So the nauseating and frustrating Mumbai experience, which left many of us feeling impotent with rage and anguish of not being able to anything is finally over. Finally something has happened which has actually made people angry and come out on the streets demanding structural changes in the way this country is governed. Even though the numbers may have been a wee bit too little for anybody to stand-up and take notice.

I was also extremely angry to begin with therefore I have not written anything for some time. I have allowed it to subside before actually putting my hand to the keyboard.

Indians are by and large very peaceful people and the resilience of Mumbai actually stems from the resilience of Indians in general, who are probably one of the most flexible people anywhere in the world , being able to put up with almost anything and continue with the business of life. It took our royals nearly 100 years to realise that the rug is being pulled from under their bottoms before they could put up a rag-tag coalition for 1857 revolt. It took the general population another 60 years to start doing anything about the humiliation and degradation they were being subjected to. After starting the process it took us another patient 40 years before we could hoist our own national flag and have our ‘tryst with the destiny’. This ability of ours to take shit and still be able to get up, dust up a bit and get along with the grind of daily life is sometimes mistakenly portrayed in the media as being resilience. This our ability to compromise and weasel through a situation without having to make difficult choices, which puts our life and limb at a risk for another day has helped us being very successfull in business field, which is dominated by people who exploit such situations.

At the time of independence the architects of our democracy made a big mistake by not jettisonning the british systems with them. So the police force with its ethos of subjugating and keeping the masses under control was retained and continues in its same role even to this day. Otherwise, where do you see in a democratric country police openeing fire to kill its own people with the impunity that it does here. The Indian Civil Service , whose sole aim was to fill the coffers for the british, was also retained and continues to dominate the country having resisted all attempts at specialisation and having subjugated all other government services.

The british system of indirect democracy works in their country, which is very small and is guided by very well entrenched value systems and traditions, whereas Indians with their tendency to compromise, take shit and cut corners could never be relied on to faithfully implement such a complicated system.

The system under the ‘leadership’ of Nehru quickly degenerated into personal fiefdoms and family hierlooms. With Nehru himself taking lead of ensuring that the power stayed in the family, by entrusting the reins of power into the hands of his daughter. Other more principled leaders like Sardar Patel and Shastri who were naive enough, allowed everything to happen right under their noses.

ICS meanwhile went around systematically denigrating one force that has stood by the country at all times, under the Nehru, who was deeply afraid of the Military, pushed the Army Chief out of the Teen Murti Bhavan and made him equivalent to the cabinet secretary, from his earlier exalted position of being second only to the prime minister. Not to speak of stripping the Military from all positions of decision making related to security and the running of the establishment itself, these days the generals are not even on the panel to advice the prime minister on security related matters. Compared to USA where the National Security Advisor is going to be a retired Marine general, we have a career Police officer on extension. The generals themselves were bought by the political establishment by the lure of gubernatorial and diplomatic assignments post retirement and have casually allowed the powers to slip from their hands so that now they are reduced to a status of beggars and have to go with a bowl through the IAS establishments to get their meagre salary hikes. On the operational front they have been reduced to a level of foot soldiers, who press the trigger when they are ordered to with no role in deciding on the security posture of the country.

The political establishment and the bureucrats have resisted all efforts by the supreme court to reorganise the police and make it a more speacialised and apolitical force. We have more agencies dedicated to gathering intelligence than any other country but with none of them having given clear roles, all of them keep fighting little turf wars, which results in confusing signals and lack of any accountability by anybody. Many of them are actively engaged in clandestine spying work on political enemies on the directions of their political bosses. So while the general population gets to face the bullet, the brokers of power use meagre intelligence resources to settle scores. ( Refer MK Dhar’s Book, Open Secret)

And mind you the bureaucrats and the police officers are supposedly one of the best that the country has to offer. They come through a very stringent even though outdated selection procedure, which ensures that only the best are able to make it through. Though most succumb to systematic rot that has set in and are overwhelmed by the daunting task of overhauling the system and making any structural/ systemic changes. Most prefer to go along with the tide and make hay with the politicians, while the sun shines.

