Choices we have to make :-(

And thank you political cartoonists for being so direct and so right! Hamlet told his friend Horatio once - "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." What do we know about what must really be going on at the highest levels of global politics? But is it any wonder of the great friends American Government keeps to keep steady the price of oil? But then, I am just being hypocritical myself by saying only the American Government has to do this. Ive been hearing costly oil for a while now. Will anything ever spur us to start looking into alternative energy sources, and cleaner technologies to run our industrial behemoth?

Pat Oliphant,
www.slate.com
23 Feb, 2011

The Truth.

Drew Sheneman,
http://www.slate.com/

The Past.

Ted Rall,
www.slate.com

once again, the healthcare of a superpower?

In the midst of the Cricket World Cup, and if people can take their minds off it, the happenings in Libya and the rest of the Middle East, 12 would-be mothers lost their lives in the past two weeks in Jodhpur after being put on infected glucose IV drips. There were 7 deaths in the Umaid Hospital, and 5 deaths in the Mahatma Gandhi Hospital. The toll could go higher, with a few mothers battling for their lives in these hospitals currently. In Umaid hospital some time ago, a few children were infused with HIV positive blood.

Okay, what does this do to the trust that the local population has on the government machinery for healthcare? On the same note, what other options do the poor populace of the region have to obtain their basic healthcare?

Both are rhetorical questions but unfortunately, will never invoke the kind of self-analysis or debate that our society should be doing about the ability of the state to provide even the minimum required healthcare to its citizenry. Like I said, we are too busy trying to a global economic power, and I am quite sure that for a politician, providing incentives to business interests is any day easier than providing the most basic social infrastructure to his or her constituency, which in the case of the Governmint of India, is the citizens of the Republic of India.

Coming back to the tragedy in Jodhpur, the government, both at the state and center, seems to have swung into action, and everything seems to be pointing to the cause being spurious IV fluids being supplied to the hospital. Some officials from the Hospitals and other regional officials have been suspended, including the drug inspector for the area and a high level committee comprising a few doctors will look into the matter and give a report to the government in some time. This article from the Indian Express provides a timeline of the dealths, and also mentions that the health minister of the state actually visited the hospital after the first few deaths were reported but gave a clean chit to the hospital.

Would it be out of the ordinary for anybody to expect that everybody will forget about this tragedy in a few days, the media will move onto the next scandal, and after some exchange of funds and some scapegoats, life will be on as usual in our government hospitals?

While the news is being reported in the national media, their usual penchant for sensationalism and yellow journalism gets the better of them sometimes, as this headline from Prannoy Roy's New Delhi Television demonstrates: Jodhpur Tragedy: the Hospital that Orphaned 12 babies.

This permeation of spurious medication is widely prevalent all across the country, and it is very very dangerous, apart from being apalling that the Goverment of India and all the state governments are not keen to tackle this at a war footing. There is not one corner of this country which is safe from the tentacles of this potential tragedy. In Manipur, a fake racket was busted, and what shocked me the most was this line in that story: The two organisations set Surjit Singh free after making him sign an agreement that he would not repeat such fraud in future. Such people who have been making money at the cost of risking the lives of thousands of people do not deserve such mercy that the two NGO's of Manipur showered on this spurious drug manufacturer. He should have been castrated and then handed over to the police who should have thrashed him more and then registered a case.

There was another news item I came across recently, about the government finally waking up to the gravity of the situation, and medicine strips will have bar codes on them to allow for better monitoring.

Drug Consultative Committee (DCC) -- in its last meeting on Febuary 15 -- has approved the proposal that for every strip of medicine available in India ought to have a 2D bar code and a unique randomly generated numeric code (UID).

A phone number will be mentioned above the bar code, where the consumer can SMS the UID. A message will tell the consumer whether the drug is an original.

DCC's recommendation will now be sent to Drug Technical Advisory Board. The final notification will come from the Union health ministry.

Once approved, India will join Italy, Malaysia and the European Union to make 2D bar code and UID mandatory in an effort to curb spurious and counterfeit drugs.

DCGI will have to amend Rule 96 (manner of labelling requirement) of Drugs and Cosmetics Act, saying "every drugs manufactured in India shall bear on its primary label Unique Identifier Code and 2D bar code that shall be used for anyone to verify the drug through a system of SMS by mobile phone."

Experts say the proposal might face serious opposition from the small and medium scale drug firms, who will have to buy equipment for bar-coding which will increase their production cost.

"We will give these firms a good enough phase out time. However, we have seen that if 2D bar code and UID is printed on the strips, production cost goes up by just around 30 paisa. It will come down to 10 paisa once the technology is used by everyone," Dr Singh said.

Earlier, commerce ministry had passed a rule that all medicine packs manufactured in India only for export must carry a barcode as of July 1, 2011. This will allow medicines to be traced and tracked to its source of origin.

The fact is that while Indians suffer constantly from the menace of counterfeit drugs, fake Indian drugs have been making their way abroad as well, particularly into Africa. While there is a lot of things that the third world is suffering from, this issue of counterfeit drugs is something that is in their own hands to eradicate. No country can act as a silo today, and while I am calling for an urgent effort in India to eliminate spurious drugs and bring the manufacturers to justice, I would like to see this happen all across the world.

Qaddafi The Lunatic

Qaddafi has gone crazy in Libya. News reports say that he is increasingly losing control over many parts of the country, and his goons, and hired foreign mercenaries are literally walking the streets and shooting down protesters. Meanwhile, Qaddafi has called these protestors cochroaches and promised to whoever still supports him that he will fight to the last drop of blood. His equally crazy son, who was probably to succeed after him, has said his dad will fight to the last bullet.

In a big news, two Mirage jets of the Libyan Air Force were ordered to fire on the protesters. The pilots, two colonels in the Air Force, refused, flew the jets to Malta, and have asked for political asylum. This is big.

Associated Press, Monday Feb 21, 2011











There are news reports that say that Qaddafi is actually planning to sabotage his nation's oil wealth by blasting pipelines and inciting violence among tribes if he ever does go down fighting. Thousands have already been killed in Libya, and I will not be surprised before Qaddafi kills a few thousand more. Its going down man. Wonder what will happen next. Will KSA be affected? No middle east coverage today is complete without commenting on what the Americans are thinking. Shit, their well laid plans in the region that stood the test of time and money for decades seems to be crumbling apart. The bogey of Islamic fundamentalism has already been raised many times, but only time will tell how the middle east will shape in the future.

