HAPPY NEWYEAR 2008

Very happy Newyear to all my friends. Letus hope Orissa will witness sustainable development.

CELEBRATING ENGINEERS' DAY

In our country we celebrate 15th September as Engineers' Day in the memory of late Sir M.Visheshwaraya, one of the chief brains behind India's industrial and engineering development.

MAY MASALA

The INSEAD business school in Fontainebleau,France has conceived a Global Innovation Index(GII), a model to show how countries are responding to the challenge of long term economic growth through innovation. The index is based on data from a variety of sources, some objective and some subjective, and includes things such as GDP growth rates, university enrollment rates, and results from the World Economic Forum's annual Executive Opinion Survey.
The GII has in INSEAD's terminology 8 pillars, five input pillars and three output pillars. The input pillars, which support a country's ability to generate and use ideas for innovation, are (1) institutions and policies,(2)human capacity,(3)infrastructure,(4)technology sophistication,(5)business markets and capital. The output pillars, which represent the total benefits of innovation, are (1)knowledge,(2)competitiveness, and(3)wealth.
Out of the 107 countries measured, the GII shows that the US is the most innovative country by a wide margin, followed by Germany, the UK,Japan, and France.India ranks 23rd and China 29th .Because of its recent rapid growth India will presumably move up the GII ranks in future.

A New Business Paper " UDYOG DUNIYA"

I am launching a business newspaper titled " UDYOG DUNIYA" in Oriya language for the benefit of both existing and budding entrepreneurs of Orissa. If anybody interested to subscribe this fortnightly paper , then contact me immediately.

For a sample of UDYOG DUNIYA, you may email me with your mailing address ...chinmaydas@gmail.com

CRICKET WORLDCUP,INDIAN BILLIONAIRS AND NANDIGRAM

World Cup Cricket-2007
Herschelle Gibbs of South Africa scored six sixes in a over of Bunge of Scotland, surpassing the previous record of Jayasurya of Srilanka in World Cup cricket.

Indian Billionairs rule the Business World
According to Forbe's latest list of Billionairs , India has 36 in the hotlist, becoming the country having maximum number of billionairs in Asia surpassing Japan. Steel Baron Laxmi Narayan Mittal is in 5th position while Ambani Brothers are in 14th and 18th place in the world.

From Kalinga Nagar to Nandi Gram
Acquisition of land for the development of Industries in many places of eastern India had resulted in bitter pills for government due to poor and hasty handlings of various deals. Nearly 17 adibasi people died while protesting against the acquisition of their land by Tata group in Kalinga Nagar of Orissa. Now Nandi Gram(West Bengal) residents are opposing the setting of SEZ. As per the latest report 12 peole have died in Nandigram , making the both Central and State Government to think judiciously about the imlemetation aspect of Globalisation and Industrialisation.

FEBRUARY COOL STUFFS

BANGALORE : The Chip City
Bangalore is now home to 70 of the 130 firms(including multinationals) engaged in chip design in India. That makes it not just way ahead of the rest of the Indian competition but one of the top global clusters in chip design, comparable to Silicon Valley, Cambridge(UK), and Taiwan. If we break up the chip design work into design services(designing for others) and proprietary or innovative designing, Silicon Valley, Cambridge(UK) are already ahead. But if design services are considered, Bangalore is in forefront. Global players opt for chip design services offered by Bangalore firms for multiple reasons like talent availability, cost advantage etc.

Travel Portals get Rs.500 cr from PEs in 2006
Travel Portals are increasingly catching the fancy of Private Equity (PE) players with investments in this fast emerging business segment registering a 100 percent jump. The past year alone has witnessed investments of nearly Rs.500 crore being pumped in.

Good Time for SMEs

Small and Medium Enterprises(SMEs) heve become the darlings of corporate India. Bankers pursue them with loan offers, IT vendors say that their real market lies with them, stock market analysists search among them for next infosys, and consultants make presentations about them. SMEs with a turnover of Rs.50-400 crore are hot property these days. Everybody from banks, VCs, private equity players and hedge funds are zooming in to capitalise on their entrepreneurial zeal.
Today's SMEs are a different breed. They have acquired companies abroad, become part and parcel of global supply chains and are even convincing foreign manufacturers to outsource patented design work to them. Two main trends---ancillarisation and export orientation---have been responsible for the change. Small and medium vendors have adapted themselves to the needs of large local manufacturers and have also become suppliers to global manufacturers, the auto ancillaries industries being a prime example.
Give your opinion.

