A curious incident from online shopping experience

A friend of mine ordered a mi3 redmi note from FlipKart.   This is what he got!



Here is the more complicated part.  He (Let's call him A) stays in Noida. The delivery was possible only in Delhi. So he asked another friend of his (say person B) to order the phone (coz B has account in FlipKart and B had got the deal offer) with the product to be delivered to person C (who lives in Delhi). So C got the delivery, brought it to office. A opened it in office, saw the beautiful surprise that was waiting for him inside the box, and started wondering what next to do. When A called FlipKart support, he had to explain that the order was placed by B and delivered to C and received by him.We are still wondering, whether FlipKart will own up the mistake or not.

So, the topic of lunch discussion was, what should we do to have strong proof of misplaced product.The only viable idea was: when the product is delivered, open the product case at the same time in front of the delivery person, check it and then accept it. But, this is fraught with many issues. I for myself, stay alone. So, I am mostly absent from home. Therefore, I schedule deliveries at my office address. Even in that, I am mostly busy in meetings during office time, or it is weekend. So, I prefer the delivery guy to deliver the products at office security. I pick it up at the end of the day. For me, it's pretty difficult to spend time with the delivery guy for opening the product  and verifying it. Moreover, the packing is usually so sophisticated, that it would easily take 5 to 10 minutes to unpack it. And if it is a big product, unpacking it would be highly inconvenient, as I have to drive back 35 kilometers later.Moreover, the delivery guy himself won't be willing to wait that long.

Life is complicated!

One plus two first experiences

I have  migrated to one plus  two  from  an older  Samsung  Galaxy  grand Quatro. Overall  I am enjoying  the new phone.  But I did  find  some issues.

It doesn't  ship with  a headset. For now I am using  the headset  of my previous  phone.

It doesn't  have  fm.  I used to use my earlier  phone  to listen to fm while  driving.  I don't  have  this capability  anymore.

When I connected  the phone  to laptop  today  it didn't  start  charging. Towards  the end of the day  I looked at the battery  details page to realize that it is not charging. Disconnecting and reconnecting  the  cable didn't  help. Finally  I restarted  the device. Then it started  charging. I could  not  figure  out  why this happened. Probably  it is a software  bug which  will get fixed later.

The phone  comes  with  a single  cable.  Thus one has to keep carrying  it around.  My earlier  phone  came with  two cables. One with  a wall socket  adapter  and other for pc connection. Having  two  cables I think  is useful.  This  seems to be a cost cutting  exercise. However official USB type c cables  from one plus are out of stock on amazon.  So getting  an official  spare isn't  easy at this  time.

Btw the phone is really  fast and worth  the money.

On the mirage of one rank one pension

Not sure how many people know about the so called apex scale in Indian bureaucracy. This is the highest scale at which bureaucrats in India can retire. Some years back, they introduced One Rank One Pension for (only) those bureaucrats who reach this level before retirement. In some sense, this is a preferential treatment given by the top bureaucrats to themselves. I believe this should be abolished. The idea of one rank one pension is indeed flawed. It causes unnecessary load on the exchequer. And if it is awarded to military persons, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be awarded to other government servants also. After-all, teachers also serve the nation! The only thing worthwhile is some sort of compensation to military people in pay commissions since they retire much earlier. This I believe is done in form of dearness allowances so far. In general, the focus should be on ensuring that during the military career, or just after it, people get trained enough so that they can easily get good jobs in civilian life and can continue to earn their living for doing real work and contributing to the growth of the nation. Living off pensions for able bodied persons is not a great way of living in my view. I don't have the statistics but my guess is that most of the military veterans do get absorbed in decent civilian roles post retirement. I would also mention that armed forces have different provisions for martyrs and people who get physically disabled while on duty.

Hope for best or work for best?

As I have been talking with my friends and colleagues about the change in government, a typical response has been "Let us hope for the best". In fact many a times I also gave the same response. And just now, it struck me that this is nothing but passive thinking. After giving the mandate to the new Modi government, we just want to sit back and "Hope for the Best".

What if we just replace "Hope" with "Work" and start thinking "Let us Work for the Best".  A simple change in word has a major impact in our approach to governance.  Rather than being a passive observer to the charade of governance, we become an active participant in the governance process.

