More ruins

If I stood up, and looked out of the window , from the room where I usually work, I can see these buildings. I've asked many people no body says anything clearly. It sits near the edge of a hyacinth covered pond fringed with heath.The buildings are not protected by any fences or palisades, and seems not to be under any care.The only people I see near it are children playing and flying kites.


Speaking of old places and kites I am remembered of Ruskin Bond's story "Kite Maker" , I do not know which place he had in mind when he wrote that story, I feel it could easily have been of this city.

The wrong shade of white

Some Indian software companies have strange dress codes. You have to "well dressed", with the tie around the neck and the shoes on the feet. The shirts have to be of particular shades. I consider infosys to be one of the biggest culprits in the regard of enforcing dress codes.

I feel it as ironic , for anybody who is a programmer , whose normal cultural stereotype would not have anything to do with being well dressed , to be forced to work wearing this sort of crap.
Besides , it is outrageous to fine somebody for not wearing the tie. These companies are getting their priorities wrong.There should be no compulsion on the people to adhere to any sort of dress code. Because being well dressed does not have anything to do with programming.

I am reminded of an incident, Andrew Tanenbaum mentioned somewhere in his writings , about the experiences he had of working for a big company. He decided to leave them when he was subject to lengthy lectures on maintaining the decorum , after he wore a shirt of the wrong shade of white to the office.

I am writing this , because a long time ago , I did not not join infosys because of the darn dress code.Hey , HR , over there at infosys, you could loose people because of the darn stupid dress code, if you are still enforcing it.

The treasures of the old city

The old city is under curfew.There are policemen in most of the streets.An outburst of communal violence have disrupted the normal flow of life in this part of the city where you are never away from the links that connect to its past , its history.

Wayside monuments , crumbling mausoleums , sarcophagi , they are all there to be seen for those who wish to see. Here I am going to describe one such historically significant construction barely a stones throw from where I live: The Paigah tombs .

The people who write guidebooks to Indian cities should be burned at the stakes.In all probability you could pick up half a dozen guide books on Hyderabad , which says Paigah tomb is a historical site where Paigahs , cronies of the old Nizams are interned.I bet none of the books ever says where they are located , and there wont be any pictures of it, leaving the reader and traveler totally clueless.In fact I could not even find any pictures of the place online, and this place is supposed to be under government care.

So by sheer luck I got to know , that this place is near where I live.Just 5 minutes walk.One Sunday afternoon , I finally decided to go an explore the place.On entry I met the guide who is also the security guard.He insisted that footwear to be removed before entering into the graveyard.

The graveyard is a simple affair with an open roof.There is some ornate decorations on top of the walls.These graves seemed to be of people of lesser stature in the Nizams court.Once you walk across the graveyard, there is an open courtyard.

There seems to be a few families living inside the complex.The guard mentions that they are caretakers.Well , to me they didn't look like caretakers , more like they were just living there.On side of the courtyard there is building with a proper roof and marble flooring.The higher ups seemed to be buried there.The guard can go on explaining these for quite a long , like this fellow who is buried here was the owner of Begum Bazar, this fellow was owner of Saifabad , and this fellow wakes up every day at 2 o clock in the night and goes to the masjid.

One you reach the end of this roofed structure , there is pond or tank behind which is a small mosque .The mosque seems to be used for active worship.Towards one side of the mosque is a dilapidated structure containing more graves.

Beyond that is another building , totally covered by vegetation and in dilapidated state.The guide refused to let me go into there.He insisted there were snakes and much more in there , and it would be positively dangerous to go in.I just think that is a place of disputed ownership with private parties , they might have gotten some restraining order to prevent visitors being brought in there.

As you travel around old city , you can see many such things.I wish if I had time and interest to go to all such places, once the old city returns to peaceful times.

Passing Out

Its been more than two years since I left college, now sitting here, perhaps I am separated from it by enough space and time, to reflect on the time I spend there, and the things I saw and learned more objectively and try to be a troll on my own blog.

