I have moved (almost)

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Yes Sir, Yes Sir, Three Bags Full

Commentator after commentator in the Indian media, political inclinations and insinuations notwithstanding, shed copious amounts of reptilian tears over the appearance of naked cash in the floor of the Parliament during the trust vote yesterday. A hallowed shrine, the sanctum sanctotum of Indian politics, was eviscerated, they wailed.

Hogwash.

Indian politics, right from the dark days of the 1970s have had carried the cancer of money infiltrating its ranks. The first generation of politicians had the dream of building a nation but that dream turned into a sordid nightmare for the citizens once the second and third generations swooped down. Governments - at both state and center - became less about governance and more about making the quick buck. The matter is remarkably akin to how countries with rich natural resources are the world's largest anarchies today. Owners (which sometimes is the state) realizes that velocity of resource stripping is directly proportional to the quickness at which riches will flow. Actually, it is not different from the way Gordon Gekko planned to strip the assets out of Blue Star Airlines in Wall Street. Current day politicians are very awake to the fact that five years is all they have to strip whatever comes their way. And they do it with awe-inspiring efficiency.

The money, hidden away like Indian sex in the dark corners of the bedroom, finally entered Parliament in broad daylight. Good that it did. It had already entered our living rooms through scenes captured in sting operations. It had already entered our minds fifteen years back when a stock broker confessed paying money to a Prime Minister - his lawyer even brought along the suitcase used to ferry the cash (politicians then were a touch naive - they returned a $20 suitcase after taking the $250,000 content). Members of the House brandishing stacks of currency notes represents the smelly armpit of Indian politics. Unfortunately that is the current unwashed state of the country's political existence. Those in airconditioned studios wearing Davidoff perfumes may not like it, but - alas - the brutal truth cannot be quite wished away.

The image of Mahatma Gandhi clutching his chest as he falls to the assassin's bullet is an everlasting image in the Indian psyche. That was the day the guiding light of the country went out. Let the image of waving cash in the Lok Sabha be burned into our minds as well. The soul of Indian politics died a long time back. Yesterday we merely concluded its last rites.

They Come Together. And How.

1. Rabindranath Tagore - the Poet Laureate of India
2. Matt Harding - an idiosyncratic individual bit by the wanderlust bug. Jives with strangers around the world in a dance that is somewhere in-between Chicken and Raindance.
3. Garry Schyman - a musician based in Los Angeles
4. Palbasha Sidique - a 17 year old Bangladeshi girl who lives in Minneapolis, USA
5. Praan - poetically means "life" in Bengali. A small poem from Gitanjali

The end result is as sublime as it is electric. I'll stop here.

Technorati Tags: Palbasha Sidique, Matt Harding, Praan, Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

It would be funny if it wasn't sad

They came driven in their own cars to do the needful. The needful were different for the two protagonists of the Nuclear Deal Drama India has witnessed in the past couple of weeks. Prakash Karat, the Communist boss, came to announce the withdrawal of support in a Wagon R (the small car from Maruti Suzuki). Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh, the two leaders of the Samajwadi Party, came in a Toyota Camry (a luxury sedan in India) to start on the deal to extend support to the beleagured government. Cars - perhaps - don't make the men but in this case it starkly revealed the polar differences between the two parties and also a pointer to what the Congress party was getting into. Ajay Shah writes in his blog about Congress' inexperience with coalitions and Saubhik Chakrabarti, who Shah cites, is correct. The SP with its skullduggery and under-the-table arm twisting will ensure that some key policy decisions are seen through while extracting their pound of flesh from other quarters. And that is the way India is destined to be run in the next few crucial years of the country's existence.

Being a democracy is bad enough to push radical reforms through - every decision has to be debated ad-infinitum and often by people who just don't get it. And imagine a colatition - an euphemism to describe a bundle of opportunistic once-goons-now-politicians trading horses of every size and shape - working within a democracy. If Apple hadn't staked a claim on the phrase and put it as their address, we could have justly termed the situation as "Infinite Loop".

A corporation that drags its feet to make decisions and flounders in forcing ahead purposefully is soon consigned to the back-alley of history. Why should governments (and nations that are ill-fated to have them) be any different?