The end result of systemtatic rape of this country was starkly visible through the 5 days of trauma caused by a bunch of hoodlums from Pakistan. The political bosses have consolidated their powers in increasingly narrow consituencies so that you see first families in almost all states. Not to speak of the first among the first families the Gandhi family. The whole set-up is even better than Monarchy or Dictatorship, which appears to be what it is. This comes complete with a very large fig leaf of ‘democracy’.

So much so that president of the Congress party now carries almost an Extra-constitutional authority, with even the prime minister and all congress chief ministers taking directions from her. Maharashatra chief minister offerred to resign to the party chief and not to the prime minister, which means that he, a people’s representative is reporting directly to an unelected authority. What can be a bigger slap in the face of democracy, which MK Gandhi was hoodwinked into supporting.

The rot can be assessed immediately by the way politicians confronted with the enormity of the challenge started shooting of their mouths. Maharashtra home minister called it an attack on Maharashtra. He conveniently forgot to mention that many non-marathis came to defend ‘Maharashtra’ in those gruelling days.

The lack of preparedness and lack of flow of information can be assessed by the live television reporting. When enormous amount of CC TV footage of terrorrists was available, and anybody could make out that they were prepared for a long haul resistance. Not to undermine the sacrifce of ATS chief Mr Karkare, it is hardly a role of a chief of a unit to go on a recce mission and get shot casually. Somebody may call it leadership, I’ll call it lack of preparedness, foresight and standard operating procedure under these circumstances. Didnt anybody clarify whether ATS is supposed to investigate the terrorists or actually take part in shooting wars with them. This lack of clarity of purpose plagues almost all agencies.

The much vaunted NSG came in with their modern weaponary, but also could not do much for next gew days due to lack of basic information such as floor layouts, exits and a painfull lack of night vision devices and gas masks, which would have enabled them to finish the job much earlier. Any modern Special Force does not go out without night vision devices, which is standard issue for ordinary American soldiers. Americans as a philosophy dont go out to fight on an equal footing, they go out to overwhelm the enemy. Our political leadership, throws under-equipped men at unknown threats and later goes out to malign thier deaths. ( VS Achuthanandan & earlier Amar Singh). The proposal for night vision devices no doubt would be hanging fire in some echelons of bureucracy.

Through out the drama, and even post events, the media is unusually obsessed with security at 5 star hotels and hardly a sliver is being shown of what is being done to increase the security of VT station, where many innocent and poor people have perished. The media in their zeal to be the first to report any development actually went ahead and compromised the operation with their obtrusive presense and giving live pictures to the handlers in Pakistan. The security establishment also did not cordon off the area, and everybody could be seen doing their own thing without any coordination.

When I was a kid, punjab was on a boil and terrorrists used to regularly attack targets of high value. During those days I used to wonder and thank god that nobody is enemy of the general public till now, otherwise there will be nobody protect the us. All my nightmares seem to be coming true.

With such systemic rot, it will some time before the killing will stop, as Pakistanis are prepared and motivated to ‘bleed India through a thousand cuts’, to quote Bhutto or some other dictator that they have had. With our short sighted foreign policy, none of our neighbours can be called as true freinds of ours. Even the country which, we have fought to liberate is our arch enemy and keeps shooting across the borders at BSF, and is involved in turmoil in Assam.

Is there hope?  I would love to think that there is, but I dont think so. As an ordinary Indians, we can die suddenly anywhere, anytime. If not to some brazen Pakistani, then on the hideous roads, in police firing, under shoddilly constructed buildings, due to food poisoning and hundreds of other reasons.

It is not a surprise that even though we have one of the biggest list of millionaires, we remain one of the poorest contries on the planet, with life expectancy and literacy levels comparing with some sub-saharan countries. These are the things, which the media, which is conveniently hands-in-glove with the political establishment forgets to highlight. They had no compulsions in shouting occassionaly about the ’systemic’ problems facing our country. but none have  carried a sustained campaign aganist the rot, ‘political monarchy’,corrupt civil services and politicians. The media and intelligensia some days ago was actually out on the limb praising one of the most vicious and corrupt Politicians, Lalu Yadav as saviour of Railways.

