Cogitations of Vishwas Jain

Date-16/4/2018, Forenoon session Board-Sujata Mehta Mam I was second to go. The interview started around 11:20 AM Duration-Around 30 minutes Mam: Tell me about yourself When you left your job Why you left your job How you used data analytics in E-commerce Countries are placing restrictions on outsourcing. What will happen to to us. What we can do You did graduation in civil engineering. Do you know about silent valley Our criminal justice system is taking 20-25 years in delivering justice. What can be done What does fast track mean How to persuade people for Alternative Dispute Resolution Mechanisms Member1: It is right that 'Justice delayed is justice denied' but by doing thing fast don't you think 'Justice hurried is justice buried' Some cross questions What is justice according to you Do we have court of law or court of justice Member2: Ok Vishwas, enough on justice and law. But he also asked question related to justice which I do...

Great start of a perfect day out So ultimate objective for next day was to explore desert safari. But the first stop was War museum. The Museum displays war exhibits which include vehicles and equipment captured during the course of operations in 1965 and 1971 war. Also, it has an Honour Wall engraved with the names of the Param Vir Chakra and Maha Vir Chakra gallantry award winners. Before watching a documentary on 1965 war we happen to talk with a soldier of BSF. He was aggrieved of the fact that youth of the country is going abroad and not joining army. However, he was hopeful that one day youth will chose army as a career option rather than a measure of last resort.We left the place feeling more patriotic as if it was 26th Jan or 15th August. Well that's when we have to feel patriotic. Isn't it? Nevertheless, next in line was Kuldhara, an abandoned and so called haunted village.  It was abandoned by the early 19th century for unknown reasons, possibly because of ...

'Jane Kya Dikh Jaye' tagline of Rajasthan Tourism echoed my mind before I planned my next excursion or rather I should say assignment. After crossing several items on the list like reaching half the height of Mt. Everest, diving in the middle of the ocean, winning a race on camel back in the desert was the next nail in the coffin. This nail prompted me to visit the Golden City of Jaisalmer. The start-Valentine helps It all started with 4-5 people nodding for the trip enthusiastically and a day before the trip you are left alone. It took high level of emotional blackmail , humiliation of lonely valentine week and a wish to escape from Delhi life to finally board the train. My journey started with reaching Gandhinagar Railway station of Jaipur(Country's first all women railway station) to board the same train. Trains and wait are synonym of each other Indian Railways never surprises you. Train was delayed by an hour. Typical Indian family adds to this trauma of waiting...

" It's a belief that I can achieve such heights in life. If you have belief you can go really far in your life. I kept on believing and dreaming and I am here today. " -Roger Federer on winning Wimbledon 2017. At the age of 36, when most of the athletes sit back and relax, one name which is celebrated all over the world regardless of nationality is Roger. Nobody wants him to loose even if he is playing against the player of their own nationality. His one handed cross court backhand, serve and volley, ability to move and slide across one side of the net is still unparalleled. Alexander Zverev, who is the currently the youngest guy in ATP top 30 players (finished the 2017 season ranked world No. 4), rightly put his feelings into words in post match presentation after loosing to Roger Federer in the final of Hopman Cup, 2018 " Roger, relax a little bit, we want to win something as well. It makes us young guy look bad ". When he landed in Australia this year, h...

Open Government Data (OGD) Platform India - data.gov.in - is a platform for supporting Open Data initiative of Government of India. The portal is part of Digital India initiative intended to be used by Government of India Ministries/ Departments their organizations to publish datasets, documents, services, tools and applications collected by them for public use. It aims to increase transparency in the functioning of Government and also open avenues for many more innovative uses of Government Data to give different perspective. The National Family Health Survey 2015-16 (NFHS-4), the fourth in the NFHS series, provides information on population, health and nutrition for India and each State / Union territory. NFHS-4, for the first time, provides district-level estimates for many important indicators. Some pieces of this data is also available on OGD platform in public domain. I have used NFHS-4 district-level data of Rajasthan from OGD Platform to find out the performance of vario...

