Life as I find it

MTNL Triband is cheap, easy to set up, and reasonably reliable when all you do is surf. When you end up downloading a lot of data, you find that there is much to discover on the front of getting what you pay for. I just tested the regular speed I get on my modem, and it turned out to be 100kbps. No wonder my MTNL connection always seemed slow. And no, it wasn’t any slower than usual when I tested. Was running normally for it.

Now, the thing is, I have never paid for a slow connection as such. One of the main reasons for signing up for Triband was MTNL’s clear statement that cable internet providers provide speeds less than 256kbps, and speeds under 256kbps don’t qualify as broadband.

SO I signed up for 512kbps, and when it still seemed slow, upgraded to 1mbps Still, no change in performance. At which point, I tested the speeds I was actually getting. My modem shows 256kbps, while any online test shows around 100 +/- 5. So where is all this money I’ve paid MTNL for 4 years gone?

Apparently, I’m not the only one. Almost every person, regardless of what plan they choose seems to begin from slow speeds and it takes complaints about slow speeds to get them to raise your limits to what you paid for. Out of 17 people I spoke with, only 3 began their internet connections with the speeds they paid for. 4 of them complained about slow speeds a couple of times, and it was increased. 1 has a recurring problem with speed on a connection that should give him 512kbps. He complains, it goes up, and is slow again after some days. 6 others with the 512kbps night unlimited plan had never checked the speeds they got since they mostly used them for surfing and downloading when they were sleeping, but on my insistence checked and were angry to discover that they were not even getting half the speed the plan charges them for. The others were miscellaneous cases with complicated stories of plan changes/problems and not much relevant to speed.

My husband thinks I should go to the consumer courts. However, the problem with this is that consumer courts would like you to first approach MTNL, at which point they readily increase your speed – so then you don’t really have a complaint left for the court.

What I am looking at is this default “setting” that cheats people on a regular basis till they complain. If their billing system can refer to their records of my plan and bill according to that, why can’t their speed system refer to the same plan and provide according to that?

In MTNL’s own words, they are not providing a broadband service, since their speeds are not exceeding 256kbps.

Oh, they have the capacity – I’ve seen lightening fast MTNL connections. Incredible speeds, and real value for money. The thing is, you have to not just pay for it, but make sure that you test the speed you get and insist that they give you what you paid for.

What would be the electricity bill for the additional usage of the computer when my downloads took over 5 times the time they should for over 3 years? Who compensates me for this? Maybe we need a PIL.

In a world where online services abound and flourish under the comparitive anonymity the net offers, fraudulent service providers have a whole new market to themselves. Being too trusting is a bad idea.

I had been meaning to submit my site to online directories for a long time, as many people said its good to be listed, and links and all that.

Some surfing brought me to Submit Edge, which offers submissions to 750 high PR directories for 60$. The site really looks like these guys know what they are doing, and have an understanding of Search Engine Optimization, Link Building, etc. Kush Infosys Pvt.Ltd. which runs the site and service are based in Mumbai, so I thought that I’d be giving business to someone from our town. Sounded good, so I paid them, filled in their form with the link I wanted submitted and careful descriptions.

Done, right? Wrong!

Once I received acknowledgement of my payment, there was complete silence on their end.

As you see, the submissions should have been done in two weeks. As the duration came to a close, I started wondering what happened of the services I had booked, and wrote them an email. I got a response saying that it will happen soon.

Finally, about 3-4 days after their stated time was up, I got my “submission report”. Imagine my horror to see:

1. The main page of the first site I was submitted to (PR7) had links to adult sites!!! Checking a couple of days later, the entire directory was gone and replaced by some video site in some language I don’t understand.
2. The second site in the list doesn’t have a category for where they claimed they submitted by link to.
3. The third site has a domain name with random letters, and is listed as a PR6 site, when in reality it has no PR at all.
4. In fact, many of the sites had random letter domain names.
5. Their High PR list has exactly 21 directories that state a PR of 5 and above. Please note that these also aren’t really all actually High PR, as the third point shows.
6. From there on, it is PR4 and PR3 till 41 and goes downhill from there.
7. Not a single incoming link from these sites points to the link that was submitted (which I guess is a good thing, though it defeats the entire purpose of the exercise)

Aghast at what I had paid for, what I was getting, and what it could potentially mean to my site, I emailed them with my findings to receive no response at all. I tried calling them, but kept getting through to an automated mailbox.

