My identity!

Here goes my identity, seen below baby elephant with papa elephant.

Identity woes: Its the execution, stupid!

Time and again in this country we see political and bureaucratic herd (not class) keep talking about making some sort of identity checks. We have seen some talk after Delhi blast, some talk after Bangalore blasts, some talk of after the bought old bi-cycles used in the bomb blasts in Jaipur and other places.

Now the new one is for issuing the new SIM cards. The current mechanism of identify check is completely in the hands of the Telephone companies and they knowingly let the rules break.

Here is the new attempt of the Government (see article) to solve the problem:

"In its efforts to check the use of mobile phones in terror activities, the Ministry of Home Affairs is likely to advice the Department of Telecommunication to direct all mobile phone operators to get two existing cellular customers as guarantors before issuing SIM card to new customers. ... The Ministry is likely to suggest the DoT to come out with a guidelines that makes it mandatory for SIM card vendors to take instant photograph of new customers, sources said"

The problem with the above approach is in the implementation. Banks might be able to do things over the time, but the Telecom industry is growing much faster than the banking industry in terms of number of connections. Also the banks have a better and powerful regulator in the name of RBI.

I suggest a slightly different approach:

1. Today new connection seeker will need to give Photo Identify Proof: Let us add that user will need to give a recent photograph also. Just like a bank account.

2. Today user will need to give Address proof. No change in that.

These two are sufficient to come up with a noval scheme of things to make sure the new SIM is reached to the right person.

First, the SIM and/or an activation code is not directly handed over and but sent to the person to the given address in a speed/register post. That way the address can not be fake. Banks already follow similar process to dispatch credit cards, ATM and other PIN.

Second, let the Telecom company print the photograph of the person next to the address on the speed/register post envelope. Let the post man check the identity of the person to ensure it is delivered to right person. Today post man's already check for identity for delivering important docs like passports. This is not a big deal for the post-man.

Third, let the activation code expire every six months and make it mandatory for Telecom company to send the activation code in the same process described earlier.

This way the identity of the person and the address can be ensured that it is not fake. Also, you will be promoting the Department of Posts and can earn premium money for this service. And the Telecoms probably going to raise the same old pitch "this will cause inconvenience to the users, make them less effective since they have wait for a day-or-two for the phone activation", I would just tell them that this world existed and worked equally effective even before the cell phone was invented. A person waiting for a day-or-two will not make any significant loss to this world.


Hope some political/bureaucratic herd is reading this!

Slow down and enjoy life

"Slow down and enjoy life.

It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast-

you also miss the sense of where you are going and why." --Eddie Cantor

What a great philosophical thought to start. In our busy lives we forget that spending free time with each of the things we do. Always hurried, aim to do more and more things, cover more and more distances.

I am realizing how important it is: whether it is stopping and spending some time while going along the ghat roads with beautiful scenery, or spending some time calmly with yourself trying to absorb and feel what you have accomplished today, this week, month, year or till this point in life or forgetting about every thing else and being with yourself, with your family, with your friends and being in the present and enjoying things around you to the fullest extent. There must be some do-nothing periods in life, there must be periods of boredom where you will be forced to look at things which you do not otherwise look at.

Let me slow down and enjoy life ...

Welcome ...

... to my own blog "Wild Elephant".
















One question you might have: why is this blog named "Wild Elephant". I love watching wild animals either on Television or out in the nature. However that is not the reason.

We three friends long ago had nick names for ourselves: "Wild Elephant", "Bulldozer", "Baby Balloon". What an imagination! Truly wild. I liked mine "Wild Elephant", so carrying it on with this blog. Well, we have some similarities too: both eat vegitarian.

If I am "wild elephant" my whole family too. Now you can see my kid too in the picture between papa and mama, cute little guy running around and doing craziest things.

That's the long story cut short. Meanwhile let me think about good topic to kick my blog off.