The journey to the next quiescent point...

What should you do?

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 02:15:00 +0000

Try finding out what you don't want to do. Instead of trying to find what you really want to do.
Do not limit yourself.

Travel and Go-UNESCO!

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:33:00 +0000

This year has been great for travel, check this out -

Jan 1st	Goa	New years
Jan 8th	Bangalore	Work
Jan 15th	Mumbai	Marathon
Jan 22nd	Hyd
Jan 29th	Hampi	1st Go-UNESCO
Feb 5th	Hyd
Feb 12th	Auroville	Marathon
Feb 19th	Ajantha, Ellora	2nd, 3rd Go-UNESCO
Feb 26th	Ongole	Run trip

Oh and noticed the latest project on the right? Go-UNESCO is the latest travel thing i'm doing. This time more people are involved and the rules are more liberal. This challenge started because of the failure of another, i've written more details here. I'm yet to figure out how to make the leaderboard dynamic - right now i have to copy the code from the Google spreadsheet. But discovering gadgets for the spreadsheet has been great, i have a lot of possibilities in mind.

Check that to-do item out

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 07:22:00 +0000

So i've been hobbling the past few days. Which is an indirect reference that I finished my first full marathon at Auroville on 12th feb. The official certificates are out and my time says 4hrs 38minutes.

And, i'm not happy about it at all (with my performance that day). Over the last 4 months, the training had almost taken over my life. I'd followed the FIRST - run less, run fast program and had been acing the training sessions too. My aggressive target of a 3:50 finish seemed achievable too - had missed very few of the targets set in the program. But race day was a completely different story. Was half destroyed by 21k and fell behind Manoj (my running partner) by 23k. After that, I walked most of the remaining distance. Although it was humid and hot, it was not unexpected - I have run two halfs in Auroville before and the weather is always like that in mid february. I think I really have to improve is mental fitness. You know running's going to hurt, but how much pain can you take - that defines how well you do. Friends were saying I shouldn't be hard on myself, but then if I don't, who else will?

In the meanwhile, I am still trying to shake off the habit of waking up at 5am everyday, letting my shins heal and getting involved in other sports. Gapp introduced me to bouldering in Hampi and I want to do more of it. Also plan to bike to work everyday - this way i will be able to save a lot of workout time too. And need to look for a smaller house closer to work to save on commute time. There are a ton of things I want to - gounesco challenge, learn spanish, tripnaksha 2.0, build blinking lights for the cycle and so on. Who has time to get bored?

Stocktaking

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:38:00 +0000

I think I failed in achieving all three big personal goals I put for myself last year -
Mastering Spanish - I started off well with my friend Marissa helping me out with grammar, etc. I try to keep up these using the audio books i'd downloaded and by keeping my default FB and CS websites in Espanol.
Visiting Russia - I have had this fascination with Russia since I was a kid. Mostly because of the Misha magazines my dad used to get. My plan however was a non-starter from the beginning because I thought of going after winter had started there. Maybe some other time, or maybe after I'm done with traveling in India.
The Auto Ride - It was a great debacle. A learning in how you should always have a plan B and not rely on sponsors for the main idea. When the sponsor pulled out, the plan was completely crippled and that is not a good position to be in. It also reminded me why I don't like depending on vehicles or external factors.

But on the other hand, had some good things going too. I hosted a few couchsurfers, started on a great new job where i'm learning product management too, organized a city marathon (I owe half my white hair to the stress while working on this!) and traveled quite a bit (if only the normal way). This year has already been a mixed bag - started with partying in Goa, then falling sick while still there and missing out on a week of my full marathon training. Wonder what the rest of the year has in store for me. But whatever it will be, it won't be boring!

A little bit of Steve Jobs

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 02:54:00 +0000

I read Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement address again today. I realized that I had read it before only after I started. His story about death is something I have at the back of my mind most times, I just came back to the source after reading this article again. Here's the section I'm talking about -

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

I have changed what I was doing, sometimes took big losses too, when I felt I was not doing something I really wanted to. That man is inspiring.

The ride to edge of water

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 04:05:00 +0000

Woke up early today and rode to Himayat Sagar alone. My own freedom ride

Hyderabad Marathon

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:30:00 +0000

I'm organizing actually. It'll be 3 more hectic weeks.

#nohonktoday

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:55:00 +0000

#nohonktoday

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 03:03:00 +0000

Drove to The Manohar for a demo at Techsparks. Then Hitec city for a meeting.