Time has come for a 2nd freedom struggle. The british have left but have left behind a system and a plethora of leeches, who look like us but are differrent. They feed on our blood and their hunger knows no bounds. They need to be pulled out and crushed.

Its been some time since I have been active on the site, given my extremely lazy and laidback attitude to life and everything else.  Some time back I wrote a piece on comparison between Fiat Palio mjd and Maruti Swift Ldi/ Vdi, which has been very popular. After the analysis I then went and purchased a Maruti Swift Ldi in late Mar, 2008 based on the reasons that you can read here.

I wanted to write something about owning a Swift Diesel. Now whenever one experiences anything it is coloured by the persons previous experiences. My motoring experience is coloured by the fact that I owned an Esteem for some time, then I went for a Wagan R, then drove Fiat palio for 4 long years and then have now bought a Swift LDi. In between I had an opportunity to lay my hands on a Santro, Indica, Alto and even a Maruti Omni. Since most of life on wheels has been spent behind steering wheel of a  Fiat palio 1.2 ELPS, naturally I will tend to compare my experiences with the very superior performance of the Fiat in almost all departments.

I purchased Swift Diesel, because I wanted more mileage and Fiat was sleeping on its Palio MJD and Grande Punto Launches and also I have had some very bitter experiences with the Fiat Service. I was a bit apprehensive about Swift as Most Maruti Cars tend to be flimsily build with very little tolerance for bad roads and rough driving.

Now that I have driven more than 6000 Kms since 25th March, 2008. I have had some good surprises and some of the prejudices about Maruti have remained.

The looks are pretty unconventional and the reactions also are on extreme side. You can either love it or hate it, there is no middle path for this car. Some people like me even though they do not like the looks, have bought the vehicle, only goes to show the superior characteristics of the vehicle compared to others in same class. By same class I mean similar size, engine and seating capacity. Pricewise this vehicle is much more expensive than the competition, with almost Rs. 20000.00 lead over the Palio multijet and more than Rs. 1 lakh on the Indica. The looks are further spoiled by the thin 165 size tyres on the otherwise very chunky profile. It looks like a Sumo wrestler suffering from Rickets. Maruti has tried to squeeze maximum out of this vehicle. Thats why you get see such cheap cost cutting measures. I wonder how much more does it cost to put a 185 size tyres than 165, when bought directly from OEM. Some basic equipment like Tachometer and Prismatic rear view mirror are not available on the LDi model.

Swift like all Maruti’s is delicately built with lot of plastic staples holding the inside door panels and the carpeting. The plastic staples invariable start coming out after some time, especially if your door panels have been opened for fitting the remote locking and power windows. This reults in very annoying door rattles, while driving on rough roads and when careless co-passengers slam in the doors. The bumpers have started to come loose after driving on some rough Kerala roads.

Leg room is adequate for medium sized passengers, but reduces significantly if the driver is above 6 ft and uses all the available back slide. The drivers seating position was difficult to get used to, as the seat itself is flat and the lumbar support is not exactly where the lumbar vertebrae are, and is located slightly higher up, which results in very awkward seating positions for the driver, which has actually caused some back-aches during slightly long drives. Now after much experimenting I have arrived at a relatively comfortable driving position. In this postion the AC & Stereo controls are too far off and I have to bend forward to reach them. Of course in Fiat the seat encloses you in its embrace and no position is bad for your comfort.

The switches and knobs are high quality and have soft luxurious action.  Gear throw is short and crisp and makes this vehicle a delight to handle on quick overtakes.

