COVID Blues

World has experienced a series of effects of COVID pandemic right from the year 2020. We are into the third year, but the virus is going strong with its metamorphosis through Mutations. We have seen three major waves, many a variants, death and chaos in different parts of the world. Yes, it has been quite a leveler - affecting all human races, visiting all the countries - rich or poor, taking a toll on economy thereby governance, destroying livelihood of many daily wage workers, affecting work as well as education. It has also taught us to live within our means, eat healthy and be compassionate to the world at large. The worst affected are the young adults whose formal education has suffferred beyond limits. They have missed the fun of living and learning together. Small mischiefs and greater celebrations of campus life. Hope they will get their share of fun and frolic once sun shine emerges again. We have almost ran out of greek alphabets to name the variants of COVID. Some are Variants of Concern as designated by appropriate authorities. Present reign of 'Omicron' has been described by many as signal to end of COVID era. Fervently hope that these turn out to be true. Whatever be the outcome, world has learned to live with constraints. Many functions have gone online underlining the need for a robust network backbone - available for all without restrictions. From entertainment to education and work, affordable network connectivity is of paramount importance these days. I am sure world governments have taken notice and is working to ensure the same for its citizens. In fact governance is also delivered through the same network these days. May we pour collective wisdom of mankind into developing as well as deploying faster networks. Care should be taken to ensure availability of the same to the poorest of its citizens through appropriate mechanisms. The security of data should be protected when all the information is available on the network. Present scheme of encryption may no where be sufficient once quantum computers are deployed from their present research epoch. May be like COVID, mankind may have to live with exposure to private data. The targeted marketing calls or advertising one receives is a clear indication of systems knowing ones preference or search history. World will keep on evolving. Its quite good to know that human race will continue to adapt so that we can carry on. Future generations may not have "JOB" as seen in traditional sense. But then ours is quite different from those a century ago. Data, Infrastructure and security systems will be the thrust areas. Research into high end computing and fundamental sciences are going to be in the lime light as far as i can see. All the best to one and all

Life & Education Braves Pandemic

Continuing the thread from my last blog wondering how world will change during the pandemic times. Well, We all adapted to the situation. That quality is the one which allows continuation of life forms through evolution. There might not have been evolution in physiological or anatomical features of humans during the Covid - 19 pandemic but we have managed to discover to circumvent inconveniences caused by pandemic. Education is one sector which saw brilliant innovations. Teachers and students together made progress to engage one another and keep engaged. In fact students managed to beat teachers in use technology to one's advantage. Though a lot of aspects of education especially the social & physical ones got a back seat, show DID continue.... Many sectors especially tourism & transport got very badly affected. Companies lost much income while coughing up committed expenditure. Some of them even had to close their shutters. Certain sectors such as communication services amazed us in scaling up despite harsh environments. Online meeting platforms & social media thrived on the additional time men and women have in hand. Governments around the world are still having a tough time in managing the spread, gathering resources to keep peoples needs met & saving the economy from collapsing. Its an irony that stock markets are soaring, possibily due to inherent leaning of humen towards gambling. Moreover opportunites for sensible investments are dwindling. World lost around 50 lakh human lives & the clock is still ticking. Long term effects of COVID - 19 are yet to be ascertained. Some of the countries has started third booster dose where as majority of nations are struggling to complete administering first dose of vaccine. It is to the credit of software prowness of India that CoWin application served as rugged platform for vaccine administration and management. Aadhaar card rolled out earlier has been put to rigorous use to pave way for applications such as CoWin. I too got transferred in the midst of pandemic from Kerala to Telangana. Got vaccinated fully with a gap of 84 days in between the jabs. Going by the reported trend world over, we are nearing the end of pandemic. May life be back to normal as it used to be in the past. Loka samastha Sukhino Bhavanthu

