India's new Rupee symbol : An amalgamation of old & new ?

For those who've not seen the news - India now has an official Rupee symbol (see below)

I like the look.
Excellent combination of the Devanagiri "Ra" and the English "R". During the release there was apparently a point made about how it represents the Tricolour + Ashoka Chakra ?

Now, that is one bit that I cannot see ?

In any event, it will probably take some time to catch up on official usage - but, given the timing, I think it'll certainly catch on very quickly.

Activity based learning as part of SSA : Chennai's focus + time to debate

I think there was a co-incidence of sorts on this topic. Just yesterday, as part of the Sikshana Outreach program @ Kanakapura, we were discussing this with some NGO's out of Chennai ....
ABL is the structure that essentially came out of Rishi Valley (and earlier from Neel Bagh) - not that I knew of this much earlier, I've read and learnt about this recently.

Why is this relevant ?
Simply because, yesterday I was surprised at the numbers that was being talked about at Tamilnadu's ranking in the ASER tests. I would have expected them to be in the top 10 if not the top 5. However, I was told that they are probably not even in the top 25 !!??


I think I'll have to look at ASER results and match that with the ABL results that gets published to find out where the difference is.... some work for the coming weeks.




NEWS ARTICLE from yesterdays HINDU - what a co-incidence !


Sibal to visit activity-based learning schools
Special Correspondent CHENNAI: Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal will visit activity-based learning (ABL) schools in the State next week.
In the wake of the commendations the implementation of the ABL scheme has received across the country, the Ministry had conveyed to the State Education Department that Mr. Sibal wanted to extensively spend time on July 14 to learn how the implementation in Tamil Nadu differed from those in other States. The idea was to involve the Human Resource Ministry and prepare a compendium of best practices that could later be implemented across the country.
State Education Minister Thangam Thennarasu confirmed that Mr. Sibal had expressed desire to visit the schools. “We are lucky to have a dedicated team of officers and teachers who have spared no efforts to implement both activity-based learning and the active learning methodology (ALM). It is a recognition of their efforts.”
The ABL and ALM are being implemented by the School Education Department as part of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), a nationwide effort to improve capabilities of all children through provision of community-owned quality education in a mission mode.
The broad aim of SSA is to provide useful and relevant elementary education to all children in the 6 to 14 age group by 2010 and to bridge social, regional and gender gaps, with the active participation of the community in the management of schools.
The SSA wing of Tamil Nadu carried forward the ABL of the primary classes into middle school or upper primary — classes 6,7, 8 through the ALM.
In 2007, 10,000 middle schools across Tamil Nadu underwent a dramatic refreshing learning process, empowering the learner to break into knowledge systems effectively, whether in the textbook or in the world around. This came as a relevant ‘chapter two' to the implementation of the ABL in nearly 40,000 schools prior to that.

Should Justice Hegde get into politics himself or How do we break the cycle ?

I have been following the back-and-forth on Justice Santosh Hegde's resignation from the Lokaykta offices with growing pessimism. Here was a man who was willing to bell the cat (so to speak) and instead of empowering his team, we are now faced with the possibility of his office turning to be an insipid "reporting" tool !

How do we break this impasse ?

Reminds me of a time when we (as a Nation) went about asking for electoral reforms and lauded the changes brought in by the election commission. Until then, we (or atleast I) thought that Election commission was just a bureaucratic organization with no "teeth". Today, I'd give them their due credit for cleaning up (with substantial success) things like electoral rolls, ensuring adherence to the code-of-conduct etc.

During one of the meetings that I attended with Justice Hegde, he was categorical that he did not want a political office. My thinking today is - maybe he should stand for one !
Maybe, an electoral mandate will FORCE the elected individuals to wake up and act on a specific mandate.

Alternatively, if he is still not willing to get into the political arena and fight an election, maybe, as individuals and citizens can elect him as an extra constitutional watchdog ?

As a democracy, the voice of the citizens should formulate our policies - should it not ?