Post Script: The UPA government faces a trust vote on the 22nd of July. Several Members of Parliament (I couldn't bring myself to prefix the "Hon'ble") will be brought out from jail so they could vote ("all hands on deck - rapists and murderers first").

Post Post Script: The cast of this drama is dominated by two individuals. Your political inclinations will decide which of Manmohan Singh or Prakash Karat you will call the hero. However, neither will vote on the no-confidence motion. They were never elected to the House. TVR Shenoy writes more...

Technorati Tags: Nuclear Deal, IAEA, UPA Government, Samajwadi Party, CPM, Congress party, Prakash Karat, Manmohan Singh, Amar Singh, criminalization of Indian politics, India

GL 007: Licensed to Separate

I have been following the Gurkha movement for an independent state with tepid interest. I must confess that I have never been to Darjeeling or have crossed the Teesta river and my only exposure to the northern part of West Bengal has been through Satyajit Ray's "Kanchenjungha" and the songs of Anjan Dutta. I have no reason to believe otherwise that the topography of the region is breath-taking with the majestic Himalayas in the north and smoky blue foothills all around. I also do not have reason to beleive otherwise that the socio-economic state of the region is as pathetic as the natural beauty is scenic.

History is laced with examples of people seeking an identity because that would make them prosperous - or so they think. This almost never works in the United States because your identity hardly counts as a parameter for success. Unfortunately it does elsewhere, and it does even more where ethinicity is inbult into a social structure. An even cursory look at large regions where races of multiple ethnic origin were bound together by a fragile fabric of nationhood reveals that they fragmented away over time. Yugoslavia is a prime example. So is the esrtwhile Soviet Russia. And fires of ethnic battles have not yet doused in several parts of Africa (the only saving grace is that no external constituency seem to be interested in redrawing boundaries in that continent).

I fear for my country. I fear that someone has managed to sneak a foot in the door. The ethinic army is waiting to swoop down through the crack that the door has opened. I am afraid that there will be a boundary line going through my courtyard.

Technorati Tags: Gorkhaland, Separatist Movements in India, Separate State, West Bengal, Darjeeling

What does the sign in your store say?

I took off from work early yesterday and on my way to home decided to stop by Reliance Digital to check out some LCD TVs that I have been earning to own for a while. Given that it was non-peak hour, there weren't many people in the store. There was however this big sign that said

"We wanted to let you know that we really don't care if you bought from our store - our goals are not aligned with your custom towards us. You are free to stroll around, see and touch anything so long as you do not ask questions of the sales staff. Please don't expect a sales person to approach you, smile at you or display any initiative to help you purchase. You are here for reasons you know best but we definitely know that we are here not to help you bring those reasons to fruition"

No - obviously there was no such physical sign. But the sign was everywhere. I tried to engage some of the salespersons in a conversation but they somehow were gravitating towards the microwave section (possibly because that is the ladies-heavy zone). I left the store in fifteen minutes.

All businesses have signs that say something about them. It is not necessary that they are painted on a board. What does your business say?

Somehow I like Wordpress more

For those of you who may be interested in my professional existence, I write a separate blog on it. Perhaps to try out a different service, I chose Wordpress to host that blog. I was impressed by the service.

1. The dashboard has exactly what a blogger would want to know about his site
2. The metadata service is better
3. There are many more themes than blogger to choose a layout

I haven't figured out how to insert Youtube videos though (not that I do that often). Just out of curiosity I tried to import this blog into Wordpress. "Khag" is the bengalee name for a weed that was used to make pens that people would dip in ink to write. As children, we were made to write the name of Godess Saraswati (deity for knowledge) on banana leaves using a "khag" pen and milk for ink. Hence the name for the blog.

Starting a Mexican Wave

I went to watch the Bangalore Royal Challengers play the Delhi Dare Devils in an IPL 20-20 cricket match yesterday. It was fun because I had never witnessed, in person, the off-field entertainment aspect of the sport. Shaan (a super-hit singer from the Hindi filmdom) performed live on the far end of the ground. He looked like a puppet from the distance but the gigantic video screen more than made up for it. There was this psychedelic display of laser lights and loud music played each time something worth celebrating happened during play. Lastly, but most definitely not the leastly, the presence of the Washington Redskinnettes (the cheer girls) added a whole lot of spice to the balmy evening. The spectators were hugely engaged with what was happening all around.

