Report
on my state today
I
have reached India and overcome the toothache well. The Internet connection has
happened. I must remember that I am back in India, and things happen lot slower
here. I am getting ready for my big day Jan 9-11 in Delhi. The Indian officials
were supposed to be at the airport starting Jan 1, but when I enquired on
landing, not only were they nowhere, the custom and tourism people had neither
heard of them, nor knew at all about Pravasi Bharteey Divas.
This despite a stern near-unintelligible
letter from PBD telling me the right number of Passport size photos to bring,
for admissions is for people with photo badges only! Another things for email
after scan, else try to get badge on reaching Delhi later. India, my Bharat mahaan for you.
Hope enough people show up! Tiecon
meeting just before PBD has already dropped its prices! Not a good omen, I tell
you. What follows is an outline of what I am going to say. If they feel like smiling
let them at least have a bellyful laugh! I can only talk more after the
conference on which I will certainly report.
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Centrality
of secure communication to advanced civilization
This
document seeks to establish the centrality of secure cantfake-communication to
advanced civilization, i.e. far beyond US today. Cantfake-communication must
include these and beyond, against meanest possible adversaries:
Spacecraft
relaying information back and forth
Command
and control of nuclear weapons
Military
officer deploying troops
Aircraft
and missile guidance and targeting
Submarine
and ship formations
Interbank
and financial transactions
Non-hackable
and non-deniable transactions
Electronic
documents far more secure than paper contracts
Elimination
of identity theft
Elimination
of all difficult-to-detect currency forging
Must-pay
regime for active and passive objects
Copy
free without preventing time shift, backup copies, circulation, and fair use
Many
others
Doing all of these at once is hitherto
impossible. I suspect it will remain so for millennia. I can do it now, and am
starting out, using UMIA encryption that far extends PKI encryption that will
be the Internet backbone this decade. This is far more than good money for me,
or even politics of the century. When they go to the stars, they will probably
have forgotten Newton and Einstein, but they will still be using UMIA
encryption and know it came from India.
-----------------------
FICCI
office is on third floor. The Badge issuing office was full of NRI's running
around with some unknown goal in mind, participating in full contact pushing
like all good Indians everywhere. Welcome to Delhi.
I
complained to FICCI about the lack of knowledge at airport re PBD. Security, I was
told. The Badge issued to me had no picture even though they took photographs I
had brought and couriered first. Computers, I was told. Was it a hardware
(scanner) or software (programmer), I asked?
Oh certainly hardware, you know how temperamental computers are. News to me, a computer scientist, who always
thought of computers as ultimate lawyers. But then Indian computers perhaps are
different.
No
body knew or cared about low fat and low cholesterol diets. They certainly knew
of vegetarian, fish-only, and non- vegetarian diets. But the whole idea of
people turning away from ghee was hard. I was advised to make my dietary
choices known to the cooks way in advance. Which I regretfully did at Tie and
at PBD. In Tie case, I could live off salads. PBD was different - the meals organized
as full sets of dishes by state, and no Indian state seems to consider salads a
part of its offering. Out of 5 meals at PBD, I could only enjoy once at the
Bengal counter where they had fish and rice.
After Sir cooks are through with vegetables, they are always layered wih
tastee ghee. Other times I survived on sambhar on rice, an excellent way of
promoting national integration. Once I tried a wonderful u*p from kerala, like
a round dosa made in front of you, but sautéed with tender young coconut. Alas
the spread you were expected to put on it was anything but healthy.
Lord
Parekh seems to be fit for House of Commons as he is for House of Lords. He was
carrying a full load of papers for his first House of Lords in UK, he recounted.
An Englishman saw his plight and offered to carry his bag. Then he saw the wide
smile etched on Lord Parekh's face. "Must be exciting to become a
lord", he quipped. "True", said Lord Parekh, "But the real
reason for the smile is that for 150 years before today, my forefather carried
papers for yours!"
The
NRI meet was a disaster, largely by poor design and mismanagement, and partly
by security concerns. Poor design was in calling inappropriate people for wrong
reasons, coordinationless spread of events, inadequate parallelization and
concurrency; mismanagement due lack of communication between FICCI, volunteers,
and security; and security described later.
