Pritam Acharya | ପ୍ରିତମ୍ ଆଚାର୍ଯ୍ୟ
895 posts
@72pritam
Interested in probability, history, and CS | Past - @IISERPune, @IIScCSA | Erdős number 3 | Always learning | Working on Equity Pricing Models @BarclaysCIB
nothing has topped this yet
India pays a premium for the privilege of not learning anything :) Every Indian car Tata, Mahindra, Maruti, all of them has a tiny computer inside called an ECU (Engine Control Unit) This computer decides everything - how much fuel to inject, when to shift gears, how brakes work, how the battery behaves in an EV. Think of it as the car's brain. India makes zero of these brains for passenger cars. All of them come from foreign companies, mainly Bosch (Germany). If you don't control the brain, you don't really control the car. Indian OEMs can't even add a simple valve to their own engine without asking Bosch for permission. They can't change a single line of code. They are selling cars with someone else engineering inside. This isn't really about technology being too hard. It's a business model designed to keep you dependent. Three layers lock you in :) First, every new car programme needs Bosch to do setup work (Rs 10-30 crore). Second, you pay full price for software Bosch already developed for Volkswagen so Bosch gets paid twice for the same work. Third and this is the killer every time you want to change anything in the software, even something tiny, it costs around $500,000. So Indian OEMs simply stop trying to innovate. They accept whatever Bosch gives them. The calibration trap means tuning the car's brain for Indian conditions, how should the engine behave in Ladakh cold vs Chennai heat? Indian OEMs outsource even this to AVL in Austria. AVL reuses work they already did for European cars, charges India full price, and transfers zero knowledge. So Indian engineers never even learn how their own cars work from the inside. What Korea did is Hyundai faced the exact same situation in 1987. They set up Kefico as a joint venture with Bosch, learned everything from the inside, and by 2015 they owned the full technology themselves. The sequence was simple - first learn calibration (tuning) → then write your own software → then build your own hardware. It's a ladder. India never climbed the first rung. Why India didn't do this - It's not a talent problem Indian engineers design ECUs at Bosch offices worldwide. It's a combination of things like Indian OEMs won't fund Indian startups to develop alternatives. They demand that Indian suppliers first prove themselves in Europe before getting a chance at home (while European companies protect their own). Middle managers won't risk their careers backing a Pune startup when they can safely pick Bosch. India spends 0.64% of GDP on R&D vs Korea's 4.9%. Private sector funds only 36% of India's R&D, in Korea it's 79%. SEDEMAC - the one exception - One Indian company (IIT Bombay founders, Pune-based) actually makes ECUs for two-wheelers and generators. They have real IP, real patents, millions of units shipped. But even they couldn't break into passenger cars. Tata Motors is literally in the same city and doesn't use them. EVs are simpler to control than petrol/diesel engines. This should have been India's fresh start. Instead, Mahindra's new EV platform has Bosch (Germany), Valeo (France), BYD (China), Mobileye (Israel), Continental (Germany) - zero Indian ECUs. The dependency just migrated from ICE to EV with different foreign names. swarajyamag.com/technology/the…
Odisha CM Mohan Charan Majhi writes to West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee expressing serious concern over the lack of proper protocol during President Droupadi Murmu’s recent visit to West Bengal. In the letter, Odisha CM Mohan Charan Majhi said, 'The incident cast an avoidable shadow on the image of Bengal, a land known for its culture, civility and respect for democratic institutions."
The Supreme Court has directed the Centre and all State governments along with all institutions receiving public funds, either partially or fully, to dissociate the chairperson of NCERT social science curriculum, Professor Michel Denino and his two other associate members who were behind the Sub-chapter in part 2 of the Class 8 NCERT Social Science textbook 'Corruption in the Judiciary', in any manner for the purpose of preparation of curriculum or finalisation of text book for the next generation. A bench led by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant also directed all of the aforesaid authorities to disassociate Professor Denino, along with his team, from the preparation and inclusion of the Chapter, from rendering any service in any institution, which would mean payment to them from public funds. “At the outset we have no reason to doubt that professor Michel Danino along with Ms Diwakar and Mr Alok Prasanna Kumar either does not reasonable knowledge about Indian judiciary or they deliberately knowingly misrepresented the facts in order to project a negative image of Indian judiciary before students of Class 8 who are at an impressionable age. There is no reason as to why such persons be associated in any manner with preparation of curriculum or finalisation of text book for the next generation. We direct union, all states, all institutions recieving state funds, to disassociate them from rendering any service which would mean payment to them from public funds”, the Court noted.
You’d heard of bribes on imports….bribes on exports is a new one.. Rs 50 lakh for 50 flights’—Lt Col ‘sought bribes’ to get flight clearances for defence exports, says CBI Mayank Kumar @mayankreports reports #ThePrintExclusive theprint.in/india/rs-50-la…
The Taj Mahal - Edwin Lord Weeks, 1883
> New Parliament > New PMO office > Kashi Vishwanath Corridor Have you noticed a pattern? Also, all these projects were designed by the same architect.