There are many ways, we can keep ourselves involved with the governance process. The least we can do is to use the social media to provide constructive criticism towards the actions the government is taking or not taking. If something is not working, raise it. If government decisions are improper, cry hell. If the government is doing something right, appreciate it. If the government needs our support in making some decisions, help them. If you have new ideas to solve a problem, share it.  If any member of BJP or affiliated organizations is trying to abuse his power or reach, make it known. But don't indulge in unnecessary rants. Don't complain about imaginary problems or apprehensions without any factual basis.  Use twitter, facebook, whatsapp and other social media to the best of the ability. Know that people in this government do react to simmering anger in social media and take corrective actions quickly. An example is when Pramod Muthalik was inducted in BJP during the campaign, an aggressive twitter lashing led to he being thrown out of the party the same day. Know that Modi wants to be here for a long term and he will not do anything which would lead to erosion of his support base.


There are other avenues also for engaging with the modi government. At his website http://www.narendramodi.in/ you can directly write to him, or join him in his "Serve the Nation" campaign.  I am sure many more initiatives will be launched by the government in upcoming months to have a greater involvement of young and capable people in the governance process.

Even if you don't like BJP ideology, or something that has happened in the past, the government is here to stay. So better engage with them rather than just saying "Hope for the best".

Handling illegal migration from Bangladesh

Illegal migration from Bangladesh into India turned up as an important electoral issue while campaigning in West Bengal. While BJP didn't give a specific solution to it, it did show its tough stand that illegal migration is not acceptable.  In this post, I suggest a WIN-WIN solution which can be helpful to both India and Bangladesh.

A fundamental issue to understand is why migration happens. Essentially there are two reasons for migration: economics and politics. If people don't find job opportunities or other income sources in their native place, they tend to go to other more prosperous places in order to find jobs. The prosperous places are always in need for more blue collar workers or even general labor. So there is an economic benefit associated with them to allow illegal migration to happen.

The second reason is political. There are two sides of this. When a small group of people is harassed in one locality, it attempts to run away and find refuse in some other more friendly place.  On the other hand, politicians sometimes allow illegal migration as long as they can cultivate their vote bank.

Of the two, majority of migration happens due to economical reasons and vote bank politics is just incidental to it. Thus, if the core reasons for migration due to economic reasons can be taken care of, then migration will automatically come down. Not many people really want to leave her home place and wander in foreign lands.

In order to solve this problem, it makes sense for India to help Bangladesh develop into an economically prosperous nation. If India can help develop infrastructure in the country, build ports, roads, and help grow labor intensive industries, then most of the Bangladeshis who have left the country, will naturally be motivated to go back to their home land and stay there. Further, with right kind of partnership between India and Bangladesh, this will also help India develop its north-east region much more effectively. As the roads through Bangladesh will help connect the north-east to the Bay of Bengal and excellent ports on the coastal line will help increase international trade, India will automatically benefit a lot. Such an excellent India-Bangladesh partnership will help solve so many problems in one go.

Now, it doesn't mean that the illegal immigrants problem will be solved completely through this master stroke.  The political refugee problem will still remain and will have to be addressed differently. But, its good to solve the 80% of the problem first and then come out with more challenging approaches to solve more tricky problems.

The Safe Bool Idiom

The Safe Bool Idiom Learn how to validate objects in a boolean context without the usual harmful side effects in C++.

Why English is good for us as a technical language

So if you have read about HTML, you know that a tag can have child tags and a parent tag. Children of children are descendants (recursively). Parent of parent is an ancestor (recursively again). A tag also has sibling tags. The children of the sibling of parent tag can at best be called a cousin.

Now think if you were going to be taught the same thing in Hindi.

HTML me tag hote hain. Har tag ka ek pita hota hai (Maata nahi hoti). Ek tag ke 0 ya 0 se adhik bachche tags ho sakte hain. Unhe ham putra tag kahenge (putri kyon nahi?). Ek tag ka sirf ek hi pita ho sakta hai. HTML tag ka koi pita nahi hota, isliye woh sarvochh poorvaj kahlata hai. Pita ka pita, yani pitamah tag bhi ho sakta hai. Agar pita ke pita ki shrinkhala banayi jaye to woh sab tag poorvaj kahlayenge. Usi tarah putra ke putra (pautra tag) aur agar unki shrinkala banayi jaaye to we sab vanshaj kahlayenge. Har tag ke bhai tag bhi hote hain (bahnein nahi hoti). Bhaiyon me kuch agraj honge (coming before) aur kuch anuj (coming later).

I think that all the books on HTML would become so funny if we had to read stuff like this.

We should be grateful that we have a foreign language in which we read all the technical stuff :D