Darn, no body takes college seriously. Everybody is after easy marks.Everybody wants to have some fun.Everybody wants to choose the electives which "guarantees" the most marks.There is no purpose to anything.Never mind paying hefty fees just to while time away.

yet the moment , we "pass out" of college , and enter into a job, a kind of "seriousness" comes in out of nowhere.Now everything has a purpose, everything has to be done proper.Because if it isn't so, your boss will get angry, perhaps you can even get fired for it.And that is so obscene.

When I see a person, who was an easy goer in college, turn into a sincere and true worker in a company, I feel like taking a steel bar and breaking their knees with it on the spot, because that person is the ultimate hypocrite, since he can do work for the earning of money, but he cant attach the same seriousness to college which is supposedly is done for enlightenment, and we are paying for it to boot.

The guy who does good work , only so that he earns good , and does not get fired , is a creature of small ambitions , he will probably make a lot of money , buy a good house and live happily , but I feel chances are less that he will either invent the steam engine , or write the "Ulysses".

Aftermath

The results of the 2009 elections are out.Left parties have obtained much less number of seats than they are used to, so have many regional parties like RJD and TDP.Many "pundits"have taken this as an opportunity for Left bashing and hate speech, but we should see what are the real things , what role the Left has played in the history of our country and what role it shall play in its future.

Many conservatives try to establish that somehow Left is anti-development.But development is an all encompassing term,we cannot equate the short term prosperity of a few people of the higher strata of the society as development.One oft cited example is that the Left parties opposed the introduction of computers and usage of mechanized farm equipment.If the Left have opposed these , then it was a reasonable stand at that point of time.

Computerization would have lead to a certain degree of job losses as many tasks would be mechanized and would not require human intervention.So even as computerization would create a few jobs for well-skilled personal , a lot of existing workers could lose their jobs ,if they became redundant. It would also have made us owners of large amounts of proprietary systems ,and we
would had have to give away huge sums as contract charges to international concerns like IBM and Unisys. We would have been locked into these vendors software and hardware , and would have no option but to keep paying them forever.Besides if we had bought lots of expensive stuff then , by now we would have lots off stuff worth pennies,which would have to be sold for scrap.

Similarly farm machinery also posed a genuine risk of pushing unskilled labourers into unemployment and starvation. We expect the government to take care of all the people , not just a few well-off people in the big cities. But unfortunately many governments fail to see things clearly , and someone has to do something so that government does not do the wrong thing.And Left has done this very well in the past and continue to do so.

Right wing commentators often depict the left-block as a hindrance to taking decisions , because the left does not allow to take steps designed to serve the vested interests of the right wing and its backers. Contrariwise,I would say that the Left's opposition to the nuclear deal was in our people's interests.One of the greatest decisions ever taken by the Left was that of withdrawing support for the UPA,over the Indo-U.S nuclear deal.The Congress was seen to be pushing for deal ,without any semblance of transparency.

The urgency with which the government acted on the nuclear-deal issue is strange and uncalled for and raises questions as to what where the real motives behind it. The best recourse for the situation was to pull the support for government and dissociate from the nuclear deal and build up public opinion from the outside.

The power at centre is not to be used for giving special bonuses and freebies to different regions as the regional parties are doing. By doing this the regional parties are diluting our national purpose.In exchange for regional benefits ,they are sacrificing their stake of opinion on economic and foreign policy issues which are of paramount importance, and have an impact over the entire country for all of the future. In the choice between using the influence of a political party to either strive for regional development or get a decisive role in setting national policy , the latter is certainly a better choice.But short-sighted commentators still clamour for narrow development.

The role of Left will not be diminished by a singular electoral debacle.If we let the Congress ,which has the ideological depth of a doughnut,have its way, we might be on the way to see rampant opportunism and hypocrisy:Its leaders not having any unifying philosophy to guide them , and acting purely on individual whims and fancies.And its allies true blooded regional parties ,who will give the government nightmares while dealing with issues concerning the concerned regions.

