HUH?

Actually, the Koran was burnt and we didn't even realise it.

2010-09-10T13:22:00.004+05:30

Back in 2008, a radical pastor from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka (Kansas) did burn a Koran and also captured it on film. But we didn't hear or see any of it. The media just didn't latch on to the story and saved the world a Terry Jonesesque fiasco.

Cut to 2010 and Terry Jones who has mercifully "put on hold" his plans to burn the Koran. This episode has raised that one important question - Should the media report events that simply intend to provoke? Thankfully, there are voices who say we shouldn't. AP says it does not distribute pictures of Korans being burned, in line with their policy not to cover events that are “gratuitously manufactured to provoke and offend.” NYT executive editor Bill Keller adds that “the freedom to publish includes the freedom not to publish.”

Jones knew pretty well how to work his way around media ethics. He started with controversial "Islam is of the devil" hoardings in the summer of 2009... then came t-shirts with the same slogan... (by then he was getting picked up in regional papers) until finally he decided on the international "Burn a Koran day". He succeeded for, as Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs points out, there are more people at his press conferences than at his sermons!

I wish the media here stops obliging the next time marauding Shiv Sainiks harass couples on Valentine's Day or execute one of their many self-aggrandising and media-friendly stunts. It also applies to lumpen groups of all religious shades.

Is this in Australia?

2010-01-05T11:36:00.003+05:30

First things first... There's no justification whatsoever for the killing of the Indian student Nitin Garg. He has unfortunately become the first casualty in the ongoing series of attacks, some of them surely racist, on Indians in Australia. And he is definitely not going to be the last.

I have always wondered if these attacks have something to do with poor integration of Indians into the mainstream Australian society. I could be wrong. Maybe they don't. Perhaps even those who blend in very well are attacked. But that doesn't negate my point about how many Indians (and many other nationalities) fail to integrate themselves in societies of countries they adopt as their homes.

This argument arose in me again after seeing this photograph that was published in the Sydney Morning Herald. It shows Garg (front left, in white shirt) celebrating his birthday last year with his friends. It struck me that there's not one Australian with him (either Aboriginal, Caucasian or from any other group that's part of Australia). All his friends, at least those that matter to him, in Australia are Indians. Isn't it unfortunate? This photograph could well have been shot in India. He might as well have been in India.

If you want to live in another land, reap academic and economic benefits of a different country, enjoy the prosperous lifestyle of Australia, I think the least people like Garg could do is let a part of them become truly Australian.

Can a Sufi take up arms?

2009-05-28T12:05:00.004+05:30

I have always thought of Sufis as people obsessed with wine, poetry and god. Arms and ammunition was the last thing in mind. But that changed after reading this caption in the NYT about the Sufi militia in Somalia that is fighting an extreme Islamist violent group. I think it's a lame oversight by the NYT. What they probably mean is moderate Islamists! Kind of good Taliban vs bad Taliban.

State seduction?

2009-02-06T15:59:00.003+05:30

Republic Day parade has little to do with celebrations that reinforce our resolve to be free, democratic, socialist and secular. It is largely a realpolitik tool that allows a democracy to court leaders ranging from those who are theocratic to autocratic... a piece I wrote for the Outlook website:

As the republic entered into its 60th year, yet another edition of the Republic Day parade rolled along Rajpath yesterday. Like always, through much of January patriotism became a pain for many in Delhi as they adjusted their lives to a parade that is as divisive as it is grand.

The criticisms of the parade are many. The most cited one terms it as too "Stalinist" for a democracy. It is something that fits in well in Pyongyang, they point out, but not in New Delhi. They have a point. Our parade is not simply a display of impressive marching contingents, which is indeed practised by many, but includes brandishing real and faux military hardware. Should the latter have a place in a modern democracy like ours? None other has a parade that, in bits, is so farcical. Where else would you see soldiers atop wooden cut-outs and scaled models of tanks, ships and missiles moving to the tune of martial music or even the sound of simulated sea waves? It may be fine for schoolchildren but it's unacceptable for the country's armed forces to engage in something that is so risible and amateurish. And that too in front of a visiting head of state.

From Outlookindia.com

The parade, importantly, is not a public celebration. It is not a cutting-edge festival of India's best performing arts involving her most eminent artistes from across the country. That would be more befitting of nation that seeks to fete her progress and one that seeks to cultivate pride in her citizens. The parade, on the other hand, is largely restricted to politicians, bureaucrats, diplomats, bussed-in children and those who can brave the morning chill and oppressive security.Moreover, for those who live in and visit Delhi, the parade cuts off one of the most coveted public spaces (the greens around India Gate) for several weeks as contingents rehearse for the parade. If cultivating an engaged citizenry is the goal, leaving this space open for the public would achieve far more. The cost of organising the parade and managing its security, which surely runs into crores, is also another reason for it to be scrapped.

So what justification can possibly exist for continuing with such a tradition that evokes so many criticisms? There is one evident reason: state seduction The significance of the parade today may be minimal but the occasion, over the last few years, has clearly become a tool to seduce states India wishes to engage with. A look at the chief guests of the last eight Republic Day parades reveals how 26th January has been used to "honour" heads of states with enormous fuel resources irrespective of their socialist, secular or democratic credentials. To hell with Republic Day and all what it stands for! This trend obviously evolved at a time when India needed to import energy to sustain its frenetic growth. And even before this trend crystallised the parade has helped India court whosoever it wanted and for whatever reasons by anointing one head of state for each year's parade.

This practice of luring energy-rich countries on Republic Day is apparent as a distinct pattern from at least 2000, with Olusegun Obasanjo, then the president of Nigeria that is Africa's leading oil producer. ONGC Videsh soon stepped into Nigeria and remains committed to building a $6 billion refining infrastructure there. Algeria was next in 2001 with its eighth largest reserve of natural gas in the world. In 2003 it was Iran's turn that had on offer the world's second largest reserves of oil and gas. Iran also happens to be OPEC's second-biggest exporter. After a gap of two years, this trend reasserted itself with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz and OPEC's lynchpin being selected as India's chief guest. Vladimir Putin of Russia, which uses its vast gas reserves as a diplomatic tool these days, was the next chief guest in 2007.In most of these countries, India has strategic stakes in oil and gas fields and has significant energy ties with all of them.

By 2007 and in the backdrop of the Indo-US nuclear deal, nuclear energy was being touted as the solution to India's growing energy crisis. This also showed up in our choice of the chief guest for the parade. We, therefore, had France's Nicholas Sarkozy visit us as the chief guest of the 2008 Republic Day parade. France is one of the world leaders in nuclear technology and harnesses close to 80 per cent of its energy needs from nuclear sources. Russia, the chief guest for the year before, is also an important partner of India in nuclear fuel trade.

From Outlookindia.com

This year was no different with Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev being the guest of honour. His country, Kazakhstan in Central Asia, is home to the second largest uranium reserves and currently also has the 11th largest proven reserves of both oil and natural gas. That his democratic credentials are doubtful is of little disrespect to the free spirit of Republic Day. It is a thought that's brushed under the red carpet rolled out to greet him. Nazarbayev is the kind of leader who gets over 90 per cent votes in elections, the fairness of which is questioned by international observers. The Kazakh president has been in power uninterrupted since April 1990. He is even criticised for allegedly concentrating power in his hands and for amending his country's rules that allow him to return to the presidency for an unlimited number of terms. But for a democratic republic like ours that is no roadblock in honouring him as the chief guest for our Republic Day parade and signing uranium and petroleum deals with him on the occasion. No surprises if one of the following years a resource-rich despot is elevated to the same status.

Republic Day parade has little to do with celebrations that reinforce our resolve to be free, democratic, socialist and secular. It is largely a realpolitik tool that allows a democracy to court leaders ranging from those who are theocratic to autocratic (words which have no place in the Constitution we adopted on 26th January 1950). The showcasing of the parade and our military hardware is more akin to a blustering patriarch ordering his family members to put on their best for the guest at home for dinner. Much like a dictator who showcases "the best" his country has on offer to a fellow dictator. Many Indians will be thankful though they live in neither. Hope you had a happy Republic Day!

Forget a two-state solution. What about "Isratine"?

2009-01-22T13:57:00.002+05:30

That is what Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi asks in today's NYT op-ed. Carefully specifying that the holocaust is undeniable and that the Jews never forcibly expelled any Palestinian in newly created Israel, he says assimilation is the ony key to peace in West Asia. This is what he says: "Assimilation is already a fact of life in Israel. There are more than one million Muslim Arabs in Israel; they possess Israeli nationality and take part in political life with the Jews, forming political parties. On the other side, there are Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Israeli factories depend on Palestinian labor, and goods and services are exchanged. This successful assimilation can be a model for Isratine"

What if an Air India flight landed on the Yamuna?

2009-01-19T10:31:00.002+05:30

Isn't it miraculous that all 155 passengers and crew aboard the US Airways flight survived a landing on teh Hudson river in New York? Or, perhaps it isn't a miracle. Prompt emergency assistance, within minutes infact, ensured all were evacuated from the sinking jet. With a prayer for the passengers and a pat for the Chesley Sullenberger III, there are a few questions that ought to be raised:

1) What if an Air India flight landed on the Yamuna in Delhi? Or would there be just an empty dry bed? Or would it land on the Commonwealth Games Village?
2) Would the pilot be skilled enough to land safely on the river?
3) Would the crew (trained in hordes by the numerous air hostess/steward academies) be professional enough to rise to the occasion?
4) Would our emergency services reach the sinking jet and passenegrs on time?
5) How many would drown?
6) How many would die because of poisoning by the polluted waters of Yamuna? How many would survive with adverse skin reactions?

Just an audience interruption?

2008-12-16T14:26:00.003+05:30

Muntazer al-Zaidi, the shoe-thrower, is a hero in the Arab world. A Saudi businessman has offered $10 million for one of the shoes. The talk about shoes just doesn't cease. Yet, the White House, on the other hand, merely refers to this pivotal moment in Arab history as "audience interruption"! See it in the White House transcript of the press conference. It is probably the worst job you could have - draft press releases for Bush's administration. By the way, in the melee that ensued, Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, got a jab in her eye from a mike.

In this season of serial blasts, it's time for some serial dressing

2008-09-16T09:33:00.002+05:30

Read more on the serial dresser that our home minister Shivraj Patil is. Apparently, the day of the blasts in Delhi, he changed his suits not once, not twice but thrice!

Meet Mr Shivraj Clueless Patil

2008-09-16T08:23:00.006+05:30

Image from Daylife.com

I am tired of seeing a rather nattily dressed home minister tour blast sites. Saturday was no different, as Shivraj Patil turned out in his best sherwani obviously after the NSG commandos had sanitised the sites. It was as if he had turned out for a geriatric fashion parade and not for a damage control operation.

But what really got my goat was his declaration that he had prior information that blasts were planned in Delhi. And, in his own words, he had this information even before Narendra Modi let the centre know about it. Patil's defence is that the intelligence was not "actionable". That he had no clue about the timing, the place or the method of the blasts planned. I gawked as I heard him say this on national television.

In other words, our internal intelligence and security chief and service need to be told when, where and how are blasts planned to prevent them. The next time the Indian Mujahideen may as well leave a bomb outside Patil's residence with simple how-to-defuse instructions for him to follow. He may finally take credit for having averted a major blast!

I am tired of feeling helpless as each time the IM thumbs its nose at us and the state.

Watch the video here.

Should the media be held guilty of abetting suicide?

2008-09-11T15:44:00.005+05:30

While scientists readied themselves to fire up a never-before experiment to understand the origin of the universe, news channels in India (and presumably elsewhere too) hit a never-before low as they went on an overdrive "reporting" that the end of the world was near. Consequence: a 16-year-old girl near Bhopal killed herself anticipating doomsday.

Biharilal, the girl's father, insisted that Chayya (from Asharita near Indore) had consumed sulphos, an insecticide, after spending hours watching TV programmes on the proton-collision experiment. She was terrfied of reports that the experiment was set to cause mahapralay. The girl had persistently asked him if the end of the world was indeed imminent because of the experiment at CERN on the border of France and Switzerland. His dismissal was not comforting enough. This apocalyptic fear was first expressed by sceptics who predicted that the experiment would create an artificial "black hole" that would suck in the earth.

For whatever it's worth, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has served notices to Aaj Tak and India TV for their reporting on the CERN experiment.

Chayya's death obviously reasserts the immense power channels and newspapers today command. However, more importantly it also poses several questions about how that power needs to be used. The channels, where it is always a struggle to find content and sustain oneself 24/7, gleefully jumped at the first thought of reporting on mahapralay. It was easy fodder for starved, lazy, unimaginative and irresponsible journalists.

Did the channels deliberately play up the fear of doomsday to grab a larger audience? A fear, which, at best, was a freak possiblity. And even if it deserved being talked about, did the channels bother to show scientists who were rebutting that lunatic claim? My fear is no. It's not just television channels. Even papers and websites played up the doomsday element with relish. Sample, for instance, this from Rediff: A Wednesday. Will the world survive it?

Thye girl's death must not go in vain. It has to lead us to establish a functional and effective media regulatory body. If journalists smart at the thought of being controlled by the government, they must offer an alternative that checks the plummeting standards of journalism in India; Arushi and the CERN incident being just two shining and recent examples.

Here's why I despise Mahatma Gandhi...

2008-09-08T11:12:00.001+05:30

For all the non-violence and compassion he embodied, it's disgustingly shocking to find that Mahatma Gandhi actually had called for "legislation making every stray dog liable to be shot". Yes, that's right! This information comes from a review of Bibek Debroy's book "Sarama and her children: The dog in the Indian myth" in India Today

That the man, revered unfailingly as our father of the nation and so central to the country's identity, has been uncovered as someone so cruel is disconcerting. Which brings me to this question: Are there many other failings of Mohandas Gandhi that have been deliberately brushed under the carpet? It's akin to discovering that Mother Teresa had for all homosexuals to be burnt at the stake! (This bit is made up.)

And what would Munna Bhai make of this? All I can say, to hell with Gandhigiri.