UCEAN Register in Alumni Website

To get in touch with old pals of U.C.E., Burla , you may register with www.alumniuce.com and get access to a large pool of old friends.

Technology For Future-I

Technology Developed in M-Commerce Domain

In Indian telecom history Short Messaging Service (SMS) has become a whole new language, accounting for revenue worth Rs.2300 crore and growing at 30% per annum. And now this mobile handset is all set to replace our wallet and becomes the preferred choice for financial transactions. This means booking airline tickets, movie tickets, making P2P or bill payments on the move-all through SMS- no need for WiFi connectivity. One of the killer applications in this domain is m-cheque. Customers wishing to avail of this facility would need to replace their SIM cards with a high powered memory chips (number remains the same) which can be bought over the counter at service provider’s outlets, while personalization or credit card authentification is done through an SMS to the concerned bank. Once the credit card data resides on the chips, the mobile phone is ready to make transactions. Walk into a merchant establishment that accepts this form of payment and give him your mobile number. The merchant, who has a handset with a similar chip, sends an SMS to a predetermined number with customer’s mobile number. The server that receives this SMS maps the data and sends it to the bank’s payment gateway. In turn, the bank’s server checks the credit limit and sends a message to the customer asking to verify the transaction. Customer’s acceptance is completed through an SMS along with the mobile PIN. This goes to the bank’s server, which sends an SMS to the merchant confirming the payment. Finally, customer receives an SMS, which serves as a proof of purchase. The same mobile handset can be used to draw cash in ATMs replacing the use of plastic cards.

New Technology for Old Transistors

Silicon is the edifice of the electronics revolution. By putting hundreds of thousands of tiny transistors on a single silicon chip, engineers shrank the size of a computer from as big as a room to a pocket sized pc in a matter of four decades. And this reduction in dimension did not affect the performance of computers-in fact, their power grew exponentially. For instance, while an 8088 microprocessor chip had just 6000 transistors, today’s Pentium IV chip carries as many as 50 million transistors. One giant snag: silicon based transistors are not expected to go very far and will soon hit a technology roadblock. The problem with all transistors in current technology and almost all proposed transistors is that they regulate current flow by raising and lowering an energy barrier. Using electricity to raise and lower energy barriers has worked for a century of switches, but that approach is about to hit a wall. Even if it were possible to build an ultra advanced laptop computers with molecule sized transistors using current transistor technology, it would take so much electricity to run the laptop that resultant heat generated would probably vaporize the computer itself.
In order to overcome this technology roadblock, a novel concept is under development that can lead to molecular transistors, which would make the next generation of tiny, powerful computers. Such transistors will be as small as one nanometer. A team of scientists showed for the first time that a single charged atom on a silicon surface can regulate the conductivity of a near by molecule, there by allowing current to pass through. This device is known as Quantum Interference Effect Transistor or QuIET.

The Chicken Came First.

My salute to Vinod Kapur and his farm Kegg (Kapur + egg) that produces the most extraordinary chickens. The birds have helped 7,00,000 rural households in Uttaranchal, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Assam and North-Eastern states of India increase their income by Rs.300 crore every year for the last five years. Kegg tinkered around with imported poultry stock from the US to create high yield birds suited to Indian conditions for the urban markets. And the outcome is called Kuroiler (Kegg + Broiler) chickens, which is custom bred for the small farmers, is very different from the local village birds. Unlike desi hen, which produces 40 eggs in its 18 months cycle, a female Kuroiler gives 200 eggs in the same period. Then, they grow quicker. A male Kuroiler reaches the 1 Kg weight in 6-7 weeks, compared to a desi’s 18-20 weeks. Significantly, they are low on maintenance. They don’t need a special diet and can survive on scavenging, foraging and supplementary wastes from kitchen. They fly a little and run quicker, from predators. So they live longer.

