India-Stupid and India-Smart

[prasad1]

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Chetan Bhagat

| Jun 23, 2012, 12.00AM IST
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A very nice article in Times of India.
he goes on to say:
"We probably have too many smart people. But allow me, with my moderate intellect, to make one more assertion - we also have a lot of stupid people."
He says "Indian stupidity hotspot - our airports".
His last stupidity in airport takes the cake.

"Stupid situation number five is thrust on passengers arriving in India from abroad. After a long immigration queue to obtain a passport stamp, you queue up again as another official inspects the stamp. How stupid is that? You also write little slips of paper with a customs declaration, which is collected by a sleepy constable as you exit. Nobody ever looks at those slips. The constable often forgets to take them. What is the point of this? Has no one ever questioned this absolute stupidity?"

 

[Anand Manohar]

Dear Prasadji

Yes, I read the article. What amused me all the more was that this article appeared a day after the
President had granted clemency, commuted the Death Penalty and awarded a Life Term to a person
already dead - five years ago in a Govt Hospital !

That's really smart, isn't it ?!!!!!?

Guruvethunai
Yay Yem

 

[ozone]

In Engineering, especially in Software Engineering there is a concept of Peer Review. It comes from the perspective that 4 eyes can reassure of something that 2 eyes may at times miss.
Every one is in a hurry to finish off something that they think is mundane and unnecessary. Not until you discover that the man in the counter forgot to stamp your entry when some authority determines you have sneaked in without that stamp on your passport, would you realise the need to have it been cross verified.
In software, it is said 90% of the time is spent in code that verifies that nothing provided were wrong, or nothing went wrong.
High Availability and High Accuracy involve building systems that are redundant; the opposite is not always true though.

 

[prasad1]

In Engineering, especially in Software Engineering there is a concept of Peer Review. It comes from the perspective that 4 eyes can reassure of something that 2 eyes may at times miss.
Every one is in a hurry to finish off something that they think is mundane and unnecessary. Not until you discover that the man in the counter forgot to stamp your entry when some authority determines you have sneaked in without that stamp on your passport, would you realise the need to have it been cross verified.
In software, it is said 90% of the time is spent in code that verifies that nothing provided were wrong, or nothing went wrong.
High Availability and High Accuracy involve building systems that are redundant; the opposite is not always true though.

Having come from Software design background I understand that you program for every possible scenario, and all exceptions. I also understand that you build for redundancies.
I also have been industrial engineer (process engineer) so you know you can eliminate some totally redundant step to achieve efficiency.

Mr. Chetan Bhagats point is valid. We tend to go with the flow, and not cause any trouble for ourselves. But people working in the system must realize the stupidity and streamline the process.

If the slip of paper is not accountable, you know it is useless. If that paper is to be of any use (of course they can harass you) in any follow up action, it must be filed and documented. The paper they collect at the airport is not verified, nor systematically saved.

 

[venkat2206]

Atleast the system of collecting the slip at the exit provides employment opportunity to four constables (3 per each shift and one reliever!!). In the good olden days people used to bring lot of "foreign goods" and hence they might have started the system of verification of declaration in exit. Now it is certainly irrelevant. Job for Jobless people in the country.

An efficient immigration system - really very fast compared very many other countries - but at the end there is only one costable to verify whether the immigration stamp was put or not - a bottleneck process. Afterwards, every one's bag will come in the conveyor belt except yours !!. At the end, collection of declaration slips.

Venkat