Our attention span's moved on, but Middle east is still simmering

We know that after Ben Ali (who people say is now in the hospital after a stroke), Hosni Mubarak has stepped down (and possibly left the country) and the "Days of Rage" are on across the Middle East, and most notably in Libya, against the well-entrenched Moammar Gaddaffi, in Bahrain, against the well-entrenched royal family (who's already unleashed the troops on the protesters and managed to kill many), and despite the political moves in Yemen and Jordan, the protests are still on in those regions.

The fact is that no matter how the future of the region looks on from here, these protests, for one, have scared the hell out of the incumbents. There are dole outs galore in almost all the countries in the region, and the big, orthodox, well-established House of Saud in Saudi Arabia feels the heat too.

Bahrain's king Khalifa has brought down the wrath of his army onto the protesters, with many losing their lives. Now Obama's already talked to the king to exercise restraint. Of course, his talk was filled with the classic American crap of "universal rights" for its citizens and "meaningful reform", but one must wonder why is Obama talking to the Bahraini king and as far as I know, he didn't talk to anybody else? I think the answer lies standing on the Bahraini capital Manama's port in the form of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, America's show naval might in these oceans and seas.

One could say that this will be the second time in the near past that the American Government is facing a test of its resolve to those oft repeated democratic and human rights principles, after its refusal to shut down or relocate its military base on the Japanese island of Okinawa, despite a widespread Japanese protest against the base. In fact, the then Japanese Prime Minister, Mr. Yukio Hatoyama, had to resign when he couldn't deliver on his poll promise of removing the base from there.

But lets not get into history shall we? There's too many dark corners and double standards there which will only enrage me further. But it will be interesting to see how this American dilemma plays out. Already western media has started raising the bogey of the Islamic fundamentalists taking these regions over, which they say, is a very bad thing which the US shouldn't allow to happen.

Next comes another big gun, Moammar Gaddaffi. There were reports a few days ago of protests in Libya, which is actually ensconced right in between Tunisia and Egypt, so it has been feeling the heat for a long time now! Gaddaffi was already in action when the unrest had begun, and began announcing reforms and raising salaries. From what I read in the news earlier, the protests were first not against Gaddaffi, but against the Prime Minister and his government, but somehow, rather expected I should say, they turned to the fact that Gaddaffi's been the dictator for far too long now. Already more than three dozen people have been killed in the east of the country, a region which the media reported to always have been unfriendly towards Gaddaffi.

It would be safe to say that more than a 100 protesters in the region have been killed in cold blood by the armies/police forces of these countries, and many will be killed before any normalcy returns. The west is mainly concerned about the safety of the oil flow, and I suppose it would be unfair of me to say that the rest of the world isn't, but this year will definitely be an epochal time in the region's, and world, history. Never having known what democracy is, I wonder how they will manage.

What about Iran? There are simmering tensions there, but I think i'll leave that for another post.

Prime Minister's crocodile tears

I've always maintained that the UPA government has always milked their Prime Minister to the fullest when it comes to dealing with the public and media's charges of unprecedented corruption and misuse of power within their coterie. It seems that the Prime Minister's "meet the press" was just that.

The person I saw on television yesterday did not look like the leader of the government of India, but a powerless individual who, like any other citizen around him, is saddened by the state of affairs and is simply sharing his anguish.

The media, it seems, as brought it hook line and sinker. Very, very disappointing. I read this note from Aroon Purie of the India Today on the news conference, and was disappointed to say the least.

He says: "Prime Minister Manmohan Singh didn't deal with the question on 2G spectrum allocation too directly. I asked him why he re-appointed A. Raja if he knew that what he was doing was not right, but he didn't really deal with that question. He said he thought he (Raja) wasn't that irregular and followed the policy and he had therefore re-appointed him (Raja). He also said that these were compromises of coalition politics.

The prime minister appeared to be serious about going after corruption. He was concerned about the fact that the government had become scam-tainted, that the country had become scam-tainted. He felt that India's self-confidence should not be sapped by this atmosphere around the government.

I think it is good that the prime minister communicates to the people about what he thinks. He has voiced his opinion on certain issues and it's a good thing.
My first reaction was - thats it, Mr. Purie? I suppose its time to get on with our sorry lives now. Note the other bogey with governments in India use with utmost ease - the compulsions of coalition politics. So what is the message the Prime Minister is attempting to send to his coutrymen and women? That this is all acceptable because its a coalition? Thats the most absurd reasoning a politician can ever present, and unfortunately, its been used very frequently. I believe the real problem is that we simply do not have the laws to put an end to this supposed "helplessness" on the part of the Prime Minister of a country that says it wants to be a permanent member of the UNSC. Shameful.

Even Indian Express, a newspaper that I have a little inkling of respect for, is actually discussing the high points of the Prime Minister's interaction! What about the tough questions, you damn TV editors? Maybe its my mistake to believe you all have any other capability than present news that highlights the state of today's tabloids, bollywood and cricket.

Okay, let us take a look at some of his other gems, or rather, examples of his helplessness. But, I had said this in my previous post as well, perhaps there is a method to his madness. As many readers suggested, the Prime Minister is now simply speaking like a seasoned politician - skirting away from the tough questions, maintaining a line of innocence and finishing it out with promises of action. His press conference was filled with examples of all three.

Whatever some people may say, that we are a lame duck government, that I am a lame duck prime minister, we take our job very seriously, we are here to govern, and to govern effectively, tackle the problems as they arise and get this country moving forward.

The country voted our party to be the leader of the coalition, and we have a lot of unfinished business to accomplish ... I will stay the course. I wish to assure you and I wish to assure the country as a whole, that our government is dead serious in bringing to book all the wrongdoers, regardless of their position they may occupy.

As far as who gets licences, the first-come-first-served policy, how it is implemented, that was never discussed with me. Licences were not a matter which ever got referred to me or the cabinet. That was a decision exclusively of the telecoms ministry.

So did anybody gain anything from this media parlay? I doubt it. The media - the television media, particularly, got to hear what we've been hearing all this while already (coalition compulsions for example), nothing in terms of the decisions he is going to take, and how the media and the BJP are being so negative. So despite the hoopla that surrounded the meeting before it happened, this press meet will be forgotten before you wake up tomorrow morning.

CONgress Posterboy

The Prime Minister of India is going to be interacting with select members of the media today. His aim is to address them directly and field some of the important questions that are being asked about him and his government. An analyst on DD News this morning suggested that it was some of his cabinet members who suggested to him to address the media who have been questioning his silence in the midst of these "allegations" of corruption against his team members and the mounting attack of the opposition.

My first question to him would be: "Mr. Prime Minister, your government is running wild. Do you have ANY control over it?"

Now of course this question arises when I disregard the first conspiracy theory from my mind - the Prime Minister is aware of the shenanigans, and is complicit in helping his partners make money for themselves and the party. The fact is that he has been aware of all the dealings in the government, after all, HE is the leader of this group of rowdies who have been running amuk with no holds barred. So the country wants to know, what is the truth, Mr. Prime Minister?

