Yantrakaal

Its Presence of mind and the right answer at right time that matters!! Q.How can you drop a raw egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it? A. Concrete floors are very hard to crack! (UPSC Topper) Q.If it took eight men ten hours to build a wall, how long would it take four men to build it? A. No time at all it is already built. (UPSC 23 Rank Opted for IFS) Q.If you had three apples and four oranges in one hand and four apples and three oranges in the other hand, what would you have? A. Very large hands.(Good one) (UPSC 11 Rank Opted for IPS) Q. How can you lift an elephant with one hand? A. It is not a problem, since you will never find an elephant with one hand. (UPSC Rank 14) Q. How can a man go eight days without sleep? A. No Probs , He sleeps at night. (UPSC IAS Rank 98) Q. If you throw a red stone into the blue sea what it will become? A. It will Wet or Sink as simple as that. (UPSC IAS Rank 2) Q. What looks like half apple ? A : The other half. (UPSC - IAS Topper Q. What can ...

Many of you would be aware that the two halves of the human brain have two widely different functions. The left half of the brain is used to handle the rational, analytical stuff : mathematics, planning, organization, while the right brain is engaged with emotional and instinctive tasks like arts, music, love and other passionate matters. Human beings also fall into these broad categories. Some are methodical, rational and people like these end up as scientists and administrators. The other category end up as artists, musicians and finally as mystics. What characterizes the second group from the first is that the latter are more often interested in the result and not the process of arriving at the result. They know ‘what’ but not quite sure of ‘why’ or ‘how’. Instinctively, they know whether something is good or bad but would not be able to explain why. On the other hand, the former are extremely insistent on reason and proofs. They refuse to accept anything that cannot ...

Lenovo has acquired IBM's PC division. This is a very big demonstration of the relentless economic pressure that the emerging economies of eastern asia have brought to bear on the productivity and profitability of western manufacturing industries. What was earlier evident in toys and clothes and then in components like harddrives and memory chips ... has now engulfed total systems and the companies that make them. And this has taken twenty years. What next ? The next frontier is services. Software services and business processing services. We are still in the era of the toys and clothes (body shopping ) and are rapidly moving into the equivalent of hard drives and memory chips (project delivery ). When shall we move in to acquire Accenture ? EDS ? Cap Gemini ? IBM Global Services ? Another twenty years ? or will the world move faster ? And who will do the acquisition ? Infosys ? Wipro ? TCS ? Let us wait and see ... These are interesting times indeed.

As India breaks free from the indignity of underdevelopment and shoots for the commanding heights of the global economy, the single most important engine that it needs is a competent workforce -- or to be more specific the quality of education that they have access to. Education is of course the responsibility of the government but like most other government responsibilities, it is never taken with the right degree of seriousness. So private participation in this sector is becoming increasingly important and we see a large number of institutions -- from engineering and medical colleges down to secondary and primary English medium schools -- that have emerged. This is fine in principle but very often the management committees of these institutions, much like traders of scarce commodities, charge high prices, compromise on quality and behave with a degree of arrogance that is extremely distressing for the end consumer. The obvious solution is to invite government regulation but that w...

Convocation Address delivered on Sunday, April 3rd 2005 at the College of Engineering & Management at Kolaghat to graduates who have passed out in 2003 / 2004 Friends … I am sure that you all realize that this is perhaps one of the most important days in your life. You and your parents have worked very hard and have made numerous sacrifices of in terms of time, money and the cost of lost opportunities – to reach this point where you will receive a diploma. By the Grace of the Divine Mother and through your own diligent efforts you are now an Engineer.. with a capital ‘E’. Congratulations. It is a day of great joy and rejoicing and I join your parents, your teachers and other guests in congratulating you on passing the second important milestone in your career. You may be wondering what the first milestone was .. it was your admission to this institute and I am sure that you recollect how happy you and your parents felt when that happened. I am also sure thatthere will be many mor...

New ArtWork "installed" at Krishnokoli in celebration of Holi 

I saw an advertisement of the Nokia 9300 and it floored me with its combination of a full functional keyboard … it is truly a combination of a cellphone as well as a full functional computer and that too a free of Microsoft technology .. who could ask for anything more ? Actually I do ask for something more … I want the phone to be smaller and I want the screen and the keyboard to be bigger … but that is an inherent contradiction. The only way that we could overcome this is to have a real laptop ( big screen & keyboard & all ) that is connected to a tiny phone through a USB cable .. but that too is rather clumsy. So here is my solution … Let us design a small PC-card style device that can accommodate the SIM card of the GSM phone. When I am in pure cellphone mode, for example, when I am traveling, the SIM card stays within the cellphone … and I use the cellphone. When I want to browse the internet, I pull out the SIM card from the phone and put in the PC-card style devi...