For those who drive an LPG powered vehicle in Mumbai - here  is a list of all Auto LPG Station in Mumbai. Also check out my homepage  http://whoisnikhil.googlepages.com  :-)

Lot of analysis and discussions are going on across the internet and media about the current meltdown, the way out of it. Lots of conspiracy theories have popped up and quite a lot of economists have discussed opposing theories. Check out the two videos below for example: I personally believe there is too much simplification of the issue in most media discussions. What is happening is not a result of simple economic theories, nor the result of pure political manipulation at the international level.  There is too much of a mix of US domestic policies vs. US and Europe's international economic policies and India-China's sudden rise and emergence as global "cheap" goods and services destinations (and resulting loss of low value jobs in the developed economies).  Add the large scale immigration of Africans to Europe, Mexicans to US (Indian immigration to US is mostly skilled jobs and far too less in no to become a factor though), and thus the loss of low value jobs for na...

The news of an Indian origin financial advisor committing suicide after killing his entire family hit the headlines within hours of the event. I wonder if it had been an Indian farmer instead of a financial advisor, whether the news would have taken the same position on the newspapers. However, the stark similarity in context of the suicide with that of the Indian farmers prodded me to think which one of them was worse - the Financial Advisor's or the Farmer's. The farmer in India lives on the bottom edge of the economic ladder, is uneducated and enjoys little socio-economic security. However, the financial advisor was an affluent citizen (having made a fortune of $1.2mn once), had a social security number and was well educated. His committing suicide indicates a complete failure of the much touted "social security" which the west claims to be its achievement. However, look at it from another perspective. The financial advisor works on estimates and projections of se...

I've recently bought a car (more on that in my next post) ... and have been driving around Mumbai - especially along the narrow traffic in front of IIT main gate.  Driving a new car on Mumbai roads is quite traumatic - because you are often driving barely inches away from the rickshaw or goods carrier which might be swaying from left to right (thanks to the potholes and uneven terrain of Mumbai's roads)  - and every moment you run a risk of kissing the bruised exterior of the next vehicle - and as a result getting a nice scratch on yours. Image Credit :  Guy Kawasaki Often when I drive, I also look around for other small cars and their sides. Almost 90% of them have scratches itched on them at some place; about 50% also have a dent or two somewhere. I suppose drivers in Mumbai have to resign themselves to the fact that their car will get scratches and dents sometime or the other - sooner than later. Trying to save yourself of this can only be stressful while you drive. I dare s...

All web applications are pull-based in nature, in effect meaning that the client (your browser) can request more data from a server, the server cannot send data voluntarily to the client.  Thus while a client can ask the server for the body of a known email, the server is unable to inform the client of any newly arrived emails unless the client specifically asks.  Hence, for data that may change without interaction from the current user (eg prices, bids, chat, email) the client must poll the server to discover any changes to the data set. Currently, this is how most of the web applications work. Comet Comet is a Ajax based technology which overcomes the push-limitation of the web by using the ability of a server to hold poll requests until either a timeout or an event occurs, so that the server can send a response at any time to communicate an event to the client. A very nice layman intro to Ajax-Push or Comet technology can be found here . For more info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_(p...

I wrote about an idea of a high-speed railway service for India which I christened द्रुतगामिनी Railroad . Indian Railways is now planning a small pilot in a similar direction - a bullet train connecting Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Pune [ HT reports ]. Inspired by China’s plans to develop the world’s fastest bullet train, the Indian Railways has taken the first step to construct high-speed corridors on the Pune. Mumbai-Ahmedabad route for bullet trains running at speeds between 300 km and 350 km per hour .. it could mean the 93-km Mumbal-Pune stretch could be done in 20 minutes. The fastest train on this route, Deccan Queen. presently takes 3 hours 15 minutes.  Similarly, 444 km between Miunbai and Ahmedabad could be travelled in 120 minutes. The fastest train on this route, Shatabdi Express, currently takes 6 hours 45 minutes. Even if it wasn't this blog post which sparked the fire, it makes me happy that the idea is going to be a reality. However, the only grouse is that the Indian rail...

Those who are Google Fans would have by now already installed the new Google Chrome browser. For those of you who have not, here is the link to download the installer (~450KB). [ Caveat : The installer downloads the app from the web, so you need connectivity for installing also. The app downloads about a 100MB of files during installation.] For a long time the industry has speculated about the Google OS and so many have proclaimed Google search engine and Google Adsense to be the [notional] OS of the web; rumor mills and fiery debates have been done across blogosphere - but none of these has been convincing enough. But surprizingly enough, since the release of Chrome, no one has revisted the debate - apparantly people are too precoccupied with testing the browser and revealing its privacy flaws .  I believe, Chrome is what we all have been waiting for as the Google OS . When they themselves proclaim in their introductory comic book - [ Ref : Page 4] "We are applying the same...

Note (Click to expand) This is an old blog post, I first wrote typed in 2005. 3 years later while cleaning my old Hard disk, I found it. Blogging was still a fairly new pursuit to me then and I was not sure if this post would be well received, hence did not post it. I know better now, that it is better to post than shove it away, so here it is. The question is not whether we will live or die - the question is whether we will be free or not - Subhash Chandra Bose I have been debating with myself whether to make this post or not for the past 15-20 days and finally decided in its favour. If it offends anyone in any way, I apologise beforehand. Think of all the activities that give you emotional or physical pleasures - love, food, sex, self-praise, anger and above all physical inactivity ( आलस ). Of course all of us would differ in the level of pleasure these activities give us, nevertheless it cannot be denied that all the above do give us pleasure to some extent. Notice the similarity...

In my previous posts [ 1 ][ 2 ], I highlighted how intertwined energy business and politics (namely on oil) have become and how they are blocking the ushering of clean fuel technologies in the developed world. Shubham commented in response to Part II - ... the developing countries have the wherewithal to come up with alternate methods of energy. If something good and sustainable has to be found, it has to come from the developed world.... Since most of the cutting edge research in the world happens in the US, no progress has been made on finding alternate sources of energy in the recent past. The point he is making is exactly what I am refuting, that it is not merely about research any more ; the technology that is needed is already there (at least basic if not advanced) , the problems are more political in nature. Therefore, if say the Indian govt creates a legal and political ecosystem favourable for use of renewable energy, all the research which has been done (in India or abroad...

Those of you who have grown up in the Hindi speaking states would have read Munshi Premchand ’s iconic story Panch Parmeshwar . Briefly it goes like this: Algu Chaudhary and Jumman Sheikh are two close friends in the village. One day a dispute between Jumman and his neighbours comes to be arbitrated by the village Panchayat , (village council cum judicial body) of which Algu Chaudhary is nominated as the Sarpanch (head). While everyone expects Algu to rule in favour of Jumman, with responsibility of being righteous upon him, Algu finds himself in tricky situation to see that Jumman actually is on the wrong side. Finally, Algu rules against Jumman leading to a major drift in their friendship. A few months later, Algu is similarly involved in a dispute. Realising that Jumman would be eager to take revenge, Algu’s adversary requests appointment of Jumman as the Sarpanch . However, as soon as Jumman assumes the post, he realizes the immense responsibility that the position comes with and ...