Go Consumer

There is a service to help consumers resolve their issues with companies. It used to be called core.nic.in, now it is whitelibra. What whitelibra offers is a unique thing. It offers to mediate with between the companies and the consumers, for free! If things don't work out, the matter then goes to the court.
One would imagine that the companies would be queuing to sign up to this service. Whitelibra would have a two way responsibility. While it would be responsible to ensure that the consumers complaint is addressed speedily, it would also ensure that frivolous complaints are resolved at lower cost to the company, and that consumers would no longer be able to use threats to the company employees to get the actions faster than what could usually be possible. On the other hand, to a consumer who plays nice, the company starts to treat very shabbily.

WhiteLibra should become the first line, the default place to file a complaint by a consumer. No matter which company. The consumer is spared the running around, which is done by the whitelibra folks, and the companies are spared the frivolous, unreasonable, and threatening consumers. Both sides win.

Apparently something is wrong with this. Because companies are not tripping over themselves to register their consumer complaints contact with whitelibra. In fact, complaints routed through whitelibra are not being entertained at all by the companies, who insist that the consumer should contact them directly. So that they can play their games.
Which leaves one question: WHY?
The answer is pretty mundane. Something we Indians can guess instantly, but here it is for the world to understand. The complaints registered on whitelibra are public. The workflow is public, the resolution is public. If people choose whitelibra alone to resolve any complaints, be they with the neighborhood shop, or a multinational, then pretty soon their record will be public. We can get interesting data like: How many people are complaining about overbilling to a particular mobile operator? How many people are complaining about deficiency of service for a particular hotel or airline? Which companies do not have proper after sales support? Which cars have what issues... and so on.
It will be open for the world to see. When I as a curious observer go over to the whitelibra site and find that the mobile operator that I am using has been getting a lot of complains for overbilling, I will check my bills. It is very likely that I will find that I am being overcharged too and I will file my own complaint, and so many others would do so too. This is the nightmare scenario for the companies. Their strategies depend on keeping their practices under wraps. This is why they are not supporting whitelibra.
This is precisely why consumers should insist in going through whitelibra. In fact, even if you have an existing complaint, you should move it to whitelibra. Don't speak to the company directly ever. Speak only through whitelibra.
The fact is that no one expects companies to be 100% on target 100% of the time. A courier company may slip up on its delivery. An airline will bump off overbooked passengers. The stereo headset you buy will turn out to be defective. If the courier would be DHL, they would probably call you up to inform you that the package you sent was late and you can either get credit against the next time you decide to use DHL, or give your address and they will send you a refund cheque, or generally do whatever it is that is written in their manual. There is a very little chance that DHL will forget to call you, but that chance is there. When that happens, what we do is to call DHL. What we should do now is to call WhiteLibra. Even if we are on the best of terms with DHL and they are our corporate couriers, and we have special pricing. We go to whitelibra. Whitelibra gets in touch with DHL, DHL resolves the issue or presents it case why redressal is not applicable. Case closed. For the whole world to see. Believe it or not, this is good for DHL. Their responsiveness to their customers, which is there to begin with, is now seen by the world.
But, there are other companies, who have very unhappy customers, and no one is aware of them. Obviously, they have brought lots of advertisement space in the media, so no one is going to know anything about this. With whitelibra, whose job it is to publicly redress consumer complaints, these will be seen. There will be such a short time between a fraudulent scheme, or a bad quality product and its publicity that it will not be worth it for.
The Indian companies have been taking their consumers for a ride since the beginning. The foreign companies are doing the same thing.
What I am trying to say is check out whitelibra, be patient, and use it exclusively to file your consumer complaints. I am telling you, it is good for all of us.

Sino Indian War: Mutually Benificial Proposition

can war be mutually beneficial? yes.
India and China share a problem. Population.
Since they can't kill off their own population, they might as well do it for each other.
They can agree to go to war, on the condition that no nukes are used, and soldiers don't shoot at soldiers. Instead, they can exchange lists of population centers and send missiles and bombs across to those centers.
If this war can bring down the population which is over 1 billion in both countries to say 100 million or so, the result will be phenomenal. Their food and energy requirements will go down, and they will turn into exporters of things that they would have been importing.
Of course, the trick would be to hide this strategy from the world, which is not possible now that I have blogged about it.

