Hari's Corner

I'm subscribed to around 20 to 30 blogs through Live Bookmarks in Firefox and a few more blogs which I check out occasionally (without being subscribed to them). I don't know if it is the time of the year, but most of these blogs have gone quiet of late. Some haven't received updates in several months now while others have slowed down gradually and come to a standstill. It's not just one or two blogs. Dozens of blogs which were active a few months ago have suddenly experienced a freeze mode.

I cannot find any reasons for this broad trend although I do think that a lot of people start blogging at a frenetic pace and then find that they cannot keep up because they're too busy, lack the motivation to write or simply don't have anything to talk about. I know it's not easy and especially when creative inspiration is at its lowest ebb. I often start writing at random and find that I am writing nonsense, so I click the "delete" button. You won't believe how many articles I've deleted that way. In short it takes a lot of effort just to write something meaningful when you're short of ideas.

Nevertheless, I wanted to break the trend in case you belong to my little piece of the web, so you have something to check out.

Private Sector banking in India has a long way to go. At least that is my conclusion after my experiences with the customer care department of a popular private sector bank in India. Having struggled to add my debit card to my PayPal account for nearly a year (after which I gave up on the issue for a while), I recently tried to resolve this issue once again with the bank, but my frustrating quest to make the customer service department of this bank understand what PayPal is and what an online payment gateway means leads me to believe that the situation hasn't changed in a while now.

The problem with Public Sector banks

This does not mean that Public Sector banks in India are particularly good at customer service either. But with Public Sector banks, the problem is entirely different. The employees of PSUs generally belong to an older generation who were in the business long before banking became computerized, automated and centralized. Most employees at government banks at least know the basics of banking and can answer most simple questions (provided they are in the right mood). Their problem is one of lethargy, attitude, bureaucratic red tape, antiquated procedures and a lack of customer orientation. Government banks don't exactly cater to customers in double quick time but they usually get the job done in reasonable time. They are also a lot more approachable because government banks don't delegate customer service to a bunch of call-centers and telephone operators. It is possible to meet the local branch manager of any government bank provided your business is important enough. True, everything takes a while to get done but it does get done in the end and in recent times, government banks have shown a tendency to tighten up on the customer support front. They have a long way to get there, but at least they're modernizing now.

The biggest advantage of Public Sector banks is that they don't *have* to make profits. They don't have to look at cost-cutting. They also have the infrastructure and a large employee base which gives them a natural advantage in terms of geographic spread and coverage. They are also the mainstay of rural India. They will continue remaining the stronghold of banking in India because I don't forsee private banks making any headway in that direction.

And why private banking will continue to suck

Private banks in India have a completely different problem. Thanks to liberalization and globalization, they have tough competition on both fronts: private and public sector banking. They have to make profits and indulge in cost-cutting to remain in business. They also have to charge higher interest rates for loans than public sector bank for the same reason.

Customer support in private banks is usually computerized and modernized. But this has also taken away the most important factor in banking: personal contact and personalized service. True, many private banks do tend to make a lot of noise about "personalized" banking, but that's all a bunch of baloney. Their customer service, in theory, is supposed to provide excellent service, but in reality it is the opposite. Why?

The reason is that private banks usually have to employ a large workforce to keep up with the increasing needs of customers and in the process, they cut corners in quality. The bank support staff in private banks are usually young graduates who have very little experience in practical banking. They are also great at punching numbers into computers and generating reports, but are extremely poor in analyzing and understanding the core concepts of finance and technology. They cannot do a thing without the supporting software and hence are reduced to mere computer and telephone operators. I am willing to bet that a fairly computer-literate customer can actually use the software better than these ill-trained customer support personnel. While they are trained in being prompt to reply to queries, their promptness is akin to a robot, not a human being. They have very little ability to think about things that go beyond what can be generated out of a computer report. No doubt they have sophisticated technology at hand, but what can be achieved if the human being behind the computer cannot think?

