A Letter to National Informatics Center
Dear Web Designers of the Indian Government
I write this, not because I am a frequent visitor of your website. In fact I never visit your website, knowing fully well that the only reason it exists is because it should. The only governmental websites I ever access have been CBSE and the IRTC. Both of them pale in comparison to the rape of the internet that is your ‘national informatics portal‘. You have not only eaten the d or e or s from design but you seem to have chewed it, spitted it, then drank it only to excrete and paste it on your website. Not the first three alphabets. But the whole W.O.R.D.
While most countries work hard to build an image better than the existing reality, you dear Sirs, seem to have worked meticulously hard to ensure that India- contrary to all the Microsoft and Google offices here, contrary to all the customer support jobs that we steal, has as much technological talent as the Sahara desert has water.
This letter has been excruciatingly frustrating for me to write. I have written another draft which frustrated the hell out of me because I kept on writing and it seemed it would stretch all the way from my my laptop to the end of the milky way. I have now decided I would put in points why your portal, if you can call it that, puts many of us concerned citizens and geeks under significant cardiac stress.
We believe that the whole of humanity is at stake here. Forget WMDs or Oil or Taliban or asteroids. Hitler wouldn’t have needed concentration camps had he been able to access nic.gov.in in his time.
**Begin rant**
(1) You seem to be using a version of Front Page 304BC which was invented when Bill Gates first learn how to shag. The next time you go to Palika to buy School Girls become Naughty Nurses 3, please also buy a copy of Dreamweaver for Rs 50. I would have sent you a torrent link myself, but I am afraid that Azureus may prove too advanced for you.
(2) It pains me to recommend you to use one of the readymade templates. It is unfortunate that you have been inspired by Ramsay and his horror movies for your color schemes.
(3) Try not to have broken links. At least on your front page cad.delhi.nic.in denies me access to your highly confidential data about Computer Aided Design. Are you sure that CAD expands to Computer Aided Death
(4) People stopped using Lynx and Mosaic many many years ago and it is possible to do many things with a language called HTML. If LTTE and the State-Jail in Bihar the only organisations offering me work, I still wouldn’t like to work with you after seeing your recruitment page. I wonder if your dresscode asks people to wear animal skin and there are two stones and twigs in place of your coffee maker.
(4) A search for India on the search form, returns the same page. If you want to get the same thing done, you can use something called the Refresh button on your browser. The ‘software‘ that you use to display things that you call website are called browsers. The blue ‘E’ thing that you click, you know.
(5) The website is ‘optimised’ for IE only and I noticed there is a Hindi version of the site. Next time take the following fact into consideration- Number of Non IE users is 30%. Number of people in India who have a computer, use the internet (in particular your site) and do not know English but know what Prayogiki means- Tends to zero.
(6) I have for a minute thought that you may have created this page only to add security to the pages. Which geek worth his mp3 player would like to hack your website? The idea was soon dismissed when I took your collective IQ into consideration.
(7) If a link on your homepage redirects to another website, link to that directly and not give another page saying ‘Please go to Crap.MoreCrap.gov.in’ If I suffered from OCD and liked clicking on things I would go and play Bubble Wrap online.
(8) I think you should sue IBM for copying your logo. How dare they copy your logo?
(9) There is a link to ‘Evolution’ of the NIC. It actually means the process by which things develop and diversify into better forms. How one could evolve before history was the future am sure you can tell.
(10) Your ‘History’ page sadly does not talk about how the pages that you host, are the remains of the First great Internet disaster of the fourth century. I actually cleared my browser cache just to make sure that the page that I was viewing was actually a page and not some unloaded junk. Junk, Dear Sirs, is not something that you should intend to create when creating anything.
(11) Using blinking images is not the same as using Flash in a website.
(12) To supplement your income from all the embezzlement of the millions the government provides for maintenance you should also place Ads selling Cyanide on all the pages.
(13) I really cannot go any further. I doubt if I have ever used these many phrases in italics to stress a point. For assistance contact any sixth grade student in any computer club in any school in Mozambique.
Please burn the servers buildings which contain your data. Then throw the rubble in the holy ganges which would then be unholy forever. Then never let any human come in contact within a light year radius of your perimeter or human race will not evolve.
We will have a future where the creative faculties of our genetic offsprings would be such that even the greatest poets would not be able to compose ‘Roses are red, Violets are blue, dear mom and dad I love you’ and the Rainbow that I created in second grade would be a masterpiece no one would ever be able to reproduce.
Hoping aliens who are uglier than you would eat you alive
Yours sincerely
Aditya Anand
This post would have looked much better if I used screen shots and many images that I planned to. But I am too lazy and tired at 4:30 in the morning. Further I am yet to change the permissions for my upload folder. Hence this whole image keeda would be a real bitch
Thing(s) of the Day: Don’t mess with Mommy.
In keeping with the theme of the post, I thought I should also give you this
May 18th, 2008 at 6:34 am
Spoke my mind. I actually feel embarrassed whenever I have the misfortune of visiting an Indian Government website. Those people should be charged under some criminal offense!
May 18th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Small correction, the national portal of India is
http://india.gov.in/
not nic.gov.in
May 18th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Did you send this letter to anyone consequential?
Nice post, anyway.
May 18th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Ankit, thank you for telling me that. That was a big mistake. I dunno why, but I think it was probably once upon a time the national portal.
The india.gov.in is not half as bad though.
Abhishek, would that make a difference? Though I have to highly edit it to send it, it seems a good idea
May 21st, 2008 at 3:45 pm
one word :hilarious
ps: yea…exams got over…so started writing again… exam time sucks out any cerative ability one might have…hence the dry period….
May 21st, 2008 at 3:46 pm
one word :hilarious
ps: yea…exams got over…so started writing again… exam time sucks out any cerative ability one might have…hence the dry period….
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:03 pm
So is this blog officially dead? :O
September 23rd, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Hmm dead it is. Not officially so.
Needs a miracle called holidays to get it resurrected. Hopefully next week (Ramadan Holidays starting here in Islamic World)
**Note to self** UPDATE UPDATE God freakin’ UPDATE