The state of deceit in this government is such that the CONgress has found convenient scapegoats in each and every scam and then washed its hands off them. Kalmadi in CWG scam, Chavan in Maharashtra, Raja in telecom, etc etc. I am sure people will have questioned them on the plausibility of just one person getting away with thousands of crores of public money without anyone in their government, not in the least their Prime Minister knowing? What about that beacon of light for the CONgress party, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi? Surely she, who has unquestionable control of her party workers, will be aware of what her minions have been upto? Not a word from her at all regarding anything.

The commentator I was watching on tv today also said that the Congress seems to be now adapting the policy of offence being the best defence. We all know the CBI is already a donkey that works for the Government of India, is overstretched and understaffed, and its investigations, if there are any at all, will probably come to naught since they happen to be against the CONgress and its illustrious allies. Of course, in keeping with the new policy, the CBI has already initiated investigation against Arun Shourie, who was the Telecom Minister in the NDA government. The UPeeA government's spent considerable time actually, in convincing people that we may be such and such, but the BJP is such and such too!

Coming back to the title of my blog, Prime Minister Singh is indeed the posterboy of this shady undertaking called the Government of India, because whenever you question the government, you are made to believe that you are questioning the integrity of the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister, as we all know, is the most honest politician in the country today. That has been the Government strategy for quite a while now. You could not but be impressed with the government when it was first formed - people with the best of education and the best of credentials were a part of this cabinet, but unfortunately, its just a free-for-all circus right now. The media, well, I guess it has been hammering along against this monolith of opacity with its tiny hammer, with a few successes here and there, such as this headline in The Tabloid of India: There is governance and ethical deficit, admits Chidambaram. Oh my God, a direct admission by PC himself! we are truly saved.

In another major news, the Government of India has actually agreed to a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe into the 2G scam, something which the opposition has been demanding for a while, and the reason for which the Parliament hasn't been functioning at all (as opposed to functioning occasionally during peacetime).

Today also happens to be a very auspicious day, its Milad-ul-Nabi, the birthday of the Holy Prophet. Let us hope that He at least reminds these leaders of men in some way that He is watching and they be mindful lest they go so far that there is no turning back. This country deserves better. This country's citizens need to make better choices.

Egyptian musings

The USA's former best friend (for 30 years actually!)

Taken from Google Search. All due copyrights held by the original photographer/source.














And how ironic is it that American President Obama made a clarion call to the Arab world on democracy and human rights from this same country. His speech was such a big deal that it has its own Wikipedia entry!

And now the process of "A New Beginning" has begun after Mubarak finally steps down after all the cajoling and browbeating and bribing didn't work. Fortunately, even though Egypt may be in for some uncertain times ahead, at least his departure was not brokered by the big powers, but brought about by the people themselves.  Already change is sweeping the region, something which I have blogged about already.

Following the American media, the big questions these days are whether President Obama handled the situation well, or did America see it coming, or what Obama needs to do now. Basically its all about them. I think its this American attitude that won't win them a lot of friends in this century. Many accuse Obama of not being in control of the situation. I don't understand how, and why, should be take control of the thousands of Egyptians out on the street chanting for an end to a dictator's rule. 

As you can see - screencap from Al Jazeera












Meanwhile the friendly people's government in China did what it does best - limit the access of news on Egypt to its citizen. Another famous square the name of which also begins with a "T" comes to mind. Actually, it must have come to many minds lately, hence the unease within the People's Goverment.

The fight to suppress truth

I woke up this morning to the news that a young woman had been murdered by her village’s Sarpanch for invoking a query against him and his accomplices in siphoning off money from a pension scheme under the Right to Information Act. Her father-in-law, an RTI activist according to some news sources, who initiated the query with her, is also severely injured. According to the media, the Sarpanch mowed them down with his vehicle. He and several of his associates have been arrested, but this incident is yet another example of citizens losing their lives for daring to take on political and bureaucratic figures who are misusing their office.
Added Later: It would be very disrespectful if I do not even mention their names in my post. Mr. Jagdish Sharma from the Chandrawal village in Fatehabad district in Haryana lost his daughter-in-law Sonu. She had two children.

That news channel then talked to a noted RTI Activist, Mr. Arvind Kejriwal, who said that in the past one year, this is the 11^th victim who has been killed for using the RTI Act. The media has been raising the issue of protection for activists and whistle-blowers, but Mr. Kejriwal pointed out that protection does not mean providing them with physical security or anything of that sort, but taking stern action against the people who have been named in the RTI plea.

Action against the wrong-doers takes a long while, which gives enough time to the wrong-doer to try to change the course of the case against them by intimidating the person filing the plea, or in the worst case, killing them. Unfortunately, the lack of action against the perpetrators has resulted in more murders than ever. According to Mr. Kejriwal, of the 11 murders in the past one year, more than half of the perpetrators have still not been brought to book. This is another example of gross mis-governance and an extremely tepid and flawed justice system that is prevalent in this country today.

It seems to me that only when the media reports the crime, does the government take any action. While the media does report on crimes committed against RTI activists and other whistle-blowers, there are thousands of cases out there which go unreported. 

While the act is indeed suffering from inordinate delays, absolute lack of coordination among departments, and the greatest impediment of all - the unwillingness of questioned officials to provide details and desire to hide information - I feel we must stay the course. 

The Government has been trying to water down the act because certain officials in high positions feel it is an effrontery to their office to be questioned. The Delhi High Court actually upheld the decision last year that the office of the Chief Justice of India is under the purview of the RTI Act as well. I suppose it is not entirely a coincidence that the then CJI, Justice KG Balakrishnan, a stooge put in that position by the CONgress, is under investigation for corruption.

Again, the RTI Act has been able to make a dent in the iron curtain of government unaccountability and graft, and the correct action for the Government of India should be to strengthen the laws that protect whistle blowers, speed up the disposal of cases and not water down the act. The fact that the Government is threatened by the Act shows that it might be working. According to this old editorial in The Hindu from March 2010: 

The RTI Act has empowered the ordinary citizen in a way its architects did not anticipate. Studies have shown its growing appeal across all social strata, which is surely why the government is set on blunting this powerful tool in the hands of the people. Such obscurantism must be seen through and defeated.

The men and women who have dared to take on the corrupt and the unaccountable and lost their lives and limbs in the process are heros who will be remembered always. Over the past few years, the Government of India has reached new lows in corruption, mis-governance  and unaccountability, and if we, as citizens of this democracy, stop fighting back, it won't take long for India to begin its decent into being a banana republic.

Kala Ghoda Festival 2011!