And because of the recent trend of outsourcing support, private banks are also a lot less approachable. It's hard to meet somebody who's actually in a responsible or senior position in person. Their support systems are fairly well-organized, but the actual process of getting things done can be a frustrating, especially if the issue involves something different from their usual routine (like the example of using my Debit card online). Surprisingly I found that these younger employees also have very little idea of new technologies like internet banking, e-commerce and online payment gateways. The last straw was when the telephone banking staff had no clue about what PayPal was and how it was related to eBay. I have been referred to different kinds of support staff (from direct face-to-face to telephone support to internet banking support) but so far nobody has been able to answer my simple question: "Why does the bank keep rejecting my Debit card?" In fact, they had no idea what the bank policy was on online card usage. So much for support!

Conclusion

My feeling is that the talk of the private sector banks being competitive is rubbish. They cannot be competitive because they have to hire more and more staff in order to cater to customers, but at the same time they cannot afford to pay large salaries to attract really qualified personnel. From what I can see now, I don't expect this scenario to change in the forseeable future.

I announced that we were moving house several months ago but it got delayed due to a variety of reasons, but we've finally shifted. The last week or so has been busy and we're still in the process of settling down. The physical adjustments have been easy enough but having lived in one place for nearly 7 years, one does tend to get attached to the comforts (and even discomforts) of familiar surroundings. I wonder how long it will take for us to accept the new house as 'home' though. It does happen over a period of time almost unnoticeably. My estimate is one month.

I think what we'll miss most is the presence of the owner of our previous house. A retired Superintendent of Police, he was a gem of a man - an extremely warm, friendly and helpful person, he was always a source of strength for us. We will miss him and his family a lot. He was a great neighbour because we got on well with him, he could smooth over many problems with his influence and his 'police' aura also gave us a kind of security.

However, I guess change is inevitable and in many ways the new house is a lot more comfortable than the old. We also got rid of loads of junk from the old house that had piled up over the years and that is always a good thing. We had several carton-loads of nothing but old papers (bills, receipts, old legal documents, outdated courseware, files, newspapers, magazines, tons of old, rotting books and similar assorted junk) which could all be safely disposed off!

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I know I started reviewing blogs over at Untwisted Vortex, but it's been difficult to remain motivated to do them, particularly because I find that I keep having to say the same things over and over again. Reviewing blogs of total strangers is always a challenge because one needs to invest time and effort in getting to know a bit about them first and that always takes time. Otherwise there's very little to say about their content. Theme and layout are easy enough to review, although there are too many crappy, pre-built themes around and I get depressed in trying to point out the flaws again and again.

Nevertheless I hope to finish the ones I've accepted and then decide whether it's something I want to do on a regular basis. If I decide to continue, I think I'm going to have to pick and choose which ones I am willing to do because, as I said, I don't have the patience or temperament to do fair, balanced reviews when I just cannot work up any interest in the subject of the review. RT is much more committed to his blog reviews though. I expect his military training and discipline early in life has helped him remain focussed on them.

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With the resources they have at hand, Government agencies and PSOs can swamp private organizations by any number you choose to quote, if only they had the will to do so. I had an interesting example of this because recently we had applied for a transfer of our telephone line and internet connection to the new house. We normally have two internet connections in our house as my brother needs a dedicated line for himself working out of home. One ISP we use is AirTel, a private telecom company and the other is the Government-owned telephones department, BSNL.

Surprisingly BSNL responded far more quickly (almost immediately) to the telephone and Internet connection transfer request. We got it working in our new house within a couple of days while AirTel is yet to respond. I think that the Public Sector has a definite edge over private organizations particularly in the telecom industry because they have the infrastructure, a much larger workforce and now the competition to keep them on their toes. Shows what Governments can do if they really want to do good for the people. If only all Government departments started responding like BSNL to serve the public, India could go quite far! I think the biggest impeding factor to efficiency is red-tape and corruption at the lower levels of staff in these organizations.

Papa Hari News Service

In a remarkable scientific breakthrough that rivals the discovery of electricity, the invention of the light bulb and the creation of the first successful aircraft in the magnitude of importance to mankind, scientists working at the Papa Hari Foundation Dedicated to the Discovery of the Secret to Blogging (PHFDDSB) have finally discovered the secret of eternal blogging. Unveiling a new "blogging machine" a Senior Papa Hari research scientist announced that wannabe bloggers no longer have to sweat it out to achieve instant results.