Time to kick out cricketing heroes!

2008-08-11T10:57:00.003+05:30

Bored to death of seeing the same cricketing faces on the front pages of our papers, I am delighted that tomorrow will be refreshingly different - Abhinav Bindra has created history by winning India's first-ever individual event (10 metre air rifle shooting) gold at the Olympics in Beijing. What a delight! The last time India bagged a gold was 28 years ago when the men's hockey team won at the Moscow Olympics (marred by a Cold War era boycott).

Inflation's 12%, did you say?

2008-08-09T11:44:00.003+05:30

Indian's are fretting about rising prices and the highest-ever inflation rates in a long, long time. But spare a thought for the Zimbabweans where inflation is so dramatic that by the time you finish reading this post, it would have probably gone up! It's a staggering nine million per cent a year! Yes, nine million! I, f***ing can't even imagine what's it must be like to live in such conditions with such a wacky rate of price increase. But I found my answer in this brilliant profile of Robert Mugabe by Peter Godwin in Vanity Fair. He describes it thus:

Everywhere in Zimbabwe there are long lines: lines for bread, lines for cooking oil, lines for maize meal (the staple food). Buying gasoline requires an array of byzantine procedures. Zimbabwe can now boast, if that is the word, the highest rate of inflation in history. As I write, it’s running at about nine million percent a year. How can I convey what it’s like to live with this kind of hyperinflation? Imagine that you’re out grocery shopping, and in the time it takes you to reach the checkout line, the prices of the items in your cart have all gone up. Golfers now pay for drinks before they tee off, because by the time they’ve completed 18 holes the bar prices will have risen. No one uses wallets for cash; mostly you carry around bags full of blocks of money secured by elastic bands. During my latest trip to the country, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe issued new, higher-denomination notes no fewer than three times in a period of two months, the last one being the 500-million-Zimbabwean-dollar note. At its introduction it was worth two U.S. dollars. Four weeks later, its value had fallen to five cents.

We may begin seeing, pretty soon, big American cities with no daily newspaper...

2008-08-07T13:20:00.002+05:30

We may live to see one such day in the US, argues this piece by Arun Venugopal on Salon. According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 2,400 journalists left newspaper newsrooms in the US last year leaving the journalism industry with the smallest workforce since 1984. The way out for American journalists, he prescribes, is to move to fast growth centres like India where journalism continues to boom (unfortunately, in terms of business and not quality).

Sure, there are a lot more foreign-sounding bylines in our papers these days, Hindustan Times leading the pack. Two that I can recall immediately, Barney Henderson and Robbie Corey-Boulet. Surely, there must be many more even though there are none at the magazine I work. It should be interesting to find out from them and their Indian colleagues about what new perspectives do they bring to the newsroom. Do they fit in well, despite possibly travelling to India for the first time? Whatever may be the answer, they sure do bring in stories from corners we Indians may overlook. Like this one from Corey-Boulet about a Noida firm outsourcing sub-editors to American papers.

Away from the shrill of rhetoric about Indian jobs being taken away, I think a multicultural workforce in journalism has become a necessity given the globalised times we live in.

What's the longest word...

2008-08-03T22:07:00.003+05:30

... you can type without moving between the row of alphabets?Apparently it's typewriter! Interesting, isn't it?

India has its nuclear deal, South Korea has one with beef!

2008-06-19T14:20:00.002+05:30

It's nearing splitsville for the Left and the Congress over the nuclear deal. Meanwhile, an interesting development is playing out in South Korea that may have lessons for us and out politicians.

A repentant Lee Myung-bak, the president and former Hyundai CEO, has had to repeal a deal with the US he rushed into after widespread public protests. The deal would have allowed large-scale import of US beef into South Korea. Beef imports were earlier called off after a case of BSE or mad cow disease was detected and critics therefore said the PM had overlooked the health concerns of his people. The beef deal, the US had insisted, was a must is a bilateral free trade agreement had to be signed. "I and the government are deeply sorry" a frank Lee told his people in his address. The president said he "was in a hurry after being elected president, as I thought I could not succeed unless I achieve changes and reform within one year after inauguration. As a president, I did not want to miss this golden opportunity (the free trade agreement)." Quite a bold statement for a politician.

Mr President, the Korean people have a beef with how you work! (Image from BBC News)

Would a frank Manmohan Singh, like Lee, tell us why there’s such obsession with the nuclear deal? So much so that we be subject to an early poll? Energy security has a lot of other components that are not getting the same love and push from the PMO: increasing energy efficiency, the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline being just two of them. So, is it really energy security that bothers the PM? And are there some “musts” we must give (or have given) to the US to have this nuclear deal?

The copy editors are dying. What about reporters?

2008-06-17T15:13:00.002+05:30

Good copy editors have always been rare. But Lawrence Downes comments in the NYT that the entire species may be endangered now as newspapers cut costs and take on forms that have no place for the orthodox desk:

As newspapers lose money and readers, they have been shedding great swaths of expensive expertise. They have been forced to shrink or eliminate the multiply redundant levels of editing that distinguish their kind of journalism from what you find on TV, radio and much of the Web. Copy editors are being bought out or forced out; they are dying and not being replaced.

But in that world of the perpetual present tense — post it now, fix it later, update constantly — old-time, persnickety editing may be a luxury in which only a few large news operations will indulge. It will be an artisanal product, like monastery honey and wooden yachts.

If you need any idea of what the copy editor's job is, Downes has an answer:

As for what they do, here’s the short version: After news happens in the chaos and clutter of the real world, it travels through a reporter’s mind, a photographer’s eye, a notebook and camera lens, into computer files, then through multiple layers of editing. Copy editors handle the final transition to an ink-on-paper object. On the news-factory floor, they do the refining and packaging. They trim words, fix grammar, punctuation and style, write headlines and captions.

But they also do a lot more. Copy editors are the last set of eyes before yours. They are more powerful than proofreaders. They untangle twisted prose. They are surgeons, removing growths of error and irrelevance; they are minimalist chefs, straining fat. Their goal is to make sure that the day’s work of a newspaper staff becomes an object of lasting beauty and excellence once it hits the presses.

And what about the reporters? Are we endangered with the proliferation of citizen journalism?

Playing with my camera

2008-06-13T23:09:00.002+05:30

A lucky shot of these beautifully dressed women at Akbar's Tomb in Sikandra...

Censorship at the Taj Mahal?

2008-06-12T08:01:00.003+05:30

Revisiting places often throw up new details that may have escaped you before. On a recent trip to the Taj Mahal, that's what happened to me. I, unlike when I was a kid (the last time I went to the Taj), headed for the stone tablets placed on either side of the main entrance to the monument. I was intrigued to see how a few of the engraved lines were covered using white paint. The one in Hindi had its paint peeling off, making it possible for anybody to read what the government wished to hide from its people and tourists from abroad (loose translation):

The Taj Mahal's upkeep was in safe hands even after Shahjahan's death. But that changed in the 18th century. Its ... (illegible) and sandalwood doors, cots, boards and other furnitures, lamps and lamp posts, ... (illegible), curtains, gem-studded artefacts and other items were plundered one after the others by the Jats, Marathas and the East India Company.

What's the harm in saying so if it is a historical fact? If it isn't, why was this etched in public by the government in the first place? History, as always, remains a toy in the hands of the government.

What about this terror?

2008-05-21T17:05:00.002+05:30

As we mourn the death of 66 individuals in the serial blasts that hit Jaipur a few days back, very little attention seems to have been accorded to another tragedy that has killed more than double of those killed in Jaipur. About 150 people have died in the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu after consuming poisonous illegal alcohol. This happened in a border town between the two states. Police now say the alcohol was illegally produced as bars and shops were sealed because of election in Karnataka. Would it be fair to assume that some political parties were behind this lethal concoction? If yes, are they any different from those who carried out the blasts in Jaipur?

Why was a deadly cyclone called Nargis (daffodil)?

2008-05-19T11:01:00.002+05:30

Not the kind of damage one would expect a daffodil to unleash: Image of the cyclone from BBC News

In this season of disasters, both natural and man-made, this thought may be inconsequential. Still, I have been wondering why the cyclone that devasted much of Burma was named after something as delicate and romantic as a daffodil (nargis is the Urdu word for the flower)?

There is an elaborate international system in place that allows countries to take turns at naming cyclones in the their regions. The India Meteorlogical Department is the coordinating centre of South Asia for the World Meteorlogical Organisation and receives entries from neighbouring countries. Nargis, the cyclone that hit Burma, was Pakistan's suggestion. But why? Did the Pakistani meterologists actually think the cyclone was going to downgrade itself before hitting land to a breeze that would end up caress Burma's treetops? Why not some of the firebrand stuff like the names of their missiles: Hatf, Ghauri, Ghaznawi, Abdali?

Bangladesh, when it was its turn, had recommended something more sensible: Ogni (fire). India too had an insipid name - Akash (sky). Fortunately, the latter didn't kill as many as Nargis. The next cyclone will be called Abe, as Sri Lanka wants it. Wonder what Abe means? Tried looking around but didn't come across something relevant.

Can a champion swimmer have a paunch?

2008-05-08T16:46:00.003+05:30

Image from Mercury

I can't get over the brouhaha over Grant Hackett's muffin top. After pictures of him from Seville emerged, showing him with a well-endowed belly and excess flab spilling over his trunks, there's been a debate whether he can be a swimmer worthy enough to represent Australia. So much so that he had to strip himself down to his Speedos at a press conference back home and show off his abs. He even had to explain why that belly happened to be there: apparently, he had eaten 1200 gms and loads of liquid before that shot. And at the conference he got asked by journalists: "Grant, are you holding your stomach back?" Wonder why the guy isn’t put to a simple test in the pool rather than such a gimmick? If he makes it, the paunch may as trigger research to see if it helps slash lap timings!

Just a thought for our Indian sportsmen: if we were to put our cricketers to the flab test, I wonder if we'll be left with enough to form a team! More so, if the MC4R gene in Indians has now been proved to cause a 2cm expansion in waist circumference!

Do we need the governor?

2008-05-08T12:36:00.003+05:30

As the Raj Bhavan in Calcutta switched off its lights for two hours to express "solidarity" with the ordinary folk who are forced to bear long power cuts, the ruling CPM has come alive with caustic comments for Gopal Krishna Gandhi's Gandhigiri act. Here's a sampling of the missives directed at Gandhi:

“He (the governor) should also walk to any non-government function within 10km of city limits. This will save fuel.” Shyamal Chakraborty, CPM leader

“If we save electricity, it is a good thing.” Prakash Karat, CPM general secretary

“It is high time the Centre ponders whether the post of governor is required. If need be, the Constitution should be amended to abolish the post. A non-elected person cannot judge elected representatives of the people.” Biman Bose, CPM state secretary

"Food scarcity is there in India. So it's a luxury to have two square meals a day. So easily his next step will be to skip at least one meal." Shyamal Chakraborty, CPM leader

The rhetoric aside, two valid questions:

1) Should a governor indulge in such publicity-gaining tactics that breach established protocol?

2) And, should we do away with the post altogether? Especially when the governor’s long been reduced to an agent of the ruling party in Delhi? More so, when posts are handed out to party loyalists and cronies?

Fighting aliens with vada pav!

2008-05-07T13:15:00.002+05:30

Vada pav: 100 per cent Marathi, Image from The Telegraph

The xenophobic Shiv Sena now wants to spruce up stands selling vada pav, the culinary epitome of what's Maharashtrian. This so that Marathis, selling the most authentic Marathi snack, have an edge over others. Little bother that the person helping them do so is a non-Maharashtrian! More here.

Why does India need Iran?

2008-04-30T15:47:00.002+05:30

There is one aspect of Indo-Iranian ties that has either been completely ignored or grossly underreported. Obviously, it is not about oil or gas for tomes have been written about how Iran can be a strategic source for the two. My argument pushing for closer ties with Tehran, on the other hand, simply concerns the ability to stretch our arms on the western flank. Hemmed in by a belligerent Pakistan, Iran happens to be India’s only way out to the west. That would mean overland access to the resource-rich and strategic Central Asia, which also includes Afghanistan. And for a country with aspirations for a regional power status, not being caged is extremely crucial.

Map sourced from the library of the University of Texas

Take a look a map of West Asia. If not for Iran, India would have to take a long detour and pass through the Arabian peninsula, comprising a clutch of Gulf Cooperation Council countries, and then transit through either Syria, Jordan or Iraq to enter Turkey and then turn eastward to Central Asia. Quite a protracted and expensive detour compared to what Iran offers with its borders with Armenia, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea. With Pakistan still unrelenting to grant India overland access to Afghanistan and the rest of the region, Iran happens to be India’s only bet. And that is a reason important enough for maintaining good ties with Tehran.

With all due credit, this is something that has not eluded our strategists; India and Iran have launched transport infrastructure projects as Delhi seeks the shortest route to Central Asia. But progress has been meagre and undoubtedly hampered by nuclear politics.

The most ambitious of all is the Border Roads Organisation’s ongoing exercise to build a road from Delaram to Zaranj in southwest Afghanistan. That several Indians working on this stretch have either been kidnapped or killed by those inimical to a growing Indian reach only highlights its immense geopolitical importance. The idea is to link Afghanistan’s network of highways to Zaranj that is located on the border with Iran. And then link Zaranj with Iran’s network of road and rail to the Chabahar port, south of Iran near Bandar Abbas, that India is helping rebuild. When this network is finally in place, landlocked Afghanistan will have access to another port and not necessarily pass through Karachi. More importantly, this network will allow India to bypass Pakistan in its trade with Afghanistan and Central Asia.

