A report in Business Standard states the first meeting of the Group of Ministers (GoM) to discuss funding options for cash-strapped Air India remained inconclusive today and it will meet again in a week. The government plans to infuse Rs 5,000 crore — Rs 2,000 crore in the form of equity and rest to fund the functioning — in the bleeding airline, which has an equity capital of Rs 145 crore. Air India has losses of around Rs 7,200 crore on its books and has debt of Rs 15,000 crore on its books. Of this, Rs 11,000 crore are high-cost debt.

In a previous post, Air India – The Cashless Maharajah I had mentioned the problems ailing the Air India. The Airlines in an attempt to trim costs announced to cut the productivity-linked incentive (PLI) of all 31,000 employees by 50 per cent, which was objected by the unions. Later, the airline management announced to cut the PLI ranging from 25 per cent to 50 per cent, which was objected by executive pilots. The airline then had to roll back the cut for executive pilots and a committee was set to look into the same.

In a candid interview with Businessworld, Arun Jadhav, the Chairman and Managing Director of Air India mentioned the problems facing the airline. To sum up these are:

-   Air India has 32,000 employees compared with 12,000 “in any like-to-like company”.
-   Employees are not conscious of working for a business in crisis.
-   Pilots “sitting at home” are paid “80 hours of flying allowances”.
-   Despite a freeze on recruitment, “we have recruited”.
-  “There is a duplication of every activity and no single chain of command”.
-  “Revenues are 14,000 crore and costs are Rs19,000 crore” (approx $2.9bn and $3.9bn)
-  “We have 22 offline stations where we no longer fly”.
-  “We have an alarming number of aircraft (25) and engines (33) on standby”.
-   For 800 business class seats from Delhi, 750 meals are ordered but there are only 400 travelers – “no-one knows” where the other 350-400 go.

Can such problems be sorted out in near future remains the question? The govt’s bail out package is based on six months of survival and recovery starting in the next nine months followed by profitability to be achieved.

Airlines have been loosing money across the world. In private sector when an airlines looses money, it is driven out of business and the shareholders bear the losses. But when Air India looses money this is paid by the general public. Not even 1 percent of India’s population has ever used Air India’s services. The major funding will now come from the rest of 99 percent Indians and from the pocket of poorest of the poor in this country. It is not that private companies are not running airlines or are not capable of operating airlines.  It is just that our rulers in their need to have a personal airline at their disposal have put a cost on the general public.

Why should government be involved in running an airline company in the first place?

I recently installed Airtel DTH at my village in Shimla District. The dish was installed on Tuesday, 6th October, 2009. The person who installed the dish assured me that it would be activated within 4 hours time. By 7 pm, 5 hours later there was no sign of any program on the dish. I called up the retailer and was informed that Airtel system was down and would be activated the next day.

Next day, I kept on calling the retailer who in turn gave me the number of the dealer in Shimla, who in turn gave me the number of the call center. Between the four of us, the dish was finally activated on Friday, October 9, 2009. It was an terrible ordeal for 4 days and I ended spending almost Rs. 500/ on phone calls alone.

What I found that the retailer and the dealer had no idea about the product at all. At one point of time, I was talking to the dealer helpline number 12149 from my Airtel cell phone and then took the dealer on conference with the call center. The dealer had no idea what the call center was telling him about the steps for activation. The dealer here was Excel Marketing in Shimla.

The procedure of subscribing to Airtel DTH is not simple. They have lots of inline processes. Add to this a novice and an untrained dealer and it is a recipe for disaster. I also spoke to the company executives of Airtel Digital TV. They sounded completely disinterested and one of them even told me he was a sales person and could not do anything about activation.

At least here in Himachal Pradesh, be prepared to deal with untrained people having no knowledge about the product and services. The dealer Excel Marketing in Shimla is a clown. Airtel executives responsible for this product are no less than jokers themselves!!

Cross posted on Mouthshut.com

Pictures from my recent Hanol – Hatkoti  trip. Had a ‘wonderful’ trip with three flat tyres in a span of 8 hours. Finally got stuck in Tikkar forest at 8 pm. With no tyre to spare, spent the night in the car at Pujarli as was too tired to drive back to Rohru.  Too tired to write my rant. Posting pictures of my trip.

