Why BHIM is weak ?

The UPI's  proud - a feather in the cap- app BHIM has been weak and ailing for some time. There has been frequent failures of ...a) failures of transaction b) frequent time-outs and now finally a failure to register.

It is to note that irrespective of number of times uninstalled and reinstalled this failure is constant.

Then you go through the comments box. Most of the negative remarks are of recent origin.

When I tried to send a complaint I received an automated mail saying   UPI has permanently closed the response to contact mail id.

What a pathetic situation!.

An app that worked very well for nearly two years suddenly failing means ...don't you feel something fishy.

Hope people like PAYTM and Goole Pay are not part of this foul game to cause disrepute to BHIM and influence  consumers to their fold.

It is not believable that a country full of smart software professionals could not fix a small bug which is causing a loss of brand image

Can't they change the contact Mail ID in the App's update version?

Why not put an end to this political rigmarole?

It is shameful to watch the behaviour of elected members of Karnataka state assembly with the recent crisis blowing up. It is no surprise that the coalition government cannot last as it was formed by the parties rejected by people.  I had outlined this as soon as the election results  were out leading to hung assembly.
Look at today the tug of war going on !!

Now, after barely 14 months later, 14 members from the supporting party have resigned from the party  due to dissatisfaction on account of "non performance".

Initially the CM tried to blame BJP of horse trading.  They had strongly refuted the allegation and said it is internal squabble between JDS and Congress.

What could be the squabble about?

     My guess is that the EMI ( hope you understand) has not been paid as per agreement and the MLAs getting a fear that they had been taken for granted. When demand is raised both party bigwigs  look the other way. "A pig that has two masters is bound to die of starvation" 

    Naturally when the promises have not been kept it generates contempt and acrimony. These are all undercurrents and common man like us never come to know the size of the deal nor the true culprits.
If the media members get to know also they may not reveal either because of friendship with the political clout or of fear.

The Chief minister has ignored the governor's recommendation to face the 'floor test' to  win the motion of confidence twice . Obviously he realizes that is not going to be possible.

  The strategy of JDs & Congress today is to force the President to dismiss the government  and cry victimisation by BJP  ( I am writing this as the drama is still in progress & the out come is yet to unfold)

To what level the so called 'leaders' can stoop !!

   We need to amend  the constitution whereby numbers ( or majority) are not important.  It must enable the largest political party to form the government whether it enjoys majority or not. They should be allowed to work for a period of minimum three years without fear of 'no confidence' in the assembly floor. For more details please see my earlier post on Election reforms.

    A skeptic may say ' you get the government you deserve'. To a great extent it may be true. That cannot be the reason to remain as a passive witness to looting of tax payers money by a few politicians.

   If the system need to be corrected it should be, especially when the required strength is there with the central government to make the corrective action.

Update as on 23/07/2019 on the political crisis in Karnataka

After  prolonged sessions for two days with very boring rhetoric by the most of the treasury bench speakers finally the speaker of the assembly, Shri Ramesh Kumar, decided to conduct the voting on no-confidence motion. The result was well known even before voting started. The coalition government fell by receiving  99 to 105 votes against it.

It is to be seen that how many more comic situations may come up before next government is formed. Till then the media world will have plenty of news alias rumors and gossips in the name of discussions.  Jai Kar-nataka, Jai Bharat !!!!

Governments & Numeracy :Case study of Chamundeshwari Electric Supply Corporation

    Come the month of April, our Mysore  electricity supplier M/s Chamundeshwari Electricity Supply Corporation promptly revises the tariff rates without fail. I had seen, it is almost 30% increase in the last 3 or 4 years. It is more than the annual inflation index.

One major reason is ever increasing the administrative overheads.  Despite increase in solar power supply the CESC is unable to control the inflationary trend in its operations.

Leave that alone. Whenever they have to hike the power tariff at least it should encourage the Low Energy Consumers and discourage the High Energy Consumers. 

In reality the opposite is happening : I consider consumers using less than 100 units are as LECs and above 100 units as HECs.  

The table below reflects the tariff increase in 2019 as compared to 2018

Tariff slabs	Year 2018-19 (Rs/kwh)	Year 2019-20 (Rs/kwh)	Percent increase
0 to 30 units ( kwh)	3.45	3.70	7.2
30 to 100	4.95	5.20	5.0
100 to 200	6.50	6.75	3.8
Above 200	7.55	7.80	3.3
Fixed charges (for all)	50 +60 +60= 170	60+70+70=200	17.6

[Fixed Charges : First KW connection is lower than additional KWs and an all electric home is provided with 3KW connection.]

