From
Emerging India
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Quick Update For NRIs, PIOs &
Software Professionals Staying Abroad
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Issue No. 189 Evening Edition IST
Corporate World . Politics . Investment Opportunities in India
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Headline News in this issue:
- High heat ‘killed’ Chandrayaan
- Nandan Nilekani on his new job (Interview)
- IcySpicy: It’s Lady Luck for Bollywood's Maradona
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SENSEX : 16,016.3 DOWN 24.5 % from 52-wk high
FOREX-Rs: USD 48.74 / EUR 69.79 / GBP 79.78
Please Note: Sept-Oct 2009 is expected to be a great period For Making Investments In India. Do Plan your investments in advance.
Do read Investment Advice for long-term investors, in this issue.
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High heat ‘killed’ Chandrayaan
Isro Scientists Miscalculated Moon Temperature
Panaji: The reasons for early termination of the Chandrayaan-I mission are now tumbling out and they reveal that Isro had kept the moon orbiter’s problems tightly under wraps.
Contrary to the space agency’s explanation that Chandrayaan’s orbit around the moon had been raised from 100 km to 200 km in May this year for a better view of the lunar surface, it is now known that this was because of a miscalculation of the moon’s temperature that had led to faulty thermal protection.
Admitting this, Dr T K Alex, director, Isro Satellite Centre, Bangalore, said, ‘We assumed that the temperature at 100 km above the moon’s surface would be around 75 degrees Celsius.However,it was more than 75 degrees and problems started to surface. We had to raise the orbit to 200 km.’’
On May 19, Isro said it had raised Chandrayaan’s orbit to “enable further studies on orbit perturbations, gravitational field variation of the moon and also to enable imaging of a wider swathe of the lunar surface’’.
It now transpires that heating problems on the craft had begun as early as November 25, forcing Isro to deactivate some of the payloads—there were 11 in all. As a result, some experiments could not be carried out which raised questions on whether the pre-launch thermal vacuum test done on the spacecraft was adequate.
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UID CHIEF NANDAN NILEKANI SPEAKS TO TOI
‘I’m here to make a big diff, not to give Infy contracts’
Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), was in Bangalore last weekend to be part of his mentor N R Narayana Murthy’s daughter Akshata’s wedding festivities. And uniquely, he spent the better part of a day running around collecting different types of identities for himself!
He dropped by at the Bangalore Club to collect his permanent membership card before rushing to the RTO to collect his driving licence.
Next time he renews his licence, it should sport his unique ID. That in a way sums up the scope of the task Nilekani has set for himself. Of providing Indians with a unique number that will pop up in their passports, ration cards, PAN cards. Singular yet universal.
In a wide-ranging interview, six weeks after moving to New Delhi, Nilekani talks to TOI on the challenges of the job and even more of living and working in New Delhi.
Q. You still don’t have a Delhi phone number, an official e-mail ID. What gives? A. (Laughs) We are a start-up!
Q. Have you got your Ambi with a siren? A. I removed it. I have a Tata Indica...
Q.Why? A. We are a start-up. I have to get on with my job. The car I drive is not important.
Q. And gunmen? A. (Looks shocked at the idea) Of course not. How can I roam around with them? I like my anonymity.
Q. How much salary are you getting? A. I don’t know. But whatever I get I will give to the Prime Minister’s relief fund.
Q. How do you find Delhi after Bangalore? A. Obviously it is a very different world. It is a move from the private to the public sector. To government. That itself is a very major shift. Second, it is a move from Bangalore to Delhi. Third, in a curious kind of way, though I am moving to government, it is like moving to a start-up. Moving from an established situation to a startup. Actually that for me is the most unsettling. At Infosys I had all the systems in place. Those have to be re-built and should take a couple of months. Meantime, work cannot stop. I am in that in-between period where I have to do many of the things that in Infosys I would have delegated.
Q. Have you figured out how the system works from the inside? A. It’s a steep learning curve. For example, getting people. How you get officers allotted to you? There’s a process to be followed. How do you get office space? How are meetings organized? How do you document these meetings? All these are new in a government sense.
