone to vote for. Then we could also look at appointment of competent officers in implementing this system, and much more importantly, sustaining it.

The best way to resolve our issues is to move bottom up. And for that we need to be aware...

Indian Software Industry's pangs

If you throw a random stone in bangalore, it will either hit a dog or a software engineer...

This is what I was told in 2000 when I began my software engineering. It was a weirdly funny joke, coz I did laugh at it, but I certainly did not like our comparison with dogs. Not only because it is derogatory (similar to the lines of objections on slum'dog' millionare) but also because engineers are by the very definition of the term, very well educated.

umm well educated? but as soon as I say this, I see my head screaming out against it. So something has to be wrong somewhere...

Some engineers are downright called 'unemployable' by the multinationals. But lets face it, passing 4 years in an engineering college would atleast have taught them basic levels of coding. Although this was not quite true in my case ( I probably wrote my first respectable software program only at my first job, but that taught me a lot, and hence this post...), but I would say that most of the software engineers would at least know how to code.

So whats the problem? its like a student who knows the alphabets well, but has no clue about how to form sentences with them. On top of it, forming understandable sentences from it is mostly just a dream. As more and more Indian software companies claim to provide 'best in the industry solutions' to the world outside (through getafreelancer.com, rentacoder.com and what not), particularly the western economies, their cracks begin to show. For they claim to know how to make software, but they actually just know how to code. And the bubble bursts...

Bigger companies like Infosys, TCS etc charge the western world enough money to send these new s/w engineering grads to almost a year of training, which makes them at least employable. But people who don't/couldn't make it into these are basically 'let loose' out in the big bad world, having nothing more than a vague imprint of 'Let's C,C++ by Yashwant Kanitkar)...

The point being, there is a lot more to software engineering than just code.

To begin with, there has to be an understanding of the context in which this software is being written. Without this understanding of context (business sense in other words) a software engineer is nothing more than an automated code generator (and they are usually crappy). A lot of this happens purely out of lack of exposure to good business practices and incompetent business acumen. But both of these can be acquired; latter even quicker.

This has to be coupled with acceptable levels of communication skills. And communication skills DO NOT mean using a thesaurus on every word and writing the most impressive word. It is about CLEARLY stating what you want to communicate, and making sure that the reader/listener has understood it well, and then confirm it.

Third is diligence. Remember that your aim is to get the work done. Not to get money to procrastinate the work for as long as possible. The client is not a fool to let this go on forever, more so for smaller project based companies where lock-in is very minimal. If a software company wants to sustain its business for longer than a few years, it has to finish the work ON TIME. if not in time.

The basic point being, a lot of small Indian software companies are coming out as promising something and delivering something much below the acceptable standards.

One of the ways in which the problem can be fixed is by having both business and technical expertise in a company. Only a bunch of engineers running day to day business will be a bad decision. Hiring an employable Technology Management MBA could be a step in the right direction.