Oh btw, have I told here that we're organizing the Hyderabad Marathon on August 28? It's going to be huge!

#nohonktoday

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 15:25:00 +0000

Drove to Secunderabad, then Bowenpally, Balanagar and KPHB. Nearly 50km today.

#nohonktoday

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 17:44:00 +0000

Drove the car to KPHB (super crowded place) too moreover.

#nohonktoday

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 14:42:00 +0000

Yesterday too, forgot posting.

The #nohonktoday project

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 14:31:00 +0000

My bike has a very loud horn. And as Spiderman's uncle had sermoned, with a loud horn comes a large responsibility, or something like that. I make sure that I don't honk too much while driving. In fact, i'd done entirely without a sound horn for almost 6 months earlier - it was more forced than voluntary because I didn't want to replace the battery when I was running low on cash and didn't have a job yet - but that is a different story. The point is, it is possible to not have to honk.

So what exactly is the #nohonktoday project? I will consciously count the number of times I honk when driving, and post #nohonktoday at the end of every day I manage to do without any honking that day at all. Simple, isn't it? But why exactly do I want to do this?

It's hard -

I drive about 12km one way everyday. And this is on Hyderabad's roads. As anyone who has been here would acknowledge, driving in or riding in a vehicle here is the closest you can get to a roller coaster experience in India. Or a near death experience - depending on which way your adventure antennae are bent. Bikes, cars, buses, autos, trucks - they all weave, swing and almost do a dance in the high speed traffic (that is, when you are not in a traffic jam). And there's honking instead of applause to accompany this dance. Driving here without complimenting some of these dancers (by honking of course!) is a little unfair to their skills and heartbreakingly hard!

Improve my swearing skills -

Having worked at a conservative corporate for quite some years earlier has made me rusty with my swearing. Gone are the days when in college we used to start with a swear word, end with one and have one more thrown in just to balance both. If I cannot honk, I can - rather, Will have to swear right!

Improve patience -

I can swear, but will it help? Not really - so i'll eventually improve my patience hopefully. I guess it's a good thing to have some patience. We'll see.

That's it actually. I have been doing a trial run since last week and now that i'm declaring it, i'll hopefully stay more motivated in getting as many #nohonktoday posts as possible. And hopefully these will also make my blog look a little more active :).

Picture courtesy - flickr

Next adventure and working with waste

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:45:00 +0000

Next adventure - http://eastcoastride.in/

Request for help -
Mountain Cleaners is a group in Dharmashala which cleans up litter left behind by hikers and locals. As it turns out, their luck sucked one find day when lightning struck a log house where they kept all their equipment. Read Shalabh's blog post for more details here. Help their good work by contributing in whatever you can. If you are in Dharmashala, join one of their walks.
Another good blog about waste in India here.

Gokarna waves sounds for download

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Sat, 07 May 2011 02:55:00 +0000

I'd been intending to this since a long time, but finally here it is. The sound of the waves I recorded at Gokarna in January this year. If you can't get sleep easily at night, this might help. You can download it by clicking the down arrow icon on the player.
Waves by Ajyrds

DIY project - LED indicators for bike

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 13:36:00 +0000

Ok, here's what they look like.

Yeah I know, they could've looked better.

So, I had soldered the LEDs in 4 parallel rows with 3 lights in series in each branch. The rated voltage for the indicator is 12V, but when I measured the voltage with a multimeter, it never was more than 10V. With each LED rated at 3V, the series connection was good for only 9V, but I still went ahead and connected it up.
Sadly, the lights survived for only half a day - most of them had burned out by the time I checked in the evening while coming back from work. The reasons can be one of the two -
1. higher voltage than the circuit was rated for
2. huge voltage fluctuations in the input supply - this was the reason I had not put up the lights even after I had the circuit ready. Sometimes there would not be any power even! I'd planned to get my mechanic to see it once, but then got bored of seeing the complete circuit sitting on my table for so long. I think I'll have to connect a resistor in series in all the branches to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Of course, i'll be building another set of lights. This time i'll try with multiple colors, I think white would not be very visible in daylight. Also maybe try lighting each row up one after the other.

Next DIY project - powered boat from a tetrapack juice can.

What's up?

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:42:00 +0000

I haven't been posting much because of so many other things going on.

First up, a job - I joined a startup a while back and have been getting back into the groove. It is a location based service for mobile and still in stealth. You can apply for a beta invite on the website - www.mojostreet.com. We are launching very soon and I hope you will all be excited then as I am now.