While progress has been made in Afghanistan, things have not moved ahead in Iran. Meanwhile, China has gone ahead and constructed the port at Gwadar in Pakistan and linked it with roads from there leading to the Karokaram highway and into China. Gwadar has thus lent China a strategic hold on the sea lanes in the zone. Indian Naval Chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta feels the port would also “enable Pakistan take control over the world energy jugular (Strait of Hormuz) and interdiction of Indian tankers”. The port at Chabahar, on the hand, is yet to be developed and has been undoubtedly affected by the fallout of the Iranian nuclear crisis. The contract to do so was awarded in 2004 to the Hindujas, who are partnering with the Indian government’s RITES and IRCON. Some Iranian analysts argue Iran has deliberately been reticent on Chabahar because of India’s anti-Iranian position at IAEA.

But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit yesterday has brought in new momentum and one hopes the two countries will be able to set aside their differences and pursue this project. India, it was announced, will also be cooperating with Iranian authorities to develop a 600-km long Chabahar port and Fahraj rail line that is part of a multi-modal transport corridor to Russia via Iran.

Both countries stand to gain: India gets uninterrupted access to Central Asia and Iran earns a substantial transit fee on transactions through Chabahar.

A slavish media and Rahul Gandhi

2008-04-29T11:19:00.003+05:30

There are many ways to screw your mornings. Reading a servile piece of journalism the first thing is one of them. And that's what happened to me today when I read Punya Priya Mitra's (Six hrs in MP: Rahul makes a promise, some conversation) piece in Hindustan Times on Rahul Gandhi's visit to a tribal region in Madhya Pradesh. Before this gem goes off the Internet, I am reproducing it here in all its glory:

Filed from Jhabua, April 29, 2008

Rahul Gandhi wrapped up his three-day visit to Madhya Pradesh on Monday with an unscheduled whirlwind tour of villages in tribal district Jhabua.

People fell over each other to touch him, get photographed with him, and Rahul obliged all, with a ready smile. (Parachute in any gora tourist, like him, there and people would behave the same way. What quality of Rahul's does this highlight? Nothing but for the fact how "exotic" he remains in vast swathes of India.)

He spoke to tribals, asked them how they lived and their means of livelihood. He often put his arms around them or quietly slapped their backs to strike up an instant camaraderie. (Didn't the reporter find something more worthwhile to report about? Like the deprivation there? HT would have us believe Rahul was meeting pals at a bar over a Bloody Mary!) The tribals spoke about their problems and the AICC general secretary assured them of all help from the Centre. (Again, how long will it take for her to realise such promises mean nothing?)

Rahul’s secret programme (It would surprise me the villagers were not told about his arrival in advance.) was known only to PCC president Suresh Pachauri and AICC secretary Minaxi Natarajan till his chopper landed at Jhabua around 10.40 am. His cavalcade’s first halt was at Christian-dominated tribal village Raipuria.

Here, Bercharam, a local, invited him home for tea. But Rahul refused with grace (Oh, I see! Did he even have a halo when he refused the offer?), asking: “Why? Is tea at the hotel bad?” And, along with others, he sat on the rickety benches (With much pain, I presume? Another question, how comfortable is his seat in his SUV or his chopper?) of Bharti Restaurant. When he gave Rs 100 for the cups of tea they had, the boy impishly refused. But, Pachauri cajoled him to accept it as gift.

Two kilometers away, Rahul stopped at Sagaria village, where he went to the mud houses (A big achievement for him, I guess? So much so that it merits a special mention?) of Dhanna, Prem Singh, Ambaram, Heera, Somla and Hari Singh.

Dhanna said Rahul asked him about the crop he had sown. “I told him that I had sown tomato and while I had invested Rs 15,000, I only recovered Rs 10,000. At this, he told me that my loan would be waived,” (Give us an update if it really happens. The last time Rahul made a promise to help a tribal woman with Rs 20,000 for her daughter's marriage, it wasn't fulfilled. And an opportunistic CM of Madhya Pradesh, from the BJP, willingly obliged to highlight Gandhi's vacuous promises.) said Dhanna.

Ambaram said: “I told him about the method of farming, and he nodded his head. He knew a lot of agriculture”. (Maybe it limited to the fact that plants need water to grow?)

Rahul also quizzed people about the effectiveness of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. “Most of us told him that water and electricity were the major problems in the area,” said Hari Singh.

From there he went to Sampark where he checked the solar power plant that meets the village’s power needs.

The next halt was Unnai Churchat Petlawad. Here he spoke to two school students and asked them if they wanted to study in Delhi. Too shy to answer, they looked at their parents who said: “Why not, if someone pays for it”. Rahul immediately offered to sponsor them. (Another hollow promise?)

From there on it was a mini-road show through Petwalad, Thandla, Meghnagar then to Jhabua. From there, he flew to Ratlam in a helicopter at 4.40 pm.

(And, mercifully, that was the end of the ordeal!)

So is Barack Obama a Republican?

2008-03-26T15:04:00.002+05:30

It's ten degreees of separation for Obama and Bush.

The New England Historic Genealogical Society claims to have found genealogical links that prove Barack Obama is a "tenth cousin" of George Bush. His politicial pedigree also links him to Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry S Truman, Dick Cheney and Winston Churchill. He is also a distant cousin of the actor Brad Pitt while Hillary Clinton is related to Mr Pitt's girlfriend, Angelina Jolie. Clinton's ancestry is more exotic with distant links to people that include Madonna, Celine Dion and Alanis Morisette, as well as author Jack Kerouac.

What does this information really mean: Is Barack a Bush in Obama? Can Hillary sing like any of her cousins? The possibility makes us laugh first and then wonder if all of us are not linked to each other (even if by several hundred degrees), something that may help this piece of research win the Ig Nobel Prize.

A Palestinian built a home. The Israelis use it as an observation post

2008-03-25T17:23:00.002+05:30

Palestinian Abdul-Latif Nasif and his two brothers thought they had built their dream home in West Bank's Nablus. But, given its privileged vantage point, the Israeli forces regularly use the home as an observation post for incursions into West Bank. Forget paying the Nasifs, this is someting that Israel doesn't even acknowledge doing since it "cannot comment on its operations". The soldiers, a BBC report says, barge in with their dogs and weapons and use the house as they will with little respect for the owners. How can peace be a reality there when such transgressions are routine?

Mr Karat, what about this interference?

2008-03-25T15:21:00.003+05:30

I am not a great fan of US foreign policy but there's one question I am dying to ask the CPI(M): Why not cry hoarse when China rams into, and not just interferes with, our domestic polity? The Indian Express frontpaged today the news of how our Vice President Hamid Ansari (second in the hierarchy, no less) called off his scheduled meeting with Dalai Lama. The meeting, which was called off after "Chinese queries", had been planned two months in advance. And what would this be if not blatant interference? Deference for Mao? The Leftists have been fuming ad nauseam how India's independence is curtailed by the Hyde Act but they won't raise a finger when China decides the agenda of our Vice President. Oh, I know why the left political parties don't. Because the paper they read (The Hindu) does not report on anti-China activities. I am sick of Janus-faced politicking!

Is sex on a plane legal?

2008-03-20T15:10:00.000+05:30

Get your answer here!

Pollution: Delhi's common wealth?

2008-03-19T11:22:00.002+05:30

Image from The Times, South Africa

Haile Gebreselassie, the champion runner, has confirmed in an interview with El Pais that he will not run in the Beijing Olympics marathon due to the climatic conditions in the Chinese capital. "I have no intention of committing suicide in Beijing," the Ethiopian, who suffers from asthma, told the paper bluntly. "It’s purely a personal decision that I have taken to protect my health. I do not want to endanger my future. I do not want to kill myself in Beijing."

Which throws up an interesting and embarrassing possiblity: What if an athlete refuses to take part in Delhi's Commonwealth Games in 2010 for the same reason? An Asian Development Bank report has already declared that Delhi and Beijing have the dirtiest air in Asia. Hopefully, some farsighted bureaucrat will now have the sense to speed up anti-pollution measures in the country. Top on that list, urgently bring in ample number of new and comfortable buses for public transport and reduce private vehicular traffic on Delhi's roads.

Update on The Hindu...

2008-03-17T12:51:00.002+05:30

After yesterday's pathetic coverage of Tibet, The Hindu, India's Chinese paper, now wants us to believe that Lhasa has returned to normality. Here's what normality means in Chinese:

Riots roll beyond Tibet - The Telegraph
City in cinders - BBC
'Cultural genocide' in Tibet - NYT
The city is sealed off to tourists and many foreign residents have left. Internet and mobile phone communications have been disrupted... - The Guardian
Beijing declares 'people's war', troops pour into Lhasa - The Indian Express

I can't wait to read what the paper may have to say if it pens an edit on this issue...

The Hindu - Lo and behold, India's only Chinese newspaper!

2008-03-15T11:06:00.008+05:30

Image of protests in Lhasa from NYT

I stopped subscribing to The Hindu long ago, mainly because of its dull headlines and prose that put you back to bed. I had another reason to do so given the paper's unabashedly biased coverage of China and CPI (M) (notably, the party's role in Nandigram). So every now and then I revisit the paper to reinforce my decision. Today was no different. I picked up a copy to see how the paper had reported the protests in Tibet. (In fact, it's a delight to pick up papers when they report with their gloves off. Editions of The Pioneer during the Ram Setu controversy and The Hindu during Nandigram should be essential reading for journalism school students on how to introduce bias into reports or, hopefully, avoid them.)

Anyway, back to The Hindu and Tibet. The Delhi edition today had a brief pointer on page one (by PTI) that led the reader to page 14 for more details. Interestingly, the paper had used PTI's report that was more or less impartial, even though incomplete, as a veil for the Chinese government's version in the inside page. The report here was filed by Xinhua (who else?). Xinhua, in case you don't know, is the Chinese government's mouthpiece. (To give you an idea of the extent of censorship in China: CCTV, another government blabber horn, is a media outlet where computer screens have pop-ups telling their employees what not to report! Just like a morning dose of chai, the Chinese journalists get their morning's share of censorship.)

And I cannot think of any other paper in India that uses releases from Xinhua so liberally, more so on events concerning Tibet. Xinhua's despatch was headlined "Shops torched in Lhasa" (probably, The Hindu wants us to believe it was a case of electrical malfunction that resulted in the fire?). Nowhere does the report mention that these protests are the most serious the Chinese government has faced in the last 20 years, something that The New York Times, The Guardian and the BBC highlight in their opening paragraphs. Instead we are fed innocuous details of arson in Lhasa. Not a mention of why the protests have erupted. Neither a word about the march by Tibetan refugees in India or their protests here, as reported by all other Indian papers. Nor a quote from the protesters in India or those opposed to China's rule in Tibet. Too bad Tianamen hasn' t reenacted itself in Lhasa yet!

The Xinhua report goes on to quote the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, who terms the protests by "some monks" as a plot to "wreck the harmonious life of the Tibetan people". "We are resolutely opposed to any plot attempting to separate Tibet from China," Qin Gang regurgitates. And so does The Hindu. But it is the last line of the report that beats all. It should also be seen as the last nail in The Hindu's coffin of its editorial intergrity. It reads: "Relevant Chinese departments will handle the issue"! Point made: that it's an internal Chinese affair and the Chinese are capable of suppressing this revolt. Which newspaper, but for a deferential rag like The Hindu, would print something like that?

As a dirge for the paper, I reproduce a link to a brilliant letter that Tenzing Sonam, a Tibetan filmmaker, wrote to N. Ram, the paper's editor, after his series (an article here) glorifying China's role in Tibet.

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting to you The Hindu with a new punchline: China's national newspaper since 2008!

The "coup" at Congress headquarters

2008-03-14T13:33:00.003+05:30

A riveting piece on the ouster of Sitaram Kesri as the Congress president 10 years ago by Rasheed Kidwai. It has got colour and brilliant quotes. My favourite from Kesri: “Congress leadership tapte hue suraj ke saman hai. Bahut pas jaoge to jal jaoge aur bahut door rahoge to thand se mar jaoge."

Lessons from Afghans

2008-03-14T12:22:00.003+05:30

While we mourn the failure of the Indian men's hockey team to qualify for the Olympics, here are some inspiring pictures of three Afghan athletes who have qualified and training for the Olympics. One runs on a craggy hilltop overlooking the city, another trains with his brother and the other walks back home alongside open sewers. Uplifting stuff!

Also, another interesting post from a friend on why KPS Gill is Indian hockey's Pervez Musharraf!

Why is The Statesman dead?

2008-03-10T15:54:00.005+05:30

It's unpleasant and untimely to write an obituary of a paper that still is in circulation. More so since it is a personal affair. I had interned (and with some very happy memories) with it between 2000 and 2002 when studying for a bachelor's degree at Delhi University. But I have to after what I came across today.

Hindustan Times had a single column piece on page 3 today about UNI journalist A.K. Singh's death. Among the various places he worked, The Statesman was one. But that's besides the point. What caught my attention was how the paper's name was spelt: The Statesmen. A small typographical error but of immense relevance, I'd say. Obviously the person who filed that report didn't even remember correctly how the paper's called. Even the editor who selected that news piece and cleared that page failed to catch the error. You'd expect journalists not to go wrong with names of papers and magazines.

What a fall therefore it is for a paper that was at the forefront of Indian journalism! And what could be worse for a such a distinguished paper than the fact that even media professionals now even fail to recall its name! What's galls more is that this pitiful state could have been avoided. With shifting interest to real estate, good journalism took a backseat. The final nail in the paper's coffin (at least in New Delhi) was the move to shift operations from the imposing Statesman House on Barakhamba Road to an obscure building in Noida. For those not from Delhi, that means a lot as commuting in a personal vehicle from central Delhi (where most government offices are situated) to Noida takes close to an hour. Most of the leading names with the paper have moved on. Several journalists who now report for HT were once with The Statesman in Delhi. The Kolkata edition too has slipped from the top slot to the third (behind The Telegraph and TOI). Maybe even fourth, after HT. Who cares... The Statesman's dead.

Stinking rich, literally!

2008-03-07T13:21:00.002+05:30

As the media in India ritually (and nauseatingly) celebrates the presence of four Indians in the Forbes list of top eight global billionaires, another Forbes listing has passed without much notice. This one's about the world's filthiest cities and Bombay, with the seventh largest concentration of billionaires in the world, has ironically also been ranked as the seventh most dirty city in the world. Bombay, believe it or not, is worse off than Baghdad that has been bombed back to Stone Age. Delhi is 24th on the list of the dirtiest 25 cities. Calcutta, however, escaped this ignominy.

