Not the Final Countdown

My life is full of countdowns right now. 16 days left for college to really begin. 21 days to go for the release of Harry Potter 7. GRE in another 23 days. I will be off to Taiwan to attend Wikimania after 30 days. 4 months for CAT. Another 5 months in Nirma. 1 year left for B. Tech.

Countdowns like these induce anxiety and terror. Wonder if Dali felt the same way when he drew this. The painting is called "The Persistence of Memory" and is considered to be Dali's masterpiece.

Why is Obama whining?

Barack Obama, one of the Democratic Party's leading candidates for nomination in the 2008 US presidential election, made headlines recently when he released a memo criticizing the Clintons' relations with India and Indians. The memo was titled "Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)'s personal financial and political ties to India". Examples of these 'ties' according to the memo are Bill Clinton accepting fees for speaking at Cisco. Now this makes Bill an Indophile because Cisco outsources jobs to India!

After a lot of criticism from the media and the Indian-American lobbies, Obama has now tried to distance himself from the memo . He now terms the incident as a "screw-up", "stupid" and a "mistake". But while he may have lost a few thousand Indian votes, he surely must have gained some respect from a lot of Americans who still see "outsourcing" as a major issue. John Kerry tried to play the same card, but thankfully he lost the elections.

Obama has been a surprise factor of this election, and could potentially spoil Hilary's party. There is tremendous interest in whatever Obama says, he has got a lot of financial backing, and he is closing in on Hilary's lead. So what does this mean for India?

In my opinion, outsourcing is not going to go away. It saves billions of dollars for American companies and makes things quite easy for them. People say that it is a win-win situation for both America and India. But I do not completely agree with that.

Outsourcing has benefited India tremendously. Thousands of engineers get employment. Take the example of Nirma. We had Infosys, TCS, Tech Mahindra, Cognizant, Accenture and HP together hire almost the entire batch. It wouldn't be wrong to say that without outsourcing, half of these students wouldn't have been placed. Also, a bulk of these companies operate entirely from India. Which means taxes, amounting to millions and billions, being added to the Government's kitty.

But has anyone thought how outsourcing might be hurting India? The work that is outsourced is mundane, boring, and far from cutting-edge. Can you tell me names of 5 applications made by Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, Cogni or TCS? Are our brightest minds made for this? This intellectual castration? These are the thousands of students who would otherwise have never thought about taking a job, but would have thought about going to US for higher studies, or would have written the GATE exam to get into an IIT, NIT, BITS. I am sure all of you must have heard about this. I don't think NASA is going to have the same percentage of Indians ten years from now.

I am trying to find out some more bad points about outsourcing. And the surprising thing is that once you start thinking, you can think about many things. What about the effect on our cities? These are thousands of young people who are going to get a lot of money. Money which can buy lots of cars, gadgets, gizmos which ultimately are going to pollute something. Look at the state in which Bangalore is. I had gone to Pune in January. It took us more than an hour to travel a few kilometers from the IT park to the main city.

But my biggest worry about outsourcing is that it is just a temporary phenomenon as far as India is concerned. Things are great right now. But we need to cash in, fast. Because this golden goose does not belong to India. It will fly to whichever country provides the cheapest services. Right now it is in India. But with the growth South American countries like Brazil and Argentina, and European countries like Czechoslovakia and other former Soviet countries, things could be outsourced there too. Besides being geographically close, outsourcing to these countries wouldn't hurt American sentiments as much as outsourcing to India does. And the Chinese are learning English too. So it is up to us to create more golden gooses. There are signs that things may be changing. Some global software giants like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle have set up shop in India and do the same kind of work in India as in US. We also hear about gaming companies and animation studios started by Indians in India. The growth of Indian pharma companies and the news about various automobile giants setting up plants being set up in India is also a good sign. At least all our eggs are not in the same basket.

I may have exaggerated the drawbacks of outsourcing a bit too much. I hope I may be totally wrong about each one of those negative points.

GEB

As people who have attended my quizzes may know, I am in love with Google. There is nothing else which has contributed more to quizzing than Google and Wikipedia (more about Wikipedia in some other post). Till now, I have conducted quizzes with rounds based on Google Maps, Google Trends and even Google Doodles. So this post is dedicated to Larry, Sergey, and to what was once called BackRub.

You must be wondering what GEB (see title) has got to do with this. Well, a bit of googling would tell you that Geb is the Egyptian God of Earth. Indeed, Geb means Earth. So the GEB series in my blog would deal with interesting things that I find while browsing Google Earth.

Ahmedabad once looked quite boring in Google Earth. The resolution was very low and one could say that this was Ahmedabad only because the search told you that this was Ahmedabad. But things changed sometime in 2006. The imagery updated and suddenly you could identify individual localities, roads and even buildings in Ahmedabad. Like a kid with a new toy, I spent hours on Google Earth, traveling through the roads I saw everyday, marking all the buildings and roads I knew, and some that I didn't. I uploaded all the placemarks I had collected to the Google Earth Community website so that the whole world could figure out the where's where of Ahmedabad. But I soon got bored with it. The imagery has not been updated again. And my dream of seeing Ahmedabad like I can see Las Vegas remain just that - a dream. But today I clicked on a checkbox called 'roads' today and...

... I discovered that Google had been working while I was sleeping! All roads in Ahmedabad are mapped. Along with their names! Did you know that what we lovingly call Judges Bungalow Road is not wholly inaccurate? Officially that road is called Nyay Marg (nyay in Hindi means justice, marg means road).

So, Google does it again. And I have an improved version of my old toy to play with.

What next O Mighty Google? Ahmedabad in 3D?

Musings from Nirma

This will come as a shock for most of you who have ever passed through the gates of hell (read Nirma). I am posting from Lab B-104 of Nirma!

Yes, Nirma is providing us with Internet facilities. This is part of the resources provided to aid us in the Minor Project. But there is a catch - it is compulsory to use the resources. It is compulsory to sit in the lab from 8:45 AM to 4 PM. In true Nirma style, attendance is taken every 2 hours. All these rules have been decided by 'higher authorities'.

I have given up trying to figure out the logic behind these making us attend college regularly. Instead I spend my time checking my mail, reading news and of course, writing my true first blog post.

I need to sign out now. 'Higher authorities' may decide that blogging is illegal. Sometimes I wonder if Nirma is funded by the PRC.

Cheers!