..The Real Retail Banking..

This has been there from the time we remember in a formal organized way but it is only now that the retail customers are getting empowered. There are two reasons for this I think a) Technology - Among others giving them some power can push them out of the branch and save real estate and manpower costs b) There is competition - particularly banks breaking country barriers to acquire reliable customers.

However for some reason retail banking customers are treated as simplistic non sophisticated users who are not trusted with features. The UI in retail Internet banking is restrictive if not condescending. Even if there are some tools it is in the mode of creating additional revenue stream or to get insight into their data and not to provide independant insight into finances. While a bank would be careful enough to prevent corruption of their data there is an opportunity for the banks to provide user fields that can be in control of the retail customers only the data store can be on the servers. This data should be maintainable and downloadable in some standard formats.

The benefits can be quite startling. A bank statement can be reviewed online and the download criteria can be defined. This is better then downloading the data and uploading this to another application to segregate.

Similar infrastructure can be provided by the banks to associate classifications (not just the comments ) at the source of a transaction that can provide classification on the nature of transactions. This can be directly fed to the tax calculation data among others.

By just providing flexibility in the way a statement can be downloaded and providing options for transaction classification a considerable customer delight can be achieved for a tech savvy customer. Options to integrate the different accounts, providing cash forecast methods are additional bonus.

Think about the amount of small scale applications that can be built by third parties by empowering these transactions.

Yeh Bhi Sahi Woh Bhi Sahi

sab kuch apna hi hai, kuch bhi to paraya nahin
sab paraya duniya mein, apna to kuch bhi nahin

yeh desh to apnahi hai, duniya mein to sambandhi sabhi
yeh deh bhi apna nahin, jaana hi hai choD yahi

kamana hai khoobi se aur jina bharpoora sabhi
vyrag se jeena hai sabko ,fhal ki apeksha kada nahin

pyar main doob jana humko, pyar pooja bhagwan ki
moh me na pado he balak, ye bhandan se chooTo abhi

sab choD kar sanyasi bano, daas bano shri charaNon ki
karm is lok ka nibhana hai, palayan to karna nahin

dhyan karo bhagawan ki, chaDado jeevan bhakti mein
mukti sirf uski hai jo, chup chap swamy ki seva mein

Jnyan ki asha mein jeeyo, jnyan hi anth andhere ki
janam janam ki talash hai, is jnyan ki pyas bujhegi kabhi

Diya deep se andhera bhage, Divya jyoti se jagat Ughe

Jalti diya ka kaam hi aisa, khud rakh bane phir jeevan khile.

...Its a Dog's life after all :)

When I said I had travelled 20 countries somebody had said yours is a dog's life. It was interesting to be down under last week - another street to roam and another culture to see.

Meeting people of different cultures is a privilege in my opinion. There are so many variations in cultures and what is considered acceptable. Each culture has something unique that they would want to show off almost in variance at what is generally accepted.

It is also true that true Globalization has set in. We can book hotels every where, my friends can find watering holes wherever they go, meeting etiquette are getting standardized, in most places living and getting back is not an issue if they have access to technology. Technology seems to be come a great leveller and the Business houses that are forming the vehicle that routes them to far away places.

Sydney is  a beautiful place and Australians open and frank. I met an interesting Australian who had tried out many worlds the dark and the bright, East and West. It is always nice for an Indian to hear good things about the Indian heritage and culture particularly from a foreigner. A question that always bothered me was why is it that - despite the thousands of years of civilization - an Indian lifestyle is more difficult than a typical western like culture.

Our rituals are elaborate, our cooking is elaborate, our dressing (traditional) is elaborate, our prayers are elaborate, our festivals are elaborate, our travel to office is elaborate and so many others. For a civilization that wears simplicity as a virtue (have you seen Mahatma Gandhi's loin clothes) this is a major irony. These Western like cultures are in fact more direct and many a times up to the point - almost like there are no strings attached (don't get me wrong - I did not mean that). Even a dog is privileged in the western like cultures almost a substitute to kids. There are no rituals and a dog can get to the sofa and sit on it, I know of a pet dog in India that has to follow rituals.

The answer may lie in some Karma. Whether one has the legs of dogs or not, all have to face the consequence of Karma - it is a dog's life after all - that of a street dog or a kid like pet.

The other Anna....the grassroot democracy

KR Puram railway bridge traffic bottleneck on the way towards ITPL in Bangalore has seen some surprising improvements in the last month. What used to take 15 minutes for a 1km stretch can now be crossed in less than 5 minutes in peak traffic. This is the best I have seen at this stretch in the last 12 years (from the time before the bridge was constructed).

I heard the local MLA of KR Puram met the Railway General Manager with about 1000 of his supporters to convince the GM of the need to release some Railway land to ease traffic. Naturally, I don't support such a show of unnecessary strength to convince a bureaucrat in the service of the country but I don't have many other instances when a local politician uses his muscle power for public good.

Now MLA Anna if you contest against the other Anna you will have my one vote for achieving this goal.

I read an article in Deccan Herald that the local police are aware of the problem at the mouth of the bridge near the temple and the issue related to the traffic on the way into the city from ITPL via K.R. Puram. I would like to add that traffic can be smoothened if the pedestrians are provided a better crossing path, more secure and less hinder some to the traffic.

If you do that and get the papers to write about it. With Gowda and Yeddy fighting, you may get the Gaddi too. Who knows?

...the Singh Sangha

Dr Manmohan Singh's biodata is impressive. He is a world renowned economist, was the finance minister of India that guided India out of what is now the most common case study in b-schools on public bankruptcy and economy, he was the governor of Indian central bank and he has been in almost all spheres of economics. He fails in politics. He is not a mass politician...

