ExpertDabbler

Pretty good one from sudish. nice that someone from the same community by birth had written abt his clearly, forthrightly.

lest some anonymous dumb-ass projecting themselves as ‘the guardian of their cultural heritage’(of course sitting in america u can guard yr culture 24 x 7 u know) will go bonkers and find “targetting one particular community” in my comments section.

i wud say its N times bettter to have an ugly true face rather than one f*** anonymous.

I dont know her name. But for me she is the Glen McGrath of photography.
So predictable like McGrath(always macros, abstracts), so consistent like McGrath(always good quality) but yet incredibly brilliant (the ability to rattle u)

Folks, check out Kaleidoscope’s blog. A must see everyday.

India has many faces and IT is India’s most glamorous face. After all, it’s not often that India is amongst the world’s best in something. Just imagine the pain of scrolling down the medals tally to find the sole Indian medal right at the bottom. In fact if you are logically inclined, you would start right at the bottom while looking for India in the medals tally.

But being good is one sector is one thing. Talking about development as a country is a completely different ball game. All this ‘development‘ and other luxuries I mentioned in the prev. post are relevant and applicable only for those who have a BE/MCA or higher with a good academic record(read consistent right from standard 10) from a reputed institute and a handful of years of experience.

On the other hand if you have cousins in villages and happen to meet them, try asking about the last time they made some money from their cultivation, the last time the water walves were opened from the nearby reservoir and the way the average agricultural productivity has gone in the last 10 years and alas we have a different tale to tell. The not so glamorous face of India. An India which let thousands of farmers starve to death while the food grains in the FCI godowns are left to decay.

This in essence is the story of India ever since 1991. The fate of agriculture is shared by all other local industries. For example, Coimbatore which was an important textile and mechanical engineering hub has been a witness to a gradual closure of these industries.

With the IT companies sweeping the recruitment in top engineering colleges, Non-IT friendly (IT friendly branches includes ECE,EEE, Instu etc.) branches of engineering is all but vanishing. Hey have anyone but heard about one branch called civil engineering? Not many private eng. colleges give that course. By the way where do all these IT engineers work? Open air? Don’t they need civil engineers to construct 300 crore campuses which can house 20,000 employees at the same time?

This gradual decline in other industries contribution to the economy has led to a surge in the people coming to bigger cities for survival. It was mentioned sometime ago that about 3000 families migrate to Bangalore every week. No wonder Bangalore’s traffic is a pain in the piles region. And Chennai is not exactly offering a pleasure ride either.

There exist in the same city two distinct sections of the population in the Indian cities. The techie community and the community which survives by servicing the techie community. True there have always been rich and poor. But there was also one section called middle class which was like a buffer. But now that middle class has been ripped apart and pushed to upper class and lower class respectively.

While a techie thinks 100 bucks is peanuts, there are youths coming to Chennai and Bangalore and willing to kill for the same 100 bucks. This lopsided growth is unsustainable and unrealistic. In fact this is not growth at all. What do we call if a cell in one part of the body grows disproportionately at the expense of the other cells? Medicine calls it cancer.

What is the way out? I don’t know.

On a different note. Satyam acquires Knowledge Dynamics of Singapore. So what? Well my school buddy Amar works there. Interesting times ahead dude.
I have worked in a smaller company and am working in a bigger company.I somehow miss the familiarity and the bonding between the associates in a small company.
A 5000-6000 workforce has its advantages. People know the company.
But nothing like a 100+team and the camaraderie in a small company.

At a time when the Architect of Economic Reforms is the Prime Minister of India, it is fascinating to observe the Indian economic journey post 1991. Forget the forex reserves position and the other macroeconomic parameters when Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh took over in 1991. Let that be for economists. Let us think about the scenario which prevailed then at a micro level.

Prior to 1991, if one hailed from an urban middle class from South India, the family income was at best about 10,000 per month. One would think twice before renting a house for more than 1500 bucks. The parents had dreams about building a house in a sub-urban area. They had to go from pillar to post to take a loan for 1.5 - 2 lakhs and struggle to pay the EMI and manage their children’s studies. For those to whom all this sounds alien watch “Veedu” by Balu Mahendra.