So Left will resurrect , because the 'right' just doesn't take care of anybody else.We need social security and free medical care and education for our needy citizens. Even so many years after our county's birth ,it is strange that the government has no obligation to take care of its citizens.All these can change only with major influence of the Left.

Good thing!

A few months ago Google launched a service called, google app engine. What app engine does is that it allows developers to create web services that was hosted in and made use of googles infrastructure. They were giving 500 mb of space with generous data transfer limits , all for free.
And the good news was that , it had to be programmed in Python.

When I first heard of python , like 5 or 6 years ago , I thought it was a major programming language for the web. Later I played a bit with Zope web application framework for python also. But , there was a big problem with using
python . Hosts for python were difficult to get and expensive. the once who had , often had ancient versions. I felt that python was not easy for web development , since its rather difficult to get a host to put the things on line.

Now , google has given a shot in the arm for python , anybody can now have their python based web application running on the google app engine.

Initially app engine hosting was given only to the first 10000 developers who signed up , but now anyone can sign up for the good stuff here.

Preposterous Article!

i have been foolish enough to send a badly written article to a 'respectable newspaper' , at that time , i didn't think about it , but now i feel it , from now , on they will junk everything that i send to them without even reading , they'll add me to their 'Black List' ,and I'll never ever get to see anything written by me ,on their 'respectable pages' ....

its badly written , but here goes ..


The Need For Unions In The Software Industry
-----------------------------------------------------
In most modern industries , trade unions play a proactive role , except perhaps in the software
industry. There has been considerable debate on the issue of having trade unions in the software
industry, but seemingly no noticeable impact has been felt on the ground level till now. The software industry is one of the pillars of the strengthening Indian economy,Yet the workers in this industry are being denied many rights , which has always been considered as fundamental by worker in other industries world over.

The industry is relatively new ,having been existent only for about a quarter of a century , that is perhaps the reason why the traditional trade union movements could not take root here . And they have not made much progress in their efforts to establish their presence amongst the community of software workers. The absence of unions have certainly granted more freedom to employers .Employers are in a position to push measures that put the employees at a disadvantage while garnering greater benefits for themselves. Employers are able to do things unilaterally without effective consultation with the employees.

The recent spurt of laying off of employees in several major IT firms illustrate , the volatility of the situation that the employees are facing. The employees , currently have little option to question employer actions. They are lacking a forum to express their opinions concerning matters that directly
affect them.

Many unfair practices like bonded labor and inhuman working schedules would not be acceptable in other fields but here this goes unquestioned. Employers in IT firms frequently subject their employees to work under harsh bonds , limiting their chances of seeking employment elsewhere for extended periods of time .Many employees are forced to sign contracts that demand hefty penalty in case of breach. If unions were active ,They could act as watch dogs against the firms using unfair and unethical practices.

They could act as a rationalizing agent , and help employees get a reasonable pay
consummate with the industry wide economic scenario.
Most companies are suffering from high attrition rates. Perhaps one of the reasons for it is the lack if employee satisfaction , and trade unions could act as a mechanism to guarantee employee satisfaction, by ensuring greater employee welfare.Right now , in many firms ,the employee relations has been handled under the name of 'Human Resources' .But HR department is just another department , that is ultimately under the control of the
ownership of the firm. How effectively such a configuration could manage employee welfare is not sure , since it is not an independent entity.

Employee welfare should be under the purview of employees only. Independent unions should be a good way of achieving this. There has been many criticisms against unions , but as a fact they have been existing for almost 200 years .They were born at the dawn of the industrial age , and they played and continue to play a great role in getting a dignified treatment for workers.
The IT industry's growth is perhaps as explosive as the industrial revolution. We are now having
immense number of employees working in this industry. May be the lessons learned from all these years of union activism in other industries in all countries could well be a major help in making the IT industry better for all stakeholders.