I filed a dispute under PayPal, upon which I got a response within hours from them offering to replace links with problems or provide new links.

Not desiring new links of this kind, I asked for a refund, and escalated my claim out of an unnecessarily overdeveloped sense of responsibility so that PayPal could see what their services were being used for, and other buyers could be protected. Turns out, PayPal wasn’t particularly interested if their sellers use their services to cheat people, as long as there are no goods involved. What is more, they did no investigation of any kind, but automatically shut down my claim because:

As stated in our User
Agreement, the claims process only applies to the shipment of goods. It
does not apply to complaints about the attributes or quality of goods
received. Therefore, we are unable to reverse this transaction or issue a
refund.

This is mentioned in the PayPal policy as intangibles not being eligible for consumer protection.

However, the payment in my account allowed me to create a dispute, even though there was no shipping address provided, and I clearly mentioned “services” as the transaction type and the dispute was successfully created about something PayPal had no intention of looking into, or resolving. It allowed me to escalate the dispute into a claim, upon which it was automatically closed.

This is clearly a strange and problematic service from PayPal that unscrupulous providers can exploit to their advantage, because it gives the illusion that the dispute will be investigated, when in reality what happens is that it gets discarded and finalized as closed. No investigation happens, and while justice is implied, it actually removes all options a claimant has in the system. Thus, even when the seller might have initiated some kind of compensation, he is actually released and essentially set scot-free to lather, rinse, repeat with some other gullible consumer.

Additionally, the fake service provider actually gets the credibility of having disputes against them dismissed by the “authority”.

So, to summarize:

• Don’t pay anyone for any service online, unless you trust them.
• DON’T trust PayPal’s dispute system unless you are dealing with tangible goods, regardless of what their dispute form says.
• Don’t know about other submission services, but SubmitEdge is clearly a fraud.

For whoever is interested, this is a sample report of submissions made, and if you want something like this associated with your site, go ahead:

The Horror Submissions Report from Submit Edge

Update: After getting praise mails that I am, as a journalist encouraging war, I need to state specifically that I am NOT a journalist, and my knowledge of politics is minimal. What I am is a concerned and distraught citizen. My posts are not informed political opinions or advice about policy, but thoughts that cross my mind as I follow this crisis. I am against war and violence. I even feel pity for the poor captured terrorist for that matter. This is only a perspective and reaction about the threat of a nuclear war from Pakistan. This threat is actually explained by recent news about a hoax call that led to the Pakistani government thinking India was about to attack them. More than that, any comments like “kill the Pakistanis” will immediately be deleted, as I have no wish to encourage the circulation of such views. So, if you find that the comment you posted has been deleted, that’s me in action. If hostile comments recur, I will delete this post. This post is about the Indian attitude toward the threat of nuclear war and what at that time seemed an insane attitude to me and not about hatred for Pakistan.

Current worry is that Pakistan is apparently never in the wrong, even as many Pakistanis raise questions about the ISI in their daily lives. Strange that the average Pakistani believes that their ISI can sabotage their own country but no other. Strange kind of organization to have, no? But I don’t think logic has anything to do with the Pakistani response at the moment.

As for the Pakistani government not being involved, no one believes that. I doubt if the Pakistani government was ever directly involved with happenings in India. I doubt if it ever was in the loop. For that matter, the government was clueless about the Kargil conflict. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

It is transparent that Pakistan WANTS the excuse of war with India to escape from its “coerced commitment” to the war against terror on the Afgan front. So I don’t really think any actionable cooperation is ever going to come from there beyond demands of proof. Even if Zardari wants to cooperate, I doubt if he has the power to do so, when the army has another agenda. He is the sitting duck for pressure from his own country, the army, US, India, world opinion…… with no real power to do anything, because doing anything on this front will mean hurting the unofficial ISI weapon against India, which the ISI will not allow and I don’t see how Zardari can make them, even if he wants to, even if he accepts that LeT are the culprits, even if he commits to getting rid of them.

