Good bye, 2011... Welcome 2012.

As 2011 come to a close and a new year begins, wishing you all a very happy and prosperous new year!

Looking back at 2011 from economic perspective, we have seen reports, that the world had not come out fully from recession and some even predicting a double dip recession. 'Gold' has out shined all other investments in the year. From about 1900 INR (22 carat) towards close of 2010, it had reached to about 2600 INR, a whopping 40% return on investment.

Had predicted and written in my blog in Sep 2010, that gold will continue to raise and the same happened. However, along with gold, the USD appreciated against INR towards close of 2010, the likely reason provided by experts is the slowing down of Indian economy in the last quarter of 2011. In spite of repeated raise in the interest rate by RBI, the inflation refused to come down, which can also be the possible cause of slowdown in the economy.

While developed countries real estate sector woes continued, I would say, India real estate market was able to sustain in 2011. However, I read an article about the challenges in Indian real estate sector and hence one need to see, which way it would go in 2012.

Indian automotive sector which had  been reporting increase in sales even during 2008-09 recession period had for the first time  reported a dip in the sales towards in last couple of months of 2011. So, would this be the indicator for Indian economy in 2012?.

Lastly, the Indian IT sector had been able to sustain its growth, though it did not have an exponential growth. The operating model might see a change in coming years. To me, the word onsite, offshore or near shore might disappear in few years time and the focus would be towards ' Cloud' computing.

Well, time is the answer..... For the moment lets be optimistic, welcome year 2012, which is my 4th year in blogging as well ....

Read more! Read more...

Unleashing Genius - A review

To me, our Indian school education is more oriented towards testing memory power. No doubt, getting high marks in school is a significant achievement, but at times students and parents tend to overlook the importance of logical thinking or apt handling of situational problems, which arises from time to time . In this world, analysing and  handling situational problems effectively is  paramount towards successful living.

Unleashing Genius by Dilip Mukerjea is one such book for children which, I would say, particularly to the teenagers to put their brain to test and enhance its capabilities towards logical thinking

The book's opening chapters details out as how the brain functions and then takes you through various technique towards enhancing one’s mind power.

Technique like ‘Mind mapping’ would greatly help children to understand & remember any topic which they study. In Management, there is common used technique called Ishikawa or fish bone diagram, which is toward product design or quality defect prevention and I found ‘mind mapping’ technique similar to Ishikawa’s diagram.

I found details like 'reading dynamics' interesting, more particularly, the description and illustration on ‘A Learning miracle’, ‘ Recall during Learning’, ‘Recall after Learning’ can provide significant assistance to anyone who wish to learn new chapters or subject. This technique would be quite useful for examination preparation perspective as well.

The book also takes you through topics such as creativity, braintertainment – basically an entertainment to brain, Jokes & some memory exercises as well.

In all, quite a good book for children and good one to be included in school library. However, I felt pricing is on the higher side (INR 1195). Hence, to make it more attractive, I would suggest the author, to look at the feasibility of including  CD / DVD with voice and animation along with the book. This would make reading interactive, so that knowledge dissemination and the presentation flow is effective.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

Read more! Read more...

'Aadhaar' - The challenges ahead.

Read an article in a leading daily about Aadhaar card . To me, it looks like "Aadhaar"may hit a road block.

Apart from cost, which is estimated to be very high, I had other thoughts, when I went to 'Aadhar' centre for getting enrolled about a month back.

A. For each card, it took about 15 to 20 minutes per person to get all details & biometric captured in the system. If this is the case, imagine the amount of time / locations it would take to get 120 crores of population, further the article point out, that less than 10 crores had been enrolled so far, from the start date.

B. The support or maintenance cost of these system would be quite huge. Since biometrics image of 4 finger, thumb impression, retina images are being stored for each record, the database might run in Giga or even terra bytes.The maintenance of such system would require huge cost for servers, software/ database upgrade, issue fixes, application patches etc. The running cost may run into multiple crores of INR annually.

C. A common man might have enrolled for these identification namely, Voter Id, PAN, Passport. Except for biometric data, all other relevant data should be present already with corresponding government agencies. If this being the case, not sure why the same data cannot be cleansed and used (particulatly, if biometric data is not used). Majority of our population would have any one of the above identification, hence it would have been much easier for the UIDAI agency to focus on left out population.

In any case, I believe UIDAI might have answers for the above?.

Read more! Read more...