 Beautiful Sunday at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival 2011 in Fort, Mumbai. The festival is quite a famous, and very intellectually uplifting affair, with artists, , dancers, painters, NGO's, and other organizations from all across the country participating in the festival.

A flute seller selling his ware. I hope he sells them all.

The Ambassador's always been a favorite with alternative art in the country.


Will be back with more photos. 

Too proud to come from apes

Many people I talk to find it hard to believe that the American society in general is a very religious and conservative society too, in many ways like the Indian societies. They simply cannot comprehend this possibility when they are used to imagine America as the land of blonde women, lots of money and yes, gratuitous sex. I can’t debate with them at length, or spend considerable time trying to convince them, but I try to present to them a few examples, such as it not being cool to make out in public, and even if kids smoke weed, they are not as open and brash about it as many college kids I see in India.

Before I descend into my one of my favorite hobbies of deriding the sad state of the youth in India today, let me quickly get to the point of my post. Since I joined Drexel way back in 2001 till today, I can clearly feel a marked rise in the Christian orthodoxy in the United States, maybe perhaps because President Bush came to power (among other means ;-) ) riding on the support of the great red mid-west. I think the hallmark of this rise in religious fundamentalism and even chauvinism, if I may call it, is the subject of evolution.

Many God-fearing, religious Christians in the United States believe that evolution is a hoax, and man is a result of intelligent design. It becomes an issue when people ask for their children’s schools to stop teaching the concept of evolution but teach their children the concept of intelligent design.

First, what is intelligent design? According to many, implying man evolved from chimps is demeaning, and an insult to their human intelligence. How can a human being be comparable to an unintelligent animal? They believe in the truth of the Bible instead, saying that man has not evolved, but is a product of a higher being, obviously referring to God as envisaged in the Bible.

It first began in the American mid-west, as I said earlier, where parents of a school district asked that the school teach Intelligent Design as a theory side by side with the theory of evolution. The Kansas Evolution hearings took place in 2005, when a religious institute posing as a non-profit think tank called “The Discovery Institute” led the Kansas State Board of Education to initiate hearing into teaching intelligent design in their schools. This “institute” calls evolution – Darwinism in a clear attempt to lessen the universalism of evolution and reduce it to the product of one man’s work (or fantasy, as I am sure they believe).

The Board, which was controlled by the Christian right, proposed among several things that evolution be called a theory and not a fact in the school books, say that science is not limited to natural explanations (clearly pointing to their belief that everything in the Bible happened in real) and introduce intelligent design as an alternate theory to evolution. Fortunately, the far right could not succeed in introducing their unintelligent designs in Kansas schools.

Another controversy took place in PA in 2005 when parents of children in the Dover Area School District sued the school district that required its schools to present intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. Fortunately, the fundamentalists lost that case well.

A major part of these fundamentalist scientific posers’ campaign to promote their cause is to discredit evolution. They say it is unproved, or questionable, and that it went against God! Despite all the ID proponents’ desire to mask it with science or philosophy, in the end it comes down to its strong religious connotation – that God created man. The net is full of this story, and this whole situation still evokes strong emotions in my mind. At Drexel, the ridiculousness of this whole “intelligent design” propaganda rattled not just me, but all of my friends. We would laugh our guts out at whoever said that Satan planted dinosaur fossils on Earth to deceive the humans.

Of course since then I think, or at least used to think that, the “theory” of intelligent design has mostly been discredited as a wet dream of the American Christian far right, but this news in The New York Times got me thinking about the subject again. It seems maybe intelligent design is not so dead after all, or perhaps America is getting more and more fundamentalist?

On Evolution, Biology Teachers Stray From Lesson Plan

Researchers found that only 28 percent of biology teachers consistently follow the recommendations of the National Research Council to describe straightforwardly the evidence for evolution and explain the ways in which it is a unifying theme in all of biology. At the other extreme, 13 percent explicitly advocate creationism, and spend at least an hour of class time presenting it in a positive light.

That leaves what the authors call “the cautious 60 percent,” who avoid controversy by endorsing neither evolution nor its unscientific alternatives. In various ways, they compromise.

The survey, published in the Jan. 28 issue of Science, found that some avoid intellectual commitment by explaining that they teach evolution only because state examinations require it, and that students do not need to “believe” in it. Others treat evolution as if it applied only on a molecular level, avoiding any discussion of the evolution of species. And a large number claim that students are free to choose evolution or creationism based on their own beliefs.

Eric Plutzer, a co-author of the paper, said that the most enthusiastic proponents of creationism were geographically widely spread across the country.

It’s actually a very scary thought to imagine these schools teaching children not about evolution but about how God created humankind. Perhaps they will bring an “Introduction to the Bible” at kindergarten level next. That compromise by the biology teachers is sad, implying they are either fundamentalist themselves, or scared of the rabid far right parents who they do not want to cross hairs with. Sad, considering President Obama’s talking about his country’s next sputnik moment. God will help them no doubt to take on the Godless non-WASPs.

Oh my God, Aero India 2011!

The Aero India 2011 defence and Aerospace exhibition at bangalore will be held this week, starting tomorrow! I am so excited that I have very few words to describe how much I am looking forward to the juicy treats of jet fighters, missiles, and a whole lot of India's latest arsenal. I definitely look forward to posting some of them here, with all dues to the copyright owners of course! 

Just to give a little background on this exhibition which any aviation/defense enthusiast in this country looks forward to every two years, this is the 7th edition of the pretigious show. Well, its become prestigious now, since India's spurred its domestic R&D and production capabilities, and opened its purses to the world's biggest defense manufacturers for wares worth billions of dollars. So yeah, obviously they look forward to making a splash here, and hope to get a pie of India's spending kitty. Given the huge scope in arms deals, not just with India buying but Indian companies showcasing their own wares, the event is now managed by the Confederation of Indian Industry, or CII.

Over the years, the exhibition has moved beyond just a showcase of military hardware, its become a symposium where the industry, the forces and the academia meet and discuss technology and strategy. The visitors are from all over the world, and they include business persons, scientists, military men and women, the media, politicians and the general enthusiasts.

For example, check this photo out of the Light Combat Helicopter developed by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, or HAL. Its something all of us have been looking forward to for years and finally we will see it perform manoeuvres at the show! woot.

Copyright: Rahul Devnath
Location: Aero India 2011, Bangalore
That sexy thing: LCH











And this is the photo of the second prototype of the chopper, in digital camo!