...but then when UPA was re-elected he was the declared Prime Ministerial candidate and every body knew that when they voted. Despite the various scandals he is still considered an honest man, he is weak but he is not asked to be replaced.

What surprises me is the extent to which politicians mainly of his party have taken him for granted. How can an eminent person like him be treated like a bench warmer for somebody. How can a person of his intellect tolerate it and why?

We give credit to so many for what is perceived of them why not to Dr Saab. Does he have an agenda - either devious or altruistic.

When Dr. Singh leaves office, the person who fills the post will have to fit in large shoes. It is under Dr. Singh premiership that RTI was passed, India's foreign policy is stepping into a more realistic platform, economy had a direction for a long period till I feel the usurper stood at the door, there are achievements that looks visionary and long lasting.

Corruption under his rule is something that he will look back as his failing. In India where everything is auctioned among the insiders the first come first served corruption has for some reason not touched Dr. Singh. Media has all kinds of insinuations on different political dynasties and allied industrial houses but Dr. Singh is still clean. The only other person in the government who has managed this feat is Pranab Mukherjee-but he is another breed. Is this the politician in Dr. Singh that we do not know of?

In politics as in every field there are those who do and those who display. When doers display they are statesmen, when doers become rich they are leaders who create rules, when people display without doing they either go to jail or become philosophers like people who do it the wrong way, but what about doers that are quiet....enter the genre of Dr. Singh.

I feel the just concluded UP Elections will show the world the worth of Dr.Singh. He talks in parliament and in other gathering but he has to speak, if he chooses to it will create a new Sangha, the set of people who will swear by Singhisms, create a Singh Era and lay the foundation of the Singh Sangha....of quiet doers who speak later :)

....Of Products and Infrastructure for the mass IT Users....

As everywhere consumers of IT products can also be stratified - Niche Users, Enterprise Users and the Masses (Three is easy, we can have more levels of classifications if you wish). The Niche users will have to pay the premium, Enterprise Users will require to optimize on an large budget but the mass users will require a commodity without the overhead of managing a large IT team - in most cases this segment will have one laptop and one user/techie all rolled into one - or some more small change.

IT commodities targeting these large mass market should be treated separately as compared with the Enterprise. In today's world the common man who wishes to deploy a small office automation or a home improvement tool is treated as a miniature enterprise. With computing and communication devices integrating and shrinking in size, on the one hand there are devices that empower the masses but on the other IT infrastructure is not catching up - either for the end users or for the developers in this space.

The small IT user cannot afford the real estate for a server room and the overheads, cannot hire a dedicated team servicing back up and managing offline connectivity, will not have the ability to test every upgrade and would not want all these nuisance that these large enterprise level applications will bring with it. He is however willing to comply with what ever the infrastructure advises as standard upgrades on a click and wish every thing else will work fine.

On the same line a developer would want an infrastructure to bring in these automation. A database that is integrated with an OS or an end to end automation suite, that provides for automated incremental back up on a pre-specified host. A simple communication protocol that is almost real time - enterprise visibility can be on a request basis using an e-mail request except in some specialized cases where they will possibly use the telephone line (and at the most a modem - or Outlook like infrastructure that will manage all forms for communication not just e-mail traffic guaranteeing delivery and managing acknowledgements and logging). The end to end infrastructure for data access, interface mechanism, security, reporting abilities, logging should all be defined and standardized within the application with the developer burdened only with building the business functions on a rigidly structured infrastructure. The choice would be on what OS platform to base the application on or on how many to port this.

It is not that this has not been done. There are small tools in the market but importance that this segment deserves has not been harnessed by the platform providers. Development environments of large scale products have highly optimized and restructured workbenches standardizing the output from these tools. Till such a time somebody has the patience to sit and design an environment - will it be some mobile device vendor who has a hidden agenda of reaching the masses - a small time developer,  either for commercial or personal use will have to create an API library for data access, error handling, interface, security and all and hope that new technologies will never emerge.

I hope this happens sooner than later...in my lifetime at least..this will become another hobby which is profitable too for the independent spirited :)

....EverGreen Dev Saab....

...Dev Anand died at 88 yesterday, may he Rest in Peace.  I have seen some of his flops but who knows about them. His hits have dwarfed them out as if they do not exist.

Of the big three in Bollywood of his era - Dileep Kumar, Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand - Dev Anand's work is most pleasant to watch.  One would be surprised if Raj Kapoor's movie was not a tragedy - there were many though. One saw only Dileep Kumar in his movies in whatever role he acted, mostly serious except for one or two in comic roles - that people of the newer generation will hardly remember - it was Dileep Kumar who was romancing Anarkali and not the Moghul Prince. But Dev Anand despite his or perhaps due to his looks gelled into his roles...until he decided to become "Ever Green".

Ironically, it is his penchant for being ever green - and what he is known for that reduced his fame post the 80s. Amitabh Bachan changed and continues to be relevant. For a versatile actor like Dev Anand or again perhaps because of it Dev Anand is remembered for his great classics whereas Amitabh despite that steriotyical "Angry Young Man" of his younger days is now a versatile and mature actor now well within his 60s and continues so competing with "heroes" of today.

...Is it a good idea to stick to the past like Dev Anand and live the life of titles or become versatile and stay in Business.

One is Socialism and another Capitalism....but we will never forget Dev Anand. Be it a good or a bad day I will listen to songs of Dev Anand than that of Amitabh's. There will be millions who will celebrate good and grieve their sorrow's with the songs that Dev Anand help create and his movies. To that extent if it matters he has repaid his debt for the successes he gained.

...but who does not like Amitabh Bachan.