Pesticide Economy? Wakeup call from UAE

I am afraid to buy vegetables from market. My roommate Jithu never buy/eat banana which is bigger than normal ones. He is worried about the injections that banana got from farmer or stockist or merchant. Same things goes with many other vegetables. 

Main problem is the heavy use of chemicals at farm for protecting the harvest from insects and pests. After that, stockists and merchants apply another heavy round of chemicals so that it will remain fresh for days if not weeks. By the way, these chemicals are known to cause side effects. Just imagine your kid of  5-6 years consuming these type of vegetables every day... 

This is going on for some time. Year after year chemical use in agriculture is increasing. Main problem is, many residual pesticides - which are banned for use on vegetables and fruits - will remain in the crops for 45 days or more. Which means, if you are consuming those with in time frame, you are actually taking those chemicals to your blood system as well. 

This is not only affecting us, but are also creating a very bad impression for Indian products overseas. Recently, UAE tightened norms for import of Chilli Peppers, Mango and Cucumber. They also made it mandatory for Indian exporters to furnish pesticides residue analysis report for each consignment. UAE is not the first one to do that, and definitely not going to be the last one. 

Last fiscal year (2015-16) alone India exported 2,62,158 tonnes of fresh vegetables and 43,591 tonnes of fruits to this tiny little city state in Middle East. Just imagine, if every major country restrict/ban Made in India vegetables then it will create a very bad impression about India itself and blow back and mistrust will not be limited to vegetables. Government, farming and merchant community needs to take emergency actions to limit the use of chemicals in agriculture.

Sajeev

Photo Courtesy: Wikipedia

Blowing Up AirIndia’s Recovery

Not long ago there were too much hue and cry for selling Air India. After all who don't want to sell a company which makes mind blowing losses day after day. Government didn't sell Air India at that time; as a matter of fact there were hardly any suitors.

One argument which often heard along with the demand to shutdown/sell the company was – it was the government which destroyed the company. There is indeed some merit in this argument. If government ran that company like a corporate entity, then AirIndia would have been in a better position. 

That is past, in the end Government intervened and helped AirIndia to come out of the crisis. Company also started implementing plans to reduce costs and improve efficiency. This plan is actually showing some results. 

Now West Bengal CM wants a direct flight between Kolkata and a European City. There is no problem in such a demand. All CMs would like to get better deals for their states. Union Civil Aviation minister can consider that request. No issues. However, can he ask AirIndia to introduce a new plane in that route?

I don't have any problem in Kolkata getting a direct flight to London. But, we need to look into the question of why Airline companies are not introducing a direct flight in the first place. The reason they provide is very simple – the route is not commercially viable. 

# AirIndia itself stopped direct flight between Kolkata and a European city in 2007. Reason -  commercially NOT viable.

# Lufthansa discontinued Kolkata-Frankfurt in 2011.

# British Airways discontinued Kolkata-London in 2008.

# Lufthansa, Germanwings, KLM, AirFrance and Thomson Airways, Jet Airways expressed its inability to CM's request for a direct flight

It is to be noted that this is the situation even after CM went to the extent of completely waiving ATF Tax.

Mamta was demanding a direct plane for some time. However, it was her recent election victory which gave a new life to the request. Assembly elections give her the power to send more people to Rajya Sabha (Council of States) where central government currently don’t have enough numbers to push forward reform bills. Hence government is willing to satisfy some of Mamta's wishes. However, why bleed AirIndia for that? This type of politics may give quick results, but it will break institutions. 

We should not forget that, a direct flight to London is neither a primary right of citizen nor his/her basic need. Forget about basic need, it won’t even qualify under affirmative action.

What West Bengal should focus on is, how to get the state back in industrial map, how to revamp Kolkata port, how to improve literacy rate, how to improve GDP/capita, how to reduce child mortality rate, how to bring industries to the state... so on and so forth. Those actions will give more momentum to the state than a direct flight to London, which hardly much people use but bleed AirIndia.

Sajeev

Photo Courtesy: Wikipedia

A Long Walk - Baratapuzha River, Kerala

It was sad to walk through the riverbed

Water is forming a pool here and there, but no flow

Almost entire riverbed is naked open

Kerala is indeed looking forward for long dry spell

Flying away towards the horizon

Wow - a dream view

Not a fav destination of migrant birds, bit there isn't much wetlands left for them

Walking through the water

Another round table conference?

Tirumittakodu Shiva temple on the banks of Bharatapuzha

Sajeev

In the name of Cows

Traffic blocks are nothing new in Bangalore. Hence I didn’t care when I stuck in one them. However, vehicles in other lanes were moving freely. Hence, I looked forward to see what is stopping our bus from moving forward. Interestingly, that was a pair of cows. No one cared about those wandering cows; it hardly mattered to anyone that they were in the middle of a busy road; and it is possible that a person rushing to home can hit one of them accidently.

You may be wondering why all of a sudden I am started talking about cows. Well here it is, now-a-days in India people are even ready to kill others in the name of cow. But, hardly anyone is ready to take care of those poor creatures; who in addition to being homeless are also eating lot of plastic waste.

Sajeev.

AI Powered Personal Assistant form Viv Labs

The buzz around AI is nothing new. Day by day we are moving slowly but steadily towards a world where more and more things are controlled by decisions taken by AI powered systems. This in not limited to stock purchases, twitter trend analysis, finding out quicker way to reach destination, or better ways to move logistics; but people also want AI to enter in to areas which are considered as uniquely human for a very long time such as write poetry, art etc.

Recently, founders of Siri (Siri was later sold to Apple for 200mn$) came up with a personal assistant – Viv - which can interact with humans.

MIT Technology Review states that, "it might connect weather and geographic knowledge with information from your contact book to respond to a query like: “If it’s going to rain tonight, find me a pizza restaurant near my brother’s place.”

During demo Viv also answered questions like,

“Will it be warmer than 70-degrees near the Golden gate bridge after 5pm the day after tomorrow?” etc.

As per Charlie Warzel of Buzzfeed, "Viv listens to your voice command and processes both the question and its intent. Then, it determines which programs it should call up to answer your question and writes a bespoke code for it in 10 milliseconds, rather than following a set of rigid, prewritten code scenarios that the user must follow, which is how most other AI assistants work."

It is yet to see what Viv is really capable of and how the new baby in the world of tech giants will fight against apps created by Facbook where the number of users is already 1bn.

Sajeev