Eradication of Corruption in India

Idea to eradicate corruption in India.

Corruption has evolved from a stage where it is treated as social courtesy to a mandate in all levels of the society. Initially people used to treat bribe as a tip for good work from the service provider.Slowly, because of the bureaucracy that has been rooted in our society, people started bribe's as a means to shield from the bureaucratic headaches that they have to bear.People themselves funded this evil to root itself into this giant complicated organization.The basis for this is unnecessary bureaucratic rules for even the simplest of tasks.

To eradicate Corruption and Black money as a citizen of the largest democracy in the world I would like to propose a solution.

1. Phase out paper money and introduce digital money.
2. Every person will have a unique identification and this Id is his account no through which he can do any transaction.
3. The same ID is his tax id.
4. Any transaction how small or big it might be attracts and tax rate of 15%.
5. Every one would identify their identity using bio-metric identification.
6. Mobiles or a bio-metric identification card can be used for transactions.
7. Every one will have one and only one account.
8. All the transactions will route through a central database maintained by a central authority.  

How does these all help in the eradication of corruption?

First if we phase out paper currency every one has to declare and submit the money they have to the central authority.At the time of submitting the money all the black money that has been stashed away should be declared.No one can have accounts other than the account he is assigned and any money that are stashed in foreign banks will be lost,until they declare the same transfer the same to the CA.

Each and every transaction will be stored and monitored and any unauthorized transaction can be easily identified.Every transaction will have bio-metric identity to it and no ghost transactions will happen.As all financial transactions of an individual is maintained changes in his wealth can be traced to his income.

Information technology should be used to maintain the same and sophisticated decision systems should be used to implement the same.

Lastly if the central authority should be complicated and should be maintained by a set of people who are competent,trustworthy and loyal to his country.

At least we know whom to blame when an adversary comes up rather than running pillar to post not knowing where to go.

The Organization Tree

Let me give you the story of a gardener and a mango tree.

Once in a village where water resources are scare there used to be a gardener and in his garden a mango tree.The Mango tree provides his livelihood and shelter not to mention about the shade and fresh air.Days passed by and the gardener was quiet happy with the fruit that are produced by the tree,he used to sell them and earn a decent profit.The tree expected nothing much but occasional watering of its roots as ground water levels are less in that area.The gardener obliged and used to water the tree daily 3 times as it is his daily bead provider.Things went well until one day the gardener got an idea to use less water for watering so that he can avoid the pain of fetching it from the river 3 times a day,so started to water the tree only 2 times a day.The tree even though provided with less amount of water continued to bore fruit nevertheless providing the gardener with a decent yield.Now the gardener was confident that the tree yield doesn't not depend on him watering the tree,so decreased the watering interval to once per day.Now the tree started bearing fruits which are smaller and lighter.The gardener now started thinking that there is some problem with the tree as the leaves are changing color and looking pale.He cut off some leaves to help the tree regrow new healthy leaves,but there is improvement in the fruit yield.He cut off some branches thought to be dead but the fruits stopped growing and yield is very low.Now he though there is some problem with the leaves as now they are yellow and brown,he bought some pesticide but even it did not help.Now the gardener is frustrated,and with now fruit to be sold he thought for a moment on what went wrong,only to realize that he forgot to water the tree in his bid to get more fruits.Now he started watering the tree for more than 4 times a day he waited for it to bore new leaves and fruits,but its too late the tree is dead long before and now is useless.The Gardener how has no shade,no breeze ,no fruit and no income.He starved to death not knowing what to do, regretting the only mistake he made ,NOT WATERING THE TREE.

We can model any Organization with a fruit bearing tree and its employees as the leaves and branches .The management is the gardener,fruit as the profits and water as the expenditure towards salary.

If the management wants more profits it should first water the organization tree so that its employees are motivated to work to their level best.And as financial motivation matters most with the employees it depends on the management how they want their organization to grow,let it die by not watering it sufficiently and waiting for new leaves to sprout or watering it adequately thus enjoying the fruits borne out of it.

Indian railways "The most complicated network"

Every Indian would have fallen prey to the savage beast of our government IT department CRIS.The beast that no one but only CRIS could tame.The beast that would bring frustration to the occasional web user.The beast that forbids the weak heart from doing online transactions.The beast that does things according to its will, leaving the IT guys scratching their buts.

