Indian Zillow

Recently I was hearing horror stories of how you may buy land in India and realize that you paid money to some guy who did not own the land to begin with..for more information see all the checks you have to do before you buy land.
Would it be possible to build a service that checks the title deed of a given piece of land, encumberances etc for you ( maybe scans it keeps it in a repository and sells you the scans for a price) . In addition reports on the quality of roads , conveniences nearby..and real driving times to important landmarks.
Like Google Maps changes its algorithms for India, an Indian Zillow will probably have to do some similar tricks...and given the market in India should have decent traction..
Is there a service like that already ?

Doctors , Kickbacks & the Hippocratic Oath

" To practice and prescribe to the best of my ability for the good of my patients, and to try to avoid harming them"

"Never to do deliberate harm to anyone for anyone else's interest."

"To keep the good of the patient as the highest priority."

Some of the verses from the oath that every doctor takes. These days it seems that a system of compensation has emerged in the medical fraternity in India which creates a conflict of interest and effectively makes doctors in India break their oath.

If you ever go to any facility that does medical tests in India and especially in Kolkata, the first thing they will ask you is the name of the doctor who has referred you to the test. There seem to be kickbacks involved wherein the doctor actually recommends only certain institutions for doing the testing, and the money the testing facility makes provides a commission to the said doctor for the tests recommended.

This extends to hospitals as well - so your patient may need a procedure and it may not require him to be admitted to a hospital ; he probably will be encouraged to get admitted because he will have to shell out more money and there is so much more dough for the doctor to make when he gets the commission from a hospital. This is in direct contrast to the medical issues in USA where insurance agencies try to prevent any procedures that may not be required ; it's another matter altogether that they take it to the other extreme.

Taking the argument a little further, it would be a matter of time when certain doctors would ' let things get a little worse' before they treat their patients in the oft chance that they the patient has to be admitted to a hospital. It was reported in the Times of India a few years back that this system of kickbacks starts from the distributors itself and that article states that gallstone surgeries have increased significantly in proportion to the marketing being done for technology intensive laproscopy.

Going to a doctor it seems has now become a dangerous proposition in itself - " Someone save me from my doctor "

'Bijli' aur 'andhera'

Manmohan ki sarkar girte girte bach gayi….bachi Kya ?
Amrika se Nuclear energy chahiye…China ke dost lene nahi de rahe…beech mein phans gaya hai India.

India consumes about 588 Billion Kwh today, and is projected to consume 1216 Billion Kwh in the next fifteen years. Majority of power generated today is fueled by Coal that directly contributes to global warming. Our long term strategy of building Hydro electric plants is not paying off; a large number of these projects are stuck in legal quagmires and bad management of socio economic effects on the people displaced..(Ask Medha ji)…so what is in store for India, if the Chinese ‘dosts’ do not let the nuclear energy in,
…’andhera’ hi ‘andhera’ ???
Bhagwan ka hi hai sahara??
Google devta se pooccha ..mili ek company…ausra.

Ausra is a company that specializes in form of energy called solar thermal energy. Instead of using photo-voltaic cells, they reflect and concentrate the sun’s energy on a bunch of pipes carrying water. The water converts to steam and that is used to drive turbines….sounds exceedingly simple.

I think the difficult part may also have to do with storing this energy as heat energy to be used later for driving the turbines when the sun is not at its hottest.

Here is a link to how his works.

So here is the interesting part...a few papers on this website claim that an area about 145 km by 145 km covered with this technology can meet the electricity consumption needs of USA.

The Math

So USA consumes about 3.816 trillion Kwh. India about 588 Billion Kwh (about 15 % of USA)
so if 145 Km * 145 Km can meet USA electricity needs, we will need about 3239 sq km just using the same ratio.
i.e. about 57 km by 57 km like about the size of Goa, covered with mirrors can meet the electricity needs of the entire nation.

For all you feni fans out there, I know...Bad Idea...Goa is much too precious too cover with mirrors. but in a country as vast as India, could we find the wherewithal to even harness 10-20% of this energy from setting up plants say near a desert or places which are not as habitable, but we can finance or find a source of water.

We have done this already...
Solar cookers have been marketed in India since 1982. I remeber seeing the ads on Krishi darshan on good old doordarshan. For a lot of people in rural India it has been a good alternative to cooking fuel.
We even set up a solar cooker with help from the germans in Mount Abu, which could generate 500 kgs of steam and cook food for more than 1000 people at a temple.
Read more here

So even if we don't get all the nuclear energy, could we use what dinesh bestows us on everyday...?? I was even thinking since we are distilling lots of water, it could even be a source of clean water for say 50 homes...maybe not ...but that's just me trying to kill two birds with one stone.

Food & Hunger

Data Point 1

Despite significant economic progress, 1/4 of the nation's population earns less than the government-specified poverty threshold of $0.40/day. Official figures estimate that 27.5% of Indians lived below the national poverty line in 2004-2005. A 2007 report by the state-run National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) found that 25% of Indians, or 236 million people, lived on less than 20 rupees per day with most working in "informal labour sector with no job or social security, living in abject poverty.

Source - Poverty in India report in Wikipedia.

Data Point 2

A study done by the government on food wastage in India estimated that an astounding 58,000 crores was the amount of food wasted in India due to lack of inadequate post-harvest infrastructure.
More details of the study done by an honorable minister can be found here

(Well the very fact that he took the initiative to measure this makes him honorable)

Math

So lets do some real eazee simple dumb math here….56000crores of food..& 236 million hungry people…(Ouch..why did they invent two different number systems to make our lives complicated).

Anyway…Here goes
236 million * 20 rupees/day*365days = 172280 crores

If god gave us ‘chappad phad ke itna saara khokha’ there goes India’s poverty…poof..!!
At the same time..we are actually wasting about 58,000 crores of food.feeding rats, feeding all sorts of micro-organisms who feast on rotting food…Bravo.

Even if we could not save the Tiger we are doing really well on other biological diversity measures.
So if we did not waste this food..could we make a significant dent on our poverty situation…as much 1/3rd of India’s poverty without relying on God’s largesse ?

Gyaan

The skeptics will be laughing saying here’s a guy who has never as much as bought ‘anaaj ki bori’ from a shop who is giving ‘gyaan’ on food processing.
But here are the simpleton’s thoughts…

• So if we managed our grain in FIFO..first in first out in our granaries; could so much of it be wasted ?
• Would adding refrigeration to our granaries be a bad investment?
• Eat local…there is a reason why each part of India developed its own cuisine. A lot of food gets transported from one part of the country to another and wasted. Could that be reduced a little bit ..not much I realize since the Haryana and Punjab belt are the granaries of India.
• The article talks about tax benefits for food processing industries..I am afraid it will only be used by the MTR types who will use it for packaging and selling food to urban India. What we need is a better storage and distribution capability, something the government largely owns I think.
• Make ‘ration’ shops compete with each other by allowing private distribution channels who can buy from granaries and regulate quantity they buy (so that in harder times they don’t hoard).