Internet Update: Connected at Last
So I *finally* got an internet connection at home. The BSNL guy came over yesterday (Saturday Aug 19) and set it up. It was a fairly simple matter. He's set up a wireless router in my living room and with the wireless card that Mani so generously donated to me, I can access the internet with my laptop from anywhere in my house.
I just did a speed test and my "broadband" connection is clocked at 248.40 kbps. Well, I don't download much, so it'll do. Browsing is fairly fast, so that's all I care about. The deal is amazing though. Including the rental for the router, the monthly cost is only about Rs. 800 ($17.25). That's a really good deal, especially considering that unlike with other service providers, there is NO data transfer limit. The installation charges were also minimal.
Yes, it did take a long time (almost seven weeks) to finally get internet at home and yes, it is a state-owned enterprise, but find me a private ISP in India who can get you a better deal or package. Yes, it's strange, but I've long since learned that conventional wisdom doesn't have to hold true in India.
Ok, wait, let me include that story as well. Ok, about a year ago, when I was doing my co-op with the greedy land developers, Mani was in India and he had gone with my friends to buy some CD-Rs. Now they were interested in buying this brand called "Emmor" (spelling?) because it was apparently priced comparable to the rest, but its quality was far superior. Now they go to this store and ask for the Emmor CD, and the guy says he doesn't have any. They visit another store and the guy says the same story. But something catches one of my friends' eyes. They look up and there's a storage space above where the salesman is standing and they can see boxes and boxes of Emmor CD-Rs. So they're like, what are you talking about, we can see them right up there?
Now the shopkeeper decides to reluctantly part with the CD-Rs and even tries to argue that he can sell my friends no more than a certain number of CDs. This is ridiculous! Now in a normal market economy, the superior quality CDs would easily outsell the inferior quality CDs and thus competition would force the competitors to make better CDs. But apparently in India, now that socialist manufacturing quotas and other controls have been abolished, apparently, store owners have taken it upon themselves to play with market forces. Rather than stock up with Emmor, which is the best quality, they seem to buy equal amounts of all brands and then sell them to customers by saying they don't have Emmor, when indeed they do and they're saving them for last. This is inexplicable.
Now since I mentioned India's socialist days, let me talk briefly about that here. Gurcharan Das, the author of the book India Unbound said in the book, India may have achieved her political independence in 1947, but she did not become completely free until 1991 when the economy became free. Now, I recommend everyone to read that book just to see how stupid socialist economies are, but here's one example.
If you wanted to open a factory, the government would say, "Ok, we'll give you a license to open this factory. You're producing tires, right? Ok, there's a demand for 10,000 tires in the market, so that's how many tires you can produce." So how did they calculate the demand? Well, simple, they've given the car manufacturers a license to produce 2,000 cars, so including the spare, it's five tires per car, so 10,000. Now how did they get the 2,000 cars figure? Well, they just seemed to have made it up or it was connected to the license given to the steel manufacturers, the petroleum refiners, etc etc.
So basically, instead of letting the market decide, the government used to set quotas on pretty much everything. In almost all cases, demand was severely underestimated with the result that you had a long waiting list for pretty much anything. Because of this, companies had no incentive to improve their products (since they were selling all they were producing) and India's scooters and cars hardly changed in appearance or technology between 1950 and 1980.
Basically, I found this really nice quote relating to one of socialism's trademarks, the Bajaj Chetak two stroke scooter.
"As a genre, it should evoke the same enthu as the two-stroke Chetak did two decades ago, when it was ALLOTTED to you by the grace of God & government, after having paid precious foreign exchange and waited in line for years ! It was really a bragging point – not bragging about the scooter – but about how "smart" you were to book the scooter at the right time, how cleverly you "arranged" foreign exchange, how you cleverly "managed" to jump the queue through your "connections", and generally how "well connected" you are. Those were the legendary days of socialism. Of the "control-quota-permit-inspector" raj of designer corruption. You never got or bought anything. Everything was "allotted" to you as a favor done by govt. And each allotment (of whatever) was a reason for celebration – since life itself was an "allotment". Be it allotment of a gas connection, a milk card, a ration card or even a single cylinder, two-stroke, manual geared, Bajaj scooter!"
Ah, those good old days, when you had to wait 10 years for a telephone connection. However, one must take the good with the bad. Despite her horrible economic policies, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (who is most derided by Gurcharan Das) was a staunch conservationist. She was the person who was responsible for getting Project Tiger started in India and for setting aside reserves.
It really is a matter of pride. I can never sympathize with people from Africa when they complain that it's overpopulation that's to blame for their decimation of wildlife. Give me a break! They have a total population of less than one billion for the entire continent! We have more people than that in one country! We've done a far better job of protecting our wildlife despite our population density being more than 10 times that for Africa as a whole. Yes, there's the emptyness of the Sahara, but even then, I'm sorry, they cannot use population as an excuse.
I am reminded of the Simpsons quote when they visit Africa. The flight attendant says, "Ladies and gentlemen, please prepare for our arrival at Tanzania." "I'm sorry, its now New Zanzibar." "Excuse me, it's now Pepsi Presents New Zanzibar." To be honest, that's not far from the truth. Political instability and the lack of pretty much anything stable is to blame for Africa's problems, but overpopulation is not an excuse. Africa's population density as a whole is comparable to that of the United States. There's something you probably didn't know.