Cut back to 2005 and there are friends who pay for their children’s Pre-KG education much more than they did for their own college studies fees. Many professionals either buy/build a flat /house which they do not need as a matter of necessity. It is only a tax saving measure. The amount paid for maintenance and water charges in an apt. in a metro city now is much more than the rent paid for the house way back in 1988-1990. Real estate prices are sky-rocketing.

“Angeya sir? Flat na sq.ft 2000 sir. Ground 30-35 ruba pogudhu” (Read 30-35 Lakhs).

There are many among my friends who are as familiar with Lufthansa flight services from Chennai to Frankfurt just as the way they knew by-heart the route numbers and timings of city buses.

“Maapila innaiku night US kelambaren da.”

“Oh night 1.20 Lufthansa va?”

These dialogues are common now.

There are many among my friends who fly regularly between Chennai, Bangalore and Coimbatore to and fro. Like every alternate week or something. Cell phones and iPods are but extension of ears. Broadband should be brought under Essential Services Maintenance Act. Air-condition is absolute must for survival.

So are we realizing the Great Indian Dream? An India which is world class in Education, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Agriculture, Infrastructure and Technology?

I would welcome readers comments/opinions/feedbacks befoe commencing my second part.

Hmm. quite a delightful book this by Chetan Bhagat. Hilarious, funny, witty, naughty, whatever. Poor Me. For a guy who took the short cut for college life, this was, what do they call? vicarious pleasure? yep maybe.

I enjoyed it so thoroughly that i felt bad the book was over in abt 24 hrs.
All good things in life ends so damn quickly isn’t it?

And btw a friendly warning. Don’t say “Ok. but not that great”.
As if u read only Nobel laureates for time pass.

Project “Reclaming the subway System”

David Gunn was appointed the subway director. He was told not to worry about trivialities like graffiti but to focus on bigger challenges like crime. But Gunn was a different character.”The graffiti was the symbol of the collapse of the system” he would say. Gunn drew up a new management structure and a precise set of goals and timetables aimed at cleaning the system line by line, train by train.
Gunn’s graffiti cleanup took 6 full years. 84-90. The strategy cost them some money and effort. But it was worth it in the end.

At that point the Transit Authority hired William Bratton to head the transit police. Bratton was also like Gunn, a disciple of Broken Windows.
With felonies on the subway system was at an all-time high, Bratton decided to crack down on fare evasion. Because he too believed that fare evasion was a small expression of a disorder that invited serious crimes.

Bratton’s idea was to signal that the transit police was now serious about cracking down fare beaters and he did all that was possible to convey that to the law breakers. His insistence to run a check on all those arrested for fare evasion yielded a crucial byproduct. It gave lot of clues about the crimes committed by those ticketless commuters and helped in prevention of crimes.

Rudolph Giuliani, the Mayor of New York in 94 appointed Bratton as the head of the NYPD. As his style, Bratton started off with “quality of life” crimes and moved on to catch the big sharks. The result is there for all to see now.

This strategy makes lot of sense. It virtually prevents further degradation. And this helps in prevention of crime.

When we apply this to Indian context, this theory makes even more sense. When is the first time when an average Indian feels,’anything goes in india’? I bet its when he uses his roads. We can see the price we pay for using the roads the way we want here.

And mind you these are official figures.

Over a period of time, we get desensitized to the number of mistakes we make. First time an Auto driver jumps a signal, he should have felt a tinge of guilt. If only he was punished promptly then and there, he would not be jumping signals as a matter of routine.

Project Punjab

What was punjab in the 80s? How far has it recovered from those years of brutality?
The fact is Punjab is a normal place, the place it once was. For a more detailed, elaborate account of the Punjab crises, please read this

It certainly did not require a Gandhi to make this tranformation. One normal, sensible police officer who had as much to crib about about political interference, corruption, lack of infrastructure, inadequate weapons to the police force to combat terrorism could achieve this.