Second - travel. My travel this year -

Skoda ROWE trip to Kanha National Park
Solo ride and trip to Gokarna from Dharwad (chose to sleep on the beach too)
Mumbai trip for the Skoda calendar launch
Auroville marathon trip (I ran the half in 1:56 - barefoot :) )
Lazy trip to Vodarevu and Chirala beaches
I may have missed some, not sure

Third - blogging and maintaining websites. Not just here, but I blog at tripnaksha, maintain the Hyderabad runners, Hyderabad startups websites and their facebook/twitter channels too. I am starting another blog for adventure traveler blog at tripnaksha soon - http://traveler.tripnaksha.com. If you want to write here, let me know.

Fourth - well the third is that I am lazy. Been reading quite a bit and studying (Spanish) a little bit. Oh btw, my inspiration for starting on Spanish was Shalabh. He has been hiking up the western Himalayas for the last 18 months after he quit his job at a bank in London. This winter, he decided he would walk around old Delhi for 3 months and learn Spanish in that time because the good trails were all closed due to snow. He's now planning to write a book about these experiences and I wish him the best. He's an inspiration, and here's why I like people like him -

"[...] the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' What did they call such young people in Goethe's Germany?"

— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

What's next?

~~Skydiving in Pondicherry this weekend!~~
Unfortunately, the event was canceled by the organizers because of a delay in getting government clearances. But i don't want to lose my money by canceling the air tickets, so i'll be a trip to Pondy with my mate Biswa. Maybe play frisbee at Auroville or do something else. Staying with a couchsurfer there :).

3 Concepts I Really Dig

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:59:00 +0000

If you know me a little, you would know that I don't really have the mind for money and usually do stuff because I want to. Here are some ideas which I love precisely because they work the way I do. I hope you try these out too.

Couchsurfing.org

On CS, you host people/travelers coming to your city at your home - for free. If you have spare space at home or a couch, you are ready to host. CSers are usually (not always) backpackers or budget travelers, but almost always interesting people!

I had an account on couchsurfing years back, before their big server crash but never got around to using it. Last year, I got another account just before my hitchhiking trip and have fallen in love with the concept all over again. I got so much love during this trip from CSers that I vowed to help CSers myself. I have since hosted a few CSers, made great friends with a few more and even learned a new language!

Bookcrossing.com

I'm getting on this as soon as I can - I love the uncertainty of where a book can end up. Basically, you enter your book onto this system and leave it at a public place for anyone to pick up. You put up a small message inside the book explaining the system so that the book continues on its journey. You can follow this journey on the system if the next person enters the details and so on. How cool is that!

Sure, not all books will travel a lot - but it is still better than a book rotting somewhere. Although owning a book and collecting them to build a library is a great objective, I would rather like an open library added with a treasure hunt :).

Freecycle.org

I was looking for the equivalent of Craigslist, where people (at least in the U.S) frequently would list stuff they wanted to give away (for free), and came across it one day. One reason for giving away things is that disposing them is not easy and sometimes even costs money. It makes sense otherwise too - there are people who could use actually use this stuff. Also, it costs less energy to reuse or recycle things than build new ones. We Indians usually do reuse and re-reuse things but we also have a habit of hoarding things which we hope to use one day. I think it is better to give them away instead. Have to encourage my dad to do it more - you would not believe what all you could find at our place in Dharwad :).

The next quiescent point

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 03:35:00 +0000

Work
I joined a startup as an employee two weeks back. It is a location based service for mobile and we are trying to launch the product next month. Tripnaksha will now be a side project - I will try to keep improving it but ensure that it does not affect my performance at the job. This, I suppose is the next quiescent point?

Spanish
I got behind on the Spanish because of a lot of travel recently. I'm working with a software from Microsoft as well as a set of audio books. However, my most important teacher is my friend who I meet a couple of times every week. I also got some bilingual (English and Spanish) children's books from my friend which will be quite useful as well as entertaining. My effort in teaching my friend Hindi haven't gone great though - if anyone can help me in this, it'd be great.

Running

I have been running barefoot for a couple of months now. After the shin splints last year, I had to completely stop running for a month or two and then bought myself a pair of medium arch support shoes too. But I still used to feel pain after running a few kms. So I thought i'll try running barefoot (first started walking to get used to it) and have continued it as it has worked for me. I finished the half marathon at Auroville on 13th Feb in 1:56 and another 20k run to APPA a few weeks before.