The engine is the same 1248 CC Multijet that the Fiat uses albiet Maruti uses a different gear box, which allows it to have Overdrive ratios in 4th and 5th Gears. For the mechanically challenged Overdrives are gears which allow the drive shaft to rotate faster then the engine, therefore theoretically being more fuel efficient. Maruti Swft also has larger wheels, which means that it covers more distance for same number of rotations, which also makes it more fuel efficient. I am normally a very placid driver and therefore get more than average mileage out of any vehicle that I drive. In my first tankfull I got 20 kmpl, and after that the figure has been progressively on the rise and the car is now consistently delivering around 24 Kmpl. The driving is a mixture of town, open highways, winding roads. AC is on during day time.  You can read further on getting more mileage out of your vehicles here.

The engine is enourmously torquey and allows me to take-off in first gear with full AC, without pressing the A pedial. Initially when the vehicle was new it was quite noisy but now it has mellowed down quite a bit. As the A pedal is pushed it is possible to make out the slight whine of the turbine as it spools up, when you leave the pedal the turbo whines down. It is much fun to push the pedal to varying degrees and hear the different sounds that the turbine makes. Just around 1500 rpm the turbocharger becomes effective and the results can be heard in sudden increase in engine clatter. In first and second gears the turbocharging does not result in back pushing acceleration, but as the driver pushes 1500 rpm in 3rd gear and beyond the acceleration is phenomenal. Enough to overtake anything blocking your view on the road. The torque with turbocharging is such that I can climb gradients in 5th gear, which in a similarly powered Petrol vehicle I would have struggled in 3rd. Of course a small momentum has to be built up before attempting any high speed climbing.

The engine noise does go up with turbocharging but at high speeds does not intrude much into the cabin. In 1st and 2 nd gears you know that its a diesel motor. 3rd gear onwards the sound & vibrations progressively reduce. in 5th between 60 and 80 kmph you wonder why people buy petrol vehicles. It is very easy to get addicted to the torque after 60 kmph. Just a tap of Acc pedal and the vehicle lunges forward. Sometimes absent mindedly I try to shift into the non-existent 6th gear. There is so much of torque. The top speed compared to the petrol variant  I think is limited by the gear box and the fact that Diesel motors are low revving compared to Petrol ones.

It is possible to feel the high torque and the Engine Management System, if you try to stall the vehicle at low speeds say in 3rd gear. The computer tries to maintain a constant rpm of around 900 and pushes the vehicles and you can actualy feel the vehcle accelerating hard without pressing the A pedal.  It is also possible to idle at 50 kmph in 5th gear. The combination of high torque and computers does not allow the engine to stall, though it should not be practiced as the vehicle vibrates a lot.

My complaint regarding poor road holding and stability when compared to Fiat remains. The vehicle bounces on rough patches, and is decidedly nervous when turning on a rough road. With full load of passengers it is Ok though.

The nice small cubby holes in the dash are good for storing knick-knacks, but a larger glove box is sorely missed. The dash itself is very chunky and when opening the glove box, you would expect a larger storage area but you are greeted by a small sliver of a drawer, which can hold your service booklets and very little of anything else. The boot is only 35 ltrs less than Fiat but feels smaller as the usable area decreases sharply due to tapering profile of the vehicle. It is difficult to put large suitcases in the boot, but more stuff can be forced in if packed in smaller and softer luggage.

AC is a delight and it chills immediately. Infact it is better to use it with thermostat slightly above the full cool setting to prevent freezing. Power steering is soft and razor sharp. The vehicle goes precisely where pointed to and does not need constant adjustment. the 4.7 mtr turning radius, a full 40 cms less than Fiat helps in tight parking lots. A 20 cm shorter length also aids in easy maneuverability.

The service at Kottayam Popular was professional and courteous. A far cry from Fiat service. A service supervisor comes and takes over the vehicle, asks and checks for problems. He himself delivers back the vehicle, washed and nicely cleaned, after confirming that the problems mentioned earlier have been corrected. Though they love to profer useless services and stuff such as underbody coating, fibre floor mats etc. Dont listen to them if you dont want to. Overall good service. Maruti recommends oil change every 10000 kms, which further reduces the cost of maintenance. Although they could have done better with finer oil filters, thereby increasing the oil change period to 30000 kms as they do in Europe.