Hatkoti Temple

Another tunnel being bored in the hills near Arakot on Pabbar. Hills being raped so Gurgaon remains lit

Mahasu Devta temple at Hanol, Uttarkashi district in Uttrakhand

Another View

Camping on banks of Pabbar at Rohru

Kharapathar top as seen from Rohru

A temple on hill side

Village temple at Pujarli

A village on hilltop

A house in an orchard

Pathetic Himachal Roads on which I traveled

Uttrakhand roads beyond Kuddu border to Hanol

Finally, Nepalese celebrating Dusherra in the traditional way at my village

Recently when my Blackberry phone became useless after dropping  it accidently, I started looking for another business phone. Blackberry is an excellent business phone, but bigger in size and thus difficult to handle. This time I looked for a sleeker phone. My basic requirement is access to mails on the go and a decent battery life.

As I looked around, Nokia E71 and E63 seemed obvious choices. They had all the functions I was looking for. Bluetooth, VoIP,  Mail for Exchange, a nice design and a user friendly key board. Finally settled for E63 as it was seven grand cheaper than the E71 and only noticeable difference was E71 supports integrated GPS which eventually I did not require.

With a brand new E63, I started setting up my phone. I use a corporate mail exchange server for my emails. I tried setting up the Mail for Exchange application but it won’t synchronies my emails with the Outlook. I un-installed and then re-installed many times, went through the user manuals again and again but could not make my email work. Finally exhausted after 2 days, started searching the support forum on Nokia site. It was shocking going through the site and seeing the number of complaints about Nokia’s business phones. Rued, why I did not visit these forums earlier when I was searching for information on phones.

First thing, I found on the forums the software needs to be updated. Now this is quite fundamental and should be mentioned on the user manual itself. Software updates happen regularly and by the time a phone reaches a consumer the software on phone is many notches down than the current version. I set up my phone for the updates, which was about 110 MB. So the one on my phone was quite obsolete.

Tried setting up my mails again but it won’t start. I went through almost thousands of questions posted on support but could not find a work around for Mail for Exchange issue. Most disturbing part I found on these forums was hardly any response from Nokia. It is mostly users trying helping each other.

Another email application called Nokia Wireless Email works fine and I can access my Gmail and Google Apps mails easily. It is the corporate email for which I bought this phone is troubling me. Earlier Nokia business phones used to have an application called Blackberry Connect where accessing corporate emails was a charm. Now probably due to business rivalry, Nokia stopped this application and instead offers Mail for Exchange which seems pretty useless.

My deepest appreciation to Nokia for not documenting half the processes. Thank you for forcing me to discover these.  It is really fun to pay Rs. 11,500 for a business phone and spending nights after night on finding out its basic services. Nokia should stay away from business phones as it is releasing phones with sub-standard software and no real support. No point competing with Blackberry and IPhone. Nokia’s business phone line is a joke!!

It’s been raining here heavily for the past one week forcing everyone to stay indoors. The rains were lesser this year but the downpour last week has been a welcome respite. Roads are still blocked due to landslides. Road to Shimla is blocked from my village due to downslides. Today being a Sunday, the official machinery is on leave. Hopefully will be cleared by tomorrow. I plan to sit in the sun for the whole day. Have missed it for the entire week.

Picture I clicked today, snowline across has finally some snow. One reason it’s a little chilly in morning and evening these days. Hope you guys are also enjoying the sun today.

This blog has been a hard work of 2 years. Many a nights were spent conceptualising, writing and posting. So how do I feel when content is lifted from this blog and posted on a daily news site.

While going through a recent post on My Himachal (himachal.us), Jalori Pass: Don’t Give This A Pass these lines looked familiar.

Jibbi is a decent village with a few shops and a good eating joint on the main road run by a lady from Delhi who is married to a local and has some amusing stories to share. Don’t miss out the gharat installed in the backyard of the house. It is quite something which one doesn’t see around these days. Marvel of village engineering. See a few foreign faces at Jibbi bazaar.

I referred to my blog post Crossing the Jallori Pass and confirmed these were indeed written by yours truly. I had posted to my blog on June 2, 2008. Obviously, I met this lady from Delhi and listened to her amusing stories and saw the  Gharat first and marveled about the village engineering. Now this writer Ananda Banerjee, in his article lifted the very same words. I did not mention the name of this joint in my post and so hasn’t he.  A plain simple copy and paste trick.