Can't help but wonder why these cities with overflowing coffers can't keep themselves clean. After all if more and more Indians are turning out to be billionaires, isn’t the government earning millions more in taxes? Obviously, it has to do with how the government and municipal authorities work. And more importantly, how we behave ourselves as citizens. The government's got to be obsessed with empowering the individual by affording him or her the basic services: safe drinking water, affordable healthcare, reliable electricity supply and education being top on that list. It is instead obsessed with the blasted nuclear deal!

Would you undergo sterilisation for a gun?

2008-03-06T13:38:00.003+05:30

In a land (Chambal valley) where mousatches and guns are the ultimate sign of virility, a dense district collector has come up with the idea of granting gun licenses to those men who volunteer to get sterilised. Shivpuri has over 11,000 licensed guns. Bhind has 19,000 while Morena has issued over 15,000 licences, says the linked report. When the region is already infested with guns, why does Manish Srivastva, the DC, have to add to a law and order problem? His job should be to take away the guns and not give out more. Isn't the state, as Max Weber defined it, supposed to wield the monopoly of legitimate violence? And the DC is giving out guns for what? Controlling population; when the best and safest way to do so is through education and informed participation. I won't even mention cases of inviduals who end up fathering or mothering children even after being sterilised at government camps. God save us from the law of the gun!

And if you thought this was bad, there's worse. Our august parliamentarians have proposed bills that disincentivise population growth. Measures suggested include disqualification of persons with more than one child from contesting elections (Population Control Bill 2000) and, believe it or not, rewarding bachelors and then punishing them if they marry (Bachelor’s Allowance Bill 2000).

Ahmadinejad (a swine) and the Kaaba (a stupid stone)

2008-03-04T15:16:00.003+05:30

Surrend, a Danish art group, is asking for trouble. First they issued an advertisement in The Tehran Times in 2006 that "praised" Ahmadinejad for his campaign against George Bush with messages that, when read vertically, spelt out the word "swine". Now they have taken freedom of expression to an altogether different level. The group has designed a poster that shows the Kaaba - the black granite cube-shaped building in Mecca - with the words "stupid stone" in German superimposed on it.

I am a liberal and consider the first move against the Iranian president is within limits of what is acceptable and what is not but calling the Kaaba a piece of "stupid stone" seems completely off key. The freedom to express is a privilege that has to be used with the precision of a surgeon and not the blunt skills of a butcher. Surrend prefers to be the latter. I am all for criticism of Islam (for that matter, all religions) but have only utter contempt for a group like Surrend that seeks to provoke and earn spotlight.

More such trouble is scheduled with far-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders forthcoming film (Fitna) that claims to show why Koran is "an inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror". The NATO is already biting its nails over what impact it'll have in Afghanistan and beyond. But what is more unfortunate is that those opposing such films opt for more disgraceful methods, like murder in the case of Theo van Gogh, rather than choosing informed and civilised debate.

Prince Harry "does bad things to bad people"

2008-03-03T16:07:00.002+05:30

Image from BBC

After Harry's stint in Helmand (Afghanistan) became public, pictures of him in action have been floating around. But it is the above one that has generated a furore given the message on his cap: "WE DO BAD THINGS TO BAD PEOPLE"! It's downright offensive, to say the least. Smacks of a royal mix of arrogance and condescension. Will someone please tell harrowing Harry about this place called Guantanamo Bay, which was also set up to do "bad things to bad people"?

A scorpion on your cigarrette pack?

2008-02-27T14:36:00.004+05:30

After much deliberation and opposition from the tobacco lobby (obviously more of the latter), the government today recommended an insipid move that from now will force all packages of tobacco products sold in India to display images of a scorpion and message that tobacco kills. Yes, a scorpion! So instead of seeing this, you see the image of a scorpion. Not the standard skull and bones that signify danger worldwide.

So what if many have little idea what a scorpion is meant to represent here (presumably some kind of threat). And too bad if it means various things to different people. A Google search on what a scorpion symbolises threw up several suggestions: Whats-your-sign.com had these on its list - Transition, Death/Dying, Sex, Control, Solitary/Being Alone, Treachery, Passion, Protection, Defensiveness! Wonder which one our Group of Ministers wanted us to associate with?

The tobacco lobby argues that more explicit pictorial warnings will ruin the livelihood of workers in the tobacco industry. They don’t seem to bother about the fact that smoking indirectly kills so many prematurely each year. A generous estimate (see point 5 in the letter) by the All Bengal Beedi Workers' and Employees' Federation places the number of workers in this industry in India at about 40 million. On the other hand, smoking kills a million annually in this country. A fair trade-off you think? Surely not, when you consider that these workers can be gradually shifted to other sectors as most of them practise little specialised skills and focus just on farming tobacco and collecting tendu leaves for the beedi.

So, till the government decides it has enough balls to call a spade a spade, hopefully, you’ll stay away from the sting of the scorpion!

A day after, Sarkozy says he wishes he hadn't sworn

2008-02-26T16:27:00.003+05:30

Even as France comes to term with a swearing president and labels him a "national shame", Sarkozy says a better response to the snub would have been to ignore him. Here's what he told Le Parisien-Aujourd'hui en France: "Il est difficile, même quand on est président, de ne pas répondre à une insulte, j'ai sans doute les défauts de mes qualités. Ce n'est pas parce qu'on est président qu'on devient quelqu'un sur lequel on peut s'essuyer les pieds. Cela étant, j'aurais mieux fait de ne pas lui répondre." (It's difficult, even as the president, not to respond to an insult. I sure have negative qualities but that doesn't mean once elected as president the person can be used as a doormat. That said, I would have fared better had I not responded to him.) Interestingly, the last sentence came as an afterthought that was slipped in by the presidential spin doctors once the journal sent a transcript to be cleared by Sarkozy. The editor Dominique de Montvalon maintained Sarkozy had not uttered those words during the interview! So, he may not be that repentant after all!

Is it wrong for a president to swear in public?

2008-02-25T12:25:00.004+05:30

Nicolas Sarkozy's plummeting popularity rating just got another punch in the face this weekend. Snubbed by a bystander at Salon International de l'Agriculture, whose hand the president offered to shake, Sarkozy let out a string of abuse. Here's what was exchanged between the two:

Bystander: "Ah non, me touche pas, tu me salis" (Oh no, don't touch me, you soil me)
Sarkozy: "Casse-toi, casse-toi alors! Pauvre con va..." (Get lost, poor jerk, get lost then!)

You can watch the swear video here.

This has allowed opponents of Sarkozy to fire another round of criticism. Opposition Socialist leader Francois Hollande lead from the front, saying his behaviour wasn't beffiting that of a president. Can a president be always expected not to abuse, more so when rebuffed? Isn't it impolite to snub the head of the state int his fashion? And to play the devil's advocate, why should he not abuse when the people are free to do so? Moreover, wasn't Sarkozy's retort more "statesmanlike" than what it would have been had many of us been in his shoes? Whatever the answers, I am having the last laugh. A bright start to the week... And had it been in India, the politician's sidekicks would have beaten the man to pulp and the state machinery unleashed to legally hound the poor fellow!

And not to forget, the slew of PILs that would be filed seeking to prosecute the guy for dishonouring the state and disrespecting one of its highest symbols.

Next time, read the fine print in your restaurant bill

2008-02-20T11:23:00.002+05:30

A group of ten friends were stunned when their bill had a surprise inclusion on it, even though it came free. Somebody from the restaurant had slipped in an abusive and sexually-explicit message on their bill at Joe Delucci's Italian eatery in Staffordshire in the UK. It is alleged that the move was deliberate since the friends had complained about the joint's poor service. Quite a way to get back! In case, you are still looking for the message, it appears right below fish cakes on the bill.

India vs Bharat?

2008-02-18T10:35:00.002+05:30

I was struck by a similarity between the still unfolding kidney scam and the Nithari scandal just about a year back. In both cases, the perpetrators were rich and the victims poor migrant labourers. In the organ trade, labourers were duped onto the operation table and in the latter a rich businessman exploited helpless labourers living in slums nearby. Moreover, the crime spots Nithari (in Noida) and Gurgaon are at the frontlines of where India and Bharat meet. Where an urban and rapidly growing India crashes into Bharat that seems to have been left out of the development loop. Any surprise then that such confrontations should arise in these pockets and between these two groups of people?

How to quit Facebook?

2008-02-13T16:44:00.002+05:30

Can you, in the first place? As Nipon Das, a Manhattan business consultant, found out it turns out to be more like a line out of Hotel California - “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”! It appears Facebook has no clear guidelines on how to delete your Facebook account and that a lot of your data remains online even after you "deactivate" your account. Under pressure from users, Facebook is finally working on a simpler way to say "Au Revoir" to the networking site. Read more here.

A word from a victim of global warming

2008-02-06T16:32:00.000+05:30

While working on a report on the Clean Development Mechanism that aims to mitigate global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, I came across this strongly persuasive article from Kunda Dixit, editor of Nepal Times. For us, smug in our sanitised environs, global warming remains a distant threat but many as, Dixt points out, paying for the misdeeds of others. The best way to save the Maldives from drowning, he adds, is not to fly there anymore. And if you want to trek in the Himalaya, try doing it in Second Life.

Here is his article:

For many of us who live in countries in the periphery like the Maldives or Nepal, there is a real feeling that we don’t just have to suffer for someone else’s crime. We actually have to pay for their misdeeds as well.

You don’t have to be a scientist to see what is happening to our mountains. The people of Pokhara in Central Nepal saw something apocalyptic last winter: Machapuchre, the 7,000m high pyramid-shaped peak that towers over the town was snowless for the first time in anyone’s memory.

In the Everest region, the Imja Glacier now has a lake three km long where there was just ice 30 years ago. When one of these lakes burst 10 years ago it washed away a newly-built hydroelectric plant. Dorje Sherpa lost his daughter and grandchild. He blamed the gods, but had he known, he would have blamed fossil carbon.

For us in the Himalaya, global warming is already a fact of life. And of death.

Scientists can do more modeling, find out the exact speed at which the Himalayan ice caps are melting. Or they can simulate the impact of melting snow on Himalayan rivers in the next 50 years. But actually, we don’t need any more evidence. What we need is for experts to tell us what to do. And then we need to find the money to do it with.

It’s not just the people of the Himalaya who are going to be affected by melting snow and ice. The water tower of the Tibetan plateau is the source of major rivers on which nearly 1.5 billion people in Asia depend directly. The Indus that flows into the Arabian Sea, the Tamir of the Taklamakhan Desert, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, all the rivers of Nepal and Bhutan, the three great rivers of Burma, the Mekong, and the Yangtse and Huang He that flow down to the China Sea—they all start as melting snow high in the Himalaya.

The melting of the ice cap on the Tibetan plateau and the mountains on its rim is already affecting the flow of these rivers. Perhaps we do need more data to give us a better idea of what to plan for. But the data is out of bounds. The Himalaya is a war zone. It is located in a multiple conflict zone: Afghanistan, India vs Pakistan, India vs China. Hydrological and precipitation data is still a military secret in our mountains.

Countries in the region also need better transboundary early warning so when a glacial lake bursts behind Mt Everest, villages on the Nepali side are warned in time.

The worst case scenario is a magnitude eight earthquake in eastern Nepal or Bhutan that could cause dozens of glacial lakes, swollen by global warming, to burst simultaneously. It’s like nuclear war, you don’t want to think about it. But we must. And we must plan for these disasters.

As journalists, we’re ambulance chasers. We are used to covering disasters after they happen. Here is one chance we have to predict a disaster so safeguards can be put in place. It’s not a question of if there will be a glacial lake catastrophe, it is a question of when.

Climate science is complex. We haven’t even started factoring in Global Dimming: how Asian Brown Cloud over the Indian Ocean is filtering the sun but adding to global warming because of a blanket of soot particles in the atmosphere. The fine black dust is also covering the snows and so it melts faster. So there are certain things we can do regionally and right away (like reducing the brown cloud, or funding mitigation like glacial lake outburst protection) while we wait for the world’s polluters to agree on emission cutbacks.

The Himalaya are the youngest mountain range in the world. Our rivers are older than the mountains and cut through the main range in spectacular gorges. Combined with heavy monsoons and heavy population density, the slopes of these mountains were fragile even without global warming. Climate change just magnifies all the problems we have many times.

These mountains are perhaps seeing some of the most dramatic changes since they were formed 65 million years ago. How to ensure that these changes are not too drastic and global average temperatures don’t rise more than two degrees is not in the hands of the inhabitants of the mountains. It is in the hands of the big polluters, two of which are our next door neighbours.

Israeli lobby strikes at Gandhi!

2008-01-22T14:44:00.000+05:30

Arun Gandhi, Mahatma's grandson, is at the receiving end of "Jewish" ire after his comments castigated Jews for their continuing exploitation of the holocaust. Here's what got the "Jewish" goat and what he wrote on The Washington Post's site: “Jews today not only want the Germans to feel guilty but the whole world must regret what happened to the Jews. The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on the regret turns into anger.”

Even before Arun Gandhi could cry "O Jerusalem!" Jewish lobby groups began gunning for him and his grandfather. The influential Jewish community has now even forced him to resign as the president of M.K. Gandhi Institute for Non-violence, an institution he founded in the US to propagate Mahatma's ideals. Gandhi apologised saying he "should not have implied that the policies of the Israeli government are reflective of the views of all Jewish people”. But, as we know well, there are no clear divisions between what is seen as anti-Semitism and what is legitimate criticism of Israeli state policy. John Mearsheimer's and Stephen Walt's controversial book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, is just one instance. Tony Judt, who called for the creation of a binational Israeli state with equal rights for all Jews and Arabs living in Israel and the Palestinian territories, is another example. Judt was even prohibited from speaking at the Polish embassy after Jewish groups complained against his views.