Secrets Behind the Dollar Collapse

When the dollar collapses, trillions worth of U.S. debt go out the window. GONE. Unfortunately, when the dollar collapses so do most business, banks, etc.This is certainly an informative article. I have read it a couple of times and need to check up on the references. For now, I am fascinated.

read more | digg story

Losing Weight

There is the hormonal reason for being overweight, and then there is the calories reason for being overweight. This post does not apply to people who are overweight because of hormones.

If you are overweight because of eating, and you want to lose weight, then here is a plan.

First of all, you should not target losing more than 1 pound per week. It is just not sustainable and can't be done in a natural way. The trick to losing weight is to work out more than eating.

The workouts should be slow and stretched out. If you walk, then walking at 4km/h for 1 hour is better than walking 8km/h for 30 minutes, although you cover the same distance, you end up burning more calories because you are moving longer. If you cycle, again, cycle slowly for longer time. This additionally ensures that you don't develop muscle. If you work out fast, you tend to develop muscle. If you workout slowly, you will burn calories. People who workout fast tend to notice an increase in weight initially. This is because fat gets converted to muscle and muscles weigh more than fat. Workouts such as push ups, crunches etc will not help at all. Skipping rope is the best thing, because you stay in one place and can stop when ever you want, and the cost of the equipment is way cheaper than those walking machines or cycling. The shoes will probably be the most expensive part of this purchase. If you do decide to skip rope, please do it properly. If you are walking leisurly, say one step every half second, you will burn approx 20kcals every 10 mins. so walk for 100 mins, which is roughly 1.5 hours and you lose 200kcals. In a week, this will be 1200 kcals or just under 0.5 pounds.

Stop snacking. Ration your food and drink. Reducing your food intake reduce the other side of 0.5 pounds. Bringing your goal of 1 pound per week in sight.

All liabilities disclaimed. Nothing given here should be considered advice. Consult your doctor before experimenting.

Why the Education Minister should watch SRK Paanchvi Pass

For those who are not familiar, this TV program features questions that a 10 year old would know the answer to because all the questions are taken from the school textbooks.

When watching this program, don't focus on which adult knows more than a 10 year old, instead focus on the questions themselves. Look at the relevance of these questions, and knowing the answers to these questions in your life today. As a programmer, a scientist, a dentist, an accountant, etc.

It will dawn on you. Our children are not learning anything. They are not being prepared for anything.

See what kind of useless stuff the children are being made to learn. As functioning and gainfully employed adults, you don't know so much that is pushed down the minds of students in India. The obvious question then will be, how is it relevant?

The children are being made to remember so much information, which would be useless for them later, so you are just wasting their time, and their parents money, and to top it all, you are wasting their lives, preparing them for nothing except being clerks to the colonial masters.

Instead teach them to work in teams, teach them to research, teach them to express themselves, and a lot more things that will help them lifelong.

Getting Media in line

The Indian media is very anti-India. They are quick to pick up and print news which are detrimental to India's interests. IIWTPM, I would get the media to freely report business, economy, entertainment and sports news. Crime, including reports and court rulings cannot be printed at all, society and religion news can be printed only if they are positive. Politics news can be printed only if they are positive.

Why would I want to do this? and How would I manage this? For now, I will tell you the How. The why will take a couple of blog posts and I will do them later.

First, how would I get the print media to toe the line. I will ask them nicely to do this. They will laugh on my face. I will reduce the taxes on newsprint by say 5%. They will fall in line. I will raise the duty on newsprint by 10%, just to teach them a lesson.

The game here is that the high cost of newsprint makes it very costly to publish newspapers and magazines. The government has high duties on newsprint to keep media in check. Since it is costly to print newspapers, there are not many newspapers in India. The citizens do not have much choice when it comes to daily newspapers. The newspapers are raking in money by the truckloads from advertisers and the quality of news is absurd. So now the existing media empires are actually happy with the high cost of newsprint. If the price of newsprint were to go down, it would be easier and cheaper to start a newspaper, and suddenly serious journalism would be viable, and people would have a choice, and media empires will crumble.

The media empires are more keen to hold on to their market, than the government is to control the media. When the media empires do not agree to any unwritten laws, reducing the duty on newsprint sends the right message. The five newspapers that get published today dont toe the official line, and the fifty that get published tomorrow will not toe the official line. Nothing changes for the officials, but the media guys are screwed because of the competition. Making newsprint cheaper is a sure way of increasing competition.

Hence, lowering the duty on newsprint will send the right message, and the media will begin to toe the official line.