Before you start reading the book review, my favourite lines from the book: " Our best intentions are often thwarted by external forces-forces that we ourselves set in motion long ago. Decisions especially bad ones, create their own kind of momentum, and momentum can be a bitch to stop. Momentum says: Hold on, not so fast, I'm still running things here. As a friend likes to say, quoting an old Greek poem: The minds of ever-lasting gods are not changed suddenly ." " I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Points becomes games becomes sets becomes tournaments, and it's all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds of me the way seconds becomes minutes becomes hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It's your choice. " I still remember the my first match of tennis that I watched on Television. The only thing that I remember from that match was the magic chant 'An-dre An-dre'. Andre Agass...

Our cab got cancelled. This left us dependent on the vagaries of local taxi dealers. It became a trade off between peace and money as they were charging higher rates but in the end peace prevailed which rarely does these days. However, for us it was not a zero-sum game as the final objective was peace at whatever cost. So, we decided to hire the taxi. But the peace plan got dismantled when taxi driver warned us that there is huge traffic jam on the road to Dhanaulti. Also, it is impossible to reach Dhanaulti and return on the same day. After seeing the brooding expression on our face he told us that we can at best go to Mussoorie and return the same day. He also added that he can't guarantee that we will be able to return on time and catch the overnight train to Delhi as the road is severely jammed. He had several stories of getting stuck in the traffic jam for 6 hours while returning from Mussoorie in the past. As some of my friends had to join the qualitative work force that d...

I am on  my way from my temporary shelter in Delhi to the nearby park to find 'peace' in the smog covered environment. It is  a fresh afternoon of cold December. The 'cold' is nowhere compared to what we witnessed 5-6 years ago, thanks to the climate change and rise in temperature. This is the same me who shouted 'looser-looser' for Sri-lankan cricket team in Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium when SriLankan players showed up on ground after wearing pollution masks.To be honest, I never wanted to project myself as 'anti-national' in the heated environment of the iconic stadium which witnessed nationalist activities like Anil Kumble taking 10 wickets in an innings against Pakistan. People even went to the extent of calling spectators wearing pollution masks as 'anti-national' while they were just trying to save themselves from reduction in their lung capacity. Anyways, on my route to the park what I am testimony to is, me leaving behind caravan of cars, ...

Next day I went early by half an hour and reached there by 8:30 so that I can finish it off early in the morning itself. Literally, there is something in the air there which attracts such a huge crowd this early. This time I had to just go directly to room number 2090 for the checkup but to find that room in the huge AIIMS campus is a strenuous task in itself. Again Blue Army brigade was there to help and found the room with little difficulty. Security Guard outside the room gave me the token number 44 and asked me to wait for my turn. The display showed number 15, so I thought it will going to take another 1 hour. I decided to take out the newspaper and after turning some pages my eyes clung to the news which read ‘Most-prescribed drugs at AIIMS not available in hospital store’. I was reminded of the huge crowd that saw outside the generic drugs store yesterday. Anyways, my turn came in 25 minutes. I went inside the room and what I witness I am sure we all must have witnessed in...

It’s been long time, more than 2 years I suppose since I last wrote a blog. It was a long wait for me too. From being overloaded with my own life to finding something substantial to write, I was a bit confused whether I should bring down the blog or wait for some meaningful cogitation or experience which I can share. Now I believe it was worth the wait. I always find it better to write my own experience with life and then alas! I got the opportunity to visit India’s finest medical institute lying in the heart of the capital Delhi, AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences). Don’t worry, nothing serious! Because of the conception I had before visiting there because of some honest reviewers of India I was already jumbled whether my decision to visit AIIMS was right or not. Reviews went like this-too much crowdy, mismanagement at its best, people littering here and there and that too in the era of Swachh Bharat(Clean India) and much more. That created second thoughts in my min...

Through my  previous blog posts , you must be knowing that it took almost 9 months for my passport to travel from Lucknow to Kanpur, even Indian Railways are faster than this. After this incidence I decided to file an RTI application to unearth the data of different regions and to find out that which region is working efficiently in processing the passport application. Application: 1.      How many days it takes for a Normal and Tatkal passport application to process and to issue   a passport in different regions? 2.      How many passports are issued within 3 days, 7 days, 14, days, 21 days and 30 days in case     of Normal Passport and how many passports are issued on the same day, within 2 days and 3   days in case of Tatkal Passport? Despite the fact that I asked for the time taken in issuing the passport, including Police Verification Time but the reply I got was excluding the Police Verification...