I am yet to come across a convincing demarcation of what is legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and what is anti-Semitism. Any suggestions? Or, is Israel synonymous with world Jewry despite the fact that more Jews lived outside Israel than in the Jewish state till 2006?

A "sinister tie-up" between India and Israel?

2008-01-21T16:36:00.000+05:30

Long speculated, India launched today Israel's most advanced spy satellite, Tecsar, that transmits images regardless of time and weather conditions. Defence analysts say the satellite will target Iran's programme for nuclear energy (nuclear weapons for some) and thus may be viewed as a "sinister tie-up" between India and Israel against Muslims. This is the second such satellite aimed at Iran after Eros B, launched in April last year by Russia. While American mentors of close Indo-Israeli ties will be happy at this development, will Indian authorities withstand pressure if an offer to launch Iranian spy satellites, such as Mesbah or Sina 1, is made to New Delhi by Tehran?

The left-wing love of a right-wing president

2008-01-18T15:07:00.000+05:30

The contrast's stark. Sarkozy's right-wing views have been well-documented. But this brilliantly researched article in The Guardian brings into focus Carla Bruni's political affiliations and they couldn't have been more different from those of the French president.

The irony of it all, Carla Bruni could never have made it to France if Sarkozy's hugely-criticised DNA test rule for immigrants were in place when the model and her family chose to live in France. The controversial rule seeks to allow only those immigrants with proved paternity to move to France. Bruni, who fled Italy for France, would have failed the test as she moved there with her stepfather and mother. In fact, during the presidential campaign Bruni supported the socialist Ségolène Royal against Sarkozy and even attended a concert to protest against Sarkozy's controversial plans for DNA testing.

Bruni, who has in the past, supported left-leaning causes, has even criticised former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. She now learns that the TV-obsessed and "post-cultural" president Sarkozy is being likened to Berlusconi.

All this leaves us wondering how Bruni will adjust to her partner's political thoughts. And what role she'll play as France's first lady. That's obviously superseded with a more important question: How long will she remain France's first lady?

Nano ke side-effects!

2008-01-16T11:53:00.000+05:30

Some brilliant cartoons on the Nano phenomenon from the Hindi press:

What does the burqa veil?

2008-01-14T11:41:00.000+05:30

Shahid Nadeem of Pakistan's famous Ajoka Productions, a theatre company, has an interesting response: “I use the burqa as a metaphor. The burqa is also being used by world powers to hide what they are really doing. They are using the burqa to pretend they are fighting for justice or democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan.” He is in town to perform Burqavaganza, a play banned in Pakistan, at the National School of Drama's theatre festival.

Is Nano really a Rs 1 lakh-car?

2008-01-12T15:24:00.000+05:30

Really for Rs 1 lakh? (Image: NYT)

Everyone is gasping at and lauding the fact that Indian automobile engineers have produced a car that can be sold at Rs 1 lakh. But I wonder if all this excitement about Nano as a seminal feat of Indian engineering is well merited and if this price tag isn't a face-saving exercise for Ratan Tata. Not that I want to be the party pooper. In fact, I feel the criticism offered by Sunita Narain or Rajendra Pachauri about environmental damage is completely misplaced. It sure is remarkable that so many Indian families can now look forward to owning a car. That doesn't stop the government from improving public transport facilities. Does it? Moreover, it may reduce the number of two-wheelers on the roads and related deaths.

However, my hunch is that Nano is worth more than the quoted price and that Tata is selling the car at a lower price to save face and as an unprecedented publicity gimmick. Tata initially wanted to design a low-cost car with no fixed price. The exact price tag came up casually during Ratan Tata's interview with FT. Since then the tag has stuck and has been spectacularly propagated worldwide. Who would risk not adhering to that? Imagine the disaster if Nano was priced even at Rs 1.5 lakh! Tata’s comment, with a fine reading between the lines, hints at what I am referring to: "The Rs 1 lakh price tag might be difficult to hang on to, given rising costs. But a promise is a promise," Tata said, adding, "I am a shy person. The media attention and expectation were traumatic… But the challenge has just begun. We have to deliver on our promise. The nation has to accept it. There is a along way to go." And already, he’s praying for a tax break to reduce further possible losses.

So is it, after all, that great an achievement for Tata and the Indian automobile industry? What if XYZ firm produced a car that would have normally sold at Rs 2 lakh but undercut the price at Rs 1 lakh to sell more and gain attention? More so when the firm is one like Tata that can recover losses from its other operations and has large economies of scale? Moreover, variants of Nano, it has been announced, will be priced higher. And we haven’t even driver a Nano yet. Ratan Tata famous one-liner "A promise is a promise" sounds more like "Well, we would have sold the car for more than Rs 1 lakh but then we had to stick to the tag and save our face. Not doing so would have been a publicity disaster for the company."

Would you still view Nano’s launch so jubilantly? Not me.

Making sense of the brouhaha down under

2008-01-10T13:34:00.000+05:30

While most newspapers and television channels cry hoarse about the affront to “national pride” and bat passionately for the Indian cricket team, practically none of them have attempted any form of introspection. The Indian cricket team, after all, isn’t quite smear-free. Rohit Brijnath, my favourite Indian sports writer, fills that vacuum and offers some incisive and enlightening comments on the cricketing controversy.

Some excerpts:

It is interesting that despite losing two successive Tests the Indian cricket captain is still respected, and after winning 16 Tests in a row there are calls in his own country for the Australian captain to be sacked. A lesson is to be found here: how a team plays sport is important, but so is how it conducts itself.

…only recently in India during the one-dayers against Australia in October 2007, team manager Lalchand Rajput spoke immaturely about giving it back to the visitors, and S Sreesanth and Harbhajan behaved in intemperate fashion. Then, India's "fearless, young" players were cheered widely for "fighting fire with fire", yet there was nothing fearless or smart about their behaviour.

Of course, racist language, which Harbhajan Singh is accused of, is unacceptable, and the effort of some Indian observers to downplay how vile the term "monkey" is to a black man is offensive. Yet it is not only racist language that is repugnant, but Ponting's team has yet to grasp this, and continues to use words that are not necessarily part of the banter in Asia. "Monkey" is wrong, but so is stuff about body parts and dubious parentage. Yet at the same time for the Indians to wail about "bastard" suggests their vocabulary is priestly pure.

No doubt Mike Procter's decision was absent of fairness, and the umpiring incompetent (though all teams will rightfully now cry for umpiring changes mid-tour), but predictably there is overreaction in India, where cricket is rapidly being infected with jingoism. One television channel argued whether the Sydney Test should be annulled, others considered a cricket referee's decision as some bruise on the national honour (this, in a time of farmer suicides)* and called for the team to return. In sport, you don't sulk and take the ball home, you play on like men.

And not just television channels. HT frontpaged a survey of a few hundred respondents on Tuesday (January 8) to say “Come back home, nation tells its players”.

Finally, Brijnath, in his conclusion, condenses the lesson from this controversy in two brilliant lines: Ponting's team needs to grow up. Kumble's team needs to remember how to bat. To which, I may add mine: Cut the chatter. Let the bat and the ball do the talking.

* Few would dispute the fact that Sharad Pawar seems more perturbed and proactive in times of cricketing crises rather than in times of agrarian crises. If there’s a second lesson that can be drawn from this episode, it is this: Sack Pawar as the Minister for Agriculture. Let him keep his cricketing portfolio for that is the cap he likes to don.

An Islamic car?

2007-11-12T16:01:00.000+05:30

Malaysian car maker Proton has unveiled plans to manufacture an Islamic car with plans to tie up with manufacturers in Iran and Turkey for its production. The special features will include a compass that always points to Mecca and a special compartment for a copy of the Koran and a headscarf. My first reaction to this was - How communal can we get? Do we really need an "Islamic" car? And that too one that doesn't offer much that is Islamic other than a compass and extra storage space. Anybody may add these two to any ordinary car to make it halal.

I wish Proton had put more brains into this project to come up with a car that could have beaten others by, let's say, reducing carbon emission or enhanced fuel efficiency. That would have made Muslims and even non-Muslims or Muslim automobile technology. Oh, by the way, has Proton thought of an Islamic car that switches itself off five times a day so that its drivers may be forced to pray? Wonder how many takers are there for such an "Islamic" technology?

Is this reduced milk? Is it eggs? No, it is grated potatoes

2007-11-01T12:51:00.000+05:30

Chefs in Lucknow craft eggs wrapped in minced meat (Image from NPR)

I have always wondered what makes for an outstanding dish. Given the frenzied times we live in, I strongly believe that its simplicity (how easily and quickly one can cook it) is as important, if not more, as its taste. Having someone else cook for you is not an option - you never get your preferred combination of flavours and smells. And since I do my cooking - mostly each day - I have to keep it simple and yummy. Those fancy recipes that need ingredients your kirana store does not sell are, therefore, out of the question. My kitchen is not equipped with an oven or a mixer-cum-grinder and I have never even felt the need for them. And I can safely claim to make stuff that several people like.

But Lucknow’s nawabs had it differently. Their opulent kitchens operated on a war footing with an army of cooks. The nawabs even had their food decorated with gold and silver foils. In this NPR's story on the decaying art of nawabi cuisine, Pushpesh Pant, a foodie, claims in those days a good dish was one that was "exotic and unexpected". "Say you eat a dessert, and you say 'Is this reduced milk? Is it eggs?' And the host would say, with a twinkle in his eye, 'No, it is grated potatoes." The story goes on, calling these dishes as “riddle dishes” where desserts masqueraded as entrees like kebabs, curries and even whole fish.

Very convincing and appetising. But am I willing to change my definition of an outstanding dish? No. Not at all. Kakori kabab at Maurya Sheraton's Dum Pukht doesn’t even beat the satisfaction of a self-cooked meal of dal and chawal at home.

Why is a Hindu a Jew in the US?

2007-10-03T16:14:00.000+05:30

The "Axis of Good" (India-Israel-USA), as our former NSA Brajesh Mishra once infamously put it, seems to be taking shape. NYT reports how many Indian-Americans are now modelling themselves on Jews when it comes to establishing community centres, advocating on civil rights matters and lobbying the US Congress. Does this trend of ganging up with the Jews (socially and politically) veil anti-Muslim sentiments? Maybe not, but I have some inherent repulsion for anything that's organised around religion. Or even, for that matter, organised religion.

The battle for "free speech"

2007-10-03T11:48:00.000+05:30

After Ahmadinejad's controversial appearance at Columbia, George Bush has now been invited to speak at Mashhad-based Ferdowsi University. The White House has dismissed the offer, saying it would have considered it if Iran allowed freedom of expression, did not have nuclear ambitions and did not threaten Israel. Such a spoilsport! Too bad we are missing out on what would have otherwise been a lip-smacking encounter between Iranian students and "war criminal" Bush. I doubt if he even has, to use Lee Bollinger's phrase, the "intellectual courage" to take questions from a free gathering of students in countries that are run by American proteges such as Egypt and Pakistan. Only if Lee Bollinger now coaxes his president to defend the ideals of free speech that his country stands for!

Taking about American leaders speaking at universities abroad, Condoleezza Rice in February 2005 lectured on American foreign policy and trans-Atlantic ties at Sciences Po in Paris (where I studied). Not only were a handful of students allowed in the auditorium, even the questions were vetted by the State Department. Benjamin Barnier, a student at the school, had one of his questions struck off the list. It asked what the US administration could do to improve Bush's image in the world, particularly in West Asia. Instead, he got to ask something about the possibility of a Shiite theocracy in Iraq. If only the American administration practised what Bollinger so fanatically preaches...

Feasting in Ramadan?

2007-10-01T16:02:00.000+05:30

A boy was once hacked to death in Pakistan by a bystander. His fault - he was eating a banana openly when others, including the bystander, were fasting. BBC's Masud Alam takes a tongue-in-cheek look at how grave feasting in Ramadan can get.

A nuclear deal for Israel now?

2007-09-28T14:09:00.000+05:30

Israel, which like India is not a signatory to the NPT, is lobbying for a deal that would allow it to benefit from civilian nuclear energy. This request is surely going to be political hot potato in the US. If it accedes to the Israeli demand, it will have to deal with the obvious criticism that it supports a country that possesses nuclear weapons while stunting the progress of another that doesn't have any. India's case is different because New Delhi does not pose a direct threat to Tehran. But Tel Aviv does (at least according to Iran). We know the only country in West Asia to have nuclear weapons, ahem, is Israel. And Iran is not going to take it quietly... These are interesting times!

The Indian Express coincidentally answers some questions asked on this blog

2007-09-27T15:07:00.000+05:30

In my post on Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia, I had asked if any Indian university would have the courage to invite any person vociferously critical of India, its government and policies. The Indian Express in its edit on the president’s visit to Columbia on Wednesday thinks no. Here’s their explanation:

“So here’s a sobering question for the world’s largest democracy: Would one of our premier institutions — let us take this opportunity to mourn the fact that there are so few of them — have had the vision to host an event that attracted similar controversy and political opprobrium. The answer has to be no. There are two sets of reasons. One is that we are not yet a mature system in that institutions don’t have the degree of operating autonomy to take decisions that go against the supposed national grain. The few universities that take things like furthering dialogue seriously and have the brand to attract marquee policymakers are vulnerable to official interference of all kinds. Ministries can block seminars and discussion forums pretty much when they want to; ‘anti-national’ is the adjectival equivalent of a blunt instrument.

The second reason is less obvious but more important. We have developed a tendency to want to listen to only those who say what we want to hear. Would a certain well-known university known for its left-leaning academic staff and campus politics invite an unapologetic American neocon? Doubtful. Would any top-of-the-line institution host a speaker who flatly and aggressively contradicts, say, India’s position on Kashmir? Doubtful. This inability to engage with the ‘other’ has of course infected politics and is partly engendered by current political practices. Thus it is that the two national parties can barely say hello to each other. Put it this way. A US president may in the near future have to talk to Iran’s. But when a BJP president and a Congress president will have a constructive chat is anyone’s guess.”