Maruti has gone ahead and built what they have never done before. A Car that actually drives and feels like a European vehicle, though they still fall short on many parameters, but they have improved the model with each passing year. If you drive the first batch of Swifts and then drive the current models then the differences are immediately apparent. The body rattle is significantly reduced. Clutch action is much better and softer.

Verdict, Buy if you have spare cash and drive at least than 800 Kms per month otherwise the fuel economy of diesel is quickly eroded by interest costs of alomost Rs. 80000.00 that you pay extra for the diesel.  Buy if you are a crazy drag racer.

Where are we headed……

Three Cheers for Thackeray and co. who could not bear the anonymity of their Marathi Name ‘Thakare’ and changed it to sound and appear more distinguished and English.

Are these the same people who are appealing to Marathi Pride (or Inferiority complex)?  Do they actually know who was Shiv and what did he stand for?  Does he really know the meaning of ‘Navnirman’? So this young Thackeray did not get his share of moolah in the original ‘Shiv Sena’ so he decided to float his own gang of hoodlums.  How does he differentiate himself and his pack from the original Shiv Sena, who was already venomously xenophobic ?  Very simple….take your xenophobia to the streets, be one up on the Shiv Sena.

Things do not seem to be so simple as they are made out to be. Why is he targetting only the North Indians (People from UP, Bihar)…because these people are poor and powerless to oppose. They clean the streets, drive taxi’s & rickshaws, work as construction labour, carry head loads, sell vegetables and are literally carrying the city on their shoulders. They have virtually shunted out the more relaxed local Marathi out of the trades at the lower spectrum, by their hard work and sheer endurance to inhuman living and work conditions that the city subjects its poorest to. Very few Marathi’s with their pride (or conceit) will work these trades.

Some of them are second or third generation and have got some education and are now begining to bite at the white collar jobs that most educated Marathi’s held in Private sector and government.

Why dont these people target Gujratis, Marwaris, Parsis, Shetty’s……….Its not that simple…. they are seriously monied. Mumbai pays 60% of India’s Income Tax, where does this tax come from?? Its easy to attack a cart puller but very difficult to put a hand on an Ambani or Tata or Birla for that matter. Marathi mannoos will not have any where to work if these people shift shop.  And kind of corruption that we have in this country its not too difficult to understnad that nobody attacks the hand that feeds.

So at the end its about Predation…..Thackeray wants to survive in an increasingly divided country and polity and he does what is easiest ot do. Marathi pride is the only one he can appeal to. Kill a few street labour in the bargain damage a few properties and voila I have a political career !

So what is this Marathi pride and respect for Marathi culture? I for one admire Maratha Valour stemming primarily out of my knowledge of Shiv and the Maratha Light Infantry. I love their Pav Bhaji, Wada Pav and spicy fich curry and am titilated by Lavani theatre. I dont speak Marathi  but I know many North Indians and others who can.

What more does Marathi culture stand for to a common man? I wonder if even Thackeray & Co can explain that? Have Marathi people worked to popularise their culture? Who watches Marathi films? Who reads Marathi literature?

I think Thackeray & Co will do much better justice to Marathi culture by opening a touring theatre company.

So are we headed for disintegration of this country?

Gujrati pride, Marathi pride, Tamil pride, Uttar Bharat pride, Naga  pride, Oriya Pride, Bengali Pride, Asamiya Pride, Kannada pride……..the list is long. We have already seen the effect of Punjabi/ Sikh pride on this country and are bearing the brunt of Kashmiri pride……

DO we need any more prides?

Why dont these people die early deaths?

I was on a lookout for a new notebook. After extensive search and excel tabulations vis-à-vis price and configuration I finally zeroed in on a Dell Inspiron 1520.

Why Dell??

Well Dell came out with flying colours when compared for configuration against price.