Let us analyse what difference it makes to the consumer in different slabs in terms of rupee value

( This includes Fixed charges of the respective years)

Tariff slabs	Year 2018-19 (Rs)	Year 2019-20 (Rs)	Percent increase
Fixed Charges	170.00	200.00	17.60
Up to 30 units	273.50	311.00	13.71
Up to 100 units	620.00	675.00	8.90
Up to 200 units	1270.00	1350.00	6.3
Say  220 units	1421.00	1506.00	6.0

What puzzles me is that 'why CESC is penalizing the  lower strata of population with higher percentage increase in tariff'. In fact the higher end users should have been charged with higher rates of tariff to discourage excess usage of electrical energy.

Thus I see a basically a faulty approach in Policy Making.

    One can easily see the ‘Low Energy Consumer’ is taxed more (13.7%)as compared High Energy Consumer (6.0%), more than double . 

   This gap has widened because the Fixed Charges have been hiked disproportionately. This affects the LEC to shell out higher percentage from his monthly  savings.

    How to remove this anomaly?  

  A fair solution is to fix a %  increase based on the total revenue and work backwards to evenly distribute across all groups.

    As we do not have the data about the distribution of consumer base in different slabs  it is difficult to rework the exact solution. However a model calculation based on 6% increase in revenue is shown in the table below.

Tariff slabs	Year 2018-19 (Rs/kwh)	Suggested (Rs/kwh)	Percent increase
0 to 30 units ( kwh)	3.45	3.65 (3.7)	5.8
30 to 100	4.95	5.25 (5.20)	6.0
100 to 200	6.50	6.90 (6.75)	6.15
Above 200	7.55	8.00 (7.90)	6.0
Fixed charges	50 +60 +60= 170	50+65+65=180  ( 200)	6.0

( figure in the bracket shows CESC’s present rate)

The new rates are not way off from the present rates except the Fixed Charges which is significantly lower, down by 11%.

What difference it makes to the consumer in absolute terms of payment in rupees?

Tariff slabs	Year 2018-19 (Rs)	As per suggested rates	% increase
Fixed Charges	170.00	180	6.0
Up to 30 units	273.50	290	6.2
Up to 100 units	620.00	657	6.0
Up to 200 units	1270.00	1347	6.0
Say  220 units	1421.00	1507	6.0

We can see the impact of tariff revision is uniform across all strata and not very much skewed in favour of the HEC

It is important to see the suggested rates have not altered  the dues from the HEC from the present rates declared but at the same time giving relief to LEC.

Tariff slabs	Year 2019-20 (Rs)	As per suggested rates
Fixed Charges	200.00	180
Up to 30 units	311.00	290
Up to 100 units	675.00	657
Up to 200 units	1350.00	1347
Say  220 units	1506.00	1507

If this does not meet the expected overall revenue,  the percentage increase has to be reworked as 7 or 8 uniformly across all sections and not arbitrarily adjust the numbers without concern for Low Energy Consumers.

The country has to go a long way in numeracy to understand the significance of numbers in decision making.

Twitter and WhatsApp- need for monitoring

I have a twitter account since 2009. Seldom I used it but for announcing  my new blogs whenever I posted one. I did not take active interest as it looked a very murky world ( even now it is) and limited space to express anything useful.

We can interact with anyone and everyone, known or unknown, a celebrity or common man we may get instant response.Though I was aware of it, I could not pay attention as I had better things to do earlier.

But now that I have lesser things to do my attention turned to twitter and social media. I felt these were better than noisy meaningless TV debates  fighting for TRP rating

My experience in the last four or five months did not alter my earlier views. It is still a murky place lot more than what I had imagined. If you try to follow the threads you get lost like in the bylanes of a metro city.

The amount of misinformation or rumour and the speed with which it can spread is much much faster than TV media or Print media. Many people retweet  without thinking or verifying the facts. Then there is hashtag (#)  to classify or categorize your message. There is lot more to know...

Meanwhile the Parliamentary Committee has called for a discussion with Twitter Official to  control and prevent wrong usage of the twitter handle. This scheduled for Feb 11th 2019.  I have sent my suggestions through a tweet.

Good news is that offcials of Twitter also aware of the possible misuse during election campaigns and are willing to cooperate with the law of the land.

  In case WhatsApp the  problem is different.  There in the name of protecting privacy of individuals  they claim everything is encrypted. They cannot dig information to report origin of the news or how the message got spread. In short there is no traceability. This will make the investigation process very difficult in case of any legal cases arise based on Whatsaap ( click on the figure to read the news item and the suggestion)

As these social media platforms are still evolving it should not be difficult  to incorporate necessary change.

It is very important that false messages and provoking or instigating messages should be  made punishable, both in Twitter and WhatAapp.  The netizens must learn to use them as fire. Negligence or lack of vigil may create a law & order problem  anywhere in the country any time

De licensing Charging stations for EV

The latest news is that individuals can set up EV charging stations and no license is required.  This is from the ET Energy News.  Click the figure to see enlarged figure.

What is not clear is how one is going to figure out the business potential. Though it is not a matter of concern for the government it does not  give any direction to the overall concept to move ahead. It needs volume of vehicles  to seek the charging stations. Why anyone would come forward to put up a charging station where electric vehicles are not around ?

