>>>>POWER BRAKES>>>>

This is one of the best examples that how the modern sophisticated systems of today can turn out to be a danger to ones life.
All modern cars today are equipped with ‘POWER BRAKES’ so as to increase the efficiency of the Braking system of the vehicle. Power brakes use the power from the engine and the battery to do so. The working of the Power Brakes can be understood in detail over here.
Though, check valve is provided in the system to help the driver stop the vehicle even when the engine stops running, a few factors need to be highlighted here.
The engine must be running in order to have power assist. If the engine stops or stalls while driving, there will have small reserve of power assist for two or three pedal applications but, after that, it will be very difficult to depress the brakes.
Just imagine parking/driving your vehicle downhill, and God Forbids, for some reason your engine stops………..
Read about a real time experience over here.
Thanks to Mandeep Singh Brar…
The X-Man
Manish Saini

Think twice.....what are the Headlights for?

Have you ever realized while driving your vehicle what the function of the headlight of your vehicle is? Simple......isn’t it…?
It helps you find your way in the dark and prevents you from banging the vehicle around.

Believe me; if you concur with the above statement, you need to think once more.
While driving in the night, if you are not very sure of what lies ahead, you reduce the pace of the vehicle to have a clear view of the path and decide upon your course. But lo…..you reduce the acceleration and here goes the intensity of your headlight to minimum. The whole purpose for which you slowed down the vehicle is defeated.
I am not proposing that the manufacturers should put in an extra battery separately for the headlights. What I am trying over here is to convey the point that the actual purpose of the product is defeated in the way it is currently engineered and we need to give it a serious thought.

Thanks to Mandeep Sing Brar
The X-Man
Manish Saini

The naked Truth

The Case -

1. Ever increasing cases of the incurable HIV which has a maximum rate of transmission through unprotected sexual intercourse has reached a figure of 5.2 million in India.
   Rakesh Kumar, director of the non-governmental Center for Health and Development says –
   "Led by a consumerist boom, the youth in India are actively indulging in sex. Their lack of education about safe sex norms exposes them to the AIDS trap”.
2. A recent survey of Bombay youth concluded that
   · 64 percent of those ages 14 to 19 were no longer virgins, and 43 percent had visited prostitutes.
   · Another found that among young unmarried Indians, 69 percent of men and 38 percent of women reported pre-marital sex.
   · Of those having pre-marital sex, 45 percent were ages 16 to 19; 27 percent were 15 or younger; and 28 percent were 20 or older.
3. Every year, on an average, about 210 million women become pregnant throughout the world. Of these approximately, one-third or 75 million pregnancies are unwanted. About 40-50 million of these women resort to abortion, 30 million abortions being performed in the developing countries. In India, 11 million abortions take place annually and around 20,000 women die every year due to abortion related complications. (Read more here)
4. Apart from the famous Indian temple sculptures, India has also attained popularity through its well known texts of sixty four arts of which ‘Kamasutra’ is the flag bearer.(India is known for its expertise in the art of making love. It is quite evident from the sculptures that adorn the various Indian temple walls. Kamasutra, the world renowned epic in this field is just a reaffirmation of this fact. )
5. Bollywood is already exploring depths of female exploitation on the screen to which children today have unrestricted access apart from the internet and other electronic gadgets of this communication age.

The X Factor –
A country with above described profile must be the fore runner to advice safe sex, which is not the case, which is what is the x-factor
Though these factors are there for every one to see and realize but still ‘sex educations’ importance is undermined in this country. Even UN through its various agencies has continuously stressed its importance from time to time.
A couple of years ago, Ram Chandra Purbey, the former primary education minister for the state of Bihar, exclaimed the following; "Our society is not an open one. Inclusion of sex education in the syllabus can also have an adverse effect". This statement clearly indicates government attitudes on the issue of sex education, and the misconstrued notion of unpleasant effects of people having sex in every possible corner. Dangerously enough, there is no consensus in India over introducing sex and reproductive health education in the school and college syllabus.