It is a misconception to think that India needs another Gandhi, JP to clean the system. If we are not ready to clean our toilet, why do we expect some Mahatma to do that for us?

Once the minor lawlessness are tackled with severity. The bigger crime dons will be deprived of new recruits. This can shake the very foundation of the rowdy culture.
But what is happening is the very opposite in India. A petty criminal is patted, encouraged, told through all the cues that he is the smart one who has figured out the way things work and then when he grows too big for the system, he is hunted using the name of “encounter”. He is seen as a martyr slain by the police. This, if anything lures more youngsters to the path of crime.

Is not a Veeramani and Veerappan a product of the system which encouraged them to go the way they wanted to and then were killed by the same system through the “encounter”. Is not the system responsible for letting them go scott free for so long? And it does nothing to prevention of lawlessness in the first place.

After 30 years, after losing valuable forest resources and after losing some 130+ people(again official figures), a criminal is killed in an “encounter”.
If those police officers deserved substantial rewards then every tax paying citizen for 3 years deserves a reward too. Why not?

For the long term solution, all the social and economic aspects should be taken into.
Law enforcement will have immediate effect but with no tactical approach, it soon losses its sting.

Those remaining honest Indians need some big time encouragement for all their deeds which goes unrecognised. When was the last time we celebrated some good effort by someone. “Ah, idhile yedho vishayam irukku, illene edhukku ivan ivlo velai seyyanum?” is the cynical response.

In a country where the black money economy is bigger than the accounted one, the government thinks nothing about increasing the taxes for the hapless salaried class but goes about with a VDIS for all those tax evaders.

I for one firmly believe in the power of positive reinforcements.
Both punitive measures and positive reinforcements - something to celebrate about should be celebrated, should go hand in hand.

Law enforcement brings immediate, visible change. Positive reinforcements brings about real change but it takes longer to manifest. One cannot exist without the other.

India is a system which continously conveys it does not pay to be honest and skilled but it pays rich to be dishonest and corrupt.

To sum up,

Petty crimes should be dealt with severely, to dissuade further degradation.
The honest lot, the invisible minority should be given something to cheer about.
Each of us are responsible to accomplish this change.
We need what Narayana Murthy calls the “Greater common good” factor in mind.
And the way to go is the carrot and stick approach.

Note:
I am obviously not an expert in criminology or social psychology or police. But this is my perception as a commoner. Rather than cribbing that everything is wrong in India, i did some reading to see how worse situations were tackled in a democracy and what can be done.

So does that mean the concerns of Prabz and Narayanan sir are irrelevant? Not at all. If India is fine with democracy, then what is the answer to the corruption in the machinery, gross indiscipline in the community in general? How are we going to discipline ourselves without losing our democracy?

What is the position of Newspapers today? Do they have the freedom to write on the burning, critical issues of the country?

How come Imrana’s case is seen as Uniform Civil COde issue rather than a Criminal case. The charge is rape remember?(rightly pointed out by PB.Enakku adhu varaikum uraikalai frankly)

How are we going to handle the increasing belligerence of the minority community in the name of secularism?

Is there any precedent in a democracy where what was once a rowdy place has improved later? If yes, where and what measures were taken? And is there any logic or pattern which helps us understand the phenomenon of crime, indiscipline and lawlessness and how the menace can be tackled within the ambits of democracy.

And no Anniyan,Indian and any other Shankar jokes please, we are talking serious business here.

During the 1980s, New York city averaged well over 2000 murders and 6000 serious felonies a year. Every one of the 6000 cars in the Transit Authority Fleet, with the exception of midtown shuttle , was covered with graffiti- top to bottom, inside and out.
Fare evasion was so commonplace that it was costing the Transit Authority as much as $150 million loss in revenues annually. There were about 15000 felonies on the system a year. The crime rate was at its peak in 1990.

But by 1996, New York had become the one of the safest big city in US.