Trips

Traveled quite a bit recently - drove down to Gokarna from Dharwad last month. The bus connectivity wasn't convenient so I went on my dad's Honda Activa. Since it was a weekend, the beachside shacks were all full (at least on Om beach) and I spent the night on the beach - by choice, I could have got something on Kudle beach. I lazed on the beach mostly and read my books. Met a fun group of tourists from Egypt and France and hanged out with them.

Frisbee

The Ultimate frisbee scene in Hyderabad is getting better! There's a group now playing every Sunday morning at Sanjeevaiah park. We plan to get one game on Saturday in Hitec city and one on Sunday at Sanjeevaiah park going soon. Check the facebook page for announcements.

Report from the roadtrip to Kanha

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 04:18:00 +0000

It is sometimes very nice to have everything arranged for you by someone else - this trip was one of those. The Skoda team had arranged everything - I only had to get to the airport. I did that with quite some time to spare too. I'd planned to meet up with my college senior who works for the government at the airport but his shift had yet to start. Coincidentally though, I met a former colleague from Infy and we whiled away our time talking.

I stayed overnight at a hotel near the airport and got to the airport again for the flight to Nagpur. We had a small press conference at the Nagpur dealership after which the expedition was flagged off. Packed lunch from the famous Haldiram's and we were on our way to Kanha!

The ride was pretty good, except for the traffic. The car (Skoda Yeti) handled quite well in the ghat roads at the end and I loved the feature where the fog lights switch on automatically in the direction of the turn. We got to this retreat called The Baagh which was definitely the nicest place I've ever stayed at. The food was heavenly! And the facilities were amazing.

We took 3 safaris inside the core forest area of the national park over the next two days. The first, with renowned wildlife photographer Mr. Nayan Khanolkar - a very knowledgeable, down to earth and friendly person, second with Mr. Adwait - another awesome photographer and the last with Ankit, who worked with the company doing the event arrangements on this tour. The conversations on each safari was different and quite enriching. I would not have appreciated all the wildlife if not for the experts with us. But we were not able to spot the star of the story - the tiger, in any of the safaris and that was a dampener. The second night, we all left for a joyride after dinner in the buffer forest zone. After a long while, I was able to see stars shining bright in the sky without any light pollution around. Other than that, we saw very little wildlife on this safari. We'd even missed a turn somewhere and had got out of the forest some 20km from our stay. Some had started grumbling (the temps were pretty low there) and wondering whose idea (Mrinalini) this ride was in the first place. And then, lo and behold, we see a tigress walking along the main road! Like Mrinalini and Nayan had said many times - if you're in luck, you'll sight a tiger even on a road; who would've thought!

The next day we did our third safari and went to Bamhini Dadar which has an abandoned air strip and is a vantage point for some great views of the park from a height. We were also shot on video for the ad which will show up in two weeks (tv18 and star group channels). I also showed up in their advert in Hindustan Times Brunch yesterday. Here are some pictures from the trip. I am yet to upload the GPS log files to Tripnaksha though.

Another trip and a new project

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 07:19:00 +0000

So, I'm going to Kanha National Park on a roadtrip starting from Nagpur tomorrow - with Skoda. As part of a promotion/contest for the launch of their new SUV - the Yeti. I'm pretty stoked that i'll get to drive a new SUV and do some offroading too. BTW, i'll be on air on Radio Mirchi Mumbai for a few seconds too today.

So, here's my new hack project -

It's a 40 year old radio I brought back from my grandparents' place. It wasn't working and I've stripped off all the ancient electronics inside. I want to use the frame and make a c.d player out of it. Now, I need to get a c.d player to hack around. Anyone interested in giving away an old unused but working c.d player (even a walkman will do)?

BTW, check out the new tripnaksha blog - i've been posting quite a bit recently - you can submit stuff you think is related to adventure/travel/india too.

Stereotypes

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 06:36:00 +0000

I was going to write about how I am a person who doesn't confirm to stereotypes, but then realized that I do confirm to one - that of not confirming to stereotypes! So instead of bragging unabashedly, I will now only ramble. And, you have been warned.

Someone once told me that stereotypes do not exist without a reason - they do have a basis on which they are formed. Yes, it is politically incorrect or even offensive to speak them out at times, but hey who doesn't like jokes about blondes or sardars! Then there are some others which are plain disgusting - like the one about girls from North-East being easy.

