nonamechicken

Regarding acid attacks, a 2013 report says that 45% of victims are men. Some stories from recent times:

https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/kerala/2018/apr/30/k...

https://www.deccanherald.com/national/east-and-northeast/wom...

https://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi-news/woman-threw-acid-o...

https://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/aligarh-19-year-old-gi...

https://zeenews.india.com/india/woman-throws-acid-on-ex-boyf...

The twitter link posted by abhshkdz (https://twitter.com/jslaternyc/status/1144483586042548225) took me to this article:

>"Dear BBC, Bengaluru isn’t running out of water soon. Here’s why!" http://bengaluru.citizenmatters.in/bangalore-water-scarcity-...

So, I am confused about whether we really have a problem or there is some other agenda. I know lot of people in Bengaluru don't get govt water supply (Cauvery water). Was speaking to a friend just yesterday who was complaining about the quality of the tanker water they get in their apartment, that some people are getting skin diseases because of it and that they use filtered water for washing their baby and their hair.

Desalination seems to be expensive:

>"Rs 1.36 crore a day for just 200 million litres of water; can Chennai really afford desalination plants?"

http://chennai.citizenmatters.in/chennai-cost-of-desalinatio...

The above article concludes that

>Our water problems are essentially due to mismanagement of water bodies, and Chennai is not a rain-starved city. “Chennai’s average annual rainfall of 139 cm is sufficient to recharge its aquifers. We don’t have perennial rivers, but we have abundant surface water resources. The city of London, with just 60 cm of annual average rainfall, relies on surface water resources. It is shameful that we have opted for the extravagant choice of desalination plants instead,” said Sai Praneeth, Director, Hydro-Meteorological Innovative and Explorative Solutions (HYMIES).

Also just came across this Twitter account. They seem to be posting a lot of info about India's water situation. https://twitter.com/zenrainman

This is what typically happens to h1bs: if someone comes from India to work at the client location (Boeing office in this case), and if the customer is not happy with them for whatever reason, they get send back within a month or 2.

I don't like Indian IT companies because they pay us less and some managers exploit us a lot. But one thing they deeply care about is the customer. They would go to any length to keep the customer happy. There is no way they would risk loosing business playing such games.

Why would anyone pay $120-$150 per hour for .net code in India? Most American firms pay $25-30 per hour to the Indian companies. Also, do airplanes run on .net?

>You’d see .NET code with a single class that has a few thousand lines of cod

If we are blaming entire nationalities, I have seen code written by an American. His idea of refactoring was copy paste the function, append a '2' to the function name and use it. There were at least a 50-100 functions like this in the project that had like 30-50 source files.

I really doubt 737 Max's failure has anything to with outsourcing to India. Usually, most of the work outsourced to India are low value work (what I call as 'near brain dead' type). I don't think Boeing would outsource anything even remotely critical to a company like HCL. From the article:

>Based on resumes posted on social media, HCL engineers helped develop and test the Max’s flight-display software, while employees from another Indian company, Cyient Ltd., handled software for flight-test equipment.

>Boeing said the company did not rely on engineers from HCL and Cyient for the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, which has been linked to the Lion Air crash last October and the Ethiopian Airlines disaster in March. The Chicago-based planemaker also said it didn’t rely on either firm for another software issue disclosed after the crashes: a cockpit warning light that wasn’t working for most buyers.

Even inside US, Indian engineers are not allowed in critical software that goes into defense and (most likely) airlines, only citizens can do that. So, there is no way they would have outsourced safety critical stuff to HCL.

I was working for an Indian IT company back then. According to my colleague, they offered really good health insurance (I never pay attention to such things, so don't know how good it was compared to others). I got a dental cleaning and wisdom tooth removal done once, and had to pay $2200 from my pocket since insurance didn't cover those. The dentist told me before the treatment itself, and so wasn't a surprise. Another time, I ended up having to go to a hospital couple of times for an issue. Total bill was around $20k. I had to pay only $50 from my pocket. After I came back to India, I got another letter in my US address from the hospital (nearly 1.5 years after the hospital visit). I suspect it could be another bill. I knew about the letter because I still get the USPS informed delivery email alerts!

My friend also worked for an Indian company. His wife had a delivery and there were complications. I am not sure what really happened. He one day called me and told me to have some money ready (around $2-3k) in case he needs to borrow. He said he had to pay a lot of money from his pocket, and that he reached the maximum limit (after which insurance pays everything?). He was in US for around 1 year, and left soon after because the project was over or ramped down. Just before he left, he got another bill for $3 or $4k and he said he is letting it go to collections. After he came back to India, I asked him about it and he said it was taken care off (didn't say if insurance paid or he paid or he ignored it).