Copyright: Shiv Aroor, www.livefist.com

spare a thought for the vulture

As a child, traveling across the bad roads of North India was an experience I will always remember, not just for the multitude of experiences, but giving me an opportunity to be outside the city, and get to look at greenery, lots of bovines, peacocks thrown in here and there, and lots of vultures, often crowding around a dead animal (a scene which fascinated me!).  I would enjoy looking at these big birds gliding in circles with their huge wings or simply perched on a tree brooding among each other.

As I grew older, I realized during my travels that I had stopped seeing them anywhere. Initially I let it go, but I realized surely there must be some reason why they have disappeared from the landscape all of a sudden. I looked it up online, and I realized that the vulture population in India had indeed suffered a tragedy in the decade of 1990's, when they were almost wiped out from existance. I often talk to people about this, but for some reason they look at me incredulously and unable to understand why I am so interested in this. I have no answer to that, but I do know that reading about them spurred me to read more about their demise and efforts to breed them again.

There are three species of vultures in the Indian sub-continent. The Gyps Indicus (the Indian long billed vulture), the Gyps Tenuirostris (the slender-billed vultures), and the Gyps Bengalensis (The white backed vulture)

The vulture distribution before the decline; Copyright: Wikipedia.org Commons.











First, a lesson in history - what caused this massive decline in their population.
Diclofenac - In the vast rural landscape of the country, cattle forms an inseperable part of life and livlihood, and the common Indian farmer has been getting more savvy in their upkeep, breeding and health.
Diclofenac is a non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drug used to reduce pain in a number of conditions. The veterinary version of the drug had been introduced in the sub-continent in the early 1990's, and its use spread throughout.

During this time, the vulture population of India, nearly 40 million in the 1980's, declined to under 100,000. the Bombay Natural History Society first noticed this at a vulture breeding center in Rajasthan.

By 2000, The IUCN had listed these three species as "Critically Endangered", which basically means that the species are very close to extinction.

It was studies done by a number of convervation groups based in India and the UK which realized the cause for their decline. One of the sideeffects of the drug, even in humans, is a possibility of renal failure. This is exactly what caused the death of the vultures as well. The vultures would scavenge on the carcass of a dead animal containing the drug, and it would lead to "dehydration, visceral gout, and kidney failures in vultures within a few days."

The Comeback

The drug has been banned in the country since 2006, and alternative drugs have already been suggested and offered, which though costly, will become cheaper once the awareness and production sets in. Of course, I am speaking purely based on secondary information online which may be old, and I am hoping that the country has fully phased out diclofenac by now.

After the reasons for the decline were established, the scientific and ecological community launched a campaign to urge the government to ban the drug. This started in 2003, and the ban came in 2006. The alternate drug proposed by the scientific community, Meloxicam, was found to have no adverse effect on the vultures, according to BNHS, and thus the government encouraged vets across the country to switch to that, the for the pharma industry to begin producing it in greater quantities.

In fact, the Ministry of Environment & Forests, Government of India came out with an Action Plan in 2006 titled "Action Plan for Vulture Conservation in India". The document first gives a basic outline of the problem, its history, and subsequently gets into the work done so far, the issues being faced in achieving success and the task ahead. India is not working alone on this, but is working with Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

While banning of the drug was an important landmark, it was not enough to replenish the number of vultures that had been lost. According to many reports, in 15 years, more than 99% of the three species of vultures in the subcontinent had vanished!

Fortunately, the BNHS has been running major breeding programs for the vultures at a number of places, including Haryana and West Bengal. The first success at the vulture breeding centers was in 2009 when conservationists were blessed with the first ever vulture chick hatched in captivity. The chick born was of the Slender Billed variety.

According to a BBC newsitem in June 2010, the program yielded further success as more chicks were born, and of all the three species. By June, the news says there were 10 chicks, and 4 of them were the White Backed vultures. Most of these birds were born in Haryana and the rest in West Bengal.

The GoI Action Plan also lists establishment of more breeding centers across India. This newsitem from the Mumbai Mirror interviews the head of the breeding program for the BNHS, Dr. Vibhu Prakash, also one of the first scientists to notice the rising deaths among the Indian vultures.

I do hope the future is brighter, and the vultures released from these centers spread out and multiply. It takes time, because as Dr. Prakash says, the vultures don't start reproducing before 4-5 years of their lives.

The Indian Vulture's status as a critically endangered species.
Copyright: Ganesh Shankar, taken from IUCN












This is just the story of the Indian vultures. There are hundreds of big species that will probably be wiped out form this planet because we have taken gratuitous consumption as a sign of modernity. Our consumption of the earth's natural resources is only going to grow, and despite what we say or try to do, till that changes, the future of the rest of the species on this planet will always be bleak in my mind.

I am glad I made this post for my own sake. I've been meaning to write about this for a long while, and now that I have blogging again, I am glad I put in the time into this post to make it worthwhile, and maybe even create awareness among whoever stumbles across this post.

Nice day on the locals today

Today was quite an outdoorsy day. Went to two landmarks of the city today, three actually, because two are adjacent to each other. I've been meaning to not spend my Sunday staying indoors like i've been doing lately, and I was fully determined to do something about it for real this time. So my first stop was Kala Ghoda, which is an art street in Colaba, adjacent to the historical South Bombay buildings and armed forces establishments. The second place was the Byculla Zoo, and the Mumbai City Museum next to it. While reading up on the zoo, I found out that Byculla was the name of the Portuguese King who once held that land.

The Kala Ghoda festival is on these days and it was a delight to walk on that street surrounded by wares from a multitude of small scale industries and NGO's, and a greater delight to see the brilliant sculptures there. However, I will leave this for the next post. So what comes in between the landmarks is the travel, and that was accomplished by the Western and Central railway locals. I always enjoy traveling on the locals on the weekends, when there isn't a large crowd, and there's no work for me to think about for that day. I've clicked photos of the locals before, and I think I should post them here in the future as well. Today I just want to post some photos I clicked today.

The one above is of two Western line trains crossing each other. I am on the one on its way to Churchgate.

The one above is of the Victoria Terminus, or the CST, as its known now.

and another of CST above.....

and the fast local we didn't end up taking, above. 

This one above is of the Churchgate station. Beautiful everytime I look at it.

Of sons and daughters

Ha ha, in my blog post yesterday, I had talked about how these protests have at least led to the end of
dynastic politics in these countries, with Mobarak’s son Gamel out of the picture in Egypt, and Ali Saleh’s
son in Yemen. It is quite a story within a story in itself, and international media has been writing about it
too.

I came across this news item in The Slate magazine, a sort of young, humorous, but very insightful
publication of the Washington Post. They had linked the story from the New York magazine, and its
titled, in a very tragicomic way – “The Biggest Victims of Unrest in the Middle East: Dictators’ Sons”

Allow me to take the liberty of posting a few nuggets here….

