Self Governance

As you know, I am a real Indian by heart. Daily I keep on thinking “How can I make my country better?”. Better in living conditions, technology, education, health care etc etc. Looking at the corruption and the the way tax payers' hard earned money is being mis-utilized, and because I have this desire of making my country better, I am coming up with this idea of self governance.

By this idea, I propose that every tax payer should be given a choice to spend some percentage of his taxes (or only income tax) for the work that government is supposed to do. Like, laying tar roads, raising and maintaining public parks, maintaining government schools, other infrastructure, free health care, free medicines, public transport, traffic management, rural development, population control, pollution control, etc etc. I mean everything that government is supposed to do and that common people can do too!

Now, this may raise a lot of questions of implementation feasibility. Here are some of the suggestions.

Instead on an individual spending the money, there should be a group of at least 10 and at max 100 tax payers. These citizens should be linked to each other. Like they should be residing in same apartment complex, or they should be employees of same organization, or they should be part of commercial organization( like all India Dabba Wala organization ;)) etc.
Similarly, there should be a limit on min and max amount spent by these groups.

One committee will be formed by government that will create the tasks that can be delegated to these groups. While choosing the tasks to be done, these groups will approach the committee and get the tasks from them. These groups can suggest their own tasks too to this committee and the committee can take a decision on that.

The idea is very raw at this point of time. But, this will distribute the work, increase the focus, increase the sense of responsibility, reduce the corruption etc. I don't say that this system will be completely corruption free, but at least it will be distributed and will definitely reduce.

I request the readers to raise questions and ridicule this idea by telling how and why it can NOT be implemented.

Master Blaster

I am a great fan of Sachin Tendulkar. Hence I can't digest the comments against him. There are various comments like he has played against weak countries, has scored only on Indian soil etc etc. Hence I went to statsguru of Cricinfo.com and got following links.

His test records

His ODI records


I think these records show clearly, that most of the negative comments about him are incorrect.

My Views on Hiring and Firing

I have been recently reading a mail chain on one of the yahoo groups I am subscribed to. The gist of the first mail was about the lay-offs done by some companies. Many members replied to the mail criticizing the contents and questioning the sender. People were of the opinion that the companies who have fired employees were correct because they have done it on the basis of performance and background check. No body was accepting that there can be other reasons also. This is what I have to say.
Hello Janata,
If you read the chain, most of the janata is talking about firing in case of under performance and back ground checks etc.
Guys, lets accept that there are companies who are cutting the cost by firing employees. The reason given can be anything. I am not going to buy the claim that the firing has happened solely based on under performance and back-ground check. If there were no finance crunches, they wouldn't have done it.
We all know that US has already entered into recession though its not official. Dollar value has significantly gone down. Service companies like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, who earn in Dollars and pay salaries in Rupees have already have their salary expenses increased by 20%. Also, most of the companies do salary revisions at the calender year end. How many companies have increased employees' salaries significantly? I haven't heard of any.
So, I agree with the gist of the mail written by Varsha(The author of the first mail), though, I do not agree with the specific data mentioned in the mail.
And guys, please understand, lay-offs are no more a surprise in India. With highly paying jobs it has already entered here.

Lets hope that the wave settles down quickly.

California

I am in california these days. The weather is really good. Summer is on the way and daylight saving is going to start soon. The day will be bigger and bigger here after. I happened to see a lot of my friends and old colleagues.
I also visited a couple of places here. The Golden Gate Bridge, Mystery spot, Santa Cruz beach, Mt Diablo etc. There are couple of more places I have visited but I dont remember their names ;).
I happened to attend a few technical conferences after coming over here. They were really good. Especially DesignCon2007 was great. I received an HP-iPaq in a lucky draw. Its worth $560 and has lot of features, especially GPS.

Accident

Dhadam dhum.......! For a sec I didn't understand why my car has stopped. Then I realized that the WagonR in front of my car had applied the breaks and they worked on my car too. What a technology! I exclaimed.
I soon understood that I have bumped on the car. Something was going thru my mind while I was driving the car. "How come there are insects in the car" mom said and I looked back. Had to look ahead for dhadam dhum.
The (poor) guy in WagonR was going to see the Germany Vs Argentina football match. I was going to see my uncle who was hospitalized for some operation. I got down, apologized etc etc. But this was the first time I have hit someone and the car was very slow. So not much damage.

Since Long

Welcome back Vivek Joshi. ;). These will be the words from my friends who regularly read my blog. Yes! Thats true. "Wednesday, August 10, 2005 was the last time u posted on blog. What happened?" says Gaurav. "kuch update karo blog... atleast marriage pics hi share kar do :)" says Sweta. I remember Atul T. also asking me about it. Well, to be honest, I was just reluctant.
Now, I have loads of things to write about. The first one and the most important is about my marriage. I got married on 18th Nov 2005. No no no...! that is not the reason for me not posting anything on the blog. ;). But yes, was busy and has less time to spare ;).
I think I will be posting a few things very soon. Things about my long trips, my accident, football, etc.etc.