Now comes the funny part, I contacted the owners at My Himachal site, posted a comment on the site requesting them to remove this article. I was promised action soon. An email appeared in my mail box written by Ananda Banerjee to My Himachal

Thanks for the email has forwarded it to the desk editor who subs copies and adds to the copy before it goes to the print. This was a originally written as a drive road drive coverted to a trek.

So the matter ends up here! The oldest excuse in the world.. desk editor did it. My Himachal conveniently edited the post. I was told Ananda Banerjee is an established writer and he won’t do anything like this. Established writer??? Even a chavvani chhap blogger like me does not scout the Internet to complete an article. An established writer cannot commit theft.. Wow!! My comment about the theft has not been published till date. The very same article was also published in the Daily Pioneer and still contains the above mentioned words. Some one has been collecting bucks at my expense indeed!!

I know that whatever we create is our own intellectual property whether we put a copyright notice or not. How these people have the guts to post things they don’t produce?  I fail to understand this kind of behavior of benefiting on others expense and hard work to earn a living. I can’t make a dime of my own work but apparently others are able to do well with it. Looks like they ran out of dignity as well.

Here is an unedited version of the article on My Himachal and a link to The Pioneer article.

Mahindra Singh Dhoni, the current Indian captain has been named the richest cricketer in the world. Forbe’s magazine recently released a list of top ten richest cricketers. Interestingly top four richest cricketers are from India. Saurav ‘Dada’ Ganguli also features in the list at number 6. Top Indian players and their earnings are:

Dhoni – USD 10 Million
Sachin Tendulkar – USD 8 Million
Yuvraj Singh – USD 5.5 Million
Rahul Dravid – USD 5 Million
Sourav Ganguly – USD 3.5 Million

Whoa!! 10 million dollars! That is a whopping amount for an Indian sports person. No doubt, this kind of money can make one skip the presidential ceremony and the Padma Bhushan awards. Topping the Forbe’s list has it’s own orgasmic pleasure which no award on earth can give! Before I sound someone who is jealous of Dhoni’s feat,  yes… I am! I belong to a generation who was taught “paroge likhoge banoge nawab, kheloge kudoge hoge kharab”. (If you study you will become an officer and if you play your life will get spoiled) All those who came up with this great piece of advise would now be turning in their graves. Here is a lad, just 27 and has pocketed 50 crores in just one year. Even the retired cricketers must be marveling at Dhoni’s feat.

It all started with Sachin’s grand debut and he showed how real money can be made from cricket. Earlier generation of cricketers would retire with a job in Railways / Airlines or some other PSU to see them through during later years. Some turned to commentary and became media stars but the prime of their youth spent on the green-fields, though was full  of achievements but albeit empty coffers.

State of affairs of other sports remain dismissal. No infra-structure at the grass root and no facilities at the national level. Indian sports ministry runs these sports federation and we all know how great the government is in screwing up things. Till the time these federations are controlled by the Ministry, their players can simply dream of earning this kind of money. I am sure players from other sports must be questioning why cricketers earn so much? It is time they confront the establishment.

Dhoni has had a dream career till now. He has been a lucky charm for the Indian team though I personally feel his own performance at times has not been up to the mark. But if the companies are happy so are we! Indian sports outside the government  influence can look for some  serious money in future. Tennis Star Roger Federer, who recently won the 15th grand slam, is being reported to  earn 50 million dollars(250 crores ) through his career alone. This figure is without any advertising revenue.

Quite possible within next generations of Indian sports? Why not!

(Images sourced from the Internet)

On September 5, I received a Tweet from a friend saying, Today is Teacher’s Day. Hope you still remember your teachers. Teachers and school happened a long time back. Refreshing school memories I picked up the phone and called up old classmates. Later I took out my school album, I still have one, and went over the years bygone. School mates, teachers, Principal.. it was nostalgic.

This post is not about remembering those nostalgic days but about the present mess we have  created in education. Schools have now turned into shops, some of them costly ones. A teacher is more of a salesman in the shop. Teacher’s Day have turned into one of those customary days, which we observe like some of the other calendar marked days. This de-grading has been gradual over the years. Once a noble profession, teaching has now ended up in tuition classes. From school classes to coaching classes, it has been a terrible rot.

