June 2007 Archives

The information on starting or registering a business in india, is not one of those things that are very well available. The government staff who do it, don't want any layman to be informed, because their bread and butter is in the bribe money they get on each and each thing they do to accept your registration to helping you understand what and how to do it.

But things are better with egovernance now.. read on. I think the company registration stuff is one of the first things to be a successful egovernanance project for India.

About this post:
I am setting up this blog post, and will be updating it regularly as I find more information on this and other interesting areas of starting businesses in India.. also I plan to write posts on my experience over years in helping people operate or handle their businesses... in the context of Indian companies only.

If you have something to share/add/suggest, you can email me at harish.palaniappan @ gmail.com and I will find time to discuss with you and add your information and experiences in this blog as well.

Information On Companies, Acts, and processes in India

May be these links help to kick-off your information collection drive:
Starting your own business in India
Forming a company in India
Starting a business - by doingbusiness.org
The Indian Ministry of company affairs website
Starting a business in singapore

MCA21 : Online company registrations and other e-form processes
The Indian ministry of company affairs has setup an online governance website since september 2006 (delayed by almost 6 months) with the help of Tata consultancy services.

* Note: Before you read further, understand that this post is not updated regularly when the ministry of companies of india's policies or processes change.. so you should look at this as a starter only.. and do find for yourself more information at the Registrar Of Companies offices around India.. or in the mca21 website.

Types of companies:
In the different types of companies that can be registered (or that can be created in India at all legally), there's no possibility of starting a single person company.. At a minimum, you can only start a private firm with 2 directors.

But, the government has been recommended by an expert committee, to add a new class of companies which is proposed as 'One person company' and probably may have OPC Pvt. or OPC Pvt. Ltd. as the ending name of the company.

If this recommendation is approved (which probably will be by amendments in the companies Act), then there will be a possibility of registering One Person companies in India. As of now, you atleast make a friendly legal entity as a director apart from yourself, like your mother or wife, or some friend, and register your company as a Private company with minimum 2 directors.

Though it is technically bad that India hasn't still recognized 'one person companies', practically it is better to register as a private company since that will avoid further paper work when your 'one person company' grows to have employees which then requires a conversion in your registration or possibly re-registration.

-- continuted --

"Size does matter: Even Newton missed the raspberry that fell the previous day."

Gravitation force was deduced after seeing an apple fall from the tree, because, Isaac Newton didn't notice the raspberry that fell the previous day from another tree in the park.

Gvernment schools in Tamilnadu, India, which educate children for very low, subsidized costs, are slowly but definitely moving towards giving computer education,which has been long lacking with such schools.

The good news is : Recently another such school, in Medavakkam has opened its doors to computer education. Thanks to (No, not the government..) but the UK based organization that set-up the whole thing.

Read this article in the Hindu.

The sad news is : Look at the number of children per computer, in the above news link.
It only proves that computer education is still a long way, for the not-so-rich students. Will be complex to train any student into a potential programmer from such an environment.

The Irony:
The Medavakkam schools computers were donated by an UK-based organization...not Indian software biggies.

Medavakkam is not too very far from the buzzing software outgrowths in the chennai city. While the geeks get busy with their work everyday in their software parks, the rise of Chennai as any software hub hasn't propogated to the surroundings.. same with bangalore and all those halli's (villages) around bangalore.

India.. is known for its dilemmas and two-faces.. one face showing incredible growth and demand for indian graduates, another face showing millions deprived of even high-school education.... one face showing rise in software graduates, another showing millions deprived of even getting to see a computer until they reach college (if they reach college).

Brings up many tough questions :
Are Indians so closed and careless of their surroundings? Shouldn't Indians have taken efforts to propogate the impact of software growth into their schools atleast in so many years now?

Would it be any cost at all for some of this big MNC companies to provide a couple atleast their old used computers to the schools rather than dumping them to the second sales market for a stupidly low price?