A Business opportunity –
Taking the lack of openness issue at face value, we understand that to manage an in-house staff for imparting sex education is a major hindrance to the cause in India. A sharp entrepreneur can exploit this loop hole in the society as a brilliant business opportunity by providing the schools with well trained, highly knowledgeable and technically well equipped staff for imparting education in this critical course.

Thanks To Ranjith Boyanapalli

The X-Man-(Manish Saini)

A date with a Bank

3rd of May, I joined Infosys among a batch of 200 MBAs. As a corporate deal, ICICI bank which has its counter within the Infy campus offered us attractive deals for almost all of their products. Apart from a salary account I happened to go in for a credit card offer. But even after 3 months of application submission and numerous escalation of the service request, I am still without a card.
Pretty upset with the service I was thinking over to apply to some other bank when an ICICI tele marketing executive called me up with a similar deal. Now, in order to check out the banks efficiency, I told her that I was interested in the deal and want to apply for the same. She promptly noted down my official address and residential too and told me that one of their officials shall contact me in the office by evening.
I was expecting a call from the ICICI bank counter in our office when at around 5:45 pm the ICICI chap calls me up and comes down to my residence to strike the deal. He happened to have traveled almost 15 kms for the same.
When I could have been given a service just 20meters away from the counter within the Infy campus, the company decides instead. It asks an official to travel 15 kms, waste around 3 and a half hours to strike a deal which it could have done within 6 to 7 minutes. Not only this, for wasting 174 minutes the company will also pay commission to this sales executive.
Further consider the opportunity cost of the official who could have instead approached and converted a few other customers within these 3 and a half hours.
In a world where competitive market is driving organization to check their operating costs, such acts of ignorance or negligence of the company officials might prove suicidal for the organization.
What I am still debating is the reason for such an act of negligence. The two possible reasons I see are –

1. Poor streamlining of company functions. It also suggests that as the organizations are growing their processes are not able to scale up.


2. The reason which I feel played its role in this case is the employees keeping their personal gains over and above the company’s objectives. This also makes us go back to the basics of variable pay design and linkage to the performance. How much does it benefit and how much does it deteriorate the company’s value.

The X-Man
Manish Saini

Things are possible

The census of 2001 declares that in India an astounding number – 22 million- people are specially abled which is almost 20% of its population. To compound the problem further, the growth rate of this population is around 2.31%
Person with Disabilities act 1995 gives the definition of disability as –

• Disability is defined a person suffering from not less than forty per cent of any disability as certified by a medical authority. The disabilities identified are; blindness, low vision, cerebral palsy, leprosy, leprosy cured, hearing impairment, locomotor disability, mental illness and mental retardation as well as multiple disabilities.

Government has definitely recognized the importance of diverting its attention to address this issue. Among which the prominent ones are –

• 3% Reservation for the specially abled in jobs in all the 4 grades. This 3% is broken down into 1% for each –
• Blindness or Low Vision
• Hearing Impairment
• Locomotor Disabilities & Cerebral Palsy
• 10/15 years age relaxation
• Also 3% reservation in all the Major universities including IIMs
• According to Article 32: Every disabled person can move the Supreme Court of India to enforce his fundamental rights and the rights to move the Supreme Court

But are these provisions of any use if are not serving any purpose?