It is a pity we did not let George Bush address a joint session of the Indian Parliament when he visited in March last year.

Scindia old boy Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon at work?

2007-09-26T15:19:00.000+05:30

Some news from my school.

There's a proposal to draw a ropeway to the Gwalior fort, which houses The Scindia School, from Phoolbagh in the city. While Jyotiraditya Scindia, now President of the Board of Governors, has opposed it for the "environmental damage" it may cause to the fort, BJP's Yashodhara Raje favours it for she believes the ropeway will bring "glamour" and promote tourism in Gwalior. Now Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon has also stepped in and written to the MP Chief Secretary claiming it would affect the school's compound and the principal's residence.

It may be unfair to comment on this without an idea of the project but it sure is an interesting development. Also heartening, provided it is not politically motivated, to see Menon take interest in the school. Get more of this story here.

Must Read: Spat between Columbia president and Iranian president

2007-09-25T12:58:00.000+05:30

"Too bad bin Laden is not available" read one of the fliers that was being passed around at the venue of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University. Many understandably criticised the university's decision to invite the Iranian president (given his hatred for the "zionist regime" and "support for terror"). Columbia president Lee Bollinger, who seemed almost apologetic about having him over, launched into a vigorous defence of the freedom to express. Using that as his shield, he attacked him and dug his knife deep into the president. Calling him a "petty and cruel dictator", Bollinger labelled the president as someone who's "either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated" because of his stance on the holocaust. "Will you cease this outrage," he asked the president, who was reportedly seated 10 feet away from him. (NYT reports Ahmadinejad wore a "frozen smile"!)

Bollinger's speech is stirring but only when it concerns individual liberties of scholars, journalists and other Iranians. He should have stayed clear of attacking the president on foreign and nuclear policy, where he questioned Ahmadinejad why Iran supported terror in Iraq against the US, funded terror elsewhere and why Iran refused to adhere to international nuclear rules. That put him on a weaker wicket given America's support for , shall we say, favourable or friendly terror in West Asia, Latin America and elsewhere. After all the US actively supported Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran that killed millions and the CIA fomented a coup to unseat Iran's only democratic government so far (that of Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953). Like Iran, America's foreign policy isn't immaculate.

The Columbia president, closing his remarks, even said he felt the president lacked the "intellectual courage" to answer his questions and prayed his performance at Columbia inspired enough Iranians to defeat his party electorally. His last words were: "I am only a professor, who is also a university president, and today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better."

Ahmadinejad came up next and questioned why the Bollinger had to "vaccinate" the students and faculty with his speech. Why cannot they make up their minds, the president asked? He then began with pointless philosophical rhetoric on God, Almighty, Adam, Allah, Mankind, etc. And he made a fool of himself when he insisted Iran did not have even a single homosexual and presented a hollow defence when questioned why Iran repressed its women. "It's not a crime to be a woman. Women are the best creatures created by God. They represent the kindness, the beauty that God instils in them. Women are respected in Iran. In Iran, every family who is given a girl, they are 10 times happier than having a son. Women are respected more than men are," he said. Yeah... Yeah... Whatever.

But I think he made a point, and his best one at that, when he asked why we should "close the books for good on a historical event". Why should "holocaust deniers" not have the freedom to express themselves and be imprisoned instead? Wonder what Bollinger's response to that would be? I wish some Indian university invited India's bete noire to come and speak to us. Would we do that? And who would it be?

Indian Idle?

2007-09-24T14:03:00.000+05:30

This euphoria over Indian Idol beats me. Sure, there have been lot of politically correct comments made about how this show has enabled people from beyond the metros to make their presence felt and reassert themselves. Yes, agreed. The munda in Punjabi Bagh (New Delhi) at least now knows there's a city called Shillong somwhere in India. Nothing more.

It is unfortunate regional disparities have to be settled - if at all they are - on a television show that at best may be described as a con exercise masquerading as a lacklustre pop gig.

The final episode of Indian Idol received over seven crore votes, a figure The Telegraph points out, is more than the entire population of the northeast. Each SMS cost between Rs 2-3 and calls from mobile were priced at Rs 6/min. Given the load of pre-recorded shit one has to go through before voting (and to do a lot of other things these days), a call to vote would have easily lasted more than a minute. So, let's see - seven crore votes would mean an earning of at least Rs 14 crore (considering all of these votes came in through the cheapest SMS route @ Rs 2 for each SMS). Add the ad revenue, and that would mean a super loot for Sony and its executives. So what if the finalists get two cars and the winner Rs 1 crore? That's pittance for all what has been raked during the enitre Indian Idol season.

Indian Idol is no nation-building or amity-promoting exercise. It's a money-making racket. It's not even a talent hunt show. In any case, what becomes of these idols after the initial cheer? The two earlier idols have been tethering on the edge of oblivion. Can you even recall their names? To ensure the two don't topple over, they were presented on the stage during the final yesterday singing songs that failed to register and entertain. Will Prashant Tamang have a better future? I sincerely hope so. But I still suggest he keep his job with the West Bengal police.

Also, why cannot the idol be selected by a panel of outstanding judges? Lata Mangeshkar has criticised the process of choosing winners through votes. The organisers defend the policy saying it allows democracy to find a voice. At the same time, SET India, the organisers, have refused to let us know the margin of votes with which Tamang won. Now which democracy would not want its citizens to know how many votes did the winning candidate and his nearest competitor receive?

How about placing the organisers, like in our democracy, under the RTI Act and demanding information they have so far witheld? Just a few quick questions I would like to ask:

1) How many votes did each candidate of the third edition of Indian Idol receive?
2) What was the amount of money generated through these votes?
3) Why cannot normal rates be allowed for texts and calls to vote? Why do voters have to be charged premium rates?
4) The profit earned by SET India?

Enough of a rant! See you in the next season of Indian Idol!

Syria, Israel and North Korea - Axis of Mystery?

2007-09-24T11:28:00.000+05:30

I have been wanting to write about this for long. I finally get to. Earlier this month, Israeli jets violated Syrian airspace and bombed an "unidentified" target near the Syrian border with Turkey. What should normally have been an incident marked by high-wattage verbal exchange has instead been enveloped with curious silence. Syria has complained to the UN about the incursion but has not spoken out on the nature of the site attacked. Israel, sticking to its policy of ambiguity on sensitive matters, has not commented on the strike. The Americans haven't been helpful either. But the two sides have acknowledged, directly or indirectly, that an attack did indeed take place.

Journalists who have reported from and on West Asia have been stunned by this development and how little they have been able to unearth about it. The most credible theory floating around is that Israel bombed a Syrian stockhouse of basic components of a nuclear programme that it acquired at discount rates from North Korea as it seeks to purge weapons out of its nuclear programme to meet international denuclearisation deadlines. The obvious question that arises is whether this attack was designed to be a pre-cursor to a similar surgical attack on Iran? Syria may have been bombed but was Iran the actual target? Much as I would like to get to the answer, there seems very little out there that may help us reach a definite answer. What strikes me is that despite the reams being written on what might happen in West Asia, things remain very unpredictable. Nobody saw this attack coming. Nobody has made perfect sense out of it. At least till now.

Creeps me to think that such an attack by Israel may burst out of the blue. Even more when I try and imagine what Iran's response is going to be. Surely not just defence fire. Iran has already issued a warning to Israel after its attack on Syria. John Leyne, BBC's correspondent in Terhan, puts it best when he says that wars occur when two sides completely misunderstand each others' intentions. Given the shroud of secrecy, Iran and Israel surely don't.

Tajbakhsh is freed, finally!

2007-09-20T17:28:00.001+05:30

The detained US-Iranian academic and dedicated Indophile Kian Tajbakhsh has been freed by Iranian authorities after being held at Evin prison for over four months. He was accused on being an agent of western forces trying to foment a "velvet revolution" in Iran. Tajbakhsh was released on a bail of $100,000. Sometimes I wonder if the Iranian authorities, after failing to prove their charges, think of these detentions as ways to mint money. Haleh Esfandiari, the other famous academic detained, was released last month for a bail of $320,000! Imagine the number of these academics/journalists/foreigners detained and the amount that has been possibly raised. Surely, it runs into millions of dollars! Wonder if bail's an euphemism for ransom in these cases?

Good question from Australia

2007-09-17T14:01:00.000+05:30

Why should the Australian state pay for the breast augmentation of its sailors? Get the answer here.

Ever wondered why Ram Setu is called Adam's Bridge?

2007-09-17T11:40:00.000+05:30

Ram is back on the front pages. Not in the religious and mythological texts where he ought to be.

The BJP, claiming to defend Hindu interests, is crying hoarse that the Sethu Samudram Shipping Canal Project offends Hindu sentiments since it destroys the bridge that Ram, according to widely held beliefs, built with help from his Vanar Sena. The Congress, desperately trying to save its face, has withdrawn the affidavit that insisted there's no proof Ram ever existed and even pledged to review the project. The Left, while careful not to earn the wrath of Hindus, says that religious affairs should be left to the individual with the rider that faith should not hold back development. And the atheist DMK leader Karunanidhi has flatly said Ram did not exist and that the project should go on.

Amidst this brouhaha, there's one obvious question that nobody has yet asked or answered. Why is Ram Setu called Adam's Bridge in the first place? According to Muslim legend, Adam crossed over this structure to Adam's Peak, in Ceylon, atop which he stood repentant on one foot for 1,000 years. This priceless info come from Encycolpaedia Britannica. The veracity of this may be debated just like in the case of Ram Sethu.

Ram Sethu? Yes. But also Adam's Bridge. (Image from NASA)

But it does raise some interesting follow-up questions:

How important is Adam's Bridge for the Muslims? Possibly, even for Christians?

Why has nothing been said or written about it?

Are we just wasting time on Ram Sethu because the BJP and its allied organisations picked it up? If not, would the sethu have been bulldozed without raising any eyebrows?

What if Muslim political parties lobbied to save Adam's Bridge saying it offends their beliefs? How would that change the reactions of our political parties?

Doesn't this show how politicians can make an issue out of anything and everything? And why do we fall prey to such manoeuvres each time?

Sometimes all it takes is a simple question to make sense of a nonsensical national debate. A question that still eludes our commentators and politicians - Why is Ram Sethu called Adam's Bridge?

Yet another sting. - the victim this time is Goa's leading paper

2007-09-12T20:24:00.000+05:30

It's called "Cash For Editorials". A blog has stung Goa's leading paper, Herald, claiming it sells editorial space for Rs 3 lakh. More here. A monster we unleashed is now biting its creator.

Stings - An excuse for shoddy and half-hearted journalism?

2007-09-12T16:57:00.000+05:30

Yet another sting has fallen flat on its face, entangling itself in legal and ethical complications. (Live India’s reporter Prakash Singh finds himself behind bars for concocting a plot to frame Uma Khurana.) The question everybody is now asking – Do stings have a legitimate place in journalism? Most respond yes. But what nobody says is that a sting is a poor excuse for bad journalism. It’s something the police ought to do to catch criminals. Not journalists for a copy.

Once in the 1970s, the panel for Pulitzer prizes had to decide whether it wanted to award Chicago Sun Times a prize for a widely appreciated story on how cops regularly prised money out of bar owners. To set the trap, the students went to the extent of opening bars. The cops came and, expectedly, asked for money. Only to be caught in the act on hidden cameras. Good story, you think? The Pulitzer panel didn’t and rightly so. The students were not reporting, they were acting. They were not reporting news but creating news. This is what we are experiencing today in India with stings. We (journalists) no longer report news but manufacture it. We are no longer flies on the wall (what we ideally should be), observing and reporting, but actors in the script we write. We still do have to have to ask hard questions and labour well enough to get the facts. But that doesn’t mean we can get it through other means.

As the pressure to deliver piles on the newly created television channels and papers, stings have emerged as a shortcut to “great” stories and TRP ratings. Nobody wants to labour like Woodward and Bernstein did for Watergate. Who has the time? It’s simpler to act than to report meticulously. Tehelka got prostitutes to do the luring act (something they initially hid) and NDTV got an eyewitness (Sunil Kulkarni) from the BMW case to expose the defence and prosecution lawyers. Pray, where and what was journalism in that? Aaj Tak even sneaked in a Shatrughan Sinha (who was then a MP) look-alike into the Parliament premises and cried hoarse about a security breach post-December 13. Never mind that anywhere else in the world it would have been passed off as something comical. Remember the recent breach by a Laden look-alike at the APEC summit in Sydney? It was carried out by a satirical and not a news channel. Looks like I have missed out on a defining change in television journalism in India - farce now qualifies as breaking news these days!

The truth has never been simpler – We have worked our way around ethical and logistical hurdles for a quicker copy. We are plain lazy and in far too great a haste to follow the rules. Nobody unfortunately seems to be saying this in the ongoing debate.

(PS: Yours truly is a print journalist. Therefore, I can claim to speak for ourselves.)

Tajbakhsh "to be released soon"

2007-09-12T14:21:00.000+05:30

The detained US-Iranian scholar and Indophile Kian Tajbakhsh says he'll be freed soon. Hopefully it turns out to be true.

Can Jews be anti-Semitic?

2007-09-10T11:32:00.000+05:30

The neo-Nazi gang (Image from Haaretz)

Apparently, yes! Police in Israel have arrested a gang of Jewish "neo-Nazis". This is the first such instance. Their targets included orthodox Jews, foreigners and gays. The group of eight Russian-origin Jews, all between 18 and 21, even desecrated two synagogues with the swastika. Eli Boanitov, the gang's leader, was definant even after his arrest. "I won't ever give up. I was a Nazi and I will stay a Nazi, until we kill them all I will not rest," he told the police.

The problem is that this malaise goes well beyond this group. These new immigrants from erstwhile Soviet Union, who arrived in droves for economic reasons, have struggled to integrate into the Israeli society. Few speak Hebrew, many of them live in ghettos, they enjoy their pork (most Jews like Muslims stay away from pork), have their supermarkets and media outlets and have little connection, if any, with Judaism. Looks like the enemy lies within Israel now.