"Although we cannot reveal the secret working of our new machine which is patented, we can say that this machine will finally relieve people from having to blog over and over again about the same topics in a hundred different ways," said the spokesman. When pressed to reveal some details of how this would work, he said that people who wanted to become famous in the blog world usually "blogged about blogging." And then "blogged about blogging about blogging" to help others "blog about blogging" and then "blogged about blogging about blogging about blogging" to help more people "blog about blogging about blogging." The spokeman got carried away by this until he was told that the point was taken by one of the reporters whose recording equipment was running out of storage space.

"So, we wanted to take this to its logical conclusion, which is blogging about blogging about blogging... ad infinitum. Imagine the possibilities of this. If you wanted to blog about blogging, first you needed to blog. Then you could blog about blogging in order to blog about blogging about blogging. The next step was to blog about blogging about blogging about blogging. Now this machine will automate the entire process and produce as much content as your heart desires thus rendering the keyboard and the brain superfluous. You no longer need to sit and think. Just type in the number of levels of blogging you wish to dig deep into and the software will take care of the rest. It will produce high-quality articles about blogging, blogging about blogging, blogging about blogging about blogging, blogging about blogging about blogging about blogging... and so on. The trial version will be limited to only 5 levels (that is blogging about blogging about blogging about blogging about blogging). The full version will cost only $125.99 and can be set to generate content at whatever frequency you wish. Once this is done, you can sleep, eat pizza, go shopping, annoy your neighbour or whatever else you want to do when you're not blogging."

Innovatively named Papa Hari Software Blog Articles Maker 2008 (available in Home-Basic and Professional Editions) this software is still in alpha stage and is expected to remain beta for the next five years in order to remain the 'in-thing' Web 2.0 style. Many professional bloggers who attended the presentation and the subsequent press conference were less than impressed with the new software although a few feared that such a software would render them obselete.

"We are contemplating legal action against this move," stated an anonymous professional blogger who added that such a software would put them out of business. "We are the ones who generate repetitive content of this nature and we will fight to ensure that no mere software can take away our monopoly in the business. Nobody but a real 'pro' blogger has the right to blog about blogging about blogging ad infinitum."

The Senior Papa Hari research scientist remained elusive on the issue of Intellectual Property violations but assured the professional bloggers that terms like "monetize", "The StumbleUpon effect", "Alexa", "Web 3.0", "syndicate", "subscribe", "Love me", "Favorite me", "Technorati train", "Digg me", "Kick me in the rear" etc. would be avoided by the auto content generator in the first version. The Professional Bloggers Association also demanded royalty for the usage of such vocubulary but the issue has yet to be settled to the satisfaction of both parties.

Papa Hari News Service

The Papa Hari Foundation for the Protection of Starving Artists and Musicians (PHFPSAM) has proposed a new way to combat the ever-increasing piracy problem in the music industry as a result of which thousands of artists have been reduced to begging on the streets in a state of starvation. Scientists at the Papa Hari Labs have invented a new DRM chip which can be implanted in human beings to protect content theft.

A senior Papa Hari Scientist said that the device is a breakthrough in technology. "Whenever anybody hums their favourite song, a small amount will be deducted from their bank account and be credited to the artist's bank account. This device will automatically detect the song being hummed, use the information implanted in the DRM chip to compute the quality of the humming and then deduct a suitable amount. This will ensure fairness because we don't want to charge more for lower quality humming. This would be entirely satisfactory to bathroom singers," he said as he unveiled the proposed new technology at a Press Conference at Papa Hari Headquarters yesterday.

Displaying a photo of an anonymous starving artist, the spokesman said that if that moving picture didn't evoke tears of outrage against music pirates, he didn't know what would. "Join the fight against content thieves," he added. "Bad as it is, it's not P2P which is really killing the music industry. File-sharing requires a computer and an internet connection and costs money, but humming songs requires no technology whatsoever. You could have heard a song on radio once and then you hum it freely whenever you feel like it. That's a dangerous form of copyright violation because the barrier of entry is so low. All you need is a half-decent voice. Can you imagine how much the artists would be losing as a result of this form of theft?"

Music industry representatives responded enthusiastically to the new chip and added that they are pushing a law which will make it mandatory for every human being on the planet to be implanted with such a chip. Asked whether it would violate basic human rights, he stated that "no rights are being violated because we're not asking for people to stop humming their favourite music. We just want them to pay for it. As a result of people humming music, the Industry is faced with a loss of millions of dollars and now the artists are being forced to give up on their favourite private jets, yachting and golf. This is unacceptable to us and that is why we will push hard to make it compulsory."

