The Italian Job

'Donating Computer from Italy' read the subject of the email which was tagged DYPC in my GMail.

DYPC is what we call DonateYourPC.in fondly. DonateYourPC.in is a website that I cofounded and now manage. This site is a place where people who want to donate their old computers or periherals can register their donation offer details and non-profit organizations like NGOs, schools etc who need PCs but can't afford to buy new machines, can request for these donated computers.

We occasionally get donation offers from people in India and a few times even foreign nationals have offered to donate PC (which we had to politely reject!) but most of them were from USA, so 'Italy' was the only surprise part in the subject.

However as I read that email, my initial euphoria evaporated. Read this:

"I recently got a new computer, since the previous (a desktop) no longer worked under any operating system. I checked it in depth and have come to the conclusion that the only unusable components are its motherboard and its graphics card. Of course these add to a monitor and a keyboard, as well as some cables, to spare.

Knowing that India is rapidly becoming a hotbed of innovations in IT, I was struck by the idea to donate it to some needy people in said country, who may very well make a great use of it."

Even if you don't try to read between the lines, you can easily understand that our Italian friend was trying to 'donate' a computer whose motherboard/graphics card were not working. I don't know whether monitor and keyboard were part of the defective lot too! To top it all he tried to dump this piece of hardware shit in the name of helping needy people while trying to flatter us.

It didn't end there. "I would feel guilty if I tried to sell those parts, although I can find no one who is interested in buying them". Wow! So he did try to sell off the junk but could not find anyone and hence the philanthropic streak.

We often read that thousands of tons of electronic waste is sent to developing countries like India from Europe and North America. So I am quite sure that even though I refused his donation offer now, this computer will reach some part of our country on a ship someday for recycling.

(Check out DonateYourPC.in if you want to donate your old computer or would like to volunteer)

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Use mobile to save paper: a really implementable Idea!

From over past couple of months we have been watching Idea ads giving us ideas of how to use mobile to save paper. I dare not say that any of those ideas is 'impossible' to implement but you will agree that all of them will take much more efforts than just 'walk and talk'.

But a very easy way to save paper is to abolish the necessity of carrying printouts of tickets booked online. Think for a moment, when was the last you visited a Railway reservation office (except when not trying for Tatkal at the time of some major festival!) to book your tickets. We always book the tickets online and more often than not the printout is 2 pages instead of 1. Same goes with bus tickets booked on redbus.in or ticketvala.com.

Most of the cinemas these days let you collect the tickets just if you show the credit card with which you booked the tickets hence eradicating the need of printing the email confirmation.

IRCTC can take passenger's mobile number and send an SMS confirmation when a ticket is booked. TTEs should accept this SMS confirmation or the email confirmation (accessed on your mobile) sent by IRCTC.

Considering the fact that IRCTC is country's biggest e-commerce contributor and does one third of all tickets sold by Indian Railways, you can understand the number of tickets printed in India and if we cut down the tickets printed we can save a lot of paper.

More over just think of not worrying about printing tickets when not booking tickets from office ;)

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DYPC Wishes you a Greener Year!

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HOME : Limited Edition!

One thought that stays with me during entire duration of Yann Athus-Bertrand's "HOME" is that if I would have been able to capture even a single snap among innumerable frames in its 93 minute duration, I would consider my life not a near-total waste!


HOME is a spectacular movie, and I think that is understatement of the decade. More beautiful than I ever saw anything on NatGeo or Discovery, this movie shot almost entirely in slow motion and more often than not from very high altitudes gives an amazing view of our home, the earth!

It's about how we have changed the planet in last 40 years. Not going stats-heavy like 'An Inconvenient Truth' but still giving the details about how things are changing and how we may be affected. Often accompanied by very sarcastic (and impressive) quotes and stark comparisons between lifestyles.

One of my most favorite sequences is about Dubai. The camera already perched high, starts from the bottom of a sky scraper and continues to move towards the pinnacle while background score (once again terrific throughout!) reaches a crescendo! Awe inspiring and frightening at the same time.

Watch Home, on YouTube till 14th June. Even if you don't care about planet, may be you will once you realize it is SO beautiful.

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China's new horror show!

I had always believed that Indian politicians and bureaucrats are most short sighted people in the world but compared to what China is doing, these people have begun to seem like greatest statesmen! I really don't have words to express my disgust over the news of their building a 108 km metalled road to the base of Mt. Everest. And this is nothing else except showing their muscles at the time of 2008 Olympics when Olympic torch is carried to the Mt. Everest.

Myopic journos and writers infatuated with China's much flawed (in my opinion) gravity defying growth story may harp about how the boom in manufacturing industry has transformed a nation of over 1 billion a decade ago to a global super power now, but my concern is that the way China has destroyed ecological balance in delicate Himalayan region can be compared to worst carnage by mankind ever. You can imagine the intensity of construction activities considering they want the work to be finished in 3 months!

(On this note: The annual floods in north-east India caused by Brahmaputra and flash floods in Nepal,Bihar and West Bengal have been largely attributed to Chinese interventions by Indian security establishments! More)

The glaciers supplying water to major North Indian rivers Ganga and Yamuna have been melting at alarming rates and this new project by China is going to make the matters worse! Burning of fossil fuels, blasting of not-so-stable Himalayan rocks, and cutting of thousands of trees leading to loss of habitat for so many species. I fail to count the horrors!

But even more horrifying is the fact that perhaps nobody is going to be able to China from going ahead with its absurd plans! China's human rights record is so pathetic that anyone who dare protest will face crackdown, possibly death penalty or if he lucky, prison! I don't see any other country, including the all powerful G8, sticking up their nose in this matter. Neither I think is China going to heed to them if they do! Neither I expect any NGO to be able to make China deter from their plans. So forget Greenpeace to stage any dharna in Beijing!

(There has been no response from Greenpeace yet on this issue, and their response to reports that China is causing maximum emissions in the world, has been very weak and lame!)

So China is going to make a mess of one of the most delicate environments on the planet and I don't know what to do!

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