The Internet of Things for India

This presentation is prepared for a brainstorming session at Department of Information Technology (DIT), a division of Ministry of Communication & IT, India.

The internet of things

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A win not necessarily a defeat for the other

I liked the introductory voice in the Telugu movie Jalsa, especially the statement “Winning does not mean killing the other person”. I put this sentence in other words to make it useful for real life “A win not necessarily a defeat for others”.

For a long long time, I never understood why the people in Kashmir wanted to be separated, I was thinking that they are really bad people, of course this is based on the media reports.

I vaguely understood from the media that a Pakistani exhibits his patriotism by hating India. Apparently leaders in Pakistan give hate speech against India when they want the local people support.

I am pretty much aware the kind of energy levels a student would exhibit especially tendency to break something. Adding irresponsibility to these energy levels, makes the students very powerful. And if these guys get used to enjoyment, and get an idea of becoming a leader overnight while there exist many TV channels without any work nor any ethics; it is disastrous. A student publicly speaking about taking law and order in his hands, talking about a woman leader using vulgar language, beating a fellow member publicly on a live TV show; these are the easiest things a student can do. But a challenge for a good student is trying to get 10% or even 1% more marks compared to last year score.

I expect a good student to take up the tough job (it is easy to throw a stone, talk vulgar) e.g. preparing a report with supporting data why the Telangana region should be a separate state and viceversa. Do not think many people have done it, there can be many aspects and new way of putting the things. A student with open mind and out of box thinking can really make a big difference. Such things can be a good academic projects as well.

Breaking is easy, making is difficult but useful

The professors should advise students in these lines. This makes a better case for the Telangana or Samaikhrandhra while the students improve their knowledge and can become useful leaders rather the typical Indian Political leaders.

M.K. Gandhi - Propounder of Satyagraha and Ahimsa

Gandhi adopted Satyagraha (civil disobedience) and Ahimsa against Britishers for freedom for various reasons over 60 years. Any human society would sure go forward from this, if we are exhibiting civil disobedience after 60 years Gandhi era, it means we have still not moved up. What Gandhi has done in 1940s is not necessarily correct now. There was a reason for Gandhi to adopt civil disobedience as there were no listeners, no law, no civil rights etc. Today we have the biggest democracy, constitution, law & order and courts for resolving any issue, we do not even need civil disobedience today. Instead of using the above instruments (may be difficult for the common man to use them, but not difficult for heavy weight political leaders) for resolving the Telagana issue, our, so called, the leader try to use violent civil disobedience in the name of Gandhi, I am sure this behavior take us to the era before Gandhi, over 200 years back.

The bad people (mostly the political leaders) are not based on regions, they exist on any part of the land, of course they are plenty in India. It is not reasonable to expect Telangana would be clean after separating from the state of Andhra Pradesh. A bad guy continues to be bad guy even if Telangana is separated or not (analogy Newton’s first law of motion) unless we fight on the root cause. To counter a bad guy, you do not need a separate state, use the constitution. It needs to be proved if the constitution was not effective, in this case the constitution requires amendment first before the separate state.

Think Win-Win

And the outcome of the Telangana issue will not be a victory for the common man in either case in either of the regions, we keep moving backward if we do not change the way we think. When somebody expect something, obviously somebody else should yield the something (analogy Newton’s third law of motion), hence both the parties should start think of win-win situation for both parties keeping the common man in the mind.

Today technology can solve most complex problems (may be except the problems of the married man), in my views Telangana issue can be easily solved if it is treated as techno-economical problem rather than socio-political problem. The needed tools are very simple tools like Fish-bone diagram, Excel and PowerPoint for the cause and effect analysis, data collection/plotting, and presentation/expression respectively. Now the Telangana is a more complex problem as the political leaders wanted power and created social differences among the people.

Divided, we fall

For me, the “self rule and self respect” slogan for Telangana definitely provides an understanding of Kashmir issue at a broader level; but I do not support any view either on Telangana or Kashmir unless somebody proves something technically.

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The Need for IPv6 based Smart Grid for India

Introduction

India, a unique and a developing country with huge population, provides many opportunities for Greenfield application deployments. One of such applications for India is the Smart Grid for the Electric Utilities. Smart Grid provides smooth and efficient delivery of electricity from suppliers to consumers using two-way digital communication technology to save energy, reduce cost and increase reliability. Smart Grid is being promoted by many governments across the world as a way of addressing the global warming and emergency resilience issues. This article provides the benefits of IPv6 based Smart Grid for India.

What is IPv6?

IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is the next generation protocol for the Internet, the successor to the IPv4. Internet is the most innovative, successful and massive network ever created. IPv6 has been designed to support Internet connectivity for electric switches to super computers. IPv6 suite of protocols help in building the next generation Internet called the Internet of Things wherein every possible devices, machines, appliances, humans and other things would be able to communicate over the Internet.

Why IPv6?

Everything-over-IPv6-over-Everything

IPv6 is a transport protocol for interconnecting heterogeneous physical links (IEEE 802.15.4, IEEE 802.11, Ethernet, WiMAX, Cellular Networks, etc), and can transfer any type of information (Voice, Multimedia, Data, Real-time information etc.). IPv6 can handle any data rates from few octets per day to Gigabits per second.

Unique and Uniform Addressing Mechanism

Everything from a switch to super computer can be addressed uniformly and uniquely with IPv6 while the DNS (Domain Name Service) provides an established human readable naming. This eliminates address and protocol translators/gateways for connecting to the Internet.

Smart Grid with IPv6 for India

I made a presentation at IISc, Bangalore on Smart Grid for India as part of the TEC and IPv6 Forum India Work Shop on Greenfield Applications for Transition to IPv6 in India.

Mobile Broadband to reduce Digital Divide in India

I have come across many people who were confused between rural connectivity and digital divide, to clarify this, let me start with defining the digital divide. Digital Divide refers to the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all causing unequal acquisition of various skills. This leads to the knowledge divide among the people and exclusion of a section of people in the society. By this definition, there are lots of people in metros and other cities, where the connectivity is almost pervasive, who do not have access to the information and communication technologies.

Figure 1. Number of Connections in India per 100 (Source: TRAI, June 2009)

Indian government tried hard (announce plans) to increase number of broadband connections for effectively providing access to ICT thereby reducing the digital divide. When Dayanidhi Maran was the Minister of Communications & Information Technology in 2007, he set a target of 20 million broadband connections by 2010, and 9 million by the end of 2007 (1). Today we are in the middle of year 2009 and number of broadband connections at 6.4 million (Fig.1.).

The number people connected in India is 33% (33 people have either fixed, mobile or broadband connection for every 100people), this number is even lower in villages at 12.62% while urban connectivity is relatively better at 81%. This shows that the digital divide in India is rather high making large section people almost excluded from the society (Fig.2).

Figure2. Connectivity in India per 100 (Source: TRAI, Dec 2008)

There are many reasons why Maran’s target was not met. Keeping the political reasons aside, the following are some of the key barriers for the broadband penetration in India: