A World of Thoughts

 So when I first told people invisibility is realisable today, people laughed and said I should be crazy! Well, here is the thought so that some can make it practically feasible. Let us define invisibility first. Invisible means that you can see through. Or in other words, when you look at it, you see what is beyond that object and not the object itself. That is, if when you see an object, the object behind it is visible and not the object itself, then that object is invisible! All that you have to do is, have a camera in the rear of an object and project the view to the front. When you see from the front, we will the rear of literally, see through the object! The object becomes invisible. This invisibility might look unusable at first glance. It can easily give invisibility to large trucks and jeeps that are transporting soldiers to the border. Or display a pre recorded ground on the top to stay invisible to satellite observation. All that is required will be a thin display screen...

Tamil Nadu Elections 2021 for the sixteenth legislative Assembly of the state, voting phase is over!   We have done our job! The Election Commission and the administration has to do its job now. If required the central government representative in the state, the Governor, has to do his job, properly! Without politicking!   Voting was over yesterday (6 Apr 2021) but we need to wait almost another month (2 May) for the results to come in! One of those many skewed thinking that plagues our country and its administration.   But then, the voting itself, was very well done. Perfect organization, great crowd handling, accessibility and many other factors. Election commission, the police and the administration certainly require three cheers for a wonderful job done. They have become masters in the trade!   The political parties too have been very matured. Many of them who had access at the ground level such as the AIADMK, did not spare any tool at its disposal to bring voter...

Long long time ago, so long ago that I forgot how long ago, I had this discussion with one of my friends. In our youthful exuberance, we thought that the Michael Jacksons of the west and the stage performers who play music in our music nites are both equal! How inane of us! Michael Jackson was a creator. While our boys who played music on stages for these music nites were just copy cats. They played what others created! Cut the flash back and let us come to the present. Filmistan is full of creators. Be it Rajnikanth with his unparalleled style quotient or Rahman with his adorable auricular capabilities, we hear and see something original creamed out of human brain. Whereas on other walks of life, in Tamil Nadu and in India, do we see such creative exponentiation? How many categorically new products have found their ways into our homes and living rooms from Indian Creative engineers? Can we name one, please? Be it the televisions or the laptops or the software. Do we have one to be c...

A world of Thoughts has split! I was always having this confusion as to which would represent what. One blog that would host multiple streams of thoughts seemed a little out of place. Therefore, my blog is now split. On the professional end, there is the electricity business. My blog on electricity business will henceforth be electricity-india.blogspot.com This would carry regular articles on electricity as a business in India, more particularly, Tamil Nadu. In addition, I would also talk about what is happening in eClouds Energy LLP, my business. Do follow me to get a regular update on the happenings in electricity business in Tamil Nadu right here! Second, on the other interest that is taxation systems, I work with the advocacy group India Tax Payer, India's largest tax payer group! I currently head their operations and therefore, I have made it a point to put my thoughts and India Tax Payer's thoughts and ideas right here in this blog. Subscribe now to be in line with the ac...

Wind Generation companies have seen lots of ups and downs in Tamil Nad u! A long overdue order from the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court has at last come in. With this, the stand taken by TANGEDCO has been proved wrong, once again.     The wind generators who had contracted to supply power to TANGEDCO had to be paid by TANGEDCO as per their Energy Purchase Agreement. Invariably TANGEDCO does not pay for over 12 months from the supply month or more in most cases. It even runs to two to three years in a few cases where they could spot some excuse.   Under such circumstances, many wind generating companies and their assets were declared Non Performing Assets by their banks. The companies had repayment issues with the banks for continuously violating the repayment plans. While the private companies were taken to the court by their bankers, the main culprit was  scot free!   Wind companies approached TANGEDCO whose Energy Purchase Agreement allowed the win...

  Black Money is money earned by an individual or a citizen without the knowledge of the government of his country! White money is what he earns with the knowledge of his government and pays tax for.   Similarly, Black Tax is that income which the government gets without the knowledge of the common man of their country! While the white tax is the one that the government collects directly from its citizens.   You may be wondering, is there any income that the government might get beyond the known taxes. Yes, there are many that would of course, be brought under the accounts but might be pretty far from proper utilization!   Black Tax, like black money, is very harmful for the economy, in the sense that it generates black money; it is the source of creation of inequality; using this the government misappropriates public wealth which could go to anybody’s kitty and so on. In short, many activities that have negative connotations have their beginnings in Black Taxes! ...

If we have to trace the long history of electricity in Tamil Nadu then we need to start possibly at or around 1980s. With the political upheavals of the 1980s the economic stature of India took a complete slowdown.  The GDP growth rate fell to one of the lowest in the history of independent India by 1990. More important events happened in the end of 1980s. The economy spiralled down so much that the country ran into major economic crisis. Economic Trend Country stared down a very large balance of payment issue.  With a new government stepping in, 1992 became a watershed year for Indian politics as well as economy.  Power was and is the driving force behind economic growth, particularly, for third world developing nations. A struggling India, initiated many reforms in the market, including the power sector.  With the dearth of capital that bogged the 1960s long behind us, the country accepted the shift to capitalistic economy. Power industry now saw the birth of new p...

  India Budget 2021-22 is 'unprecedented'! Every budget has its own share of surprises and tough situations that they have all tried to stall. On a birds eye view of the budget, this has some new things that we could be happy about. On one side, this is more an income expense statement for the upcoming year, which is what budgets are supposed to be. For the last few decades, budgets have become policy announcing platforms. Budgets are supposed to be a plan for income and expense. I think, with this budget the FM is reclaiming that position for budgets. But for the two non-finance approvals that also went through with the finance bill, there is nothing to complain about. Having said that, budgets should mostly talk of allocation of funds for different spheres of social life in this country. Defence, health care, education, etc., Of course, health care takes in a large increase in allocation thanks to Covid situation and its immunisation scheme. But what happens with education an...

January 26th was the Customs Day. Four years back I was invited to the celebrations in Coimbatore. For the last few years, I do not find myself, getting invited! Maybe, because I 'pay' much lesser taxes and duties these days. Well, I wanted to draw your attention to the message given by our FM, Mrs Nirmal Sitharaman on this day  at New Delhi, this year. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/work-focus-of-indian-customs-shifted-to-trade-facilitation-fm-nirmala-sitharaman/articleshow/80480576.cms See the report in the Economic Times the next day (27th). The ideas and the thoughts are absolutely lofty. Yes, Customs should become 'people' friendly and do 'business and trade facilitation' from now onwards. And that the Customs is going through a 'transformative process' and become more 'people centric'. I could not but help recollecting a similar lofty statement made by the then FM, Yaswant Sinha, in the year 1998 when he took over ...

  When it comes to electricity, somehow, the rights of the consumers were the same as what happens with the rights of the tax payers! NO RIGHTS! Despite the fact that there were many rules laid out in the Supply and Distribution code of almost all the State Regulations as well as in the Central Regulations, none of these were ever implemented. For instance, there is a penalty for not supplying power for more than one hour without announcement. Or, stated in a different way, an unannounced power cut will have to be compensated by the Distribution Company! Please show me one distribution company that paid this compensation to the consumer when they cut the power, without making a prior announcement. Well, in the last year, they have been pulling themselves up and trying to abide by the rules that were laid down by the regulatory bodies. Now, the new Rule Book! Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules 2020! Most of the points raised in it are welcome. Post Paid and Pre-paid, transparen...

Jinko, a solar semiconductor manufacturer claims that they have achieved a record breaking 24.9% of energy conversion efficiency. The records on conversion efficiency has been climbing slowly in the last decade. Last year before the end of 2020, the efficiencies centered around 22% of energy conversion from light to electricity in the case of Mono Crystalline solar modules. Now in the case of Jinko, they have submitted N Type Mono Crystalline solar modules for evaluation and energy conversion efficiency calculation purposes to Institute for Solar Energy Research at Hamelin, Germany.  The press release from the manufacturer quotes their certification and claims to have achieved 24.9% efficiency which is a marked improvement and herald a new phase in the growth of solar power plants. With more and more power plants moving towards renewable sources and a very ambitious plan of reducing carbon footprint by 30 to 35% across the world by 2030 under the Paris Charter, this would be a path...

There cannot be any doubt on the fact that the Energy cost across the world has been falling down. Petroleum prices have been falling down, we all know. More so the gas prices. Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) has been falling down in its price to less than $3 per MMBTU. At the same time Indian prices of LNG seem to hover around $11 and $12 per MMBTU which makes it not so very attractive. As our Prime Minister has remarked, energy dependent on LNG than on Oil would be cleaner, cheaper and better. There cannot be any doubts on this. However, price is a deciding and motivating factor. Our analysis of power generation using gas in lieu of coal does not reduce the cost of power production markedly. If the price of gas is closer to that of international prices, then we can find it attractive and better than power from coal based power. 'A push' from the PM would certainly be good. This would require the government to scale down its duty and tax structures and also discourage concessionai...

This article is in line with what I was writing about in the last few months.  We want the cross subsidy scrapped to make a uniform and simple tariff structure. And a market decided power price! Cross subsidy is not only a problem for the industries but also for generators. In addition it is also a grand modifier of the market and is a big problem for the Distribution Company.  In Tamil there is a proverb which likens a person who goes through pain and enjoys it to a dog that is biting a dry bone. Since the bone is so dry and her own teeth so weak, the blood oozes out from the gums in her mouth and the dog things that it is the blood from the bone! Whereas the truth is that it is her own blood! In order to save the dog from bleeding if you try to take the bone from her, it will not allow you to take it either! You cannot save the dog easily.  TANGEDCO and other Discoms in electricity business are more are less like that. They 'think' cross subsidy is good for them but in ...

  First round of relief in terms of work to be done, for small GST payers has at last, come about! After pestering with the government for over two years now, the first major reduction in documentation and filing has been effected! All those GST tax payers who are having a turnover upto Rupees Five Crores may file their returns on a quarterly basis. Filing every month three returns apart from paying tax on a monthly basis was eating out the resources of the small businesses. Now, the government has announced that those people who are making five crores or less may file on a quarterly basis. But, of course, taxes have to be paid on a monthly basis! And in order to be eligible for this scheme, they should have paid their taxes till October and filed GSTR 3B for Oct 2020 before Nov 30, 2020. This would lessen the amount of work done by the small GST payers by almost fifty percent! Thank you, Government. Better late than never!  

Not all countries are spinning down the path of recession because of Covid.  Of course, we know that China has long come out of the issue and has registered a growth in the second quarter onwards. Expected to grow at an annual growth rate of 2.1% this year, hitting a 44 year low in their growth rate! Australia registered a growth of 3.3% in the last quarter. It fell into a recession, pushed in by the Corona Virus, after nearly three decades! Found itself controlling the virus and jumping out of the recession quickly. People expect Australia to further move ahead and mark the year end with a sharp growth in its economy. World's third largest economy, read Japan, has also moved out of the recession in the last quarter of this year. Japan is leading the 'Zoom Boom' with an impressive 5.5% growth in the third quarter. Japan has just signed off world's biggest trade deal, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)! Only the previous quarter, Japan had its economy shr...

 Two news items caught my eye today! On one side, the newspapers claimed that the GST collection has been going up consistently. For the second month in succession it said, the GST collections crossed 1 lakh crores of Indian Rupees! A welcome change from the dreary world of Covid. Industries seem to show a better turn and therefore, the article claimed the collection of GST has risen gradually and we are almost on par with Nov 2019! They also say that the increase in GST collections could be because of the festive season. People might have loosened their purse strings during this season to fill their homes with festive goodies. Well, that could explain this month's purchase but then it still cannot be the same as the previous year which did not see Covid! Maybe, after all, the country is turning up in the V curve! https://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/gst-revenue-at-104-lakh-crore-in-november/article33220851.ece?homepage=true On the other side, another article also caught my ey...

@Thanks, Sify A welcome measure from the Government of India!   Something that taxpayers can feel good about. Let us make a list of what are the good things that can come out of it, if this scheme is implemented in the letter and spirit of what it says.   1.       One of the dirtiest words in tax collection is Harassment of taxpayer. A tax officer meets a taxpayer and goes through the accounts submitted by him. Identifies a mistake in the calculations. Bargains for personal gains and closes the case as all clear once his requirement is met. In most cases, the ‘mistake’ is more conceptual than real. A lay man could easily misinterpret the statutes while the officer whose job is to interpret the law, does so to his advantage, leaving out the spirit of the statute!   Most of these happen only when the officer meets the taxpayer in person and finds that the person is gullible. Identifies him as a source to meet his needs. When personal meetings do not...

Introduction   Let us have a quick recap of the solar cell technology that we have studied earlier in our engineering courses so that we are able to make a well-informed decision while buying a solar power plant.   1954 was the year when the first solar cell was fabricated in the Bell Labs, which was the first practical solar cell made. Of course, over one hundred years had flown by since the invention of the photovoltaic effect in 1839 by the French scientist Edmond Becquerel. (Don’t confuse him with Henri Becquerel who won the Nobel on Radioactivity in the early twentieth century).   Since then, many developments have taken place so much so, there are many buildings sporting a solar panel, today.   Mono, Poly and Thin-film   Technology wise we can differentiate the panels as Monocrystalline, Polycrystalline and Thin-film. Monocrystalline is the case of silicon crystallized and made into a single bar. From this bar, slices of wafers are made and cut to the requ...