vikrants' view

Broken Window Theory

Vikrant — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 05:40:12 +0000

Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

For software, the “Broken Windows Theory” describes how rapidly a piece of software can degrade into entropy or “spaghetti code”. When a developer sees poor design or writes bad code and doesn’t fix the problem immediately, it sets a precedence for more poor design and bad code. Given enough poor design and bad code, the effort and cost required to address the problem become too big and it is simply easier to continue perpetuating the problem rather than fixing it.

For example, a developer seeing a software component someone else has written does not have comments might think comments aren’t important, required or necessary for this project. So they don’t write any. After all, if nobody is doing it, why should they? This is a natural reaction. However, soon you’ll have a system with thousands upon thousands lines of code which do not have comments or documentation.

In another example, a developer while attempting to write a software component, searches for other components in the system to use as reference but sees they have been written poorly. Fixing these requires too much work, so instead the developer exacerbates the problem by copy and pasting bad code to complete their task.

The facts of India

Vikrant — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:09:14 +0000

Nutrition

21 per cent of the Indian population was undernourished (between 2003 and 2005)

43.5 per cent Indian children under the age of five were underweight (between 2002 and 2007)

Under five-year-age infant mortality rate in 2007 was 7.2 per cent.

More than 70% of children (under-5) suffer from anaemia and 80% of them don’t get vitamin supplements.

Around 30% of babies in India are born underweight.

Hygiene

The UN estimates that 600 million people or 55 percent of Indians still defecate outside, more than 60 years after the scrupulously clean independence leader Mahatma Gandhi first talked of the responsible disposal of human waste.

In slum areas, where more than half of Mumbai lives, an average 81 people share a single toilet. In some places it rises to an eye-watering 273. Even the lowest average is still 58, according to local municipal authority figures.

21% of communicable diseases in India are related to unsafe water. In India, diarrhea alone causes more than 1,600 deaths daily—the same as if eight 200-person jumbo-jets crashed to the ground each day; only 14% of the rural population has access to a latrine.

Hospital beds = 0.9 per 1,000 people

Infant mortality rate 57.92

Life expectancy at birth (Female) 71.9 years

Life expectancy at birth (male) 66.87 years

Poverty

The World Bank estimates that 456 million Indians (42% of the total Indian population) now live under the global poverty line of $1.25 per day (PPP). This means that a third of the global poor now reside in India.

77% of Indians, or 836 million people, lived on less than 20 rupees (approximately USD $0.50 nominal; $2 PPP) per day.

400 million live without electricity

Traffic

The second highest number of road accidents in a year, according to World Road Statistics (WRS) 2007 data. 1,05,749 deaths: India tops road accident record book.

About 250 people die in road accidents in India everyday, which is equivalent to a plane crash having no survivors.

Casteism

More than 160 million people in India are considered “Untouchable”—people tainted by their birth into a caste system that deems them impure, less than human.

Dalits are not allowed to drink from the same wells, attend the same temples, wear shoes in the presence of an upper caste, or drink from the same cups in tea stalls,

Records Bureau indicate that in the year 2000, the last year for which figures are available, 25,455 crimes were committed against Dalits. Every hour two Dalits are assaulted; every day three Dalit women are raped, two Dalits are murdered, and two Dalit homes are torched.

Corruption

77% of all reported bribe demands in India are related to the avoidance of harm, including securing the timely delivery of a service – which is actually a right of a person (such as clearing customs or having a telephone line installed) and receiving payment for services already rendered

Whooping 91% of reported bribe demands originate from government officials in India.

Thirty-six per cent of Indians paid bribes to the legal system in 2006

The estimated the amount paid by Indians as bribes to the legal system at about Rs 2,630 crore (Rs 26.30 billion).

The majority of the bribes went to lawyers (61 per cent) followed by court officials (29 per cent) and middlemen (five per cent).

Police department bribery should be easily in the range of 4000 crores. If you take the macro view of the situation, corruption is hurting our economy more than anything else

Goa is loosing more than its identity

Vikrant — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:32:47 +0000

Yesterday, Oct 17th will go down as a black day in the Goan history. A crude bomb made from gelatine sticks went off in a scooter at Grace church in Margao. The bomb was intended to target the Diwali Narkasur festival. Hindu fundamentalist Sanatan Sanstha has been blamed for this heinous act by the police and the government of Goa.

Born and brought up in Goa, I always took pride in the communal harmony in Goa. For me it was not the beaches or the feni or the cheap alcohol which made Goa stand out from the rest of the country but its people. Goans are the most peace loving people you will come across anywhere in the world. Their policy is simple “live and let live”. Enjoy your food, drink , music and be merry. That is what inspired so many bollywood movies and looks like also attracted the wrong kind of people.

Along the way, there were numerous episodes that happened which were completely un-goan like the murder and rape of the british tourist, the church bombings which was later found out to be planted by islamic fundamentalists to disturb the Goan harmony and the latest was the idol desecration issue across various hindu temples in the state. I read the news and wonder how is the growing tourist activity or for that matter every increasing migration responsible for all this? Well, the migration by nature is unfiltered and it is much more than the transfer of physical beings.

The objective of the bombs was to kill, maim and injure Goans. It was to trigger riots in a State that prides itself on communal harmony and tolerance. It was to destroy the Goan way of life for some twisted fundamentalist religious beliefs.

This is a dangerous and a very serious trend. The Goan should stand and fight as if his life is dependent on it which evidently is true.

There are some genuine NGOs working relentlessly for the Goans, while i admire all they are doing, I would define the “Goan” not by his surname or place of birth, but anybody who wants the peaceful Goa back and pledges not to partake in anything that can cause harm to Goa,its nature and its people is a Goan. The one who will stand up against those who are exploiting Goa of its natural resource, its environment and its people.

Only this “Goan” can save goa.