At the Chinnaswamy Stadium, the video screen usually sends out prompts to the audience to start a Mexican Wave. I guess the rapidity of events in a 20-20 match possibly precluded such attempts this time around. So an entrepreneurial spectator (he was wearing a South African rugby shirt) decided to try start one all by himself.

· He did the "1-2-3-Ho" act of counting and standing up after the count with raised hands. Obviously people around him didn't respond because they didn't know they had to

• He did the act again but this time shouting "c'mon fellas, let's do it" before he did. Suddenly the whole aisle was rising up with him. People in the adjacent aisle took notice but didn't respond quickly enough
• Now everyone in the first aisle was kicked up and people from many aisles out were noticing this attempt. A lot of them were just waiting for the juggernaut to reach their stands.
• The next attempt was miraculous. Not only did the second aisle respond but the wave just spread across the aisles all around the stadium. Not once but the wave did three rounds around the stadium before people again got engrossed in the cricket.

It takes time to build momentum around an initiative that involves several people to succeed. And there will always be one person with the idea to start things off.

PS: Delhi Dare Devils won the match comfortably.

Vote Not?

The first phase of elections in Karnataka is today and Bangalore is one area that goes to poll. Looking (and driving) around it is impossible to tell today apart from any other given Saturday (of course the booze joints, euphemistically called "Wine Shops" in Bangalore are shut). Some reports say the polling is 12%, which possibly explains why the queue outside the ATM is longer than that outside a polling station. Apathy towards a chance to decide governance is a dangerous symptom in a democracy. When I used to stay at Harare a lot of my friends took pains to tell me that this is exactly what used to happen during election time in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe methodically ensured he "got" the votes year after year and stayed on power to rule the country. Twenty eight years into its independance, Zimbawe stands perilously close to economic obliteration. Chilling though but let me drop this analogy here.

The Indian Premier League

The IPL is at its halfway stage. For the duration that it has been on air, the tournament has re-written television habits of Indians besides altering the cricketing habits of a few T20-migrant cricketers. It is impossible to pick up any form of media - print or electronic - that doesn't dwell on IPL. Even business channels on TV inevitably veer to that in favor of bulti-billion dollar take over bids.

Coming to the cricket, a few truisms have started evolving

1. It is futile to have the jack-of-all-trades all-rounders. This is a game of specialists.
2. Having a bowling superstar or batting superstar doesn't help. The top wicket taker at this stage (Zaheer Khan) and top run-getter (Virender Shewag) don't feature in the top teams
3. Any team that loses 3-4 wickets in the first 6 overs is doomed. They may produce isolated fireworks later on but their fate is sealed
4. (corollary of above) Any team that scores 60-ish losing no more than one wicket in the first 6 will most likely win the game
5. And for my J. Pierpoint Morgan style phrophecy - the fortunes of teams in IPL shall fluctuate

I am betting on the Delhi Daredevils to win the tournament

Many Faces of a Genius

He wrote, he made films, he composed music, he painted. He was arguably only second to Rabindranath Tagore to leave an indelible impression of Bengali art on the rest of the modern world.

Much before I was introduced to the films of Satyajit Ray, I was an avid fan of his fictional detective "Feluda". It was only later that I realized that his films had a deep impact on the way he wrote. His writings, like his films, were devoid of flab, of excesses and told a story through a multidimesional plot. Moreover, his literature had a strong visual aspect to it. It was impossible - especially for a teenager - not to try visualizing the story in parallel to reading it. And then Ray had the uncanny ability to create a film out his own story that brought out completely unexplored aspects of the written piece. It was this ability that converted a short story for children called "Atithi (The guest)" to his last and seminial film "Agantuk (The Stranger)". It would be apt to describe the film as - if our perceptions were not pre-clouded by the phrase - an adult film. In fact, Agantuk went on to tell the story of not only a family under dilemma of accpeting a relative they had never seen but also allowed Ray a medium of communicating his philosophy of life through the main protagonist. The same went for his music, especially the fusion of eastern and western classical music that came about in his composition.