Q. You are supposed to get people from the private sector in addition to government officers? A. That again is a process. You have to put in place a recruitment process to select the right people. In principle, the idea is accepted that it will be a combination of very talented people both from government and outside. The challenge is mixing these people from different backgrounds into one seamless team.
Q. Will your family move to Delhi full time?
A. No. But Rohini (his wife) will start coming often. She’s there next week. My kids were both home on summer break (they study at Yale University). We have a challenge in moving fully to Delhi. My mother, who is 84, is in Bangalore and at this age we can’t disturb her. We have a 9-year-old dog. Rohini has to hold the fort in Bangalore. I am shuttling. I leave for Delhi on Monday mornings and am in Bangalore over the weekends. I am also developing the technology team in Bangalore, so it is work-related too.
Q. Does this job require a lot of networking?
A. I have been meeting ministers, secretaries, chief ministers. The plan is to meet all the CMs. Central side have met most of the people. This is a massively cooperative project. This isn’t a project where you work in a corner, in an isolated environment and build something. Because it touches every Indian resident and every government department, it can work only in close cooperation with them. A lot of it is networking, diplomacy and meeting people.
Q. Isn’t the Rs 120 crore allocated too little?
A. For the time being it is adequate.
Q. Tell us in brief about the project: investment, partners, vendors, people, technology ?
A. Investment, I don’t know yet. People, a few hundred from our side. The main thing is it’s a partnership model. UIDAI itself will be in the business of giving numbers. The card, or whatever is the device, will be issued by the respective partners who will deal with the Indian residents. Let’s say NREGA. It has given job cards for 65 million families. They will be our partners. They will use UID as identification as part of their application. Similarly, incometax will use UID on the PAN cards. Same with the PDS system.’
Q. So UID won’t be a card like a PAN card?
A. We might send you a letter with a number and say please keep this letter safely. That is just information. Usage happens when say, the passport has the UID number. Eventually what will happen is that the UID number you get will start permeating the system. It will become ubiquitous. What’s important is that you get the UID only once, then you can use it anywhere. That’s the big change. You enrol once and get an identity for life. That’s the big USP. That’s how it reduces transaction costs, improves service for the people.
Q. Timeline for this?
A. In 12 to 18 months we want to roll out the first set of numbers. We will work with the registrars. Depending on which registrar comes on board first and starts issuing will decide who gets it first. We have very strong partnerships happening with NREGA, PAN, health insurance.
Q. There’s talk of thousands of crores worth of business this will generate. Can we have some clarity on this?
A. First of all, the investment will be distributed. It is not just UID authority. In fact, the partners will be the ones issuing the cards, the ones investing in biometric equipment, etc. We are forming a biometric committee shortly to come out with biometric standards. A lot of work in this area has already happened in India. It isn’t as if we are doing it all new. We need to aggregate it.
Q. When do the software companies come in, at the design part?
A. There’a software piece. At some point we will have to bid out to manage the centrally-managed service provider.
Q. Aren’t you worried about the conflict of interest that everyone’s talking about if Infosys were to bid for a piece?
A. (Exasperated) See, I haven’t taken this up to award contracts to Infosys. There will be very high standards of integrity, transparency in procurement. Even if there’s the slightest situation of potential conflict of interest, I will recuse myself from the decision. We will appoint an empowered committee.
Q. Bill Gates says he wants to work with you.
A. I had a scheduled dinner with Gates to discuss philanthropy. It was set up even before I changed my job. His interest was in health. What we are finding as we go along is that everywhere it is boiling down to identity. For example, in health, if we can have the identity of the babies, then you can track their immunization programme. In India, we don’t do a thorough job of it. If we are able to maintain a calendar, we can find out who’s immunized and who isn’t using UID as an interface. In fact, the health ministers are very keen on this. This is like a horizontal service, many people can use it.
Q. Do you miss Infosys when you wake up in the morning?
A. Where I miss it is in not being part of a team that I worked with for 30 years. Any issue you could bounce off them, discuss. There was a common set of values, a common strategy. In some sense, I am rebuilding a team from scratch. But this work is tremendously exciting. A great opportunity for me.
