Private sector banks and passbooks

No doubt, private banks have stolen a march over public sector banks due to their efficiency and superior deployment of technology. But when making profit becomes the ONLY motive, service suffers.

The notification by the Reserve Bank of India on issuance of passbooks is one such case. The notification was issued on October 4. But not even a single new private sector bank has implemented it. Why?

If this is their response to RBI's circular, one wonders what will happen to our complaints.

This is the RBI circular:

Date: Oct 04, 2006

Customer Service – Non-issuance of Passbooks to Savings Bank Accountholders (Individuals)
RBI /2006-07/139DBOD.No.Leg.BC.32 /09.07.005/2006-07

October 4, 2006

To

All Scheduled Commercial Banks(Excluding RRBs)

Dear Sir,

Customer Service – Non-issuance of Passbooks to Savings Bank Accountholders (Individuals)

We have been receiving representations from customers including senior citizens' associations that many banks have discontinued issuing pass books to Savings Bank Account holders (Individuals). It has also been pointed out that this decision of discontinuing the pass book system has been taken by the banks unilaterally causing much inconvenience to the account holders. It has also come to our notice that these banks are issuing Statement of Account to Savings Bank account holders at quarterly intervals instead of at monthly intervals as stipulated in our circular DBOD.No.Leg.BC.74/ 09.07.005/2004-05 dated April 10, 2004.

2. In this connection, it may be mentioned that a passbook is a ready reckoner of transactions and is handy and compact and as such, is far more convenient to the small customer than a statement of account. Use of statements has some inherent difficulties viz. (a) these need to be filed regularly (b) the opening balance needs to be tallied with closing balance of last statement (c) loss of statements in postal transit is not uncommon and obtaining duplicates thereof involves expense and inconvenience (d) ATM slips during the interregnum between two statements does not provide a satisfactory solution as full record of transactions is not available and (e) there are a large number of small customers who do not have access to computers / internet etc. As such, non-issuance of pass-books to such small customers would indirectly lead to their financial exclusion.

3. Banks are therefore advised to invariably offer pass book facility to all its savings bank account holders (individuals) and in case the bank offers the facility of sending statement of account and the customer chooses to get statement of account, the banks must issue monthly statement of accounts in terms of our circular DBOD.No.Leg.BC.74/ 09.07.005/2004-05 dated April 10, 2004. The cost of providing such Pass Book or Statements should not be charged to the customer.

4. Please acknowledge receipt.

Yours faithfully

(Prashant Saran)

Chief General Manager-in-Charge

Access restricted Web sites with Google

(from http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/h/4807 )

Google free proxy! Access restricted web sites using Google language tools service as a proxy.Contributed by: bigthistle [12/20/05 Link to this hack]

A little tutorial found on the italian site www.manuali.net inspired me for this hack. That tutorial suggests to translate a webpage, using Google translator, to access it even if restricted.
It worked fine but something else was needed... why translate?!
...
Ok, let's start from the beginning. We all know that Google is more than a search engine; we do use it as provider for email, mapping, news and many other services. Google is now also a free proxy service. Proxy is a device that stands between a PC and the internet, providing all the connections to the world wide web. What a proxy does is to receive all data from a requested site, so when you access web pages all data come from proxy.
What's the purpose for Google as a proxy? We often use office/school/university connections, usually those services are set to provide more safety, blocking the access to undesidered web sites (the "black list"). What you can do now is use Google translator service (language tools) as a proxy to bypass the restrictions set for our connection!
You just need to type the following URL:
http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=enen&u=www.forbiddensite.com (www.forbiddensite.com stands for the URL you need to go to...)
What you'll get is the translation (english to english!) of the page you want to see... your connection is directed to a google.com page so this page won't be blocked (would be blocked only with google.com on the black list), no matter what's the content.
Notice that the URL has been a little hacked because the parameter "langpair"(1) is set to "enen" (english/english) so the page is processed by Google but you can keep the original language of the page (no need to translate!). If you need another language (e.g. french) you just need to set the parameter langpair to "frfr" and you'll be able to read french pages in french!
A couple of examples:
english... http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=enen&u=hacks.oreilly.com
italian (my own homepage!)... http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=itit&u=www.bigthistle.altervista.org
Last but not least: if you use this trick, you're not sure to protect your privacy, this kind of connection lets you see blacklisted pages but doesn't hide your IP address. Just go to http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=enen&u=www.whatismyip.com to see your IP is not hidden...
That's all, bye.

Unhygienic Eatery

The video here is of an roadside eatery. Eating in such places is fraught with risks. But this one is worse. Before and after the eatery's 'business hours', this place is used as a toilet.
Just see the brisk business in the clip.

Wrong Focus

If there is any organisation or working without any focus, it is Indian Government. In the rare instance when it has one, the focus is not where it should be.

The anti-AIDS campaign is one such activity. There are several ways in which AIDS spreads, like during blood transfusion. But for some strange reason, the focus is only on sex. The 'sub-focus', if you can call it - is only on men. As if only men go astray.

Now, a study, by Royal Society of Medicine, has said India is making "perilous mistakes" in its fight against AIDS. Here is a report:

India flawed by focus on sex in campaign against AIDS: study

Paris, Oct 27 (AFP) India is making perilous mistakes in its fight against AIDS by assuming the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is being spread overwhelmingly by sex and especially by prostitutes, a study warns.
India is considered by many specialists to be an easy target for AIDS, despite the health authorities’ insistence that they are making headway against the disease.
In May, the Geneva-based agency UNAIDS said India had 5.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS - the highest figure in the world, ahead of South Africa where the figure stands at 5.5 million. The government says the tally is 5.2 million.
The new study, published by Britain’s prestigious Royal Society of Medicine, does not wade into the row over these figures, but instead lashes India’s assumption that sex, especially with prostitutes, is the main driver for new infections.
‘‘It is inconsistent with evidence and very likely wrong,’’ is the blunt verdict delivered by US researchers David Gisselquist and Mariette Corea in the society’s International Journal of STD and AIDS.
According to India’s National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), 86 percent of HIV infections are from sexual transmission, and according to three studies that have helped underpin the country’s AIDS strategies, prostitutes account for 27 per cent of the total.
But Gisselquist and Corea - who did extensive field research in India - say these calculations are terribly wide of the mark.
The total estimate of infections comes from hospital staff, who assess and report routes of transmission for patients admitted with AIDS.
But many personnel routinely assign cases to the category of sexual acquisition without asking if the patient may have been exposed to infection through blood, the authors say.
And they argue the official tally of prostitutes in India, their number of clients and the frequency of clients’ visits are probably huge overestimates.
In addition, there is evidence that commercial sex workers are far likelier to use condoms and less likely to have HIV than health officials believe, the study says.
Its best estimate is that prostitutes account for just two per cent of HIV infections - and a high estimate would be 13 per cent, less than half that of NACO’s figure.
This means that India is ignoring threats from other sources, in particular the re-use of unsterile instruments in hospitals, cosmetic services, dental surgeries and tattoo parlours.
In one incident, commercial sex workers reported they had stood in line for tattoos that were administered without changing needles or inkpot between customers.
And the researchers found a common mistaken belief among the general public as well as the medical profession that HIV survives no more than seconds or a few minutes outside the body. ‘‘The official sexualisation of the HIV epidemic has blinded just about everybody to considering (and protecting against) non-sexual routes of transmission,’’ the journal said in an editorial.