Up until a few weeks ago, life as a dictator's son in the Middle East was pretty fantastic. In addition to
the unlimited power and wealth, you knew that you would never once need to fill out a résumé or grab
networking drinks with your friend's cousin — your next job was the presidency, whenever your aging
father decided he had finally tired of ruling the country for decades. You had all sorts of grand plans for
how you'd take everything you learned at that elite British university you attended and finally modernize
your ancient society (in ways that did not threaten your reign). But now, with the commoners causing a
ruckus across the region, that unique job security, and those dreams, have vanished.

In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak's son, Gamal, who had been groomed as his father's successor, has fled to
London, and it's safe to say that a seamless transfer of power shan't be occurring anymore.

A similar fate has befallen Ahmed Saleh, the son of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen since
1978. The elder Saleh had long planned for his son, the head of the nation's Republican Guard, to
take over for him. But today, with a wary eye on Egypt and hoping to quell unrest in his own country,
President Saleh announced that he wouldn't run for president again in 2013, and neither would Ahmed.
Now how about starting something in our country to put an end to this sycophantic and patronage
based politics in our country? The Congress is holding the cards tightly to its chest on when and how the
Prince of the Gandhi family will be India’s next Prime Minister. I think they have taken it for granted that
it will happen, and it’s not a question of if but when.

I somehow fail to understand the psyche of the common party activist, may he/she be from any
party. What drives them to worship their politician so blindly that they choose to overlook the latter’s
incompetence, greed and the fact that dynastic politics is as undemocratic as it can get.

Rahul’s not the only princeling standing in line for something big, but the Parliament today is filled with
young MP’s who are their more illustrious parent’s children. Be it a Sangma, Yadav, Scindhia, Deora,
or Singh, they definitely didn’t have to work very hard to earn their chops in politics. In a way, India’s
politics mirrors the Bollywood of today, where today’s famous actors did not need to slog it out to
be famous or at least get a break. I believe most of these activists do not have the power to think for
themselves. I think they are happy just to be a part of something big, which gives meanings to their lives,
hence they will follow their politician blindly.

Arab world? Democracy? Huh?

The news in Egypt as of this morning on Google News is about everything but Egypt. While there is a huge upheaval underway in Egypt, the rest of the world is discussing Egypt, not for the sake of Egypt or any of those misused words such as freedom and democracy, but for a more realistic reason of how it affects them.

The first headline is how the American politicians are now supporting a change in Egypt, thus risking antagonizing their Israeli allies. The second headline is how crude oil prices have reached USD 103 as tensions in Egypt escalate and then every national daily reporting from their perspective - how India should go on from here, how the Britons are returning home and another big mini-story within this story is the Egyptian government's control of the internet. 

I am really not quite sure how the whole turmoil and the call for democracy started in Egypt, but I am willing to put my money on the hypothesis that it must have started as some protest against some action, or inaction, by the government in terms of price rise, or crime, or any other issue of importance for any common man, and then when everybody realized that this is getting way bigger than a simple protest against the government, somebody must have thrown the D word in.

Anyways, even the first protest in Egypt must have been inspired from what happened in Tunisia. Speaking of Tunisia, whatever happened to Tunisia? Apparently the media has completely stopped talking about the country that actually can claim to be the forerunner in bringing such sweeping change in the Middle East. well, their dictator Ben Ali is gone, and a new government is in, so hopefully the rebuilding of that country is underway now. Egypt, being a bigger economy in the region, is now generating much more interest, and the events that unfold there will probably have a bigger impact in the region.

Okay, so in Tunisia, the rebuilding process is on, rather, should be on soon, as the Tunisian PM urges people to return to work after the "revolution"

Tunisia has had two changes of government since weeks of popular protests ousted former president Zine al-Abdine Ben Ali on Jan. 14. Demonstrations had already brought the country to a standstill but the ouster of Ben Ali has also emboldened many Tunisians to strike to demand better pay and conditions.

"The government calls on you to preserve its independence by returning to work, otherwise the country may collapse," Ghannouchi told privately-owned Hannibal TV.

The security situation is normalising, we have passed the crisis of recent days and we urge you to resume work and defer your claims to meet the challenges."

Marauding gangs of youths have intimidated Tunisians in recent days, rampaging through streets and schools and attacking government buildings.

The chaos was aggravated by a two-day police strike, but security forces returned to work on Wednesday.

Okay, so that's one. Now the latest on Egypt is that we know that currently the Pro-Mubarak and the anti-Mubarak supporters were clashing in the Tahrir Square. Before that, Hosni Mobarak had announced on national tv the he will not run for reelection when the country goes to Presidential polls in September. Egypt was tantalizingly close to being yet another nation with dynastic politics (such as India and North Korea), but Mobarak's son Gamil, who was supposedly being groomed to take over power, totally out of the equation. Of course, the Americans are all for democrazy in Egypt now that their ally's hold has been shattered.

Big churn is still expected in Egypt, but lets move onto other nations which were slated to be the next staging grounds for these "democracy" protests.

Yemen: Another bid for dynastic politics busted in Yemen as the President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, says he will step down in 2013 and will not pass reins to son. If only we could do the same in India, and bring some actual, real democracy in this system.

But back to Yemen,

“No extension, no inheritance, no resetting the clock,” he said, making reference to ruling party proposals on term limits that had been seen as designed to enable him to run again.

 

The move was Saleh’s boldest gambit yet to stave off anti-government turmoil spreading in the Arab world as he tried to avert any showdown with the opposition that could risk drawing people into the streets in deeply impoverished Yemen.

 

Saleh’s remarks came a day before a planned large opposition rally, dubbed a “day of rage,” seen as a barometer of the size and strength of the Yemeni people’s will to follow Egyptians and Tunisians in demanding a change of government.

Lets move onto another country. Which other country's name cropped up but some preemptive measures are under way? Ah yes, Jordan! So King Abdullah has sacked the government, appointed a new prime minister and has called for more reforms. King Abdullah, another of America's great friend in the region, is trying to "tune into" what the Jordanians want. Of course he realizes that sacking the government does not mean the axe over his head is removed, so has undertaken some serious economic reforms.

Next, umm, yes, the media had said something about Bahrain. Let's see what's happening there. Yes, the royalty of Bahrain has indeed gone into action and plans to bring about economic changes in their monarchy. According to this Canadian newspaper, the country was already a fledgling democracy, and the only one in the region to offer a safety net for workers, but still.....

Perhaps seeing the effects of the Tunisian and Egyptian upheavals, though, the King has met with advisers, security officials and Sunni and Shia clerics, pressing upon them the need to abide by the system and respect the law. The Gulf Discussion Forum also reports that the King was clearly worried and called on clerics and mosque leaders to counter calls from those who were trying to agitate in the streets. It did not elaborate.