I recently tried to buy Office 365 from MS India. It just kept on failing with my India debit card even though it accepts both debit/credit cards. The error message was not helpful and finally came to know from customer care that it was due to the debit card. So, it can go both ways.

Remittance from the US to India make up about 0.02% of the total GDP. UAE is at the top with $13.8 billion, US at second place with $11.7 billion, Saudi at third with $11.2 billion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remittances_to_India [2] https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

Chennai got decent rain today after 196 days. Good rain is expected for 6 more days

https://m.timesofindia.com/city/chennai/chennai-rain-after-1...

Thanks for the link.

When I typed "Even if pay is half or one third", I actually was thinking of savings. I am past the edit window now. But please read it as "Even if the money I can save is half or one third".

Its easier to get vacation in US compared to India. Managers in Indian IT companies have a target that x% of their team must be billable at any time (or at least that's what they tell us), and use that as reason to deny our leave requests.

I don't know much about this topic (finance). But since I see news reports regularly of Indians depositing black money in foreign banks, I am posting this. I am not really sure if this 'financial data must stay in India' requirement could solve the problem of black money.

>The total amount of black money deposited in foreign banks by Indians is unknown. Some reports claim a total of US$1.06 - $1.4 trillions is held illegally in Switzerland. Other reports, including those reported by the Swiss Bankers Association and the Government of Switzerland, claim these reports are false and fabricated, and the total amount held in all Swiss bank accounts by citizens of India is about US$2 billion. In March 2018, it was revealed that the amount of Indian black money currently present in Swiss and other offshore banks is estimated to be ₹90 lakh crores or US$1500 billion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_black_money

Getting Switzerland to release that information isn't that easy. I have been hearing about it for at least 5 years, may be more. Even 4 days ago, there were reports like this: https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economy-politics/noose-...

Even if pay is half or one third, I prefer India (saying as someone who was an h1b in US for 6.5 years). India has a lot of problems-bad infrastructure, crazy traffic, poor air, bad policing and so on. Life in India is basically like playing a game in difficult mode while US is easy mode. But the peace of mind that comes with not having to live in the uncertainty that h1b brings is insanely huge. When it comes to quality of life, while things like good air matters, the "uncertainty" seems to override pretty much everything else, at least in my case. I guess my lizard brain sees it as "US has lot of resources that will get you lot of food, but there are plenty of predators, so you must go somewhere free from those, and until you do that I am going to make you miserable". It may sound stupid, but that's how I make sense of my experience as an h1b.

Based on my rough estimates, when I compare an h1b (earning $100k in midwest per year and paying $1000 per month rent with a stay at home spouse and kids) vs the same person working in India with spouse also working (both earning ₹50-70k per month), the person in India can save more or less same. And if that person were to try in one of the good companies in big cities say Bengaluru, they most likely will save more.

Bankruptcy due to medical bills is another major concern (one of my h1b friends faced this, ended up wiping out all his savings he had from his 1+ year stay in US, and I think some of it went to collections).

Another issue is the one faced by h1b spouses, who are predominantly women. With the proposed removal of h4 work authorization (h4 means spouses of h1b), this becomes an even bigger issue considering that Indians typically have to wait anywhere from 15-20-50-150 years for the green card. Imagine being completely reliant on your spouse on a foreign country with absolutely no support. I wouldn't want to be in that situation, I don't want my wife to be in that either. One can never know when a person will change.

>Sharing her experience while interacting with the victims of domestic violence, Peshawaria said overarching their rather harrowing lives is the fear of social stigma that is particularly intense for the women who come from south Asia. More often than not, they have been told stories about how a wonderful life awaits them in America, the world's richest country, which would be a dramatic improvement for them compared to what they experience in India," she said.

https://www.news18.com/news/india/indian-american-lawyer-aut...

And reports like below makes me suspicious of how great the immigrant life is actually. I am not saying crimes/suicides don't happen in India, but its not that reassuring since I am not sure if its murder-suicide or if they were targeted.

* June 2019-Iowa family of four found dead with gunshot wounds: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/iowa-family-four-f...

* May 2019-'Why haven't they found the killer yet?': Sikh family want answers in West Chester (quadruple) shooting: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2019/05/08/west-cheste...

* February 2019-Friends reel from suspected murder-suicide death of Sugar Land, TX, couple: https://www.newsindiatimes.com/friends-reel-from-suspected-m...