Turbulent Times affects formal education

The world is going through a major crisis owing to the pandemic caused by COVID-19 virus. Countries imposed "Lock Down" to contain the spread of virus. Its glad to note that a few countries like New Zealand have emerged triumphant. Many countries have eased lock down restrictions but the threat is looming large. May scientists trying to find a cure & vaccine to this pandemic come victorious soon ! With lockdown, "Working From Home (WFH)" have gained prominence. Though the system was around for quite some time, many companies have embraced it these days. Except core operations of "Brick & Mortar" companies, WFH offers advantages to all sectors. In line with WFH, formal schooling has also gone to "Online" mode. Physical Classes are the best option where peer group interacts with one another, teacher clarifies doubts by explaining concepts in simpler terms, lot of group activities which will be stored in memory forever to feel Nostalgic about... Online classes will require a very robust networking infrastructure & availability of connectivity & required bandwidth to each student. Present scenario in many developing countries are far from ideal. Though efforts to build infrastructure is going on, its a time taking process. Television (e.g. "Victors" channel in Kerala) & Social media streaming sites is being used which is a very welcome step in improving the learning experience. I hope governments can release some frequencies from licensing so that community radio stations can be started by local bodies or even schools with low power transmitters to cater to students nearby. This will bridge the gap between the teacher & the student. Presently teacher on Victors channel is addressing students of whole state of Kerala. With community radio stations, it may be possible for each school to start a low power transmitter with help from parents, NGOs, Alumni associations etc. I would have loved to suggest local TV station but the cost might as well play spoil sport. Moreover, i am not sure if Indian laws in vogue allows terrestrial transmission any more. All TV sets is required to have a digital subscriber set-top-box these days. One possible way will be to persuade local cable operator to provide a few channels exclusively for School Education. Lectures can be recorded by local school teachers & broadcasted. Agriculture & formation of young people must be given priority by all nations. Fighting pandemic is the first priority. Resurrection of economy may be the second priority. Next priority should be Agriculture & School Education. Till world comes out of Corona Pandemic, all possible alternate ideas for imparting formal education to students must be explored. Afterall "Child is Father of the Man"

An Year went without Blog Updation

It has been quite some time. You can attribute it to my sheer laziness. It is nice to know that I have been away for more than a year. This post is just to ensure a blog entry in 2017. Going has been good, Heavens have been kind. Satisfying time period as far as professional life is concerned. At NTPC Kayamkulam, a pilot floating Solar PV project of 5 kWp was commissioned in 2016. Afterwards 100 kWp added to it. Both installations are in raw water reservoir of Kayamkulam plant. Incidentally 100 kWp is the largest installation of Floating solar in India as of now. I had the good fortune of looking after these projects right from the design stage to commissioning as head of section at Electrical Maintenance in NTPC-Kayamkulam. With vast backwaters, dams and waterbodies, Kerala sure have great potential for this renewable energy source. Especially since availability of land for a MW scale project in Kerala is pretty low. Commercial operation may become feasible with economy of scale as well as stringent environmental norms that are put into practice.

Picture from NTPC press release on 10th March, 2017

Walk Through Link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=636BPQV5M5s

DD News Coverage : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgowaGHT-oQ

Change - The only constant thing - remains unchanged

My last post was about a year back on election. Elections did bring in change. Arguably for the better. Governance under coalition regime came to an end. A clear mandate was given by the people so as to straighten things in government & governance. It was a nice break from the routine. We earnestly hope for better days. ('Acha Din'). With a glorious start and a good pace, things started to fall into place. Big propaganda and little action at ground slowly moved out. Programs such as 'Swatch Bharath Abhiyan' moved well with public participation. And the first full budget of the present Central government has been laid out. Of late, I am getting skeptical about the change that current government is supposed to bring out. I am finding continuance of many policies of erstwhile governments. Hence the title of this monologue! Additionally we have enough controversies in political circle - be it at central level or at the state level. Common Man has no time to mull these things over. He/She is worried about the immediate needs - personal or familial or of the society. I hope media - including print, television and social - to turn away from sensational and controversial stuff. Glorifying unwanted acts/elements might fetch readers. Are they going to help in nation building in the long run? Are we teaching next generations any value by printing and talking about all the rubbish ? Let there be some consensus among media to restrain reporting on trivial issues.