What happened to the 'Communications minister Dayanidhi Maran and HCL' combine's 10,000 buck computers.. Where are they? Why aren't they in schools?

Some big software companies like Infosys, Wipro have regular interactions with colleges such as IIT, BIT, NEC etc, and even get to train there, and have industry-customized courses targeted to make graduates for the industry. Are they only seeing only the big colleges and the rich colleges as potential sources? What has the industry even attempted to do for schools?

Are Indian software biggies, and their employees SELFISH to this extent? Do Indian corporates need the cue all the time from foreigners to be inspired to do something for their country?

Every Indian software biggie has a Foundation or something to do work that helps the society... but are they doing it and thinking about it as seriously as they think about making money? Are these Foundations putting the money in the proper places?

Are Indians waiting for politicians to become computer literate and understand the importance of computers and then do something? what another 50 years for quality computer education in schools closer to or even within these buzzing sofware populated cities?

Where are we heading? What are we doing? Why is India having two faces in each and everything..

Recently I received an email from Mani Satya Samuel Jayaprakash Santosh. He is a friend of mine.. No, not a grammatical mistake, all that is one person's name.. and he is one of the top 5 long email id guys at cognizant, my last office. We obviously shortened it and called him JP.
While as you may expect we all often make lots of fun on that name, its one really really secular name. hmm. may be not too really because it lacks a muslim part.

I hope JP is not going to look for me after reading one full paragraph about his name here.. agreeably way too much of it. Ok. I will quickly move on to the email he sent.

It was about Portal India Quiz .. and he had marked me to see who was the winner of round 10.

Both the quiz site, and the name of the winner of round 10 excited me.

For, JP was the winner of round 10.. ,
and,
the quiz had an interesting flow, where the person who answers a question, gets to ask the next question. Isn't it more interesting when we can question others and they have to answer. Feels like you are taller than the others.. atleast as long as they figure out the answer. And for obvious reasons, people go to extraordinary effort to use their brains when they know its someone else who is to take the pain searching for the answer.

I have been through this flow before when we quiz each other at college or get-to-gether's, but going through it on the internet, and importantly on Wikipedia, was very exciting.

For any web person, or software programmer, wiki is a cute little, but powerfully big software for content editing and management. And they give it free for community's sake.

No mention of its features or introduction may be neccessary, because everybody sometime must have known that the software world goes ga-ga over wiki, next to google search. For starters though, one aspect should tell it all, that, whatever you see in wikipedia with all its categories and inner pages, can be setup in just a few mins of using the software (except for the content which many users have to start posting).

So, it was exciting to know that this interactive quiz, was one of those many things that you can do with a wiki... and probably only with a wiki you could play quizmaster to make 1000's of unknown people on the web.

You can see / participate in the Quiz here: Portal:India / Quiz

Since its online, and people have time, we could say many get their answers googling for it, but the questions don't sound like any search program in google will know that one. But by the way the questions are, and the way people have explained their answers, this quiz rocks.

One thing.. that I didn't understand though was,
some rounds of the quiz had more questions than the others.. . may be probably it took more to make a winner because everyone was scoring. I didnt understand still whether that was the reason.

If you have an aquarium at home and sometimes bothered about having proper guidance in maintaining it, or bringing down the fish death rate for months... then this website below should be of good help.

http://www.firsttankguide.net

if you need more help, books seem the best.. because its not so common to find people who can guide with scientific info on aquariums.. evens vets only seem to choose to specialize in larger animals in India, rather than fish that too decorative fish..

Update 30 July 07

Just select a specific type of fish that comes in many 100 colors and varities like chichilds, and discus fishes... and rear different types and colors of them in the same tank. This will help in lesser maintenance and you don't have to worry much about fish incompatibles or fighting over different species in the interest of dominating their space in your tank.

If you select the first type of tank, where you breed different species of them in the same tank, then you need to find an informative fish shop dealer who can tell you which fish is incompatible with which others, so you don't have to protect your fishes from fighting with each other. Also some reading might be neccessary.