Our education system coupled with the peer’s obsession for percentage rather than aptitude is also to be blamed. Once a cherished school life has been turned into nightmare. Schools, coaching classes, school tests, coaching class tests, we are simply torturing the students. Teachers too have been caught up in this vicious cycle and the lure of making easy money is too good to resist. Today our entire education system is being run by coaching classes, be it the teachers, students or the parents.

The government run sarkari schools stand lowest in this education pyramid. There was a time when people did not send their children to private schools. These sarkari schools were considered the best. They had the best teachers and a good infrastructure and tradition of sports. See where these schools stand today, just in a span of 40 years. Sarkari teachers have started outsourcing their jobs!

It is high time we bring in some accountability to the teaching profession and introduce dynamism to the entire education system. We are still following the old British way of education. To start with let teachers be treated as professionals and not someone who failed to get a job elsewhere. Maybe this will create a new breed of teachers who are committed to the profession.  Somehow the Guru and shishya forgot the mantra:

Guru Brahma guru Vishnu guru devo Maheswarah
Guru sakshat parambrahmah tasmi sri gurave namah

If you are a BSNL broadband user in Himachal (Dataone service) you must have faced problems of few websites not opening in your browser. For example a popular Himachal daily news blog My Himachal does not open on BSNL connection at times. Even popular sites like Rediff, Ebay and Sony gets blocked.

When an address like www.nityin.com is typed in a browser, the computer does not know where this site is located and directs the query to BSNL DNS server. The DNS server translates the popular name of the website to the computer readable number also known as IP address (69.89.31.115). Once the DNS server translates the website domain to the IP address and locates it on the internet, the website is opened on your computer browser.

The DNS servers of BSNL are slow and at times miss the IP address of websites resulting in sites not opening in your browser. Instead of using the BSNL DNS server you can configure your computer to use the OpenDNS servers and boost performance and reliability. OpenDNS speeds up your Internet experience and websites open faster on your computer. OpenDNS operates the largest and most intelligent DNS caches in the world and is a zero downtime DNS network. You need to add the following server settings in your computer

Follow the steps below to configure your computer to  use OpenDNS.

1. Go to Start > Connect to > Connect to a network

2.  Right click on your BSNL modem icon and select Status

3. A dialogue box will open. Click on properties.

4. A dialogue box will open asking for your permission. Click on continue.

5. In the properties box go to Networking > Select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and click on Properties.

6. In Internet Protocol(TCP/IP) Properties, Go to General tab and fill the OpenDNS values  as shown below.

Primary DNS Server: 208.67.222.222

Secondary DNS Server: 208.67.220.220

7. Click on ok and then stop and start your modem again.

Go to OpenDNS site and confirm your settings are working. You will see a dialogue box on the main page as below.

Sarita Rai in her article writes about an interesting phenomenon of out sourcing God and how the economic recession in the West is hurting the priests in India.  An excerpt:

It is dawn in Kerala, a palm frond of a state in India’s South West. As the sun’s first rays hit the church steeple, a Holy Mass is being conducted in the local Malayalam language.

Only, the prayer is dedicated to a newborn by his Catholic family half a world away in the United States.

Requests for these so-called Mass Intentions, or prayers offered for a specific reason, pour into India from the United States, Canada and Europe, where there is a huge shortage of priests.

This outsourcing to faraway India is a quaint practice that has been called “religious outsourcing."

But now, the severe global economic crisis and bankruptcies in Western churches are hitting even this unusual practice. In Kerala and other parts of India, where the Roman Catholic Church still thrives, outsourced mass intentions are dwindling and striking the income of poorer priests and impoverished churches.

With religious outsourcing, Westerners request Indian churches to hold Holy Mass in memory of a dead family member, or thanksgiving for a child’s college admission, to celebrate a wedding anniversary or even for unusual causes such as the well-being of their favorite sports stars.

“Each mass is paid a stipend of $5 (250 rupees) upwards, supplementing the income of priests who are otherwise paid 50 rupees for the same service by locals,” said Rector Father Augustine Thottakara of Bangalore-based seminary Dharmaram College.