Online Encumbrance Certificate in Andhra Pradesh

You can get an encumbrance certificate online in AP now. In order to get it you have to perform the following steps.

1. Go to the website http://igrs.ap.gov.in/
2. Click on Citizen Services -> encumbrance -> Search
3. Click on Yes in the screen that appears
4. Fill in the entries that appear in the search screen. You will have to get quite a few details in so it will help to have a copy of the registration document available with you.
5. Once you finish entering all the details click on Submit. It will then go to a new page with the list of items that matched the search displayed.
6. Click on the check box of the list of encumbrance certificates that are needed and click on submit. This will open a new popup window with the encumbrance certificate. You can then print this certificate.

What is this useful for

• Anyone buying new property can go and verify the current owners of the property that is shown on this certificate in the column Name of PartiesExecutant(EX)&Claimants(CL) with the copy of the registration documents given for verification. That way you can make sure that you are buying the property from someone who is genuine.
• For those that already own property you can make sure that the right people are appearing in the column Name of PartiesExecutant(EX)&Claimants(CL) as the current owners of the property.

Tips on finding your certificate

• Give as few details as possible and click on search. It will then display a whole set of certiticates. Select all and submit and see all the certificates. Once you get all of them search for the one you want and then in the column "Vol/Pg NoCD No Doct No/Year[ScheduleNo]" search for the Doct No/Year. Go back to your original list of encumbrance certificates where you selected all earlier and only select this one doct No/Year and voila you will get the certificate you want.

An apeal to my readers

I have had close to a 1000 unique visitors on my blog in the last 3 months but I have had less than 10 comments being put on the blog. It would be really nice to get some comments on the blog so that I can

• Improve their experience on the blog
  
• Write content that they would like to read
  
• Answer any questions that they might have
• Elaborate on parts of the topic that are vague

On the other hand it would be nice if the readers can

• Point to additional content that may supplement the information that is already in a post
• Give their point of view on the topic they are reading
• Add information that they may have about the topic they are reading
  

I would love to hear from all of you so this is an appeal to all my readers to help make this blog more interactive, fun and informative.

Going WiMax

After 4 years of struggling with wired broadband connections and 2 providers later we have decided to try out a wimax connection. The wimax provider is Reliance. To read more about how we came about this decision you can read more about it on my wife's blog My tryst with ISPs in Hyderabad.

Wimax as defined by wikipedia is "...a standards-based technology enabling the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL." So essentially they are going to put a receiver on top of my house which will help me connect onto the Internet by connecting wirelessly to the Reliance tower. Sounds like a dream in our wire infested cities. This is a rather new technology but it is said to provide high bandwidth at a lower cost in the long run. Currently Reliance is offering it but soon Tata Indicom (first quarter of 2009) and BSNL are also going to offer it.

Given below is the chronological account of my Going wiMax experience

Day 1 (Jan 28, 2008)

The sales guy came and collected the filled application form, Rs. 500 installation fees, copy of my PAN card and my latest telephone bill. He said that I would have the connection in 1 week - guess that is a standard line all of them are told to tell you.

Day 2 (Jan 29, 2008)

Had a call today and confirmed all the details in my filled in application form. They said that the connection will be done in a week.

Day 8 (Feb 4, 2008)

It has been more than a week and we have still not got the internet working in our house. When we called them up they said that they will come after 4. Well at 6:00 PM we gave up and they said they will come first thing in the morning.

Day 9 (Feb 5, 2008)

They came in the morning with all their equipment and started to walk around my house looking for a connection and "Alas!!!" they could not find one after trying for close to 2 hours. We were told that they have put up 47 towers in Hyderabad and that they are putting up 92 more towers and that we have to call up every month and find out if there is a tower that has come up in my area. We were also told that we will get back the Rs. 500 that we paid as installation fees only after a month.

So we are back at square one with no internet connection.