Like Tagore, Ray is relevant even today. It is the responsibility of our generation - the thirty and forty somethings - who grew up on Ray, to propagate his creations to the next generation.

Agantuk Part 1

Easy-con Valley?

The Congress has pitched the daughter of the late Chief Minister Ramakrishna Hegde to fight ex-CM H D Kumaraswamy in the Ramanagaram constituency. The move has nothing to do with promoting women in legislature. Unabashedly the Congress party declared that is was due to astrological reasons! It so transpired that a woman is unlucky for the Gowda's and this strategy is a sure shot way to ensure defeat for HDK. In fact, the younger brother of Kumaraswamy, H D Revanna, will also find a lady fighting him this elections.

Bangalore epitomizes the progress India has made, especially in high technology. Can it do something to the politician's minds?

Chipping Away...

If you are an ice-cream man why would you not let your customer lick (or bite) the luscious scoops on the cone as soon as you hand it out? Having spent so much in making the packaging look attractive it is insane to make it extraordinarily difficult for the user to start using the product (or for the consumer to start consuming it). I recently bought a bag of Lay's chips and settled down on my recliner to watch the Manchester United versus Liverpool soccer match last Sunday. No matter how hard I tugged at the seams the bag just refused to open up. I had to
(1) get up from the recliner (read give up my comfortable posture)
(2) walk into the kitchen
(3) find a pair of kitchen scissors (they are not a standard issue in my kitchen)
(4) Cut open the top of the bag
(5) dispose the sliver of plastic into the kitchen bin
(6) get back to my recliner and taste the first chip from the bag
Shouldn't bags be designed to give way at the slightest tug? Especially when quicker I get the opening bit out of the way I can get to the reason why the food company exist.

To find the bestseller...

...don't go to your neighborhood bookstore.

Bookstores typically have a section called "Bestsellers" - mostly located near the entrance to the store, targeting the fad-conscious, non-enterprising reader. Books in this section are the ones the store wants to sell to you and has little to do with sales activity (how else can you explain finding "Black Swan" there. That is not a book picked up by the masses). A definitive direction towards bestsellers can be found on the sidewalks with vendors who sell pirated books. Laws of economics demand that they invest in books that are greatly in demand (low inventory risk, which is compounded by the possibility of police raid and ultimate confiscation). Yes - they also know how to place the better-bestsellers near the edges of their spread-outs (ask for "The Last Moghul" by Dalrympyle and it will take a while to for the stall owner to fish it out from a remote sack).

The most obvious things may not be always found at the most obvious places.

I upgraded to IE6.0

I recently upgraded to IE 6.0. I was quite irritated at the way my earlier version of IE was behaving and thus made this choice. I was using IE 7.0 earlier

Generation in Transition

If the advertisements are to be believed, the Indians haven't yet decided if shunning the US is a better option or embracing it is.

There is this advertisement of a motorbike that has an young Indian riding in the dilemma of accepting or rejecting an employment offer from the US. He goes to a construction site, looks up at the impressing skyscrapers in the making and makes the decision on the spot. He will stay back. "I don't need your job, Mr. Richards", he says and displays the Indian side to his civic sense by tearing up his acceptance letter and littering the street with debris.

Then there are two ads, both from HDFC, the financial services behemoth in India. The more poignant one is where a dejected daughter returns to inform her parents that while she was accepted to an US school, the scholarship she managed would cover just half the expenses. Her mischievously beaming father breaks it to her how he has been saving for this situation ever since the girl was a toddler.

As we transcend from one generation to another, hopes and aspirations are changing as is changing the outlook towards the West. I sincerely hope we imbibe from the West something more than just calling the last alphabet "zee". Whether we do it by going to the United States or otherwise is an individual choice.

Those who live by the sword...