Q. What drives you, what motivates you to do this?
A. (Laughs) You are asking why I am not goofing off ? First of all, I believe I should spend the rest of my working life doing something useful. I can’t think of anything more useful than this. I believe we should lead a purposeful existence. Otherwise, you can dissipate very quickly. I am a lucky guy. A large part of all this has been luck, not a great plan that I have had. I have been endowed with everything anybody could wish for. I feel I should not waste that. I should use that unique position I have to make a big difference. And this is the best way as it, in some sense, plays to my skills and background.
Q. How do you see this panning out?
A. This is a five-year commitment. My job is to make this work and deliver something that is irreversible in five years. A lot of challenges today in India are challenges of execution. Translating policy and strategy into results on the ground. A big part of why that doesn’t work is because some of the micro infrastructure is not in place. And this is one of them. This is a very important piece of the implementation improvements that we need. This is value for money, value for my time.
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IcySpicy
It’s Lady Luck for Maradona
Maradona Rebello’s one lucky guy. In his yet to be released debut film Pankh, he gets to share screen space with the hot ‘n’ happening Bipasha Basu and for his second film, the newcomer will be seen alongside none other than the evergreen Zeenat Aman in Anil Sharma’s Dunno Y... Na Jaane Kyun. Maradona plays Zeenat’s younger son and Helen’s grandson in the film and aspires to be a big shot hotelier.
Ask him about his good fortune and Maradona turns red, “Maybe this is what they call Lady Luck,’’ he says and adds, “It’s been a long time since we shot Pankh and even today my friends ask me what it was like to shoot with Bipasha. And now, my uncles ask me what is it like to shoot with Zeenat ma’am and Helen ma’am.’’
And how was it working with these two beautiful women? “Bipasha turned out to be down-to-earth and simple. And as for Zeenat ma’am, we hit it off from day one. Maybe because we’re both Xavierites,” he says.
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END OF THE DAY STATUS OF THE STOCK MARKET:
Sensex went up by 2.1 % today.
SENSEX : 16,016.3 (+2.1%) NIFTY: 4,782.9 (+2.2%)
DOWN..24.5 % from 21,206.77 the 52-week high of SENSEX
UP...........108.1 % from 7,697.39 the 52-week low of SENSEX
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Investment & Wealth Creation Advice:
Please note that our advice is primarily for investors and not for speculators. Investors typically invest with 12-60 month investment perspective. You will therefore find that our advice does not change substantially from issue to issue.
We expect Sensex to come down to about 11,000 level in the next couple of months. We expect Sept-Oct 09 period to be a very good period for making investments in good BSE/NSE index-stocks / mutual funds in India. So, do plan your investments in advance. Do systematic investment (SIP) during these 2 months.
Also, those who want to invest in realty in India should wait for some time as the flat and land prices are expected to come down substantially in the next 1-2 quarters.
Do consult your investment advisor before making any investment decisions.
Do not purchase shares of a good company at a wrong (high) price. Also, do not purchase shares of a bad company even at a very low price.
Do not put all your eggs in one basket. Diversify your portfolio to de-risk. Do not put more than 33% of your investible funds in stocks and/or mutual funds. Put 33% in Fixed-Interest instruments and the remaining 33% in real estate when real estate prices are low.
Do not invest in stocks, mutual funds or realty when their prices are quite high. From the high levels, these prices normally come down by about 40-50% and that is when many people lose their hard earned money in a big way.
Make sure that you are not one of those big losers.
Make sure that you invest when prices are low (and that is the case in 2009) and divest when prices are high (which will be the case in Q1-2011).
Please note that Sept-Oct 2009 is expected to be a great period for investing your money in stocks & mutual funds in India.
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Disclaimer: Please make all your investments after taking expert advice. NRI.NewsIndia will not be responsible for losses, if any, incurred by you. Through NRI.NewsIndia, we are only making you aware of the investment opportunities in India at a broad level.
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