Some Emotional Thoughts, Engineers’ Day and Steve Irwin

Someone had once told me that a successful life stands on three essential and equal legs—professional success, family (friends) happiness and a healthy body. The stress on each has to be equal to achieve maximum result. If all the legs had an equal score of 10, when multiplied (10x10x10), one can score the maximum of 1000. Any other combination as long as the total sum is 30, will always be lesser. And if you ignore one of them, then you are a big zero (25x5x0 =0). [This thought I got from Rajeev Karwal, CEO, Consumer Durables, Reliance Retail]

My little daughter Tamanna is an amazingly notorious questioning machine. Whenever she finds time to interact with me, her talking sentences start with What, Why, How, When…etc. Through these simple words she reminds me how we hesitate to ask question when we grow older. I remember the famous quote of Edward Gibbon.
“ The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.”

On fifteenth September of each year we celebrate Engineers’ Day. Sir M.Visheshwaraya, the famous engineer of India, was born on this day. When I asked some engineering students and my colleagues what they mean by engineering, I was surprised to know that they didn’t have right answer. There may be many definition of engineering, but this one I think is the most appropriate one.
“ Engineering is the profession in which a knowledge of the mathematical and natural sciences gained by study, experience and practice is applied with judgment to develop ways to utilize, economically, the materials and forces of nature for the benefit of mankind.”

In the morning hours of each day, I and my daughter Tamanna, used to enjoy Crocodile Hunter’s Diary on Animal Planet. And it is quite shocking to know that Steve Irwin died of a stingray barb while filming off Australia’s Great Barrier Reef on September 4. We will really miss you Steve.
The Kerala government will rechristen a crocodile park after Steve. This might be the first time a memorial was being marked for Irwin.
For more details on how stingray kills other click.

The Places Around CUTTACK

In our busy day-to-day life, we Kataki miss to celebrate small things like visiting nearby places etc. Being in the field of education, I get ample free time during which I explore the places surrounding the millennium city, Cuttack. On a Sunday afternoon after a sumptuous meal, I decided to start a merry go round type journey starting from Sikharpur area of the city. The first place at which I stopped was the Mahanadi Barrage. It was a manifestation of engineering endeavor. Due to incessant rain in previous days there was flood in Mahanadi and all the gates of barrage were made open. Oh what was the power of this mighty river [Pic1, Pic2]. The famous Taladanda canal originates from this place. This river fed canal is stretched up to Paradeep, the port of Orissa.
The next interesting place on the bank of Mahanadi is Jobra Barrage Works. It is a heritage building constructed by the British people. Initially it was a factory at which boats and streamers were repaired by English mechanics. During that time the rivers were the most popular paths for communications. The chimney of the factory is now called Pillar of Jobra [Pic]. The dilapidated building shows an ancient Wall Watch and a Bell at the top [Pic]. Mahanadi boat club is established near his structure.
Bhubanananda Orissa School of Engineering (BOSE), the oldest engineering school of orissa, is one of he milestone at the periphery of Cuttack. SCB Medical College, the premier institution imparting medical education with all modern hospital facility, is another proud possession of this ancient city.

RAIN RAIN AND NOT AGAIN !!!!

Oh ! what this august turned out to be. I have not seen as much as five cyclones in a single month. It is water and water everywhere. In front of my Heritage House(bcoz it is already 102 years old now) I discovered knee high man made flood as a surprise in the morning after a great raining night. And my surprise turned into horror, then into nightmare when I discovered that this black water rivulet is not receding at all. What a curse on us who prefer to stay in this millenium city inspite of opportunity to settle at Bhubaneswar.

Flood is coming as a Guest
The state government announced the welcoming ceremony of a big flood coming tonight in small rivers like Mahanadi and her siblings. Only God can save coastal belt of Orissa.

KONARK :THE ENIGMA

At the eastern coast of Orissa, facing the blue bay of bengal, is the 13 th century marvel KONARK, the Sun Temple.The magnificent temple at Konark is the culmination of Orissan temple architecture, and one of the most stunning monuments of religious architecture in the world.Built by the King Narasimhadeva in the thirteenth century, the entire temple was designed in the shape of a colossal chariot with seven horses and twelve wheels, carrying the sun god, Surya, across the heavens. Surya has been a popular deity in India since the Vedic period .