Anti-Defamation League maintains defensively that this incident is more a reaction to anti-Russian discrimination in Israel. But this incident has raised once again the question - Who should have the right to "return" to Israel? The country's Law of Return permits anyone who is Jewish according to halakha, religious law, or their relatives (including grandchildren) to immigrate to Israel. This has allowed many second or third generation Jews to migrate from across the world (obviously helping Israel win the demographic battle against the Arabs and also the publicity battle about Israel, despite its problems, being a magnet for new immigrants). Those in favour of changing it argue it has permitted many with scant dedication to or respect for Judaism to move to Israel. "It undermines the Jewish character of the state," says MK Zevulun Orlev of the National Union-National Religious Party.

Rather than luring immigrants en masse, the aliyah authorities are naturally being asked to be more selective to get the best and the faithful of the crop. It will be interesting to see how Israel balances its demographic fight with its struggle for security.

Globalisation of diseases - chikungunya goes to Italy!

2007-09-06T17:32:00.000+05:30

Given their frightening frequency, I have become unresponsive to reports about malaria, dengue and chikungunya. But this one caught my attention. It says chikungunya has finally established itself in Italy where 160 cases have been detected. Antoine Flahault, a French professor, claims the Italian outbreak was a "world first" outside the tropics. Chikungunya fever, says BBC, is named after a Swahili word meaning "that which bends up" - referring to the stooped posture of those afflicted.

Should we blame Mother Teresa for perpetuating the image of "poor Calcutta"?

2007-09-05T13:20:00.000+05:30

Yes, says Chitrita Banerji in her provocative op-ed in the NYT.

“Ten years and one beatification later, however, the relentless hagiography of the Catholic Church and the peculiar tunnel vision of the news media continue to equate Calcutta with the twinned entities of destitution and succor publicized by Mother Teresa. With cultish fervor, her organization, the Missionaries of Charity, promotes her as an icon of mercy. Meanwhile, countless unheralded local organizations work for the needy without the glamour of a Nobel Prize or of impending sainthood,” Banerji argues. She then concludes, “Mother Teresa might have meant well, but she furthered her mission by robbing Calcutta of its richly nuanced identity while pretending to love it.”

I guess she has a valid point about the interest for propagating a destitute image of Calcutta. The more desperate it gets, more stellar would the Missionaries of Charity’s work seem to be. After all, would MoC be as popular as it is today if it were based in, let’s say, Bombay (which according to Banerji has more poor than Calcutta)? I wonder why Banerji does not mention “City of Joy” (the book and the film) in her article. Together with Mother Teresa, City of Joy has sealed an image of Calcutta that centres much around life in poverty. That is paired with the idea of Calcutta as a yesteryear city and a city that seemingly revels in living in a world gone by. This persists even as other cities, including smaller ones such as Hyderabad, Pune or Bangalore, have moved ahead.

That is not going to change till benefits of development and economic liberalisation reach all segments of the population in eastern India. Traditionally eastern India has had some of the poorest states which send migrant labourers to Calcutta. (In 2004-05, Bihar had a per capita GDP of Rs 5,772 and Orissa had Rs 13,601. Delhi’s neighbour’s, on the other hand, fare better: Punjab (Rs 30,701 and Haryana (Rs 32,712) – Source 2006 National Health Profile). And I guess the governing political parties in West Bengal are largely responsible for this decay since they have convincingly failed to provide the necessary jobs or the conducive environment required for private enterprise to flourish and provide the jobs that the government doesn’t. Ironically, the Catholic MoC has to thank the "atheist" Communist government for providing it with the necessary destitute conditions to work and progress in.

But then I don’t have the necessary credentials to pronounce a judgement on Teresa or Calcutta. Neither can I call myself a philanthropist nor have I lived long enough in Calcutta to call it home.

Esfandiari is free, not Tajbakhsh

2007-09-04T12:07:00.000+05:30

An update on the dententions of US-Iranian academics.

Iranians are comfortable waiting, waiting for salvation, waiting to be saved, waiting for good days

2007-08-30T12:56:00.000+05:30

Michael Slackman's despatch from Qom has an interesting quote from a social psychologist on the collective identity of Iranians. On how they love to wait for salvation and better days. Much like Indians who are resigned to their fate – bhagwan ke ghar mein der hai, andher nahin.

Here's the relevant extratct:

Outside, there were lines of men and women heading to Jamkaran Mosque, on the outskirts of the city. And here was another example of what divides and drives Iranians. Many see the mosque as a site where they can leave messages for Imam Mahdi and have their wishes answered. Others see it as nonsense.

The mosque was built after a villager dreamed in the year 974 that Imam Mahdi told him where he would return and showed him the site, which is where the mosque now stands. There is a well there for visitors to leave their letters of request, and the crowds were thick on Tuesday as people packed so tightly into buses they could not shut the doors.

And that, perhaps, illustrates another Iranian trait — a pre-Islamic affinity for waiting. When Iranians practiced Zoroastrianism, they were also awaiting a savior, called Saoshyant. They say that helped cope with the stress of one heavyhanded government after another.

That fit well with Shiite Islam, academics said. “Iranians are comfortable as Shias,” said Dr. Muhammad Sanati, a social psychologist in Tehran. “They feel at home with a prophet coming. They are comfortable waiting, waiting for salvation, waiting to be saved, waiting for good days.

Mohammed caricatures... again!

2007-08-29T16:08:00.000+05:30

The top illustration shows Jesus with the body of an elephant. The second one shows Mohammed with the body of a dog. The third finally depicts semi dog-semi human Mohammed again but this time with a placard that reads "Islam means human and animal rights".

These illustrations have been sketched by Swedish artist Lars Vilks. One of his Mohammed illustrations was published in Nerikes Allehanda, a local newspaper in Örebro, a city in southern central Sweden. Apparently, the paper chose the Mohammed sketch (not the Jesus one) to accompany an article on self-censorship. I don't know which of the two Mohammed ones was actually published. The articles I read (this and this) don't specify. My hunch is that the one with a placard came as a reaction to the furore generated by the second illustration. And I doubt if he was trying to defend himself and soothe ruffled feathers. It is more likely a smart rebuttal - Vilks thumbs his nose at those offended and drives home his point even more incisively in the last illustration.

To return to his second illustration, I feel it is in bad taste. Just like the one that had Mohammed with a bomb as a turban. I have two questions: a) Why do these newspapers have to continuously provoke the Muslims living in the west? And that too by using such puerile illustrations. I don't even get the point Vilks makes other than the obvious one of denigrating Mohammed by fusing him with a dog (despised widely in Islamic countries and elsewhere). It's a vicious circle (the kind Al-Qaeda hopes engulfs the entire civilised world) where provocations only engender more radicalism, and b) Why are cartoons of leaders of other faith rejected? It is the case here was so with Jyllands-Posten.

This is more like a cartoon that I'd enjoy. It's from Charlie Hebdo, a French weekly. The man above is Mohammed. The text on the left says, "Mohammed overwhelmed by the fundamentalists" and the balloon adds, "It's a pain being loved by idiots..." Charlie Hebdo was fortunately absolved of all charges of publicly abusing a group of people because of their religion. The case was brought by the Grand Mosque of Paris, the Union of Islamic Organisations of France (UOIF) and the World Islamic League.

Will the law treat a policeman and a minister equally?

2007-08-29T12:32:00.001+05:30

A police constable was suspended for hugging the actor-cum-convicted criminal Sanjay Dutt. But will a Congress minister guilty of the same crime be punished? I doubt so. Maharashtra CM Vilasrao Deshmukh insists the minister has committed no crime. “Dutt is like a family member for him. You must understand that police is a disciplined force. The norms applicable to them may differ from those applicable to civilians,” he says. Guess we are still living in an animal farm where all are equal but some are more equal than others.

Is anti-Semitism objectionable enought to be banned on YouTube?

2007-08-28T15:03:00.000+05:30

Germany's Central Council of Jews is planning to press charges against YouTube for hosting videos that are anti-Semitic in nature. Right-wing extremists apparently use the free video platform for sharing and viewing propaganda videos inciting racial hatred. A few months back, Orkut too was in problem for hosting a community proclaiming its hatred for Bal Thackeray.

This raises a crucial question. Should we censor content on YouTube? Or for that matter, on any other site? And who should decide what should be censored? Difficult questions with no convincing answers. YouTube’s policy is to “encourage free speech and defend everyone's right to express unpopular points of view”. But it doesn't permit “hate speech which contains slurs or the malicious use of stereotypes intended to attack or demean a particular gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, or nationality”. By that yardstick, I guess the Central Council of Jews is right to insist the videos be removed from the site.

But that still leaves us the question – Who decides if the video falls into that category? YouTube may have an answer. It urges viewers to flag a video if they consider it inappropriate. A clip is taken off when it comes to the notice of the staff at the video-hosting site with several “flaggings”. That is a far more civilized way to deal with attacks on freedom of expression rather than allowing an individual or a few to deal with it. Democratising opinion and enhancing broader participation has been the Internet biggest achievement.

In the real world, we are way off the mark in this debate. Often, the “offenders”, like M F Hussain or Taslima Nasreen, are threatened/attacked for expressing their views. There is little substance in the debate besides shrill vengeful rhetoric. So even if Hussain merits criticism, he doesn’t get it. He ducks under the cover of an assault on his “freedom of expression”. And even if Nasreen deserves to be panned for her searing hatred of Islam, she gets off the hook for being unable to express her opinion freely. It is reasonable to argue that these two would not have been as famous as they are today had it not been for the innumerable controversies centred around them. That is also the problem with the law that makes holocaust denial a crime in certain countries (many of them in Europe, including France). Why should such a law exist in liberal democracies? It only gives them cover whereby they claim an attack on their freedom of expression and draw sympathizers. Why cannot we let them express their views freely and let them be criticized openly and civilly by those who find it objectionable?

BTW, The New York Times still insists on printing all the news that is fit to print. Shouldn’t it change now? Isn’t all the news fit to print?

Would you learn the art of living with death running amok?

2007-08-24T13:30:00.000+05:30

Away from the mayhem back home, a clutch of Iraqis are taking a break at Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's (Why does he get two "Sri"s? Ever wondered? And why do the media accept it without a query?) spiritual retreat in Karnataka.

According to a Reuter’s report (a guaranteed puff job, if you read it well enough), they will “follow an intensive meditation and rhythmic breathing regime for a month to learn about an alternative lifestyle”. That means waking up at five every morning, followed by yoga classes, meditation, a stint in the kitchen, spiritual discussions, public speaking classes and spiritual singing as part of their “physical, mental, emotional and social development”. Whoa! As strenuous as life back in Iraq, if you ask me.

Also, I wish the reporter took the pains to enlighten us on what he/she means by social development of a person. Making a person socially more acceptable? And what would the difference be between mental and emotional development of a person? I know what's the similarity - plain good old guru-ish gobbledygook.

The young participants (55 men and women) hope to use their leadership skills learnt at the retreat to lead their communities back in Iraq. One participant says, “With so many problems of endless killings, bombs and war, life in Iraq is very stressful ... we have no hope. After coming here, we see a new ray of hope." Hopefully, you see that hope back in Iraq too.

I really wonder how all this actually helps the Iraqis deal with the war? Is breathing deep enough or a certain yogic posture the first thing on one’s mind when the neighbourhood store is blown away by a fidayeen attack? "We go back and help people come out of depression by teaching them breathing exercise and other techniques we are learning here," is what another participant says. Spirituality comes last in trying times. Iraqis for sure have more mundane and material issues to deal with - their taps have run dry... food's scarce... the neighbourhood school's probably shut down... the naan-wala next door most likely has moved to Jordan... they probably can't even move out of their homes after sundown.

I am curious to find out how many Iraqis have really benefited? Isn’t Ravi Shankar just using Iraqis for more effective international publicity? Why doesn’t AOL, if at all it wants to, help rehabilitate some of the millions of Iraqi refugees that have spilled over Iraq’s borders? Instead of concocting some vacuous Arab-Israeli bonhomie at his ashram. Some Arabs and Israelis are participating in the training together, helping each other with techniques and interacting on issues of life and spirituality. "This (the Arab-Israeli bonhomie) can only happen when the mind is relieved of stress and emotions are softened and refined," Sri² claims in the report. "This state cannot be achieved by force or violence." Well, I’ll turn into an AOL disciple if in his lifetime Sri² successfully creates a Palestinian state.

Excuse me AOL devotees, but I just can't take these new age gurus.

It's a mad, mad, mad world!

2007-08-24T12:36:00.001+05:30

Women in a Kenyan village are having a hard time chasing some monkeys away from their fields. Chomping on the crop, these monkeys are said to be completely unafraid of the women. Not even if the women put on clothes of their husbands. One harassed woman told BBC:

"When we come to chase the monkeys away, we are dressed in trousers and hats, so that we look like men," resident Lucy Njeri told the BBC News website. "But the monkeys can tell the difference and they don't run away from us and point at our breasts. They just ignore us and continue to steal the crops." In addition to stealing their crops, the monkeys also make sexually explicit gestures at the women, they claim. "The monkeys grab their breasts, and gesture at us while pointing at their private parts. We are afraid that they will sexually harass us," said Mrs Njeri.

BTW, reportedly there was a headless chicken!

2007-08-22T14:28:00.000+05:30

It was called Mike and lived for 18 months after its head was chopped off!
Here's his official story:

The Amazing, true story of this famous fowl dates back to September 10, 1945 when Mike, a young Wyandotte rooster, was about to become the dinner of Fruita, Colorado, farmer Lloyd Olsen.

With a sharp ax in hand, Mr. Olsen firmly held Mike, preparing to make the bird ready for his wife Clara's cooking pot. Mr. Olsen swung the implement, thereby lopping off poor Mike's head. Mike shook off the event, then continued trying to peck for food.

Mike's will to live remains an inspiration. It is a great comfort to know you can live a normal life, even after you have lost your mind.

Thanks, Mike!