Fish of the same kind doesn't mean they won't fight.. Regarding fighting and incompatibles, you actually should read books, search information, ask people or shopkeepers, and importantly have one or two tank divider slates or slides for stopping them fight until you find out a remedy.

To understand how interesting and important fish breeding could get, read this post about somebody's oscar fish fighting with its partner.

Some good sites:
http://www.elmersaquarium.com/:
This site has good amount of information on fish types, fish compatibilities, and importantly covers all the common aquarium problems with quick solutions.
Click on 'Site Guide' link on the homepage of this site to see its index of resources.

It has an online aquarium manual too. here

It has an interesting guide on a variety of fishes here.

fish-tank-guide.com has a list of fish types and some notes on it.. good for a quick read. (scroll to the bottom of page in the link)..

For books, you could search up the appropriate books from amazon or the FishBookStore.com

More links:
http://www.aquariumfish.net
http://www.petfishtalk.com
Aquarium mainenance - Do it yourself homemade filters, sumps, kits

Just finished my second book in my lifetime. Finished reading a book... not writing it (as if you thought I am great at writing). Yes, this is only the second instance when I have been absorbed into some book to the extent of finishing it.. that's for non-academic books.

Ok. This book was 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson.. one book that really sounded to me like it deserved all the testimonials mentioned on its covers. These days, every other book on the rack seems to add great testimonials on its covers making a selling point.. but this book could have been good even without those words of its good readers on its covers.

The book is for scientifically, and historically inclined though... If you are somebody who has spent hours on philosophical thoughts, and questions like 'What is the purpose of life', 'How big is the universe', 'Who is running it', 'How did humans happen', etc., you might like this book, though you may not find answers to all your questions. The book would kindle your thoughts to a higher level on the areas of such questions as above and help you be more informed about the questions or possible answers to even things like 'Whether god is there, and how did he create the universe'.. though it might not make the definite answer.

I am not good at writing book reviews, at least not used to for now, so if you happen to read this, you can lazily try checking this book on your visit to the book shop next time. May be we are the same frequency and you like it too.

Climate Change Basics:
Climate change, as we know is about how the climate or weather in the earth changes due to the effects of rise in avergare temperature.

Temperature rise or fall happens by design, by nature of the earth, hence climate changes and the consequences it has on life on the planet are all natural. And it would happen many thousand years once as a cycle even if humans weren't inhabiting the earth. One might ask: So, why are we humans disturbed about rising temperatures and climate changes??

It is because we have directly or indirectly fastened the rise in temperature by polluting the atmosphere with gases they call Greenhouse gases. We have fastened the process to an extent where climate changes that happen only once 'many thousand years ' could happen in just 'many hundred years'.

Greenhouse gases, the effect:
Greenhouse gases are those that create a greenhouse effect on the earth.

Back in school, or elsewhere we have learnt that Greenhouse effect is good for plant life and hence we have the 'Green' in the term Greenhouse (The house structure made of glass within which they grow plants).

Greenhouses help control the environment inside as best suitable for plant life, and helps avoid almost all external agencies that affect plants when they grow in open ground.

If something is good for plant life, it can be straightly said that something similar should be good for human life also. Then: why are we worried about greenhouse effect on the earth??

Well, its little different. We are not worried about the greenhouse effect itself.. by nature greenhouse effect is already there in the earth and this is the one reason why humans and all life survive. But, too much of greenhouse effect is what we are worried about. To say about it, we have to remember that even in glass enclosed greenhouses, they have equipment to control the temperature and moisture levels to make sure the greenhouse effect is optimal to support plant growth and not high enough to hurt or kill plant growth.

To study more on greenhouses, and the effect, you may read the How stuff works article in the below link .. and compare all explanation it provides regarding a greenhouse.. to the earth itself.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/eden2.htm

How humans affect climate change, and the factors involved in controlling the change:
The reason for rapid increase in temperature, is due to pollution from burning fuels, and other stuff that release huge amounts of greenhouse gases.

Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, and water vapor...chiefly.

We mostly know that the fuel we burn, the factory exhaust gases that we release into the atmosphere, etc., constitute directly/indirectly a huge increase in most of the above mentioned Greenhouse gases...especially carbon dioxide which is favouritely identified as the culprit in climate change.. Culprit, it is definitely, for it is one chief greenhouse gas that humans have heartily added and still adding in huge amounts to the atmosphere every second.

But Water vapour?? It is something that is majorly exhausted by the oceans that bask in the sun everyday...what can we do about that?? Water vapour is good in that it supports the effect of cooling.. hence decreasing the temperature... but water vapour is also important because the earth could enter an ice age if we have too much water vapour.

There's definitely nothing much humans can do about controlling the amount of water vapour thats in the atmosphere. Not often do they discuss water vapour during climate change debates.

How are nations tackling climate change:
Different countries have different views about climate change, its effects, and especially their priorities to take measures on it. But collectively, the most important commitments are being made through an international body formed by the United Nations, called the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The UNFCCC is a treaty that basically lays down rules or commitments that nations can adhere to. Many nations agree to it.

The basics of the UNFCC treaty declares that all countries that accept the treaty will record their greenhouse gas emissions regularly throughout their country, and share the data with all other countries. The reason behind sharing is not only to make countries compete to avoid the embarrassement of being the top pollutants, but also for the simple reason that single nations cannot fight climate change, and collective data and collective reduction in emissions is important.

It is like, one country may not see any advantage of reducing its greenhouse gases, unless all its neighbors are also reducing their greenhouse emissions (especially highly polluting countries in the neighborhood).

The Kyoto Protocol
In December 1997, in Kyoto- Japan, the UN made an amended to the UNFCCC treaty in consultations with many countries, which became the Kyoto protocol. Countries that agree to the protocol commit a timeline(Individual targets) to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 50-55% of their 1990 emission values.

The UN market and negotiate with nations trying to convince them to accept the kyoto protocol. The effort has been good and by December 2006, there were close to 170 countries which accept the protocol(out of the current strength of 192 member countries in UN).

It is by this protocol that Unleaded petrol and gasoline has replaced its Leaded counterpart in most countries.

More the acceptance, more is the pressure on countries in UN that have not accepted the protocol. Though the world's top greenhouse gas emitter, which is also the top veto power in the UN and the most powerful country on the globe today, the United states of America doesn't approve of the kyoto protocol.. yet.

In the process of negotiating countries to accept the protocol, the UN exempts countries like China, India from mandatorily committing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions with an individual target... though they have accepted the protocol.

America's argument is that, this exemption, which is a strange excuse, flaws the kyoto protocol and its validity... and hence America wouldn't accept it and make committments either. Unless all nations take the same steps and reduce their emissions its not worthy of America to do it is the american president's argument. Others say that is no good excuse or conduct of America, which is the topmost greenhouse gas emmitter in the world.

The recent G8 aggreement:
In June 2007, at Heiligendamm, Germany, the G8 nations comprising Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, have agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% of their 1990 levels. This is similar to the kyoto, or this is just the same protocol revisited, but, this time the G8 nations which include America have an agreement and that's what is making this interesting.

This meeting and the agreement is just being released as breaking news at this time of the writing, which states that the deal is to reduce 50% of emissions by all G8 nations by 2050. The details of it are yet to be discussed, or made official.

Update - 8 June 2007:
This official UNFCCC press release states that the breakthrough for discussion in December 2007 is achieved.. so it must mean that America is willing to accept to reducing emissions but things are not layed out as to How much or By when is not yet confirmed.

Related links for detailed reading:
How Stuff works: Global warming
Wikipedia - Greenhouse gas

UNFCCC Links:
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Basics of UNFCCC