 On 2nd October, 2014  Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi launched Swachh Bharat Abhiyan(Campaign Clean India) to clean the streets, roads and infrastructure of the country. Government nominated 9 prominent personalities to propagate the campaign of Swachh Bharat. The endeavor is to clean India by 2019. Who  wants to live in filthiness?. Nobody. I went to Tokyo to attend a conference, a couple of weeks before PM Narendra Modi visited Japan. I was mesmerized after seeing perfectly cleaned roads, streets. It was difficult even to find a piece of paper somewhere on the streets. Let me give you some contrasting figures comparing India and Japan broadening the perspective. We are almost 9 times in area and population than Japan, but the density of people per sq km is almost the same which means that countries are comparable.  Although GDP (PPP) of India is 1.5 times that of Japan, but per capita GDP ratio is still 0.04. The per capita income ratio of India to Jap...

To directly go to Part-1 of the story Click here To go to Part-2 of the story Click here I was in huge uncertainty till 10th April when the status on passport seva portal revealed that my passport is out for printing. On 21st April I got a mail that my passport is being dispatched and finally on 25th April I received 'THE PASSPORT' after 9 months of complete frustration. This is not only mine's story, this is also the story of many others like me. One of my friends recently got the passport after 8 months, one got in 6 months and a friend of mine also obtained in 25 days. This shows that the number of days also depends on the location of your respective Regional Passport Office. My case was involved with Lucknow and most of the delayed cases which I heard of are dealt by Lucknow office and the cases where passport are delivered within 1 month are dealt with Jaipur Office. The data which I found on the website of Passport Seva left me shocked. It says that on a pan Ind...

To read Part-1 of the story Click here Still, I was in no hurry and then November also went by in preparing for End-seams and then screwing up in them too. After the exams, I checked the status, it was still the same, but I went home for the vacations in December and did volunteer-ship in Disha, an NGO for children with multiple disabilities. To read my experiences click here. I came back to campus in January to find out the same status on the Portal. I decided to do something about it and the very first thing that came in my mind was the toll free number. I called and they never listened to me and instructed me to call the regional office which is in Lucknow for Kanpur applicants. I asked them for the contact details of  Lucknow office, but they denied. I searched on the internet and found two numbers which I dialed the whole day but nobody responded. The only alternative left was proceeding to Lucknow Regional Office and inquire about my application. I also went there and to m...

I was very much enthusiastic to write the extraordinary tale of my passport. When I started, I never knew that it will turn out to be so long but it happened because of the intensity within, so I decided to break the story into 3 parts to maintain a little level of suspense and also to make it a little bit of interesting. The story takes you through the poorly managed 'Passport Seva' (The name should change from Seva to 'Self Seva') in India, especially in some states which is well supported by the Police in the best possible way and surprisingly supported by the staff here at IITK. It was 21st July during the Hot summers of 2013 when I decided with full determination to apply for the passport. I am still wondering if there was something wrong with the day or something that it took 9 months to the PAS to dispatch my passport (almost a baby to me :D), even 'Mangalyaan'  reached Mars Orbit in 9 Months (Many Many congratulations to ISRO for the same). When I ...

Have you ever dreamt of walking in or above the clouds? Ever wanted to see how the world looks from the escape to the world, the suicide point and how it feels when you have chocolates plants all around? Heartwarming beauty, awesome climate, terrific atmosphere and pleasurable hot flavored tea.....If all these stuff tantalize you then without thinking anything else explore the blue mountains (Nilgiri Hills) of OOTY. How to reach? If you are in a group you can hire a cab otherwise the best option is KSRTC Volvo service AIRAVAT.  It takes 7-8 hours to reach from Bangalore by the bus.  There is a check post before Bandipur National Park, which remains close from 9pm to 6am.  So you have to take another route which is quite risky or plan your trip according to the check post timing if you are planning to go by your own car.  Check post is around 60 km from Ooty and it takes almost 3 hours to reach out from there, so it is better to reach the check post ear...