It's easy to fall prey to stereotypes, and I say this from experience. Take my last name for instance - Reddy. If you are an Indian and know a little bit about South India, you would definitely have heard about this last name and these are the usual stereotypes -

I am rich (or my family is)
I will rake in a couple of crore rupees in dowry
I am a Madarasi (a slightly derogatory term used to describe anyone from the south - signifying someone who speaks Hindi and English with an accent, eats idlis and dosas everyday, drinks a lot of coffee, oils his hair, studies a lot and so on)

No, i'm not bitter about it or dislike it - it's actually very amusing when I turn about to be quite opposite of what people initially thought. In fact, it is even more fun to watch when I don't mention my last name! I have even been assumed to be a Rajasthani on one occasion, in the general compartment of a train when I was traveling back to Jaipur from my sister's college in Bhopal. This chum wouldn't be satisfied till I told him my caste, notwithstanding my feeble protests that he would need a lesson in the caste system down South first. It was even funnier when during ragging period, I used to ask Andhra juniors to tell me where I was from. You see, I grew up in Karnataka and my Telugu wasn't great till I went to school in Jaipur - the taunts by my batchmates in the first year ensured that I learned passable Telugu. But that also meant that I had accents of different regions mixed in and this used to confuse the hell out of the juniors.

It is sometimes an advantage to be underestimated, stereotypes can be helpful that way. But that's a lesson for oneself too, to not form an opinion about somebody based on a stereotype!

Die trying?

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:22:00 +0000

Loved this post by Shalabh - http://theconfusedandthewandering.blogspot.com/2010/10/they-killed-me.html

SMS alerts when your website is hacked

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 04:01:00 +0000

"The real genius was in the production engineering; the whole thing could be built with standard parts ordered out of Sweet's Catalogue, with the exception of two three-dimensional cams and one printed circuit."

The Door Into Summer, Robert A. Heinlein

No, of course I did not have to use Sweet's catalog or use 3d cams and printed circuit.

Yes, I did it without spending any money too.

Prologue -

I had the unfortunate experience of getting the Tripnaksha website hacked a couple of times earlier. I did trace the problem to a vulnerable Joomla extension and removed it, but the most important thing (apart from putting up strong defenses) is that you are aware of the attack - and as soon as possible. I had been looking for a way to put up an alert system so that I get to know as soon as there is some activity (file edits/mods/deletions) on my server. A little bit of Googling pointed me to a post by Jerod Santo's post where he explained how git (source control) could be used to send email alerts. This technique has the additional benefit that you will be forced to use source control for your code (which will save your ass on multiple occasions!) and give you a log of all changes, if you are going to release the code.

However, I check email only once in two hours (I consciously try to avoid the urge to be more frequent), and I sleep for 6-7hrs in the night. What if I got hacked then? So, I wanted to get SMS alerts setup as well. I finally got that done yesterday and today cleaned up the script/workflow and tested it too. Here's the whole solution.

Solution in 3 steps-

Install git on your server. There are plenty of guides for that - google some or use the link to Jerod's blog above.
Use the ruby script by Jerod or the shell script (below) I wrote to send you an email as soon as there is a change in the git repository. You should have a mail program installed on your server already - I have sendmail, if you have some other - you will have to modify line no 46. Also modify lines 12 and 14 for the from and to addresses. Since I wanted the alerts to come to my phone as an SMS, I used "git status --porcelain" instead of just "git status" - this gives the summary of changes without any extra information. You can modify this to your needs as well. Here's what the typical summary looks like (M-modified, D-deleted,??-new files) -

M abc.txt
D parser.py
?? config/xya.cfg

*/10 * * * * /scripts/git_watch.sh /home/public_html/website/ >> /var/log/script_output.log 2>&1

Shell script to send email when git repo is changed


#!/usr/bin/env bash
#--
#    Name     : git_watch.sh
#    Author   : Ajay Reddy (modified from ruby version by Jerod Santo)
#    Contact  : "moc.ahskanpirt@yaja".reverse
#    Date     : 2010 October 29
#    About    : Check a git repo for changes and email to the provided email
#               address. Parameter - directory to check. Schedule with cron.
#               Inspired from http://blog.jerodsanto.net/2009/05/git-informed-when-your-site-is-hacked/
#--

SEND_TO="abc@domain.com"