The King also promised that Bahrain would see political reforms and improvements in living conditions in the coming days, and asked those who'd met to move quickly and take their responsibilities seriously. 

Moving onto another Middle East nation now. Yes, Syria's another candidate for change. But in the end, it might just turn into a damp squib, with people only protesting for the sake of protesting. In fact, according to Al Jazeera, the calls for revolution are strongest on Facebook! I somehow doubt if this will result in anything at all, and as a local journalist quoted above puts it,"I think the day of anger will turn out to be no more than a day of mild frustration." Am i the only one who finds this line to be really funny?!

I read about another country in the news today, Algeria, but it was about the government warning against violent protest against itself. Not that there haven't been protests, and already 3 people have killed themselves by lighting themselves on fire in protests. Being right next to Tunisia, Algeria would have been the first country to feel the heat from across the borders anyways.

So a lot of change has indeed taken place, and even if revolution may be a word that would be stretching the current state of affairs, I have no doubt in my mind that the kings and emirs and dictators (often meaning the same person or family), have been shaken out of their slumber, and we should definitely see many changes in governance in this region. While for the rich countries, it will be easy for the incumbent to employ economic reforms by spending money and keeping the people happy, the non-oil rich nations of the region, should definitely see bigger reforms, economically and even politically. Will all this affect the rich nations of the region, such as the ridiculously fundamentalist Saudi Arabia? Well, nobody knows for sure, but a study by a university in Israel says that at least some shakedown can be expected in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Morocco. Well, lets see how the Middle East emerges from this.

 

What did Engels really say?

While in IIM Calcutta, I was walking along Chowringee Road one day, when I came across a street seller of old books. Without wasting time and opportunity, I at once delved into the book sellers collection for I was sure I would definitely find something of my interest in his lot. The literary culture of Kolkata is well known, after all it is the city of the Bengali intellectual, and it was always my desire to try to take away at least something from it during my time at Joka. Visiting old book stores in College Street and elsewhere and going through their vast and myriad collection was one way I was trying to do that.

Coming back to the book seller on Chowringee Road, I was not disappointed, for I saw some very old books, including some from the Soviet era. There was a very nice comic book (a propaganda book from the western point of view) about the heroics of Stalin! I think I brought that and then gifted it to a friend who really wanted it. There was another book which I kept for myself, and perhaps a well known classic in itself. It was Friedrich Engels, the father of communist theory according to Wikipedia.org, and his classic book - Socialism - Utopian and Scientific, published in 1880.

While today socialism is readily associated with communism which in itself is a very negative word, thanks to the slow and steady demonization process initiated by the US and its allies against the Soviets, socialism does not begin and end with the USSR. In fact, there are a lot of good points in communist and socialist theories that this world would do well to inculcate and follow. I do not claim to be an expert on any social or political theory, but I do know that my education in second year at IIM Calcutta further opened my eyes to the highly unequal and unjust world we are living in, and how this injustice is only strengthening itself.

The Americans have for long, actually throughout the last 60 years, have propagated open economies, global trade, no barriers, and that governments have no business doing business. Of course now that the rest of the world is slowly catching up to the American version of "globalization", they suddenly start preaching protectionism and job creation. Of course, their global corporations have entrenched themselves into every economy across the world on this American claim that its good for them; I mean what better example to show the world than the great American dream. The third world paid for it but unfortunately is slowing taking its economic destiny into its own hands.

This is matter for another post, but coming back to Engels, there were a lot of good points he made which are relevant even today. The common man is at the mercy of the market, and in most cases, the market is not a friend. Just like the Americans used the "American way of life", and the IMF and World Bank, to force many small nations to adapt capitalist policies that would effectively take away the control of their economies from their own hands, economic liberalization today uses its own posterchilds to drive home the point that its good. In India for example, people have made lots of money in the stock market, we all know that, but what the media will rarely mention that less than 5% of this country's population actually has money in the stock market. In the end, the common man is still affected by the price of onions, so what is all the economic modernization we are talking about then?

The book has some very deep writing, and it will be impossible for me to recall even half of it without reading it again, but there are certainly a few mental notes I remember taking after I read the book, or a really long essay in three parts.

For example, he writes that when the freedom to property was brought about in England, while protecting the common serf from the feudal master, turned into something totally different, though of the same color. Now they lost their properties to bigger landowners and capitalists. This is historically correct that with the advent of the industrial revolution, the British society underwent a monumental upheaval, with the money in control of the new rich, the "bourgeois manufacturers".

While to Marx and other great thinkers such as Owen and Fourrier (who Engels writes about in the first part of the book), socialism was a utopia that had its roots in the minds of modern man, Engels said socialism really was an inevitable outcome of a struggle between classes. Even today, do we not talk about the struggle between the haves and have nots? Is it any different? I think not, other than that it has taken a more global scale and incorporated issues such as gender and race. Engels does talk about it in fact, saying the economies and countries that can't stand up to the industrial onslaught are bound to be cast aside.

In 1880, Engels was talking about the economic cycle that we are all familiar with today. He said that every ten years economies will fall under the weight of their own production. We are taught today that economic cycles are a part and parcel of the system, nobody actually questions the need to be a system which sees such a debilitating and devastating cycle repeated as if at clockwork.

Now my question is - do we have to follow the economic system that we are following? The world thrives on the images of success enjoyed by a small percentage of the population, while the majority of this world's individuals are breaking their backs to earn for themselves and their families. Nobody talks about them. My belief is that the world, the way it is right now, is unsustainable. For most of the world, unfortunately, it may be a case of nothing gained and nothing lost. For the small percentage of the world with the high capital and resource consumption, well, they certainly will realize that the earth's running out of resources, and the developed world will realize that the third world is more and more unwilling to share their resources with the former for their gratuitous consumption.

money and brute force to happiness

I am having this really strong sense of deja vu when I write this, but I simply must write more about this whole China world power farce. I know I have written about this earlier, but then again, this is not a one-off episode to be forgotten among the thousands of other events making headlines every day.

I ask a few simple questions to anybody who is interested - what are the foundations on which modern society is built?
I don't mean the physical foundations, but more on the lines of the way the modern human being lives, or at least strives to live. The basic tenet of modern society I would assume is freedom of the individual, freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, all of which are missing in China which aims to be the next superpower in the world. Now my question is - how? Through fear? Through intimidation? Through money?
Unfortunately, China seems to be employing all three with gusto, especially the last one. China has been impressing small nations in Asia, Africa and the Americas with its promise of a great China-led manufacturing revolution in their respective nations, and big promises of aid and investment. Their foreign affairs seem scarily meticulous, planned, and unemotional, thus adding to the discomfiture of ALL.