Two disgruntled employees of Patni Computer Systems, an Indian technology outsourcing company, has filed litigation that they were grossly underpaid, contravening their employment contract when brought over to the US on an H1-B visa. This may come as a surprise to some but is something that has been going on for quite a while now. In fact, it will not be incorrect to claim that such wage difference - covertly or overtly perpetrated by outsourcing companies - is at the heart of the outsourcing business. The reason why qualified immigrants brought over by US companies, supplied by the outsourcing shops, can't be paid wages less than that for peer groups in the US is allegedly to protect the US workforce. But who is expected to protest if this norm is violated? Knowledge workers are non union-ized, ruling out collective bargaining or collective remediation. Institutions bringing the knowledge labor in is least likely to even raise an eyebrow because cheaper "raw material" costs directly inflates the bottom line (leading to several thumbs-up from Wall Street analysts).

I don't know the solution but something tells me that factors of production, especially if they are scarce (and most importantly, human beings), should be nurtured well. I am not sure if someday the knowledge industry will perish by the same sword that they wield to rule the world today.

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The People Falacy of Democracy

The bombers of the Twin Towers and other hijackers on the fateful day of 9/11 hailed from Saudi Arabia. George Bush decided to attack Afghanistan instead. A 'regime change' was effected after the country was pulverized yet again and an ally of the Texan oil lobby was installed as head of state. President Karzai spoke impeccable English while his subjects were mostly tribals from different sectarian politics that mired the country, not well versed in the language or polish the head of state espoused. The disconnect could not have been more stark. After six years of installed democracy, the sponsor super power confesses that Afghanistan is at the tipping point of failure. Interestingly democracy is about people but its implementation is almost never people centric. Democracy is about building solid Institutions and this is where the Republican administration in Washington D.C. got it very wrong. They made the same mistake in Pakistan where they placed complete faith on President Musharraf. Dealing with people and mistaking that as democracy is an easy trap to fall into and it is not unusual that the US has placed faith on more westernized leaders. Involvement with Institutions need a much deeper understanding of the fabric of the nation, its culture and most importantly, its past. American impatience has put two important nations in Asia on the brink.

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Standing up for Honor

It is a running joke amongst my friends about how many times I have seen the movie "A Few Good Men". I saw it again last evening and asked myself the question - "why do I keep seeing this movie so often".

The answer lies in my stand for honor - something that was ingrained in me by one Mr. K.S. Srinivasan, President of a company I worked for. KS, as he was called, handed me my offer letter and in his bid to discourage me from shopping around with it said - "always work for honor, Mr. Majumdar". I've tried to be honest about that aspect of corporate existence ever since.

The film "A Few Good Men" is full of characters, as you would expect in a courtroom drama. There is a victim, a couple of "innocents", a bundle of marines, a fair sprinkling of lawyers and all other garnishing. The single string that passes through each character, irrespective of which side of the story they are in, is their stand for honor - the character to stay faithful to what one believes in life and an unfailing persuasion of that belief. And this goes right from the marines who are accused of killing a weaker marine to the base commander and the defense lawyers (who incidentally do not uniformly believe that their client is innocent but respect their own honors nonetheless). There is just one character in the film who doesn't seem to have honor. It is Private William Santiago. Incidentally, he is the weak marine who gets killed at the base.

The corporate world I live in is mired by questionable ethics and constantly lowering standards of human values. Honor has clearly left the building. It is sometimes necessary to watch A Few Good Men just so I keep my mind clear in these turbulent times.

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"I'm tired of monkeyin' around"

The new year has got off to a racist start - at least on the cricket field. A brown skin, skinny, Asian fellow has been accused of racially abusing a fair (almost) skinned, burly anglo-saxon. This must be the first time that racism has happened in almost the reverse order in which it traditionally has operated. Perhaps the white-men doesn't quite understand the basic nuances of racism. Racism is nothing about races - it is about power and if the Australians are the numero uno cricket team in the world then it is they who wield oodles of it and not the Indians. It is also foolish to attribute a rank to an insult, which by itself is something grossly deplorable. Making a "racist" insult to be of higher severity is opening up the ranks to other "innocuous" insults that can be equally demeaning. This monkey business of insult and insinuation in the name of "sledging" has gone too far. It's time the monkeys looked upto Darwin, took encouragement and moved on with evolution.

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