Bangalore needs a few Quick Wins!!!

A few decades ago, a mention of Bangalore would have extracted comments like nice town, peace ful town, pensioners paradise etc. Go back just a few years, and Bangalore earned itself new adjectives like IT City, Silicon Valley of India. It even managed to add itself to the Oxfored dictionary as a verb.

Today, the mention of Bangalore, will only generate clamouring for Infrastructure, roads, pollution and so on.

But you may think this is despite the fact that Bangalore has quite a few Mega projects being rolled out. But this is not so. I feel this is because of the fact that Bangalore has so many Mega infrastructure projects that are going on together, with no end in sight.

The only win Bangalore has to show is the International Airport, which was itself delayed by several decades.

What Bangalore needs is a cohesive Mega Plan, which includes all the large Mega projects like the Metro, and several small projects.

The government has to bear in mind that people can put up with only so much. If we wait for all the Mega Projects to end, it may be too late and Bangalore may lose its stature as the IT Capital to nearby cities or even countries.

It is important that a small win is planned every 6 months, that people can celebrate. It will earn the government the support and backing it requires from the public over the next 5 years.

The plan to move the Race Course outside the city and building a World Trade Centre means yet another mega project that will not have anything to show for 3-4 years. Where as converting the Race Course to a Park, can be a quick win. It will also give Bangalore much needed lung space in the heart of the city.

Similarly, the Metro will take a few years to complete. However, something like a mono rail may be easier to implement. Kicking this off in parallel, will ensure a few monorail successes in between every phase of the Metro. This will give the public, a much needed boost while Bangalore undergoes this phase of rapid transformation.

We will get a National ID Card Again!!

The move to invite the Infosys Co-Chairman Mr. Nandan Nilekani to take charge as Chairperson of the Unique Identification Authority of India, in the rank of Cabinet Minister is indeed a very promising move and augurs well for the future of this nation.

Now, this is certainly not the first time that we have set out on the task of issuing a National Identity Card, but its certainly the first time that we seem to be involving the right people to get the task done.

This is certainly a huge challenge and making it a reality will certainly require a lot of conviction and drive.

The possibilities, once this is a success are innumerable, from improved security, better controlling and tracking of financial transactions, control over black money, better and more effective rollout of subsidies by reducing overhead and leakage to name a few. In general it will give the government the ability to link actions to consequences. This is a necessity in a huge country like ours that can otherwise go berserk.

But there are several issues like authentication, validation, duplication and roll out to such a huge population.

Today there are several solutions that technology offers to solve some of these problems. The use of biometrics - fingerprints, retina scans etc can ensure that we avoid some of these issues.

The other issue is Bureaucracy. To get anything in our country from a Ration card to a passport or anything that is a necessity, will mean having to deal with all the babu's enroute. We have to find an alternate route to this until a basic level of integrity gets ingrained within our social sensibilities. We should consider having a public-private partnership, where in the private partner would be responsible for the actual rollout, biometrics etc. The database itself can be maintained by the government for obvious security reasons. The idea is to somehow solve this problem, however that may be.

The other issue is the type of rollout. We seem to have been obsessed, previously, with issuing physical cards with chips that hold all the information. The problem I have with this is with the cost of implementation this will entail and the risk to security.

a) Supplying physical cards with chips are costly.

b) People tend to lose things. And every loss will mean replacing the card, which will translate to additional costs and overheads.

c) Handing over cards with chips provides a window for a security breach.

We do not need cards. People just need to know the number that will identify them. They can chose to memorize it, write it down or use any method they may deem fit.

Challenges are plenty, but under Mr Nandan Nilekani's leadership, this is a success story thats waiting to be scripted.

Jai ho!

Nandan@TED

Some very valid points brought out in Nandan's speech at TED.com. Click here to watch this speech.

HTC Magic is here

But it looks like its not going to bother Apple... iPhone 3G S it seems will hold its ground after all...
See the review for the HTC Magic here.

June 7th was Friedman Day

As you probably guess this day is named after Milton Friedman. But what exactly does this day signify? Trust me the answer is just as interesting as the question...

Friedman Day is the day in the year when Americans have earned enough money to pay the full costs of Government. This is calculated by the American Institute of Economic Research and will vary each year.
This year the Friedman Day was on the 7th of July.

This is not the Tax Foundation's Tax Freedom Day, when Americans' aggregate income collectively finances all municipal, state, and national taxes. And this is where the significance lies. Friedman Day includes not just the income from taxes but also other sources of Goverment income. It also includes the money government borrows to pay for spending that isn't covered by tax revenue. So Friedman day will be a few days after the Tax Freedom Day.
Both these could be on the same day when there is no deficit.
The larger the deficit the larger will be the gap between these 2 days. Interesting eh...

With over 1.8 trillion dollars in deficit.. expectedly the gap this year could be wider...

Here's an interesting link on Friedman: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard43.html

iPhone3GS is on its way!! Go sign up Now!!!

And Apple seems to have sealed every hole in the iPhone with the Apple 3GS.

Its got everything you always wanted:

1. Cut, Copy and Paste

2. Video Recording

3. 3 Megapixel Camera with Autofocus.

4. A search feature to search through everything on your phone: Apps, Contacts, Msgs and mails...

And its touted to be atleast 2.5 times faster. Get to you apple store before the queues get too long..