Hullabaloo in the nuclear orchard?

2007-08-22T12:42:00.000+05:30

Illustration from The Telegraph

Our man in the US, Ronen Sen, has ruffled many chicken feathers with this comment in an interview to Rediff:

"It (the nuclear deal) has been approved here (in Washington, DC) by the President, and there (in New Delhi) it's been approved by the Indian cabinet. So why do you have all this running around like headless chicken, looking for a comment here or comment there, and these little storms in a tea-cup?"

Even after Sen’s clarification claiming the term “headless chickens” was a “tactless observation” on some of his media friends, MPs are outraged at being referred to in such terms. As I argued in the previous post, this debate about the deal is no longer about the deal. We are now arguing who’s a chicken, who’s a vegetable and who’s got chikungunya. Here’s a sampling of some hilarious quotes on this latest fiasco:

“If a diplomat called journalists headless chicken, then his brain is nothing but a vegetable.” – Priyaranjan Das Munshi

“If journalists are headless chicken, MPs are boneless chicken and government’s got chikungunya" – Mamta Banerjee

"I have been shown to be not just a headless chicken but a brainless one too." - Yashwant Sinha, who was named by Sen as one of those who objected to the deal.

“Nobody’s a kid. No chacha (uncle) of any bachcha (child) can accuse our government of playing with India’s iqbal (prestige).” – Laloo Prasad Yadav

“We have an ambassador in Washington, who seems to be the ambassador of President Bush, not the ambassador of India.” – Prakash Karat

Why is The Telegraph being so petulant?

2007-08-20T17:04:00.000+05:30

Not that I sympathise with the Left in India... I still feel The Telegraph (avowedly anti-left) only discredits itself in the ongoing debate about the merits and demerits of the nuclear deal when it publishes infographics like these. This illustration appeared in the paper's front page today. Neither does it have the aesthetic merit nor the incisive wit that is normally associated with an illustration/a cartoon appearing in one of the country's leading dailies. Frankly, it even fails to make the cut for a good college journal. I might use American goods - sure, I do - but that doesn't make me an admirer of its foreign policy.

The debate about is the deal is no longer about the deal. It's entered a realm of shrill senseless rhetoric. Some facts that the government needs to put out loud and clear (as simple as 123):

1) that India will test a nuclear weapon, if the need be
2) that India will pursue an independent foreign policy (and actually show how)
3) ask the US to keep its political advice to itself

PS: I, nonetheless, admire The Telegraph's stand on not accepting Kolkata as the new name. It still refers to the city by its old name - Calcutta.

Midwifing India and Pakistan

2007-08-17T16:38:00.000+05:30

What were Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife, Edwina, doing on the evening of August 14, 1947, a few hours before Britain’s Indian Empire was formally divided into the nation-states of India and Pakistan? An excellent article by Pankaj Mishra in The New Yorker claims they sat down in the viceregal mansion in New Delhi to watch the latest Bob Hope movie, “My Favorite Brunette.” Outside, chaos spread like wildfire as millions of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs struggled to get to the right side of the border. Thanks to Cyril Radcliffe, a London barrister, who was given forty days to carve out the two nations. He did not visit the villages, communities, rivers, or forests divided by the lines he drew on paper. The article goes on to rightly criticise the sudden withdrawal of the British, which generated more chaos and bloodshed, and how they ended up making religion the defining criterion of one's indentity in the subcontinent.

Who's the best-looking writer?

2007-08-15T13:07:00.000+05:30

Image from The Daily Telegraph

While reading articles on 60 years of freedom in India and Pakistan, I came across two intelligent articles by the Bangladeshi Tahmima Anam (here and here). A Google image search also revealed that she is equally beautiful as her prose, pushing me to build this post into a series of posts on good-looking writers. Keep coming back for your dose of beautiful people and prose. Your nominations, if any, are welcome. We'll try and keep their origins as varied as possible.

60 years of freedom? Only for some

2007-08-15T12:49:00.000+05:30

As much of urban India holidays and indulges in vacuous patriotic talk, let me be the party pooper. Two stories of the day to remind why freedom still eludes us:

a) A 22-year-old Dalit, the first from his village to get into an engineering college, is killed by upper-cast men in UP. Read it in The Indian Express.

b) Fundamentalist Hindus from Shiv Sena ransack the Mumbai office of Outlook, a news weekly, after it included Bal Thackeray's name in its list of villains. Where is the freedom to express ourselves? More here.

Could you write a country's history in 50 words?

2007-08-14T13:28:00.000+05:30

As India and Pakistan celebrate 60 years of freedom, reams are being written on their past, present and future. Of all that I have read, this one by M Ilyas Khan on the BBC stands out. In two paragraphs (49 words) he sums up succinctly Pakistan's history:

"The story of Pakistan is one of remorseless tug and pull between the civilian and military rulers on the one hand, and the liberal and religious forces on the other.

In the process, the country has failed to become either a democracy, a theocracy or a permanent military dictatorship."

It also makes a very intresting observation: the US has always selectively used its financial and military support against democratic governments in Pakistan. In other words, the biggest aid from America came for the dictators there and not for the leaders its people elected to power. It still holds good now with Musharraf in power.

It's a mad, mad, mad world... So are the media

2007-08-13T14:05:00.000+05:30

Protest "faked" for TV

They should have been on stage, pulling rabbits out of their hats. An enterprising band of political activists created magic of sorts during a televised protest that showed a cyber café where none existed.

Many watched the Republican Party of India troopers descend on the outlet — shown to be located somewhere in Thane — rip apart cables and smash computers.

he café was punished for a cardinal sin: allowing a porn site that featured lewd photos of a woman posing next to a Buddha bust. The depiction was illegal anyway — cafes can’t permit such sites to be opened — but the self-appointed obscenity busters were taking no chances. They also wanted to be “seen” going about their business.

That the “reality show” was fake came through when police, looking for the café, discovered that the activists put up the “Sigma Cyber Café” banner outside a vacant shop. Computers shown during the “smashing act” turned out to be empty CPU boxes and faulty monitors.

Asked about the stunt, RPI’s district chief Sunil Kambe said that theirs was a “symbolic” protest. “We did not know whether a cyber cafe existed or not,” he said.

From The Telegraph, 13 August 2007

Is Indian science overwhelmingly "kshatriya"?

2007-08-10T15:59:00.000+05:30

Carl von Clausewitz once declared famously that war was an extension of politics by other means. This letter in Current Science questions whether science now has become an extension of war by other means. While the letter doesn't say much, it does provide an interesting table with the soldier-scientist ratio in various countries. Japan tops the list with 2.85 scientists for each soldier and Israel is at the bottom with 0.06 scientist for every soldier. India has 0.13 scientist for each jawan.

Military muscle? Yes. But is it true scientific muscle?

Many have criticised Indian science's "kshatriya" bent, implying how defence research tops other prerogatives. That is true to an extent, I think. Some of India's most celebrated scientists are weapons/missile experts. To name two - APJ Abdul Kalam, former president, and R Chidambaram, the current principal scientific advisr to the government of India. Kalam is hailed as a scientific idol but he doesn't even have a formal PhD. We can't even claim a living Indian to be a world-beating scientist but for the probable exception of Ashoke Sen.

Taking the love for French films to an extreme

2007-08-08T14:36:00.000+05:30

A Bengali teacher from Alliance Française in Bangalore has been accused of raping a woman for two days and three nights and video-graphing the acts. All this horror to replicate scenes from French films! And the story is as complex as any French film's plot. The man, Sourav Bose, claims to be an aspiring film-maker, influenced heavily by French cinema. He lived in France from 2000 till 2006, studying mass communication at Rennes. Wait till the right wing conservative loonies get to this story - it fits perfectly into their argument that foreign music/films/serials/products/literature have led to the degeneration of the Indian society. Yawn!

STOLEN!

2007-08-06T16:31:00.000+05:30

Image from Olga's Gallery

This Claude Monet painting (Cliffs Near Dieppe) is one of the four "invaluable" paintings that raiders have escaped with from the fine arts museum in Nice on Sunday!

History comes around... and how!

2007-08-06T15:28:00.000+05:30

Salaam, my long-lost pal: Ortega (left) greets Ahmadinejad
Image from AFP

If you are a keen history student, you will remember the Iran-Contra Affair in 1987. In short, that was when the Reagan administration sold arms to Khomeini's government in Iran (a sworn enemy of the US and with whom they had no diplomatic ties) to finance the Contra rebels in Nicaragua who were fighting the government. Scruples were brushed aside with ease on both sides. America did not bother selling arms to Iran, who was then fighting Iraq, as long as it stoked the heat on Ortega. And Iran did not question the credentials of its suppliers, even if that included the Great Satan, as it struggled to wipe out Saddam Hussein. It needed the weapons urgently. (In fact, Iran even imported arms from Israel during the Iran-Iraq war!) Daniel Ortega, known for his anti-American stance, came to power in the 1984 elections were perhaps "the freest and fairest" in Nicaraguan history.

Now that Ortega is back, he is getting close and personal with none other than the firebrand anti-American Mahmoud Ahamdinejad, Iran's president. The two have just signed a barter deal under which Iran will help Nicaragua develop its infrastructure and the latter will supply Tehran with farm products. Your past does indeed come to haunt you - in this case the US. It has already warned Nicaragua that closer ties with Iran will come at the expense of its ties with Washington.

Holocaust redux?

2007-08-06T11:36:00.000+05:30

Image from AP

For a state that claims the holocaust as one of its founding cornerstones, and probably the most important one at that, it comes as a super shocker that survivors of the shoah should be treated with such disrespect in Israel today. About 240,000 live in Israel and many of them went on an unprecedented and provocative strike on Sunday protesting the measly $20 monthly handout that the state has offered them. Some of the protesters even put on clothes of concentration camp inmates, sparking off a vigorous debate in Israel. It's even way below what Indian freedom fighters get - Rs 10,000 per month (about $243)! It's a crying shame...

In defence of tap water!

2007-08-02T13:33:00.001+05:30

Image from Watercoalition.org

NYT has an eminently readable editorial urging New Yorkers to switch to tap water. It does some straight-talking by arguing that if one chooses to get the recommended eight glasses a day from bottled water, he or she could spend up to $1,400 annually. The same amount of tap water would cost about 49 cents.

And it makes great ecological sense when it says this: "Water bottles, like other containers, are made from natural gas and petroleum. The Earth Policy Institute in Washington has estimated that it takes about 1.5 million barrels of oil to make the water bottles Americans use each year. That could fuel 100,000 cars a year instead. And, only about 23 percent of those bottles are recycled, in part because water bottles are often not included in local redemption plans that accept beer and soda cans. Add in the substantial amount of fuel used in transporting water, which is extremely heavy, and the impact on the environment is anything but refreshing."

Tap water is perfectly safe in these two cities. In fact, authorities in New York and in Paris (I lived there for a year on tap water and never fell sick) have launched campaigns urging people to switch to tap water. Wish we could do the same in India. The water I get from the tap in New Delhi (it is supposed to be "potable") leaves white residue after boiling and makes tea from home in Assam taste awful. Result: I have to depend on the 20-litre canisters that cost Rs 40 each. And, thereby, I leave my mark - my carbon footprint, however small it maybe. In return, it leaves a dent in my pocket!

The evolution of emoticons

2007-08-01T13:18:00.000+05:30

Image from NYT

Did you know the earliest emoticon can be traced back to 1912? That was when the writer Ambrose Bierce proposed a new punctuation device called a “snigger point,” a smiling face represented by \__/!, to connote jocularity. More here.

Guess how much does a kilo of sugar cost in Zimbabwe?

2007-08-01T11:40:00.000+05:30

$ 200,000! And I am dead serious. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is soon going to circulate a $200,000 note in a desparate bid to control the threatening hyperinflation rate - it is close to the 5000 per cent mark! The value of the note is worth $US 13 in the official exchange market and just $US 1 in the illegal market. Worse, a single banana cost as much as 15 times a four-bedroom house seven years ago! Read this illuminating Q&A on BBC. It beats me how Mugabe, if we are to believe the reports in the West, has screwed his country, turning it into an economic nightmare from the "bread basket" it once used to be.

A linguisitically disoriented nation?

2007-07-31T15:58:00.000+05:30

Read Seth Mydans's Dili Journal to find out how East Timor is coping with a switch to Portuguese as the official language as it tries to get rid of its colonial tinge (read as Indonesian influence). Nobody seems to be bothered that Portugal was the first to colonise East Timor - I guess it's the lesser evil of the two. The problem arises from the the belief that Tetum - the other language spoken there - is seen as "thin and undeveloped". This move to purge Bahasa Indonesian has caused great chaos in the lives of 800,000 East Timorese of which only five per cent speak Portuguese. Thankfully, India didn't prove to be such a linguistic bigot in 1947 like East Timor.

I wonder how smooth the switch from the Arabic script to the Roman one was in Turkey? Or for that matter, closer home in Manipur, from the Bengali script to Meitei? Do these switches achieve any good other than making a political point? The above article quotes the example of Azerbaijan where a simple change in the alphabet, from Cyrillic to Roman, has created a new class of illiterates.

iPhone Commercial

2007-07-27T15:13:00.001+05:30

What's it that the iPhone can't do? This funny commercial has the answers. These days phones tend to be everything but a phone. My moble handset (Nokia 8250) is four years old and I hold on to it dearly because, ahem, it's a phone - not a camera, not a camcorder, not a video game console and neither a portable music player. Is your phone still a phone?

Spanish cartoon "insults" the royal family

2007-07-21T10:45:00.001+05:30

From the BBC:

Spain's High Court has ordered the seizure of all copies of a magazine that carried a cartoon of Crown Prince Felipe and his wife having sex.

The cartoon on the front page of the weekly satirical magazine El Jueves depicted Prince Felipe saying sex was the closest he would come to working.

It was published after the government announced it would pay couples nearly $3,500 for each new baby born.

The high court judge ruled that the cartoon insulted the royal family...

I am not to sure if the magazine merits such censure but its cartoon sure is funny!