The Papa Hari Foundation asserted that the chip could also be developed to detect people thinking of songs rather than humming them audibly. "The next version of this chip will protect Intellectual Property at its very source -- the brain," said Papa Hari Scientists at the Press Conference. Applauding it as a great idea, music industry spokesmen said that this would ensure that nobody could cheat the DRM chip by thinking about the song rather than humming it. But many artists were not entirely happy with this idea. "Pushing for copy protection is going too far. More than half the industry cannot produce any music if we implement this."

When asked for their opinions, many music lovers applauded this idea. "We love being guinea pigs for the music industry we love so much," said a fan whose T-Shirt proclaimed 'IP Theft is Worse Than Murder', "After all, this move does ensure that these poor artists do get paid for every legitimate use of their creation. I am willing to pay any amount from my meagre income to ensure that they can maintain their lifestyle at the present level while producing crappy albums. I would hate it if my favourite artists were forced to sell of their third mansion in the country to make up their losses." When asked whether he was being sarcastic, he said that one could interpret his statement in any way.

IP and Copyright Lawyers said that the current situation in piracy did call for drastic measures, but refused to comment on the legality of the new DRM chip. One of them who asked to remain anonymous said that he could not make up his mind on the legal validity of such a move because he had not yet been paid by either side. In the meantime, rebel and independent artists have already implemented their own version of the DRM chip which would help people bypass the restrictions imposed by the Papa Hari Chip. There were also rumours of a 'fake' human DRM chip circulating in the grey market.

Following a recent kidnap and murder case which involved the social networking site Orkut, there has been a lot of noise and dust raised in the Indian media and public about how wicked Orkut is and how it should be banned. A lot of typically reactionary articles find their way in every newspaper following such incidents of online crime. I am not really sure of the details of this particular case, but it has once again perpetrated a lot of myths and loose talk in the Press about Orkut in particular and online social networking in general.

First of all, I am no fan of social networking myself, but I have to say that blaming what is essentially a glorified contact list for the kidnapping and murder of an individual is quite stupid. Yes, Orkut is an online "contact list" in my book and it does allow people to store and share personal information with others. Before all these incidents took place, people gushed over Orkut's usefulness to society at large and about how uplifting it was to find one's old, long-lost school or college-mates through it. I wasn't impressed then. Then when something horrible happened through such online contacts, the same people take a 180 degree turn in their stance and start howling in outrage. It's absolutely clear that the journalists who write about it now haven't a clue as to how to use the internet in the first place. Let's get this straight: people aren't forced to reveal private or intimate information about themselves in the first place. If a user is stupid enough or egoistic enough to share high resolution portrait snapshots, street address or phone numbers in user profiles, then nobody can guarantee his/her privacy or safety. The key here is that Orkut certainly doesn't require you to make such revelations. You *can* use all of Orkut's facilities without having to reveal an iota of personally identifiable trivia. Thirdly, Orkut does have privacy options which allow users to protect profile data from anybody else or reveal such info only to trusted "friends". Finally, using Orkut for really important or confidential communication is plain stupid and not recommended.

It's a no-brainer. Orkut is just a technological tool - a website that provides a service. I don't rate its service too highly nor do I see a lot of benefit from using it, but there are people who find it interesting and addictive. All power to them. At the same time, I would suggest that they also learn how to use Orkut effectively and safely. Parents should actually do their job and monitor their children's online activities rather than whine and moan about Orkut and ask for a total ban on the website. It's simply not feasible whichever way you look at it because *even* if Orkut is blocked effectively, there are hundreds of similar websites which provide similar services. How can any authority govern the Internet effectively and totally? It's simply impossible.

I think people should take a lot more responsibility for their own actions. Using public Internet space like a private playground is definitely not recommended and although the possible dangers of doing so are highly exaggerated by the media at times, the only information which you should post about yourself is what you would be 100% comfortable revealing to the whole world. Online social networking has made the process of establishing contacts a lot easier. It hasn't changed anything else about the way the world works. If you want to stay completely safe from the internet, just pull off the cable. It's that simple