I write all in capital because certainly China's neighbors are looking uneasily over their shoulders perhaps expecting China to jump over their sovereign land claiming it to be there own. China and Vietnam fought many years ago, and has since kept control of the Spratley archipelago in the South China Sea, taken from the Vietnamese. Already the Chinese have taken for granted that the South China Sea is their own and nobody elses.

Similarly, after decades of self-imposed refusal to rearm itself, Japan is finally considering to begin rearming itself, given the potential danger of conflict with the newly belligerent China. Of course the USA, still the lone superpower has a huge stake in this decision, but it needs all the help it can get when China will knock at its door to ask for a share in global control. I am fairly certain its going to happen - China asking for the reins, but I do not think anybody can foresee the outcome.

Do I even need to mention China's belligerence with India, which i am fairly certain it considers a state so soft that it can do whatever it pleases, and say the nicest things to our leaders' faces. Stapling of visas to Indians from Arunachal Pradesh, denying a visa to an Army Officer who had served there, and other such Chinese tomfoolery certainly seems very calculated and premeditated.

In Africa, both India and China are trying hard to win the hearts and minds of African people and their governments. Perhaps both are being selfish and driven more by the resources in Africa than anything else, but even then, there seems to be more resentment against the Chinese presence than the Indian presence. India has had longstanding ties with Africa, and has built schools, hospitals there, and shared knowledge. China has simply given lots of aid, and taken over African resources.

The point I am trying to make in the end is that can China claim to be a world power through intimidation and bullying? The USA is a bully, and dozens of small nations across the globe have suffered their belligerence, but in the modern world, minds are won through soft power. Hollywood, rock music and fast food are America's weapons to win new friends. Unfortunately, I think the Chinese society is all but dead inside, and the Chinese leadership are driven by their own visions of dominating the world with money and brute force if need be. It all used to happen in the medieval eras, but I highly doubt the chances of it happening anymore.  

In today's free world, the power of the press, the power of information are unstoppable, and if any government thinks it can control it to its own ends, I think its only kidding itself. China was ready to take on the Nobel Prize Committee for awarding the Nobel Prize for Peace to a dissident Liu Xiaobo, arresting his family (he was already under arrest), and threatening Sweden on trade. This episode probably made the Chinese public, and the rest of the world, more aware of who Liu Xiaobo is, and why he has won the prize! 

This was reported in the BBC, and its so true:

If it had not made such a huge fuss about the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, the world's press would not have come to Oslo in such large numbers to report on the ceremony.
And if China had not tried to strong-arm countries with diplomatic representation in Norway and persuade them not to send their ambassadors to the ceremony, then it would not have got into a contest with Europe and the United States - something it was never going to win.

The symbolism of the empty chair was pretty damaging.

The only regimes that have imposed it on the Nobel Prize Committee in the past have been of a kind which China would not want to be compared with: Nazi Germany, the old Soviet Union, Poland under martial law, Burma.

Copyright: AP

December India Telecom Data

Since I am in the telecom industry these days, a part of my job here has been to research the telecom industry in India and Africa. While research in Africa is quite difficult with fewer open source information sources other than the biggest telecom operators in that continent, India has a fairly robust industry with a number of associations and institutions outputting regular research and statistics on the industry. The two industry associations - COAI - Cellular Operators Association of India (a body of GSM service providers), and AUSPI - Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (a body of CDMA and private wireline providers) provide monthly numbers on subscriber base and occasionally on ARPUs. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, or TRAI, is the main body regulating the sector in India, and is fairly active in research, publishing reports on a number of sectors, and topics, including 3G, rural telephony, urban/rural penetration etc. I try to follow their numbers regularly, and put out my own rudimentary graphs and snapshots.

I wasn't planning on putting in the November 2010 graph per operator but I suppose its a nice comparison to the December data so I will let it stay.

When I first blogged

This blog is 5 years old now, and it seems so far away! When I first started writing this blog in 2006, it had over 100 posts. I had told myself that I would try to write something every day, or at least every other day. I believe it was the time when I was just out of college and waiting to start working, and I believe I continued to blog after I started working as well. I can't believe its been more than a year since my last entry into this blog! Surely it wasn't meant to take this long to write again here.

Unfortunately, things change, and passions fizzle out. For me, its been difficult to stick to passions that stay within me with the same intensity that I have when I first set out on fulfilling them. I tell myself I love writing, but whenever I begin to write something down, it eventually breaks down into severe self-criticism and self-loathing. My frustrations at what I want to do but I can't, or can't get myself to do just pour out in very insipid and banal language. Just like what I am doing here.

I had written in a wordpad entry (something which I have begun using as my journal) about how I had met somebody who had told us - me and a group of friends - to never stop doing what we love doing, and what we would like to pursue as a career in the future. For example, if I want to write, i should continue to write regularly, for if i stop writing with the belief that I can start again whenever i want to, or need be, it will be very difficult for me to do so. Unfortunately, I haven't written anything professional, or even semi-professional, since my days at The Triangle. I was involved in the marketing magazines at IIM Calcutta, but I never wrote anything in them, with my time and effort mainly going into the planning of the magazines. These notepad entries have been my sincere effort (in my own mind), to continue writing whatever I can think of into some physical form. Most of my good thoughts, I believe, simply die out in my mind, waiting to see the light of day. When I lie in bed at night, I am filled with such wonderful thoughts, ideas and rants that I promise myself that I will write them down the next day. Most of my thoughts are not that fortunate.

Since I have started photography, I can actually post some of my photographs here as well, and that is an exciting prospect, because that is one area where I am sure I will be able to contribute with enough gusto and effort to actually make it worthwhile, and perhaps enjoyable for anybody else to go through.

Coming to the theme that dominated this blog when I first started out - politics - will continue to be there. I mean I make no bones about telling anyone and everyone about how much I hate the government, the Congress party and all the games that these people play, perhaps without realizing the hurt they will cause to the country's future. Maybe they do, and there is method to their madness, but this is a theme I wanted to write more on, with a little more research done in the mainstream media and opinion pieces. I don't see why I shouldn't, or why I couldn't.

There is a churn I am expecting at work, and perhaps some long term changes with respect to my job here at Essar and my own profile. I have been without a lot of work the past few days, and that perhaps is another reason I finally turned to my blog again after such a long time. It is wrong on my part, and very unjust, that I needed so much free time with myself to finally remember that I had this beautiful blog that I had started with so many expectations and visions, indicating on my part that i am still doing it only as an outlet to bide time, but I would sincerely like to believe that it is not so. Even if I can't post anything worthwhile, or without incisive opinions or insights, at least I will, or still, have a place where nobody but I venture and write to my heart's content.