The Sun Temple of Konark marks the highest point of achievement of Kalinga architecture depicting the grace , the joy and the rhythm of life all it's wondrous variety. There is an endless wealth of decoration from minute pattterns in bas-relief done with a jeweller's precision to boldly modelled free standing sculptures of exceptionally large size. Under the crackling wheels of past events , the Sun Temple has lost its main sanctuary but the remaining structure and the ruins arouns testify till today the boundless creative energy of Orissan artistes and their impresive contribution to the treasury of Indian Art and building technique. Standing majestically on the sandy coast of the Bay of Bengal, the porch, in its solitary grandeur is an eloquent testimony of a gracious and mysterious past. Dedicated to Sun God, this temple was constructed by Raja Narasinghs Deva-I of the Ganga Dynasty was dazzling supreme in the political firmament of India

For more information about The Fall of Konark, click

May, Monsoon and My Dreams

For last few years the month of may was painful because of scorching summer , but this time there are number of occassions in which we receive ample rain water. This may be result of global change in weather pattern which is blessing indisguise for people of Orissa. This photograph is taken from my home roof top prior to raining. What an wonderful scene of clouds dispersing into blue sky generating very exciting pattern like my unsuccessful dreams bursting into ground under the cruel behaviour of real world.

My Visit to Ghanteswari Temple

Ghanteswari or the Deity of Bells is a famous temple of western Orissa. It is situated near Chipilima Power Station. The tailrace water of Hirakud Hydraulic Power Station is made into a channel which flows quite a few kilometers and is made to encircle a small hill. An artificial masonry annular wall is made which creates the reservoir. A small hydro- plant is producing power for Orissa power grid. At the otherside of the hill is our Ghanteswari temple. A narrow passage of one kilometer made of steel structure which has deep channel on oneside and the gorge on otherside is really a thrilling place to walk. The above picture shows the pasage to the temple.
The temple is very old and the devotee ties a bell for fulfillment of his/her wishes. With passage of time there are around few lakhs of various types of bells hanging from trees, walls, beams of the temple.

For more photographs click

Vehicular Traffic Problem in Cuttack

Cuttack, whose literary meaning is Fort, has occupied a prominent position in economic and political dimensions of Orissa. This thousand years city is squeezed between two rivers, Mahanadi and Kathajodi. It's population is increasing day by day and is around 10 lakhs currently. On an average one motor vehicle per household means more than one lakh vehicles and these are plying through the narrow lanes and roads of this closed city. National Highway no.5 which passes through the heart of Cuttack, is creating all sorts of problems. Accidents are common events in this highway. One of my colleague at ABIT , Sri. Kantilal Patnaik met with tragic accident on 12.05.2006 and departed from us. It is high time that the government should look into this ever growing problem with a long term vision and act accordingly very soon.

My Sunny Days at U.C.E.,Burla

My friends at University College of Engineering are great in many ways. I simply cannoy forget those days at south (first) year hostel. Here are my ten batchmates in this old photograph. The first one from left is Alok Jena, then Chandrasekar Pati, Srinibas Pattnaik,Dipti Patra, Durga Pattnaik, Myself, Rabin Dash, Sattwik Panda. Friends on the ground( only in pic) Manoj Das, Satyaranjan aka Tutu and CVS Kumar.

My Visit To The Crocodile Park at Chennai

I am fortunate to visit the great crocodile park at Chennai where one will find unbelievable range of this animal specimen in plenty. In this picture I am carrying a little one

My Interacting Session With BPUT Vice Chancellor

While working at Ajay Binay Institute of Technology, Cuttack, I got a chance to meet Dr. Damodara Acharya ,the then Vice Chancellor of B.P.U.T., Rourkela. Later on Dr. Acharya became the first oriya to reach the apex position of Chairman, AICTE.

My Little daughter Tamanna

My little daughter Tamanna arrived to this green earth on 01.05.2003. Now she is ready to invade the nearby playschool. I am searching a good school where she will start her educational career.