Web check-in in Jet Airways

I travel a lot and mostly by Air. On business travel, when I travel alone, I am not so careful about what kind of seat I get. But when I travel with my family, I normally make sure that I do web check-in well in advance, so that we all can sit together. With two kids, there is no way you can leave this for chance.
So this time I was travelling with my family and booked Jet Airways. As usual I wanted to do web check-in 12 hours in advance. But surprise, surprise, Jet Airways site did not allow me to do web check-in. And the reason? The reason is I am travelling with Kids!!!! It says as you are travelling with kids, please check-in at the airport. Now can anyone explain me the logic? I checked with tele-helpdesk, but they were clueless. They just said it the process (another way of saying I don't know and don't bother to ask me.

BJP- Jaswant's exit

BJP is the political party I used to admire. For a change, we'd seen leader who came from middle class and who can speak the language of the educated. I was overall impressed with Mr. Vajapayee's 5 year stint in government. One of the good thing was the team has assembled. A team which is mix of professional and good politicians. In his team, one of the person I admired was Jaswant Singh for his efficiency and good administration.

Now 5 years later, when BJP has lost second election and moral down. Jaswant Singh is expelled from party for his opinion on Mr. Jinah and his role in forming Pakistan by partitioning of India.

I really don't know whether his opinion is right or wrong. But what I do know that this is opinion on something that happened 60 years back. After two generations, not many things can be seen in terms of black and white. Even if his opinon is totally wrong, that does not make any difference now. Removing from party was so extreme step.

What really pains me is, BJP has removed one of the most efficient minister they had. So here emotion is ruling over efficiency. Some of the people who were instrumental in expelling him were not so know for their good governance.

Sometimes I think that it is best for India to get best of BJP and Congress together and form a dream team of ministers. Those who are known for good governance rather than those who just know how to play with public emotion.

Obama to ban outsourcing?

Obama is doing everything he can to stop the outsourcing of US work to developing countries. This is a knee-jerk reaction to the economic problems US is going through. I am not sure how it is going to help US economy. When companies should try to save every cent of expense, this will push them to spend more on local high-cost services. It will surely create some jobs, but jobs will continue only if the company survives. And in order to company to survive, they must cut the expenses on labour, raw material and other expenses.

This also presents an interesting point. Can we (or policy) differentiate between outsourcing of product and outsourcing of services? For example, a country prefers to import electronic goods from other country, isn't it outsourcing of the product. In simple words, this country is 'sourcing' the electronic goods from 'out'side country. To encourage local employment and entrepreneurship, should a country ban sourcing of goods from other countries? This will effectively stop international trade.

Let's take example of India. India imports food items, metals, automobiles, high-tech engineering goods, electronic hardware, software products etc etc, in turn India exports food items, low-tech engineering goods, textiles and software services, BPO services. Now if US bans outsourcing, India's service sector related to Software and BPO will have major impact. For India this is not fair as bulk of India's export is in services. Probably what India should do as symbolic gesture to US, it should ban 'outsourcing' of non-essential food items. So out goes Coca-cola, Pepsi, McDonald, Pizza Hut and KFC. India should ban outsourcing of inefficient automobiles. This will drive Ford and GM out. Of course this will cause many Indians to loose job unless these businesses are quickly taken over by local companies.

I know this is a very far-fetched scenario. Most likely US companies will negotiate with US government to separate out political agenda and business agenda. They will give some area to government as new government has to show that they are doing something to save jobs.

Mumbai: MNS stand against North Indians

It is certain that main reason behind attack against North Indian is pure publicity stunt. MNS is targeting only poor labour class for this. If they target all non-Maharashtrians without any bias, it will be suicide for Mumbai. If you create list of top 20 employment generating companies based in Mumbai, how many of them are owned/promoted by Maharashtrians? If these corporates also walk out with other non-maharashtrians, it will create huge unemployment. The business capital of India will be unemployment capital of India.
(Author of this post is also a Maharashtrian)

What industry is more attrition prone?

Well, I always thought that IT industry is the one where attrition is highest. With people saying "Wow! I really spent long time here, I need some change". This is after just 3 years. But I now found more volatile industry - real estate. I have just purchased a new house. For last two years I have been visiting the construction site, I found every six months there is a new person working as site engineer. This one beats IT with large margine 6 months to 3 years. Not sure of attrition rate of Indian BPO industries, but there is fair chance that it will BPO too.