A country that disowns terrorists as non-state actors (after first denying their existence) is willing to go to war over protecting them – anyone else find that incongruent?

Meanwhile, India is pissed and frustrated that its proof is dismissed and proofs are demanded. Terrorists wanted for causing harm in India are not to be given over. Pakistan speaks of strikes being seen as acts of war, and nukes are laid out on the table straight off. For someone cooperating, its a strange attitude of denials, refusals and threats.

Meanwhile, US and the rest of the world is shitting bricks at the thought of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, and doing all it can to prevent it.

What I literally see is a world held hostage to Pakistan. No one is convinced of their innocence, but no one also wants to provoke them because they have *melodramatic shudder* nukes, you know?

Pakistan is not the only country in the world to have nukes, but it is the only country to act against the interests of the world and then threaten to use nukes if it thinks there will be retaliation.

For that matter, it does the same with its own people. The threat is not nukes, but its own extremist and army agendas of power to control that hold the common man hostage with threats of physical harm. For example, in this current scenario, what the Pakistani common man thinks is as irrelevant as what Zardari thinks. The situation hinges on the army deserting the war on terror and threatening nukes and the militants talking of defending the country they were relentlessly destroying, which incidently were both irrelevant to the talks happening between the governments.

Perhaps I’m direct, but this is how I see it.

As long as the Kashmir issue is resolved, India and Pakistan will never be truly at peace. Pakistan has nukes and doesn’t even consider an option of no-first-strike as a part of its “defence”, so that problem is unlikely to be over, ever. For that matter, I don’t even think Pakistan really wants Kashmir resolved, because that will take away their reason for acting on their hatred of India.

From how I understand, Pakistan sees nukes as any other weapon, and one of the most powerful in its arsenal. Its not particularly bothered about the damage it will cause to India, because that is the whole idea in any case. It counts on this attitude to be a deterrent in itself, with the entire world pressurizing India to avoid war, because they sure as hell know that there will be no reasoning with Pakistan.

My approach to this is different. Much as I hate violence, and my dream of a good world includes armies dismantled because they become redundant, I hate being held hostage by bullies even worse. I am aware that I could be one of the casualties if Pakistan makes a nuclear attack, and one of the more likely ones by virtue of living in Mumbai. Yet, I do think what India and the world needs to do at this moment is a nuclear war. Pakistan needs to go to the stone age before it can become a civilization.

I thought long and deep over it, considered my abhorrence of violence, the situation with Pakistan…… a whole load of things. I know it will be terrible thing. It will harm Indian economy, lives, morale, and cause a whole load of pain.

Yet, as I consider:

• Pakistan is never ever going to stop harming India directly or indirectly.
• Even if the LeT is finished, the reason for its creation is still there, and it is only a matter of time before it is resurrected or something else created to fulfill that need.
• Pakistan has nukes and will continue to have them till they are destroyed or used. 50 years from now, we will still be bearing attrocities exported from that country because it has nukes. It will still be operating without a conscience, because it believes that its irresponsible attitude toward human lives will continue to protect it from those who value them.
• India is a strong country. It will be devastated, but it will regenerate. Hopefully, it will regenerate without the hanging sword of Pakistani nukes over its head. I may die, but the future of hundreds will be safer from threat.

It is with a heavy heart, and against my instincts that I admit that a nuclear war between India and Pakistan is what India and the world needs, provided that we are able to work together and take out their nukes completely.

Rather than cringe and tolerate endlessly that which has no intention of ever going away, we need to face it and conquer it. If we pay a price, it is the price of a future of not being held hostage and harmed.

What is needed is for Pakistan to be conquered, and reorganized under a stable country (preferrably not India) and led to prosperity. It needs to find a future in creation rather than vengeance for perceived attrocities. It needs hope and well being.

The other option is to sit and do nothing. Ignore the attack completely, strengthen internal security, hang the terrorist and leave Pakistan alone to collapse under its own weight or in the “war against terror”.

If one good thing can be said to have emerged from this whole nightmare, it is that many perceptions in Pakistan and other country Muslims about India seem to have been broken.

The first and very important is where Muslims are harrassed and arrested every time there is a terror attack in India. Not only have there been no arrests this time, there is no communal ill-feeling either. We are all uniformly shocked and appalled. While anger and resentment are there in both Hindu and Muslim hot-heads, this kind of cold-blooded wholesale murder is revolting to all.

The other assumption I think should have broken is that of the militants “protecting” or fighting to avenge atrocities against Indian Muslims. Nothing states this more clearly than Indian Muslims refusing the terrorists to be burried in their graveyard. If that doesn’t send a message of “we don’t like you and we don’t approve” I don’t know what does. I hope any wannabe terrorists read this and understand that this is a massive population of Muslims we are talking about – bigger than your entire country (unless you’re from Indonesia). No matter what the propaganda tells you to believe, terrorism is not an acceptable solution to an honorable Muslim either.

You may be punishing countries in your mind, but you are making dignity difficult for the very people you aim to protect. Therefore, please find something better to do with your life. Its one life we all have, and making it a work of beauty and pride is a good goal.

Out of all these ashes one good rises up – we get over petty differences, and our similarities shine through.

I don’t deny that there was great bravery shown on all fronts against the terrorists. Yet, as we move on from the tragedy, the urgency is blurring. At this time, I want to take a moment to look at things that could have been better.

Equipment and training: I put these together, since it would be even more embarrassing to have an armed hawaldar disarmed by a criminal and his weapon used to create further harm. I think it is not enough to just arm our cops, but to instill in them certain standards of professionalism and pride in their roles. This needs to be backed up with adequate training. Not a small task, but necessary. Cops waving lathis chasing terrorists armed with AK47s is an image that doesn’t instill respect, no matter how brave they are. And it isn’t only about terrorism. In a world where every self respecting criminal has fancy arms, its about the cops feeling empowered enough to be a difference.

Emergency responses: Our emergency response needs designing. Note that I’m not speaking of updating or overhauling. If it takes over half an hour for the local cops to respond, its not a design worth keeping. Scrap it, work from scratch, and come up with something that allows the police response to be as near to the travelling time from the nearest presence as possible. This basically means that cops being trained to respond ASAP and their routines planned to accommodate at least one quick response team at any given time from any station.

Media: This has two sides. One is the media – there needs to be a plan about covering emergencies like this. This plan needs to include boundaries of what is not to be broadcast to the public. It wouldn’t even harm to continue with regular programmes with regular updates instead of creating a live test match out of a sensitive situation and compounding it with unconfirmed, contradictory information, rumours and speculation, which perhaps was a blessing if the terrorists were indeed following it. The other side of this is PR people for the cops/armed forces if their representatives can’t resist giving out information. Obviously the people of the country want information, but how much information is necessary to give immediately and what can wait till the end of the operation? What kind of information will help the country more in the situation? I imagine that I’d have preferred a blank screen rather than live telecast of commandoes rappelling to the top of the Nariman house for example. A simple statement like the army has been involved would be far better than details of which commandos, how many, and shots where their equipment is clearly seen. Go ahead, shoot it, and edit it into a breathtaking special after its all over, but not at a time when the criminals can get tactical information directly. There was a hue and cry over twitter which is full of rumours and tough to decipher with over 80 messages a second, yet clear shots of the commandos and their weapons continued, including direct statements like “bodies being carried out of the back entrance of the Taj”. No one is going to blame an official for refusing to share potentially sensitive information in the middle of a situation and no one is going to blame the media person who refuses to air it till safe.

Intelligence: We need to figure out a system for wading through all the information we get and working with it. Too much information was wasted that turns up now likehints of this plot coming up from terrorist captures in Lucknow, Kashmir, fishermen….. Nothing seems to have been done out of it. Ignoring intelligence defeats the entire purpose of gathering it in the first place.

Citizens: We have a concerned community alive to the dangers of terrorism. Is there a way that we can harness the helpless frustration of those camping out on twitter (for example). Can we engage volunteers to find out information, report things, sift through reports to remove the random chatter from the potential information, spread awareness, work on social integration objectives……?

Politics: Is there a way that we can bring parties together quickly in an emergency and work in collaboration to reassure, organize and manage the country by working with their audiences that support them?

There is so much potential for efficiency without even creating new structures. Can we try and ensure that things work as they should?