The beast is none other than our very own site irctc.co.in.

• 

The deadly combination

The best and the greatest feat by the Indian government to bring the once old manual railway reservation system to the 20th century. The site boasts more transactions than any other Indian website. The Site that runs on the best WebServer (According to IRCTC) BroadVision (A J2EE compliant server written in C++ -- sweeet). I wounder why IBM or Oracle did not come into the mind of CRIS for their industry standard Application server?.Anyway,let me go through the details of the site

The site uses WEB 2.0 technologies -- yes -- and its for real -- They use AJAX for for some of the requests.They use a mix of CGI java,.net and even PERL??(I have seen these in a job requirement some 5 years ago for IRCTC) never mind.

And I think the best thing about this site is its ability to handle multiple transactions.Only 1 out of 5 transactions will be successful which make the success rate to book a ticket on this site to 20%. But do make note that if the ticket is not booked they will refund the money with 5 to 6 days just charging a minimal amount of 11 rupees for the refund process(Means even if it is the mistake of IRCTC you have to pay for the same-- nice logic)(Or may be Indian govt is making a lot of money with these 11 rupees - only god knows).

Why Indian Banks chose major IT companies for their software rather than have their in-house departments?.

Because they have already seen the efficiency of IRCTC.

You will have many advantages having an In-house IT department,in a normal working environment.But in Railways even if you are from Stanford or MIT you should have some type of reservation to get through it.So a whole bunch of non IT people with non IT education will be the developers of the not so nice IRCTC website.

Example

IRCTC Recruitment 2010

Assistant Manager for IT:

• Age Limit: 35 years
• Number of vacancies: 04 (Gen- 3, OBC-1)
• Salary: Rs. 20600- 3% -46500 (IDA) (E2)

Qualification:

1. Regular BE or B.Tech or Masters in Computer Science or Application, recognized by UGC or AICTE.
2. 5 years post qualification experience in Java based Application. Designing Software development extensive using VB, ASP, Java, JSP, .Net, DZK, SQL or Oracle 9i/10g, DBA, WINNT/Linux with Hardware and Networking knowledge.

WTF anyone who is maintaining a Java application needs .net and VB?? only god knows!.So may be he should be a master of all technologies in the world ,just in case if required and don't forget the reservation! :)

I feel IRCTC might be using a Pentium 1 CPU with a massive RAM of 32 MB,They might not have upgraded the system since old ages.Or may be they just forgot where the production server is physically present!!!.

And to add to the insult they are charging 20 rs for every transaction,why not for free! the site is built with taxpayers money.

Even with all these drawbacks I am happy to see that there is at least an online website where I can book my tickets.See the people in Africa or the Amazon forests, they don't get to book their tickets online,Ahhha! we are in the 20th century competing with the developed countries.

Using this site is far better than standing in the line, talking to an ill tempered ,ill educated computer illiterate looking through the black and white screen in amazement and taking 5 to 10 min to book a ticket. Further the concept of onward journey is alien to many of the staff in the booking counter.May be they think that they are doing the most complicated stuff in the universe(May be!, using a govt site is no less complicated than, launching a satellite into orbit).

But all in all , if you feel you don't mind spending 30 extra bucks use cleartrip.com,A private site which uses IRCTC services and 100 faster than IRCTC.co.in.I don't know what might be the difference ,may be the blazing fast servers or the facking developers in CRIS.

Finally I think IRCTC server should be shoved into our railway minsters ass, just to remind her how this site, was a pain in the ass for majority of the Indian public.

I am quiet optimistic that the bridge at hitech city would be completed by the end of 2010.

The above sentence may a bit over kill but I see 4 workers continuously working from the past 2 years on the bridge. Its really a wonder made possible by our HMDA.Its optimization of resources to the maximum extend and as TIME has no value in the books of the Government this is the best we can expect.

If the Taj Mahal needs to be built now and if the task is given to HMDA then with the 4 efficient workforce it will take 10,500 years to build the monument(it took 20 thousand skilled workers 21 years to construct the entire tomb).

By the way HMDA means Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority and to its credit it is the worst functioning body in south india.

Still in Au-2012 the saga continues.People working 24/7 working in dim lights aided with lights from the the heavy traffic.Workers work with their bare hands to set up the structures ignorant of the technology advancements in the modern world.

This is my first blog.