Good / Better user interfaces techniques : Example of the worldcup schedule

I was pointed to this page a couple of days ago by a posting in my old company network ie. Tulbuddies.
As usual, I kept the URL aside and did not bother until I was surfing last evening and happened to check out the schedule - was blown away with the simplicity and completeness of the UI design.


When you have time, please check out http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mundial/sudafrica-2010/calendario-english.html

I love the way Adobe flash has been used in the structure and I'm sure this will look better if I had a touch screen rather than a point-&-click mouse.

Goes to show that we need to all unlearn our old usability metaphors (of quick-keys etc) and re-think how we can deploy multidimensional UI structures both in these kind of static pages as also reports and business intelligence within applications.

A game changer in the traditional server industry : SeaMicro ?

I came across an article about SeaMicro and then went onto their site to find out what the noise is all about.
I think they've done a game changer as most people seem to be point out.

For the un-informed - What SeaMicro has done is to bring in virtualization to the hardware industry. They've pulled together 512 Intel Atom processors onto a single 10U Rack.

This means that they've effectively brought together a hugh change in running costs (Power @ 1/4 of a normal system, space usage @ 1/4 of the normal system) etc.More importantly, if they can deliver on manage'ability' - then, I'm sure they have a winner.

It is supposed to be able to run the standard OS (off the shelf) and this is probably the key to adoption. The first beneficiary will be the people who are trying to offer Infrastructure as a Service for the the cloud folks.

Let us wait & watch the uptake...

Providing Solar Lanterns to stimulate productivity in rural India : Options

It was good to read in the papers today that some of the "Bulleteers" were going to collect money (@ a minimum of Rs. 500/- per person) and donate that towards a Solar Lantern in Tribal Areas.

As part of Sikshana, a trial has been run in Kanakapura school district where we've seen some very encouraging results. Please see the posts @
       http://sikshana.blogspot.com/2010/03/lighting-for-night-studies.html or just http://Sikshana.blogspot.com

As we had anticipated, there has been a marked increase in results during the period of intervention. While it is too early to demarcate the impact of the individual programs (remedial + lighting for extended study hours), the social impact is indisputable.

This also goes to prove the point that an effective light extends the time available for a family to come together, spend time indoors during evenings & nights without need for a smokey, smelly and risky kerosene lamp.
It also seems to have an efficient ROI on the spend.
    Cost of each lantern : Rs. 600 (Approx USD $ 13 at current conversion)
    Expected /Average life of Battery : 2.5 years (I've used this as life of LED seems irrelevant as battery is the bigger 'replacement' cost over the life of the equipment.
    Average charging time for a 2-3 hour usage in the night - 6 hours.

In effect, for less than Rs.2 / day over an year, every family can have almost full light coverage during the nights. I'm sure the social impact & dividends are going to be larger & better than what our trial has produced w.r.t 10th standard students.

Can we hope for green / micro-financing folks to take this up as a larger program ?
Imagine the opportunity to rewrite the words "burning midnight oil" !

US "discovers" $ 1 Trillion worth of minerals in Afghanistan : Really ?

It has been a long time since I posted onto my Blog. Basically, have been trying to get off the earlier note that I used to blog on under "Inatech" to a more "open" topic.

What better topic than this ?

Was not at all surprised to hear of this discovery. Infact, the only question I have is - why now ? ie. Why is the press release timed for now ? Esp. the bit related to to how Afghan soils contain a LOT of Lithium ?
Maybe post the BP spill, US is really (I mean seriously) looking for a new-age Saudi ?

Over the last few years, I've read time and again how a new 'find' of natural resources spurs a frenzy of social unrest. Even in India, my guess is that a significant portion of the problems related to the insurgency (Naxals) is probably related to the proverbial war between development (eg. Mining) and sustenance (Local living).

Imagine the same set, but, from a global perspective ?
My guess is that Afghanistan has another set of challenges coming through - this time, it may actually be more difficult.