Changes in Birth Certificate - Day 3

For the first two parts of this series please read

• Changes in Birth Certificate
• Changes in Birth Certificate - Day 2

On Friday, 5 days after I submitted all the papers at the GHMC office in Tank Bund I had to go back and collect all the papers. I then had to take the collected papers to the ward office based on where my daughter was born and that happened to be at Khairatabad. This is the same place from where you collect the birth certificate. I was then told that the person in-charge of doing the birth certificates is on vacation and that it will take me 10-12 days to get the new birth certificate. I had to pay Rs. 100 as charges for the birth certificate (Rs. 60 for the correction and Rs. 40 for the new birth certificate).
To read the final article in this series
Changes in Birth Certificate - Finally got it

Not going to be cheap flying out of Shamshabad

When the new airport opens in Shamshabad, Hyderabad in March it is going to become very expensive to fly out. First of all it is going to take about an hour providing traffic is reasonable (which is a tough ask) from Punjagutta to reach the airport and over and above that there is going to be a Rs. 750 (approx charge) development fee that is going to be charged for each ticket that is departing from the airport.

There was a point where air fare was compared to train fare and the railways were losing passengers to air travel. Not any more with Kingfisher buying up Deccan and Jet buying up Sahara the price of air fare has gone up significantly. Add to this the long commute, the exorbidant parking charges (costs Rs. 120 to park your car for 2 hours in Begumpet airport) and the development fee and it is no more a simple choice between air and rail.

Does adversity make us better ?

I have been wondering if "Adversity forces us to become better". About a couple of days ago I had a late night at work trying to fix some stuff that should have never reached that stage. Having fixed it I started wondering why we got here and started to brainstorm about it and started putting processes in place so that we do not have such a situation again. Which made me wonder why did we not do all this brainstorming earlier and this is not the first time this is happening.

I find this true not only in my life but in general too. We start questioning the government administration only when there is a calamity. They start putting in processes or special measures only when there is some threat. This is the same in other organizations that I worked for too.

Another thing that I have noticed is that early in ones career if you have faced adversity at work then you come out of it stronger as against those that have had a pretty easy time when they joined a job. I feel the reason is because they were in a situation that demanded a higher level of concentration and faster learning so they were forced to pick up things at a faster rate thus making them better in a shorter period of time.

So now if we say that adversity makes us better then why don't we be in adverse situations all the time so that we become better faster? The answer to this is no. The reason is when an individual faces an adverse situation his body reacts to it by pumping more adrenalin and heightening the senses. When you come out of a very adverse situation you feel euphoric and light headed but as soon as you feel the situation has passed you start to feel very tired and drowsy. If there is too much adversity and tension people suffer from burnouts after which you feel like doing nothing.

So its good to have a balance of adverse situations and calm peaceful situations so that in these situations each time you jump up a notch and improve and you use the peaceful situations to reflect and recover and improve even more.

How call center executives can aggravate you ?

A few days ago I was in a wonderful mood to blog and my internet connection went down - so I called up the call center. After all the introductions where I gave them my subscriber Id and told them the status of all the lights on my router and unplugging and replugging and twisting and turning that they demanded I do and the thing still didn't work I was told that an executive will visit my house. So I asked them when the executive would come and they tell me in 3 days. That had my blood boiling. A great deal of screaming and shouting had no effect - they told me point blank that their process will take 3 days and just as i was about to slam the phone down they say "Thank you for calling. Have a nice day" and that had me furious. How can they expect me to have a nice day - they just messed it up for me even more by telling me I won't have an internet connection for 3 days.

The question I have is, do these guys thing ? Why do they not put themselves in the shoes of the customer and wonder - is that what the customer will like to hear at this point of time. Instead of saying that why can't they say something like "Sorry for inconveniencing you. We will try to resolve it as soon as possible" and say bye. It's nice to say the chirpy line when the customer is happy but not when the customer is unhappy and the executives should differentiate this when they talk to a customer instead of belting canned lines that will only make the situation worse.