1. The basis of 3% reservation itself can be challenged as the National Sample Survey Organization has already declared this reservation to be inadequate.
2. Various schemes have been offered for the welfare of the disabled population, but lack of adequate information about them ensures that stakeholders -- disabled people, their families and organizations that work for them -- are either unaware or cannot avail of the provisions therein.
3. In the absence of infrastructure, whatever laws the government devise, all are virtually null and void. Just look around and try to check out, how many courts have got special toilets for the specially abled or ramps built for their convenience. In India apart from some Hospitals, these facilities are nonexistent (including major universities which provide 3% reservation). “Article 15 (2): It states that no citizen (including the disabled) shall be subjected to any disability, liability, restriction or condition on any of the above grounds in the matter of their access to shops, public restaurants, hotels and places of public entertainment or in the use of wells, tanks, bathing places (ghats), roads and places of public resort maintained wholly or partly out of government funds or dedicated to the use of the general public.” But by not providing adequate and proper infrastructure for the specially abled in most of the aforementioned places, the government is itself violating the article 15(2).
4. Not only does government hamper justice to these people, it completely ensures that even their voice is not heard of in this part of the world. There are no special provisions for polling made during elections – be it the availability of wheelchairs, toilets, ramps or be it the most important thing – “BALLOT PAPER”. If the majority of the disabled population in India is of the Blind, then why aren’t the polling papers printed in ‘Braille’.
5. It’s a well acknowledged fact that the most important way of empowering anyone is ‘education’. But will reservation alone suffice this purpose –
1. The National Policy for persons with Disability 2005 is completely silent on the education front.
   
2. It simply acknowledges its importance by saying that Special care will be taken to –
1. Make schools barrier free and accessible for all types of disability
   
2. Technical/supplementary/specialized system of teaching/learning will be made available
   
3. Facilities for technical education designed to inculcate and bolster skill development
   
4. Personal mobility through aids and appliances and inter-personnel will be enhanced.

But the policy doesn’t lay down any strict rules or regulations for the authorities.
Some More –
The government has provided concessions and passes to the specially abled for trains andbusses. But never ensures that the design of the same be suited for the purpose.


While intentions of the Government over here might be good, the service is not reaching where and to whom it should in the right way which makes it an X-factor.

Metro Railways is the live example that the government absolutely intends to deliver what it promises, what lacks is only the will to implement it in a right way.

Things are actually possible -

Dead Man Walking

“Some men are simply alive because its against the law to kill them.”
Ed Howe

“And some men are simply dead because it’s the law which has killed them.”

To the surprise of Mr. Lal Bihari, his loan was rejected by the bank in 1975 because ‘he’ was ‘dead’. His uncle had bribed officials to declare him dead and transfer Lal Bihari’s land to his own name. But even after 30 years, the man still waits to be declared alive which seems to be quiet unlikely during his lifetime.
And interestingly, Bihari is not a lone case. There are hundreds like him out there trying to “prove their existence”. Another case is of Maha Prasad, who was declared officially dead under land and court records in 1979, but worked as a police constable in Lucknow till 1985.

Why does it happen –

1. shortage of agricultural land


2. greed


3. some family rivalry

How does it happen –
In the wake of unchecked corruption, it doesn’t take much to get a death certificate under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act of 1969. What is required is –

1. An application,


2. a medical certificate confirming death,


3. an affidavit and a copy of a ration card (or other proof of identity) of the applicant.

Technically, the police station is supposed to check before a death certificate is issued. But presumably, corruption takes care of that also. The more serious issue is the subsequent fraudulent registration of agricultural land.

The Effort –
Among various innovative methods, this grieved group in India has adopted to attract the attention of the administration and the law the most prominent are –

1. Formed a “Mritak Sangh, the association of the dead” to make a collective effort to put forward their point.


2. Organized Mock Funerals of the ‘Alive Dead’.


3. Demanded widow pension for the wives of the dead.


4. Contested elections against prominent politicians like ‘Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Food For thought –
Dawood Ibrahim has both - power and money to proove himself dead. And once this happens, all the cases pending against him in the court would become null and void for whom would the judge reward the punishment - "A Dead Man"?
He would be able to walk free for he doesn’t even exist by law. He has the most unquestionable alibi!

The X Factor

"How reliable is the law when there exists such a flaw?"

Thanks to Kapil Dev Gupta.

Manish Saini
X-Man

Forr further reference visit here, here, here and here.