I am also getting way more captchas at least since the last 6 months. Exclusively using Firefox with clear everything on exit, multiple profiles, fingerprint flag on, some addons etc. No VPN. I get captcha almost all the time, even for Google searches from Firefox address bar (one out of 10 searches I think). But never gets a captcha for Google websites (gmail, youtube etc).

I am from India, not using VPN. Except for storefronts, everything I get looks like from US-traffic lights, cars, buses (including yellow school buses), cross walks etc.

I am not sure if it's the same technology, The Weather Channel App (Android) has an option for mesh network based alerts.

https://weather.com/apps/ibm/meshnetworkalerts

Delhi based BluSmart taxi services already launched a fleet of electric taxis using Mahindra eVerito: https://youtu.be/AVHHMOxRQ94, https://youtu.be/pWYBDbxlx_c

There are some electric cars already available or ready to launch (videos available in YouTube): Mahindra e2o, Mahindra eVerito, Tata Tigor, Tata Altroz.

These are some of the electric cars arriving in India this year (at least 11 models): Hyundai Kona, MG ezs, WagonR Electric, Tata Altroz, Tata Nexon, Mahindra eKUV100, Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe.

Regarding public bus, many states are currently testing electric buses. I have seen 2-3 in my city, though recent reports indicate the state run transport company is not that happy with the buses since they don't make enough profit or due to charging issues.

This article has a list of all the states that are soing trial runs along with the bus manufacturer's name:

https://www.news18.com/news/auto/modi-governments-big-electr...

Centre seeks proposals for 5,000 electric buses: https://m.economictimes.com/industry/auto/auto-news/centre-s...

BMTC (Bengaluru) working on plan to buy 300 electric buses: https://m.economictimes.com/industry/transportation/roadways...

>After Goa and Delhi, Kerala government has joined the race to dip from Centre’s `4,500-crore FAME-2 ( Faster Adoption & Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles) subsidy pool. The state’s public transport entity KSRTC has floated tenders to lease 1,500 electric buses for 10 years.

https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/kerala-floats-e-bu...

Some more info:

>EV sales in India grew three-fold to 3,600 in the year ended March but still account for about 0.1% of the 3.3 million diesel and gasoline cars sold in the country over the period, industry data showed. China's electric car sales, meanwhile, rose 62% in 2018 to 1.3 million vehicles.

>Motorcycles and scooters sold for commercial purposes, like food delivery or for use by e-commerce companies, will also need to be electric from April 2023, the person added.

>Its Ola Electric Mobility unit in March raised ₹400 crore ($58 million) from investors including venture capital fund Tiger Global and Matrix Partners.

>It also raised $300 million from Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors and formed a strategic partnership with the South Korean duo to help build India-specific EVs.

https://www.livemint.com/politics/policy/india-set-to-order-...

This is a big fear for many h1bs (atleast those who I know). What if they travel to India, and then the visa officer decides just like that to deny. What will happen to their stuff in US, their apartment, car etc? These people have done nothing wrong and have all the paperwork, still have that (irrational) fear.

I am not sure if this is true. This is from my state (which is in South India) this year (March-April) when the temperature was in the 35-40 degrees range. Highest recorded was 42 degrees I think in a border district. I don't think South India crosses 40 most of the time. One place reached 47 in 2016 [3].

>With mercury levels in Kerala rising this summer, the state’s Labour Department has issued an order allowing mandatory break time for labourers to avoid sunstroke. All labourers in the state who are exposed to sunlight which could potentially lead to a sunstroke have been ordered to rest indoors between 12 pm and 3 pm during the summer months.

>“Those working in the morning shift will get a break from 12 pm to 3 pm. Their work timings have been fixed at 8 hours from 7 in the morning to 7 in the evening. For the other shifts which begin after morning and post noon will be rescheduled to end before 12 pm and begin after 3 pm,” read the order.

>In 2018 too, the State Labour Department had issued a similar order to reschedule the shift timings of labourers during the months of February and April to avoid exposure to heat from 12 pm to 3 pm. [1]

[1] https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/kerala-govt-orders-man...

[2] https://english.manoramaonline.com/districts/thiruvananthapu...

[3] https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs...

The students who come to US for MS spend 2 years of their studies. They are not going to magically follow American culture all of a sudden. If one goes to any Hindu temple in US, you will find a huge number of these students.

Another thing is H4 is not something unique to the Infosys crowd. The Infosys crowd usually gets sent back to India once their deputation is over, they don't even get a chance to apply for h4.