FROM="watch@domain.com"
FROM_ALIAS="Git watch"
SUBJECT="A repo has changed"
BODY="A repo has changed"

if [ $# != 1 ]
then
  echo "Usage: #{__FILE__} [path to repo with .git directory]"
  exit
fi

path=$1

cd $path

if [ -d ".git" ]
then
  result=`export PATH=$HOME/git/bin:$HOME/git/lib/libexec/git-core/:$PATH ; git status --porcelain; `
if [[ ! -n $result ]]
then
  exit
else
  subject="Repo change : `echo $1 | awk -F'/' '{print $4}'`"
  message+="From: $FROM\n"
  message+="To: $SEND_TO\n"
  message+="Subject: $subject\n"
  message+="\n"
  message+=$result."\n"
  message+="Repo: $1\n"
  message+="Checked at: `date`\r\n"
  message+="Change log: \n\n"

  echo -e $message | /usr/lib/sendmail -t
fi
else
  echo "Sorry, no git repository at $path"
exit
fi

Setting up SMS alert -Now, I setup the script to send me an email to my gmail address because it is the one I use frequently. Next, I created another email account on Hotmail - Hotmail has a free email-to-sms service in India. I got this tip from a blog. Voila! Whenever there is a change in the repo, the script on the server sends an email to my Gmail account, this gets forwarded to my Hotmail account and further to my cellphone as an SMS. The SMS has from email address and other stuff, but I still can make some sense out of it as I had removed all the extra info from the git status command.

Your own SMS alert system for free!

Does the quote at the start make sense now?

The business of MFIs

noreply@blogger.com (Ajay Reddy) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 15:44:00 +0000

There's been a lot of hullaboo about MFIs - Micro Finance Institutions recently. First the big IPO from SKS microfinance and then more recently allegations of strong armed tactics by MFIs in recovering loan amounts.

MFIs -

So, what are MFIs? Micro Finance Institutions lend money in small amounts to people who wouldn't otherwise get credit from regular financial institutions like banks, etc. Their customers could be rural or urban. The amounts they lend could be as little as a few thousand rupees. Naturally, a bank does not see any value in lending such small amounts - their paperwork and red tape will cost more than that!

Why are their interests so high?

MFIs borrow from banks in order to lend to their customers. It is a marriage of convenience really - banks don't have the time and energy to go after small customers, the customers don't have all the paperwork that banks need and MFIs can make money by being the middlemen. The interest rates at which MFIs borrow from banks is high too, as the customers are classified as high risk. MFIs (ideally) don't just go lending money to people, they have a lot of ground work to do first. The community is a very important aspect of this lending - as most of the customers have little or no collateral to offer in return for the loan, the community and the social pressure is the biggest motivation to pay back. And, this community does not get built overnight. Also, fiscal discipline is a habit that has to be taught slowly. All this takes time, a lot of people and I doubt if MFIs could stay in business if their loans were cheap.

The customers are better off inspite of these high interest rates, because their only other sources for credit are moneylenders and loan sharks. The usual interest rates they charge start from Rs. 4 per Rs. 100 per day - calculate how much it will be annualized.

Strong arm tactics -

If everyone paid back their loans there would not be any problem right? Yes, and that would happen in an ideal world. But in the real world, that's not how it works. MFI field agents first nurture a community by lending to a few people first. These people are encouraged to become fiscally disciplined and pay back their loans. In time, more people in the community borrow from the MFIs and emulate this seed group of peers. When MFIs are evaluated by banks, they consider the numbers of such reliable customers too. So, the incentive for the MFI is to keep working to increase the number of reliable customers. However, it's a lot of hard work and some times their field agents take a short cut by repeatedly lending to the same set of reliable customers, and sometimes lending them more than necessary.

Now, if a customer uses the loan for an income generating activity, everything is ok. But what will happen if gets excess credit? Suppose X wants to get married. Since he has easy credit available now, he goes beyond his means and spends that money - but he has no means to pay it back. And there, you have it - a bad loan for the MFI. If the amount lent was small, as it ideally should have been, the loss can still be absorbed as some bad loans are to be expected and factored in anyway. But since the customer was lent repeatedly and maybe even in excess, the field agent is now in a tight spot. And may resort to strong arm tactics.

Also, imagine a situation when the erstwhile loan shark gets into this business and is now legally doing what he already was? Will he really change his ways? Fear and intimidation are the weapons which have always worked for him, why would he abandon them now?

The above is just my understanding (and some insights I got from talking to my sister) and is in no way complete knowledge of the situation. I would be happy to be corrected wherever I am wrong.