digital thoughts

Hello Everyone,

We wish you very happy and prosperous new year 2010! Thank you very much for your continuous support.

We plan to bring lot of new features in 2010. Stay tuned!

Regards,
Digital Bhoomi Team

Wal-mart entered India in stealth mode with the different name “BestPrice Modern Wholesale.”. They should have named it “Best Bazaar” following the local tradition! This entry itself is a big victory for Wal-mart considering the huge opposition from local retailers. Although the media says that mom-and-pop shops would be affected by Wal-mart’s direct entry in India, the truth is that giant local retailers like Reliance and Big Bazaar influence politicians to keep Wal-mart in check.

Despite of all these hurdles, Wal-mart entered India with the help of joint-venture with Bharti. We can debate for many days whether Wal-mart hurts small businesses. However, Wal-mart is good for consumers. Period.

Wal-mart’s entry in India is a turning point for Indian consumers. It will improve the healthy competition among major retailers which will ultimately benefit consumers – all of us!

Related Link: Why Wal-mart’s First India Store is not a Wal-mart

Although Pakistan denied any links to Mumbai attacks, recent U.S. report clearly indicates Pakistan as the source of terrorism.

“Were one to map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction today, all roads would intersect in Pakistan,” the report states. More details are here.

Related Links: Enough is Enough | The Perils of Blaming Pakistan | Pakistan is International Migraine

We forgot the polio long time ago. We think that it’s eradicated from the world. According to polioeradicatio.org, 518 polio cases were detected in this year alone.

Polio Cases in India - Polioeradication.org

Related Links: The Final Inch | Final Inch’s official website for more clippings

Our guys sometime go extra miles to rob foreigners. Last week, a stall owner at the Sonepur cattle fair sold his “special” samosas to a dutch couple for Rs. 10,000 claiming that the samosas were made of herbs.

After an argument, the couple paid the shopkeeper. But they later complained to a policeman. Police forced the shopkeeper to return the change — 9,990 rupees.

Related Link: Story in Hindustan Times

According to National Human Rights Commission, Seven crore Indians suffer from mental disorder in one or the other form. A report by National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore says around 2 crore people need treatment for “serious mental disorder“. While 30-35 lakh of them need hospitalization, the number of beds available for such patients is only 29,000.

“Morbidity on account of mental illness is set to overtake cardiovascular diseases as the single largest health risk in India by 2010,” wrote National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) secretary general Akhil Kumar Jain, quoting the NIMHANS study in the preface of the medical institute’s report – Mental Health Care and Human Rights. The report was released at a seminar organized to mark the NHRC foundation day on Sunday.

You can read more about this here. I personally feel that this would be true in any country, not only in India. 7 crore is 7% of the current Indian population. If you go to any western country, the number in terms of % would be approximately same or higher.

In a major breakthrough, Mumbai Police Monday claimed to have solved the mystery behind the terror emails sent by the Indian Mujahideen (IM) prior to the Ahmedabad and New Delhi serial blasts. Police Commissioner Hasan Gafoor said here the three techies who had sent the emails have been arrested, as also 17 others who were responsible for a string of terror bombings in different cities.

Preliminary interrogation of all the accused has brought out the chilling revelation that they planned to carry out bomb blasts here during the ongoing Navratri festival, Gafoor said at a press conference that was telecast live by a number of TV news channels.

The initial breakthrough came on September 23 when five alleged terrorists owing allegiance to IM were arrested in and around Mumbai. Over the past 12 days, 15 more IM activists, most of them highly educated, were arrested from different cities, pushing the number of those held to 20, Gafoor said.

The three techies were arrested Sunday. They have been identified as Mohammed Mansoor Asghar Peerbhoy, alias Munna (31), working as a principal software engineer in an MNC on a salary of Rs.1.9 million per annum; Salman Kadar Shaikh alias Mobin (24), working as a senior technical advisor in an IT firm and Asif Bashiruddin Shaikh (22), a mechanical engineer.

The emails were sent from three locations – Sanpada suburb of Navi Mumbai, Khalsa College, Matunga, and a private company in Chembur, both Mumbai suburbs, using the Wi-Fi. The crooks used Wi-Fi connection of the residential Internet of an American software professional Kenneth Haywood in Sanpada, Navi Mumbai.

Mumbai police and technical experts did a fantastic job in tracking the bad guys even though they used stolen Wi-Fi connection. It also shows that everyone should better make wi-fi connection secure. Don’t leave your default security settings wi-fi router as it is. Default id and password are “admin” and “password” for Netgear routers. It is “admin” and “admin” for many other routers. Wi-fi users should change that after installing the router. Many people don’t bother to do that. Crooks can easily penetrate in your network if they can see wi-fi unsecured networks.

Related Links:

4 steps to set up your home wireless network

Wi-Fi wireless network security

I always admired Devi Shetty for the noble service he provides to children with cardiac diseases. Devi Shetty is the founder of Narayana Hrudayalaya in Bangalore. Now, he partnered with State Bank of India to provide loans to poor patients for the heart surgery.

Bangladeshi Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunis Tuesday launched a novel loan scheme of the State Bank of India (SBI) for cardiac treatment of poor patients at Narayana Hrudayalaya. As the first of its kind bank product for heart care in the country, state-run SBI will offer loan up to Rs.50,000 at 8.5 percent interest rate per annum to poor patients needing urgent cardiac intervention at Narayana hospital Bangalore initially.

Terming the heart care loan scheme as revolutionary, SBI Chairman Bhat said it was ironical that while bank loans were available for building a house, buying a car or even a fridge, there was no such loan offered to save a life.

Devi Shetty said the loan amount (Rs.50,000) would meet about 80 percent of the total cost (Rs.65,000) for a heart surgery of poor cardiac patients to be identified and subsidised by the hospital. It’s heartening to see the care given to heart patients by great people like Devi Shetty.

S. Chandrasekar will receive his M. Tech degree today from IIT Madras. He is only 17.

He was born on September 25, 1990. At the age of 11, Chandrasekar became the youngest Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and Cisco Certified Network Associate.

In 2002, an Anna University committee, headed by Vice-Chancellor Dr Balaguruswamy, assessed the boy’s capabilities and decided to admit him into the BE program, which he cleared when he was just 15!. He then took the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering and scored 99.32 percentile, which left no room for academics at IIT-M to have second thoughts about admitting him into the MTech course.

I am sure the boy has gone thru substantial psychological stress in the class rooms. In the end, it’s all worth it. India created another Chandrasekar it can be very proud of. You can read about other Chandrasekar here. He received the Nobel prize for physics in 1983.

India is launching a dedicated satellite for youth next year carrying scientific instruments developed by students from Indian and foreign universities, a top space agency official said yesterday.

“The mini-spacecraft will be launched in 2009 as a piggyback on board a polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV), carrying a remote sensing satellite, from the Satish Dhawan space centre at Sriharikota” said Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G. Madhavan Nair.

The various instruments, developed by graduate and postgraduate students of universities from India, Russia and other countries, will study and share data on earth imaging, atmospheric applications, solar emission and galactic observations.

“The less than 100-kg spacecraft is being built at our satellite development centre in Bangalore. The dedicated youth satellite is the brain-child of former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who proposed such a mission during his visit to Russia two years ago,” Nair said on the sidelines of an international conference on Indian aerospace science and technology here.

Thank you Mr. Kalam! It shows that if you give the power to good and brilliant people, many wonderful things can happen.