An h1b spouse gets h4 only after the h1b's employer files for their green card and they complete the i140 stage. Companies usually file this towards the end of 6 years so that the h1bs are forced to continue with their employer for as long as possible. So the spouses would be waiting doing absolutely nothing during that period. Compared to those working in American consultancies, the Infosys crowd rarely gets a chance to stay in US for that long. So majority of h4 beneficiaries are not working for the likes of Infosys.

>Now these people are mostly by themselves and invested heavily for their education. No reason why these people flock to so called 'consultancies'. -

The reality is these US students are one of the biggest groups who flock to the consultancies. They are desperate to get a h1b before their time runs out, so they settle for anything they get, which means usually a level 1 salary. Some also resort to scams such as faking experiences in their resume, paying consultancies money in return for keeping them in status and so on.

How to Spot H-1B Fraud & Fake OPT Candidates: https://www.bridge.us/blog/how-to-spot-h1b-fraud-fake-opt-ca...

Hundreds of Indian students held in US for immigration violation:https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/600-indian-student...

US-India Farmington university row: 'I fled after fake college raid':https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47154187

Fake university students knew they were committing visa 'crime':https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/fake-uni...

How the American Dream Drives Indian Students Towards Shady US Universities: https://thewire.in/education/indian-students-arent-abusing-t...

I don't think they were blaming the government. Just citing it as one of the issues in their quarterly shareholder report.

One of the main ways these companies retain people was this: give the employee promise of onsite deputation if you work for 1-2 years in this project. Now the companies are forced to give them a decent raise or promotion or better projects.

It sucks for 2 people I know who had been working like that for the last 3-4 years. Their work day usually ends at midnight and sometimes 1 am-2am (instead of 6.45 pm). They stayed in that project because they thought one day they could go to US. Their employer applied for their visas, but got denied.

Considering that 93 percent of the approximately 100,000 H4 spouses are women from India, its clear at whom it is targeted. And the changes in h1b seems to be working as indented.

>The US is no longer seen as a plum posting by senior IT services employees (of Indian IT companies).

https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/opinion-how-it-serv...

>IT giant Infosys recently blamed the denial of H-1B visas by United States (US) for part of its growing employee attrition and said that it would introduce a "new value proposition" to help retain employees.

https://www.businesstoday.in/sectors/jobs/infosys-h1b-visa-e...

I once reported a bug in Visual Studio community edition. One or two weeks later, a developer (I think) remote logged in to my PC to troubleshoot what was happening. The next update had a fix for the issue.

Can't reply to 'highlyskilledimm's' comment below, hence adding here.

Not sure if level 4* h1b's fall under highly skilled, here are a few wondering why they get RFE for their visa extensions:

https://www.reddit.com/r/h1b/comments/bdt5o8

[*Level 4 is the highest wage category for h1b.]

Two of his videos are not available in India any more.

https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/high-court-orde...

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Delhi-High-Court-banned-PewDie...

I think the ban is not because of defamation.

>It must be noted all the claims put forward by PewDiePie to T-Series were false. Pewdiepie in his Congratulations video talked about tax evasions, relation of T-Series with mafia, and a very big blame of sexual assault.

>Pewdiepie didn't stop here and said that Indians have poo poo in their brains. He made fun of Caste system and poverty in India.

>The High Court said that the songs have “repeated comments made which are abusive, vulgar and also racist in nature,”

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Delhi-High-Court-banned-PewDie...

https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/high-court-orde...

The next hearing on this case is some time in July. I think the defamation part will be looked into then.

I am happy the court put a ban on his videos so quickly. Assuming he didn't have any intentions other than making money, he was purposefully creating more controversy so that he can make even more money as though $10-15 million he makes every year now is not good enough. By banning the videos, the court at least denied him the Indian view counts.

Depends on the area. Some areas are clean, some areas are filthy. The city I live in is successfully reducing the usage of plastic. They banned plastic bags that are at a certain thickness (the kind you get in grocery stores). Everyone uses paper/cloth bags and lot of times its reused. Now the government authorities are talking with restaurants to see how they can reduce plastic on take out food.

At home, they collect plastic waste once a week. We are expected to clean the plastic properly and dry it before handing them over. I was really surprised to see how much plastic waste we generate every week in our 2 people household. Seeing that has motivated me to reduce waste as much as possible.

They are also replacing all the city public transport buses with electric. They had some trial runs and electric buses made good amount of profit for them. So hoping to see an all electric fleet in another 5 years. Another major source of pollution is the 3 wheeler auto rickshaws (tuk tuk). News reports say they will also eventually become electric.