In essence it allows the grid power to be tapped for charging with a tariff cap of 15% over the average cost of supply. This opens up lot of questions.  Assume average  cost of power is Rs 7 per kwh. 15%  is Rs 1.05 ie  the charging station can  charge the EV owner at the rate of Rs 8.05 /kwh if my understanding is right.
 I expect the possibility of  more electric scooters than electric cars  in the near future which may stand to benefit from this scheme and hence restrict this discussion for two wheeler charging needs.

A two wheeler even after 6 to 8 hours of charging consumes only 1 to 1.2 kwh as battery size is between 21 Ah to 33 Ah with a charging current of 1.2 Amps.

In other words even after allowing for 6 hours a person earns only Rs 8 per terminal !! Is there any attraction in terms of revenue ?

A  seeker of alm  outside any big temple or Church would earn more than that in that period !! ( just in a lighter vein)

What is the cost of installing a charging station and the return on investment (ROI) apart from the investor's margin ? These questions certainly does not get any answer with this kind of press release or reporting.

Best way is to insist on solar based charging stations as a stand alone  ( with a back up from power grid for nights) and use net metering for  connecting to the grid.

Thus even when there are no vehicles to charge, the generated power gets exported to the grid and gets some income for investment  for the entrepreneur. Here charging station with two or three terminal is just an add-on to the solar power generation unit from investment point of view. This will also help to identify the Charging stations dedicated for the specific purpose of EV charging.

The revenue model for such stations is already discussed in  the  embedded slide share in my previous  post.

Inching towards EV infrastructure Policy

Today's news item confirms that some thinking is going on with the government machinery about installing charging stations for electric vehicles.

Almost two years back we had pointed out in our slide presentation that how the charging stations can be installed in all parking lots of colleges, rail and bus stations, malls etc.

It was also pointed out that with the smart apps and prepaid charging systems one can develop real time billing for the power consumed by the charging duration. Be it half an hour or three hours the appropriate amount is calculated and deducted from one's subscription.

Those who have not viewed the full presentation can view it here.

Solar Charging Stations from Kabeeranban

In this blog we keep reiterating unless the petrol based two wheelers  are replaced ( in big cities) neither pollution will go down nor the burden on exchequer will reduce.

The petrol based two wheelers are causing more harm whichever way  one looks at for country's economy and environment.

Electric vehicle Policy - Is the Govt serious?

Addressing  the industrial executives at the Global Summit organised by Niti Ayog the PM said today:

"  ....India will do whatever it takes to usher in electric mobility in a big way as it holds immense promise for economic growth and ease of living "

We have been listening to this for almost four years ever since this BJP came to power. Except opening some Charging Stations here and there or ordering 10000 Electric cars with Tatas and Mahindras  nothing truly has happened to call a big policy break through

Is it lack of technology ?  CERTAINLY NO .

Charging station infrastructure can be created in no time with solar grids. People will come forward to invest as the surplus power can be sold Power corporations  whenever vehicles are not charging. Hence that cannot be an excuse.

Range anxiety of vehicles can be easily overcome if charging stations facility are made available at colleges, hospitals, Malls and all parking lots. Therefore that cannot be a reason. 

The present Lead acid battery is good enough for  30 to 40 KM and 4 to 5 years of life for all two wheelers. Thus improvement  in  battery technology is not a constraint 

What is lacking is the will to implement. 

May be some powerful lobby of  petrol vehicle manufacturers do not want EVs  to increase in number as their business is at stake.  

Some of the key positions  of EV  Association  are held by big heads of  petrol vehicle manufacturers. It is but natural they can create stumbling blocks for electric two wheelers as the main business would get affected. 

If the government  or Niti Ayog is serious about bringing out a useful policy they can do the following.

1) Bring " age restriction" to drive petrol two wheeler vehicles -particularly in all major towns and cities . That is, all those above 18 and below 25 should ride only electric vehicles. This, to a great extent reduce the present reckless driving by youngsters and anxiety of  their parents at home. 
Implementation of this will create a boom in the market though sales of petrol vehicles may get affected. Rather this will force the present manufacturers to seriously get in to EV business instead of giving lip service.

2) Electric vehicles with less than 25 Km speed capability need not require a driving licence to drive. This will encourage more persons to buy EVs. This speed is  more than adequate for commuting in big cities.

3) Allow more entrepreneurs to manufacture electric scooters and cycles as most of the parts are available  in open market (including the DC motor drive ) and it is only a question of assembling them. [ Delhi's electric rikshaws are good example]. Such assemblers should be certified by RTO or Automobile Association of India to maintain quality and road worthiness.

   

It is very important to note that what  is costing exchequer 67 % of  petrol  payments  is to meet the demand by two wheelers.   See my slide show below.

Solar Charging Stations from Kabeeranban

Unless a firm policy to put a cap on petrol two wheelers  popularisation of electric vehicles only be a distant dream.