Most of us have been hearing about Rupees 70,00,000 Crores of money stashed away in Swiss Bank by very few Indians and political parties. Some of the readers in the other parts of the world should know that in India, a crore means 10 million. There is no need to confuse people by expressing this number in billions or trillions since UK and US friends will interpret differently. Being a hardcore IT (not Income Tax) person with some grey hair, I developed a phobia that poorly written programs and ill-designed systems would collapse any Pico-second. The trauma of Y2K just about a decade back is still fresh in my memory even though I called it a day nearly 1K days back.
Very recently Pranab Mukherjee made his usual courtesy call and asked the director of Swiss Bank about the current balance as his system is down due to power shortage in New Delhi. Usually affable director retorted saying don’t throw your telephone directory at me. Clearly Pranab would not think of doing that at a friend sitting some 5K miles away when he is not adept at throwing even in the dust bin kept next to his table. Understandably, Pranab was aghast.
Obviously there is a crisis at Swiss Bank and we need to get to the root of the problem.
Swiss banks are known for keeping secrecy. If you are not good at keeping a secret, kindly stop reading now.
It is learnt from reliable sources that CIO of Swiss Bank was discussing a statement indicating the total of Indian money of some dark color just when Pranab’s call came in. Both the CIO and the director were in a jam as the collapse of their system is imminent. The rate at which the balance is swelling, the amount would cross 99,99,999.99 crores at any micro-second meaning it exceeds 14 digits and becomes a 15 digit figure.
So, what? Actual problem is here. CIO was explaining that very moment their computerized color banking system is so designed to take only 14-digit numbers (fractions do not pose much problems). They also discovered dynamite like bug in the system which resets entire balance to zero due to what is technically known as overflow problem, once the balance becomes 15 digits. Incidentally this vindicates my right to have my own phobias. It is a poor system design but obviously they can not let the customers know of it; clients will move their funds away electronically, with a click of a mouse, to competing Banks which leads to natural collapse of the Swiss Bank just as so many other US banks collapsed recently for wrong reasons. This is the real reason why director lost his cool which you can reasonably expect him to regain only after this D-15 problem is resolved by re-designing the system with a new RDBMS engine which can handle figures with any number of digits on the fly and retain Indian clients.
interesting !
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