Wow, I've really gone off on a number of tangents here. Where did I start off at, oh yes, I now have internet at home.
I just did a speed test and my "broadband" connection is clocked at 248.40 kbps. Well, I don't download much, so it'll do. Browsing is fairly fast, so that's all I care about. The deal is amazing though. Including the rental for the router, the monthly cost is only about Rs. 800 ($17.25). That's a really good deal, especially considering that unlike with other service providers, there is NO data transfer limit. The installation charges were also minimal.
Yes, it did take a long time (almost seven weeks) to finally get internet at home and yes, it is a state-owned enterprise, but find me a private ISP in India who can get you a better deal or package. Yes, it's strange, but I've long since learned that conventional wisdom doesn't have to hold true in India.
Ok, wait, let me include that story as well. Ok, about a year ago, when I was doing my co-op with the greedy land developers, Mani was in India and he had gone with my friends to buy some CD-Rs. Now they were interested in buying this brand called "Emmor" (spelling?) because it was apparently priced comparable to the rest, but its quality was far superior. Now they go to this store and ask for the Emmor CD, and the guy says he doesn't have any. They visit another store and the guy says the same story. But something catches one of my friends' eyes. They look up and there's a storage space above where the salesman is standing and they can see boxes and boxes of Emmor CD-Rs. So they're like, what are you talking about, we can see them right up there?
Now the shopkeeper decides to reluctantly part with the CD-Rs and even tries to argue that he can sell my friends no more than a certain number of CDs. This is ridiculous! Now in a normal market economy, the superior quality CDs would easily outsell the inferior quality CDs and thus competition would force the competitors to make better CDs. But apparently in India, now that socialist manufacturing quotas and other controls have been abolished, apparently, store owners have taken it upon themselves to play with market forces. Rather than stock up with Emmor, which is the best quality, they seem to buy equal amounts of all brands and then sell them to customers by saying they don't have Emmor, when indeed they do and they're saving them for last. This is inexplicable.
Now since I mentioned India's socialist days, let me talk briefly about that here. Gurcharan Das, the author of the book India Unbound said in the book, India may have achieved her political independence in 1947, but she did not become completely free until 1991 when the economy became free. Now, I recommend everyone to read that book just to see how stupid socialist economies are, but here's one example.
If you wanted to open a factory, the government would say, "Ok, we'll give you a license to open this factory. You're producing tires, right? Ok, there's a demand for 10,000 tires in the market, so that's how many tires you can produce." So how did they calculate the demand? Well, simple, they've given the car manufacturers a license to produce 2,000 cars, so including the spare, it's five tires per car, so 10,000. Now how did they get the 2,000 cars figure? Well, they just seemed to have made it up or it was connected to the license given to the steel manufacturers, the petroleum refiners, etc etc.
So basically, instead of letting the market decide, the government used to set quotas on pretty much everything. In almost all cases, demand was severely underestimated with the result that you had a long waiting list for pretty much anything. Because of this, companies had no incentive to improve their products (since they were selling all they were producing) and India's scooters and cars hardly changed in appearance or technology between 1950 and 1980.
Basically, I found this really nice quote relating to one of socialism's trademarks, the Bajaj Chetak two stroke scooter.
"As a genre, it should evoke the same enthu as the two-stroke Chetak did two decades ago, when it was ALLOTTED to you by the grace of God & government, after having paid precious foreign exchange and waited in line for years ! It was really a bragging point – not bragging about the scooter – but about how "smart" you were to book the scooter at the right time, how cleverly you "arranged" foreign exchange, how you cleverly "managed" to jump the queue through your "connections", and generally how "well connected" you are. Those were the legendary days of socialism. Of the "control-quota-permit-inspector" raj of designer corruption. You never got or bought anything. Everything was "allotted" to you as a favor done by govt. And each allotment (of whatever) was a reason for celebration – since life itself was an "allotment". Be it allotment of a gas connection, a milk card, a ration card or even a single cylinder, two-stroke, manual geared, Bajaj scooter!"
Ah, those good old days, when you had to wait 10 years for a telephone connection. However, one must take the good with the bad. Despite her horrible economic policies, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (who is most derided by Gurcharan Das) was a staunch conservationist. She was the person who was responsible for getting Project Tiger started in India and for setting aside reserves.
It really is a matter of pride. I can never sympathize with people from Africa when they complain that it's overpopulation that's to blame for their decimation of wildlife. Give me a break! They have a total population of less than one billion for the entire continent! We have more people than that in one country! We've done a far better job of protecting our wildlife despite our population density being more than 10 times that for Africa as a whole. Yes, there's the emptyness of the Sahara, but even then, I'm sorry, they cannot use population as an excuse.
I am reminded of the Simpsons quote when they visit Africa. The flight attendant says, "Ladies and gentlemen, please prepare for our arrival at Tanzania." "I'm sorry, its now New Zanzibar." "Excuse me, it's now Pepsi Presents New Zanzibar." To be honest, that's not far from the truth. Political instability and the lack of pretty much anything stable is to blame for Africa's problems, but overpopulation is not an excuse. Africa's population density as a whole is comparable to that of the United States. There's something you probably didn't know.
Wow, I've really gone off on a number of tangents here. Where did I start off at, oh yes, I now have internet at home.
posted by Vivek at 9:17 PM
1 Comments:
Glad to hear you finallly got internet!!! valid point you raise there about India doing fairly good job about preserving their wildlife. I dont hear that often from people.
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