My budget was around Rs. 55000.00 and I seriously looked at Sony Vaio, HP, Compaq and Lenovo. Acer and others also were in my horizon at the beginning but the exact configuration that I wanted was not available in my budget.

Sony looked good but had lower HDD capacity and only 1 GB RAM. Also both RAM slots are occupied by two 512 MB cards, so if you have to upgrade then you have to discard at least one card, which is a waste.

HP was seriously competing with Dell, but was coming with only 6 cell battery and a spare battery was costing +4000 Rs. HP was offering a Vista home basic, which anyway I wanted to remove and upload XP. The build quality also looked circumspect because the shell underneath the keyboard was bending when I tried a bit of pressure on the keys. Also 2 GHz processor was not available. The 1.8 GHz model with rest of the things same as Dell was Rs. 62000.00.

You can watch an interesting video here.

Lenovo in the desired config was also too costly and came with 6 cell battery with no option of an upgrade and again had Vista home basic.

So after lot of thought and web search I decided to look at Dell. Now Dell in India like everywhere else operates on a direct marketing model, which means that there are no dealers and resellers. You have to go to the Dell website or contact them over a toll free number.

One major advantage of Dell, which is not available in any major brand is that you can configure your own PC, unlike others, where it comes fully bundled and you have to take some of what you don’t like with some of what you do.

It does not mean that you can configure everything. Some features especially the bundled operating system is thrust upon you. Like Inspiron 1420 does not come with XP, you have to necessarily take Vista. Also you cannot buy a naked PC without any software. You cannot touch and feel the PC and have first hand experience of the features.

Also once the delivery comes, you will have to setup the PC yourself as there are no Dell employees or franchisees to do it. This can be slightly difficult if you are technologically challenged. But you have help in form of a toll free technical assistance which will guide you through the process step by step. Let me see how effective they are once I get my delivery.

If you want to take delivery in Kerala, then things are a bit more difficult as you have send dell what is called Form 16 of the Keraka General Sales Tax, which is slightly difficult to procure, but you can try your luck at the nearest sales tax office. Better option is to take delivery in Tamilnadu or Karnataka and have somebody deliver it here.

All these disadvantages are small when you start configuring. The price at the bottom of the screen automatically updates as per your choice. The final price which comes will knock your head off.

You may have to shell out anything from Rs. 5000 to 10000 more if you buy any other brand with similar configuration.

Once the configuration is done you can submit the same and a Dell sales executive will call you to confirm the order and take payment options.

The surprise does not end here as I pleasantly discovered. My PC with desired configuration came to Rs. 56900.00.  Dell executives are very aggressive when it comes to closing a deal and there is fierce competition among them. After firming up the order I called up Dell to confirm something and my call was transferred to some other executive who had not dealt with me earlier. He immediately latched on to me and wanted to close the deal immediately. I told him that my budget was only 55000. He promptly obliged and reduced the price to 55000.00. After some time I called again to speak to my executive to finalise the order, I got transferred to somebody else, who promptly offered me the same PC for 53000.00. I thought, let me play the game further and tried to get some more discount through other executives, but it seems this was the lowest anybody will go. So I finally closed the deal at Rs.53000.00, which is a complete steal over all the PCs and configurations that I have seen.

I have finally ordered the following configuration

1. Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 at 2.0 Ghz
2. 2 GB RAM
3. 160 GB HDD
4. Windows XP Professional
5. 9 cell battery
6. Nvidia 8400 graphics card
7. 2 years extended warranty and damage cover

 Other bells and whistles such as 2mp camera, 15.4 in screen,  remote, stereo sound, ear plugs, USB ports, DVD R/W, bag etc are part of the system. 

The Dell executives were very friendly and ready to offer discounts. The delivery time is 21 days, which is a bit long, but tolerable considering the discounts that I just received and that the machine is made in Malaysia and shipped here.

1420 model is being produced in Chennai, so that should have lesser waiting time

Now that ordering part is over I am looking forward to the delivery and using my PC. I’ll of course write my experiences for all to benefit.

(Read about the Delivery Here)