Broken Windows Theory

First expressed by political scientist James Q. Wilson and criminologist George Kelling in an article for The Atlantic Monthly in 1982, the theory holds that if someone breaks a window in a building and it is not quickly repaired, others will be emboldened to break more windows. Eventually, the broken windows create a sense of disorder that attracts criminals, who thrive in conditions of public apathy and neglect.

The theory was based on an experiment conducted 26 years ago by Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo. He took two identical cars, placing one on a street in a middle-class Palo Alto neighborhood and the other in a tougher neighborhood in the Bronx. The car in the Bronx, which had no license plate on it and was parked with its hood up, was stripped within a day.
The car in Palo Alto sat untouched for a week, until Zimbardo smashed one of its windows with a sledgehammer. Within a few hours, it was stripped.

The germ of the idea is simple and compelling. A broken window–or a littered sidewalk, a graffito, or what you like–does no great harm to a neighborhood if promptly addressed. But left untended, it sends a signal: that no one cares about this neighborhood, that it is a safe place to break things, to litter, to vandalize. Those who engage in such behaviors will feel safe here. And once these minor miscreants have become well established, perhaps it will seem a safe enough neighborhood in which to be openly drunk, in which to beg for money, and possibly extort it. In short the smallest symptoms of antisocial behavior will, left to fester, breed greater and greater crimes, all the way down to murder.

Going by these yardsicks, is not the whole of India, with a few streets as glorious exceptions, a complete mess of “Broken Windows”?

If yes, how do we fix this? Or how did New York fix this?
Former Commissioner Bratton first tested this strategy while he was commanding the New York Transit Police.

More on that later…

Reference:
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Last week Narayanan sir had given his views on Democracy in India.

Cho Ramaswamy, the name brings smiles and evokes curiosity to every thinking, conscientious Tamilian. His magazine “Thuglaq” till date stands testimony to the fact that you can provide clean political satire and still be in the media business. The kind of crowd that gathers for him every Pongal eve in Chennai is to be seen to be believed. This has been the case for the past 30 years. I have lot of respect for his literary and intellectual contributions to the Tamil society.

Cho is a political analyst and commentator nonpareil.That’s his domain and he is a king in his domain. He is to politics what Subbudu is to music. Though unlike Subbudu he does not have the luxury of writing good things about his domain.
When was the last time Cho got a chance to heartily appreciate a politican?

But sometimes commentators try offering solutions. Like Sanjay Manjrekar trying to offer advice to Sachin Tendulkar on how to attack Glenn Mcgrath. For those of you who were not old enough to see Manjrekar’s brand of attacking cricket, well you did not miss anything actually. Criticizing Sachin is different because that’s a critic’s job. But actually trying to offer solutions?

India is a land mired in problems. Problems North, East, West and South. Except that its not news here. That has been the way of life. Nothing works the way it should. Corruption is rampant. Honesty is rare.

Cho’s speciality is his ability to reflect all this through his magazine, articles and other forms and convey this to the masses which might prompt them to think. In my opinion that is his role in this society. A very honorable role mind you and he has been quite phenomenal at that.

But what happens when Cho, the commentator becomes a solution provider? Its like Subbudu teaching Unnikrishnan on how to preserve his voice and the ways to practice.
I think these things are best left to the performers, however bad they are.

2004 Parliamentary elections.

Cho was interviewed by a TV Channel - Vijay TV I think.
He was asked a question on the misuse of POTA and hence the need to scrap it. And he quipped in his characteristic pungent style ” Ama, India la Constitution kooda dhaan misuse panraanga, appa Constitutionaye thookidalama? ”
(Even the Constitutional provisions has been violated and misused in India, So shall we scrap that as well?)

I was stumped. I never did think in that angle. If we go on removing things which were or are misused, what institution or law will remain in India?
Now this view really made sense to me. It is simple enough for every student of Indian politics to understand that there was no need to dismantle POTA but its implementation has to be reviewed.

And two weeks back comes a bombshell in his interview. “India is not fit for democracy. So we should go for emergency”.

Apparently what applies for POTA does not apply for democracy.