Lack
of communication devastated the program. Dinner and show were at a separate
venue (IG stadium) many kilometers away from pragati maidan. PBD stated that
buses would transport the delegates. Great, except no one at Hall 11 knew when
or where. I was loaded with two bags, one full of my papers, and other from
FICCI with their papers. A lugging trip to FICCI at 12A some blocks away revealed
from gate 3. Lugged to there and finally saw some volunteers, except they
neither had any idea on buses, or any phones to talk to 12A. Many delegates
went on cabs, some made it, and some
went for a nice unexpected view of Delhi! I stuck to the gate but nothing
happened for a long time. Suddenly Sir volunteer panicked and advised me to
catch a shuttle back to 12A. I complied, lugging my bags, to the astonishment
of FICCI officials at 12A who wanted me back at Gate 3 before buses left! I hurried
back with the bags and this time made the right bus, except that it left us at
outskirts of IG stadium for security reasons. Only a mile walks on a bitter
moonless Delhi night with the bags. I reached inside and started telling my
story to a fellow delegate except that the poor fellow took the Delhi Police statement
on the printed invitation for Dinner seriously. No bags or phones allowed, it
said. So he had spent 500 bucks to catch a taxi from pragati and his hotel back
and forth to deposit his phone and bag.
He did not like much the cursory search of my bag and admonishment not to
use the mobile from Sir Law, but did not say too much re it.
That
night at dinner time, you could tell NRI (with bags and mobiles) and PIO (sans
them). The cocktails in Delhi befit a maharaja. Intermingling are smartly
dressed bearers who carry silver plates on which are three plates, one large
for hors de ouerves. One smaller has small sticks to stab the pieces, and other
is for disposing the sticks. I had only a beer, but there was a whole line of
considerate offerings of chicken cubes, overfat cheese cubes, fatty fish etc.
Every one around me was 30 pounds heavier, looked 10 years older, and had a paunch
to gladden the heart of cardiac doctors.
That
night after dinner we had entertainment. After the obligatory speeches came a
remarkable singer of chutney music from Surinam. Never have a harmonium and dholak
sounded so good. After a while, part of
you feels electrified, eventually all of you, and I was swaying to the music
without control. Only saving grace was similar effect on NRI’s on line of sight
to stage. I was transported back 30 years to IIT Kanpur and listening to
Bhojpuri music after some santara with milind khukhreti and D. N. Singh.
Neither finished, nor would have I, but for Dr. Amar shah. He talked to me a
while back and thanked me for some things I did for him 30 years ago. I never
told him that providing support for him was the best thing I did for myself. I
graduated well and have never looked back.
Next
day the deputy PM spoke. Dual citizenship, he said, was like Hanuman showing in
his heart the image of Ram and Sita both, when asked whom he admired more. Confusion for buses to IG stadium was again
there. This time due to Sonia Gandhi who was to speak at Pragati, never did,
but did participate in the reception line at the stadium. I was one of the
lucky few who could shake her hand.
A
female spoke of hardships to Indian women in the Indies. The indentured
servitude males could take the humiliation of plantation work and drown it in booze
or fights. The women worked first in field, then at home, raised kids, and
provided entertainment to the males. Out of this deprivation have come some
professionals. I was reminded of an Indian professional in US who had it easy
and heaped scorn on ways of his parents. Not so funny thereafter.
That
night was the movie night, Simi on
mike, Aishvarya rao dancing, and Mr. Shah rukh khan
demonstrating he is from Delhi, and he has brains and looks both! He danced
with some NRIs. He cracked a truly competent joke - he was going to do
something, pretended he would not do it unless he got paid for it, found a
minister who pretended she would pay, accepted the offer, did what he was going
to do, and then said that's where he must stop for the amount he was paid. Good
trick usable in many contexts.
Delhi
police security was by mindless robotic senseless security rules so easy for a
true adversary to breach. For double the security and quarter the hassles, just
one-eighth the cost would suffice. Why?
The bags were searched cursorily, body searches were laughable,
communication restrictions were pointless for far cheaper and effective synchronization
devices can be used, and only truly stupid adversaries will plot in clear speech.
-----------------------
My
complaints: pointlessness and implied heartless of NRI, little efforts at
attracting business and definite revulsion to talent, every moron had a speech,
extensive kass (kiss the ass), no networking, no thoughts on differences
between e-governace and spam.
Was
it worth it? Yes if you stick to good parts, waste no time otherwise, openly
and loudly complain of stupidity and perhaps launch a class action lawsuit for
mislabelling. Good parts were PM/DPM speeches, invocation Jugalbandi of shankar
and khan, unimaginably sweet, a must
for a CD, shaking the hands of Sonia Gandhi and the US Ambassdor, and the speech of Suhel and
A Khan. Let them not pretend it is more
than a mela. It was like a good movie with commercials over 80% of the time. It
was a total waste of time for attracting
new investors or accomplished
NRI/PIO.
Reommendations:
Remove all subsequent NRI/PIO meets from FICCI to I&B ministery. Concurrent sessions at every time
but the first 1 hr max. Keep every one happy by letting them have their own
session at their time. Even recognition sessions should be parallel. Issue
phones to all to connect them to a control room. It requires trivial common
sense, not rocket science, to do next NRI/PIO conference well.
Regards
Arun