India 2014: Narendra Modi, his campaign, why the attention?

Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat has taken it upon himself to rather give an extremely different impetus to selecting the Prime Minister of India and thereby the coalition. No other party, including the Congress (I) has ever gone to the polls with a one person image. One person may have campaigned in the past, but seldom drawn so much attention to themselves. While there are supporters, critics, nay-sayers and vehement opposition, one must recognize the change he has brought in the pre-electoral phase in the country.

Considering that the literacy rate of India is low and the population of India that is still below the redesignated poverty line (and the earlier poverty line,) most parties do not publish a manifesto early on, almost 6 months or more before the actual elections. Establishing a precedent in his own party, Narendra Modi has steered (despite lack of complete support) to have the BJP name him as the person responsible for the Campaign as well as acknowledged him as their Prime Ministerial candidate. To change the will of a party with a record during the unparalleled Atal Behari Vajpayee Ji, is no ordinary achievement.


These are the notes of one who has been skeptic of Narendra Modi and his PM ambitions, read on if you can spare some time ...

Laptops: an end of an era

Laptops started out as lightweight portable PCs, but have succumbed to stiff competition from the Smartphone, Tablet and Phone-Tablet (dubbed Phablet) alternatives.

The factors that have slowly taken the laptops close to their extinction are:

1. Weight (although portable, lugging them over long distances is not comfortable.)
2. Fragility (except for the rugged versions, most laptops cannot stand shocks)
3. Upgrades (very minimal)
4. Battery Backup (extremely low if compute power required is high defeating portability)
5. Lifetime (3 years at best, but the next generation replacement is seldom as far ahead as the smartphone class.)
6. Chargers (These are not standardized and vary heavily across brands and models.)
7. Serviceability (Time consuming and subject to spare part availability)
8. Thermal performance (Cooling has always been a challenge, with few laptops cutting that edge for those who can afford them.)
9. Display (Graphics acceleration for several reasons has always been minimal, rendering them less useful for high-end applications like rendering.)
10. Wireless Communication (Too few are provided with 3G making them less useful in remote environments)
11. Recycling (the mechanical design is usually less susceptible to recycling, as is the display, input interfaces and storage - with the core motherboard also getting outdated far too quickly. This coupled with the short lifetime is making them less recycle-friendly.)
12. Software (Operating Systems constantly requiring upgrades make the "Personal" computing part much costlier and less affordable across most available brands. This is also true of most application software used.)

2012 Arab Spring: Impact on Africa, SE-Asia, Analysis

 

An observation and analysis of these changes and their impact is based on the data available openly.

A Church, its Cemetery, its Flock ...

Dad used to take me, along with mom and my sis, to a Church in town every Sunday. He was brought up as a devout christian and wished the same for me. Once I reached adulthood, or was rather old enough to take a communion, he insisted that I attend a course in the same church to prepare myself for the communion. I attended this and received in whatever worthiness was expected the communion for my first time. He thereafter set me free to choose to attend or find faith in my own way as I saw fit and no longer bid me to accompany him, though he always wanted me by his side when he went to Church.

At the time of his passing, I attended the same Church. My paternal grandfather, among other late members of my family are buried in its cemetery. My opinion that this Church is broken, perhaps even beyond repair, is from previous conversations with Dad and specifically what I observed at this very occasion.

Can we revive India?

At first when we transact with government officials, we experience a lackadaisical attitude, one devoid of all human care, intent on something else, their own. These are today's people - not merely the public "servants", but the public too. We go to a local store to buy groceries and either break queues or find others doing so for impatience is how most live.

The first time you pay a bribe, you are only encouraged to follow, as you "seem" to have saved precious time. The law takes its own course, which in semantics means at least 10% of your life-time (and that is relatively a high cost of time.) It doesn't stop here.