Now when you are offering an opinion on an idea as big as that, one would have thought Cho would come up with some compelling reasons for the same. Nopes. I did not find any. The only view offered is “Indians are unfit for democracy. So lets not provide Indians that privilege”

There is no explanation offered on why India’s discipline will happen only through emergency and not through any other means. There’s no analysis on what will be achieved during Emergency. “Trains will run in time” is the only scenario given.

Actually there was another,”The middle-class welcomed emerency during ‘75”. How Profound! Have you ever seen the middle class objecting to anything and taking to the street?. The middle-class will welcome anything so long as their monthly budgets remain unaffected.

Ok. lets assume Cho is right and Emergency is to be invoked. Who should lead India during that time? His choice is Advani or Vajpayee. On what basis? What makes them so good and trustworthy? What if they prove that they are not to be trusted with so much power after invoking emergency? What is the exit route then?
Is not an idea of a sweet, kind hearted, benevolent dictator as lofty as that of a sweet, kind hearted, benevolent Musharaff?

When we suggest something as radical as this, do we not provide an explanation which at least tries to address the concerns inherent in that solution?

Granted Indira Gandhi was a wrong person who invoked emergency for the wrong reason. Granted the guys Cho sees as right are in fact right and sensible. Assume they are at the helm. Will Cho provide answers to questions like emergency for how long”. Or is it the sole discretion of Advani and Vajpayee?

And since there is evidence to suggest that Indians become indisciplined once emergency is lifted, does it translate India will be under emergency for ever?

“Look at China” is another fancy slogan. As if China was a democracy till last tuesday and which showed no signs of improvement and then the citizens voluntarily renounced their freedom and today China is a super power.

In a manner not very different from a Manjrekar’s specific advice to Tendulkar on how to attack Glenn Mcgrath, I find a whole lot of gaps in Cho’s arguments. China and Singapore are not to be compared with India. What is China’s population per square kilometer? Which is bigger, Singapore or Tamil Nadu?

My take is simple. And am not even remotely suggesting it as a solution to a complex issue.

Emergency is not the answer to India’s development.

India’s Unique Selling Proposition is its human resources. India’s Unique Headache Proposition is also its human resources. Any solution which does not address this aspect but which simply tries to strangle the people’s freedom is just trying to activate a time bomb.

If there is one actor I am especially fond of in India other than our own Kamal and Rajini, its got to be Mohanlal of Kerala. Not many outside Kerala know about this versatile actor’s talents. I would say he is on par with the best actors of our country along with Kamal, Amitabh and Naseeruddin Shah.

Mohanlal’s forte is his ability to play any kind of character - comedy or serious with aplomb. I have never found him to be too worked up about any role. He can just breeze into a role and out of it in no time.

Talking about Lal will not be complete without talking about his association with the popular Malayalam director Priyadharshan. The two have worked in about 25 films and they are one of the most celebrated actor-director combinations.

Mohanlal has given some absolutely brilliant comedies along with that genius script writer-cum-comedian Sreenivasan. I can laugh out loud just by seeing Sreenivasan on screen. And i have to tell you its all clean fun.

And some of my all time favorite movies of Mohanlal are:

Kaataathe Kilikoodu (Bharathan’s film)
Gandhi Nagar Second street
Chitram
Dhasaradham
Pattanam Pattanam
Chandralekha
Vandanam
Uncle Bun(he playes a la Eddie Murphy - a lovable giant of a man, a role neither Kamal nor Shivaji has played till date)
Manichithrathaazhu
Iruvar(tamil as we all know)
His Highness Abdullah

He also did one mega budget movie No 20. Madras Mail along with Mammooty.
And I can never forget Lal’s pranks as a drunk young man in that Trivandrum-Madras Mail. Unbelievable performance. He can bring to life, a drunk youth without an iota of over-acting.

After a string of flops (he worked with a few directors like Shaji Kailas who are, in my opinion, solely responsible for bringing the standard of Malayalam Cinema on par with or below Tamizh Cinema in the recent years), Lal yettan was back with a super hit Udhayananu Dhaaram, based on a wonderful script written by Sreenivasan. I am yet to see the movie though.

Lal yettan truly rocks.