Airport freeze : Where is the preparedness ?

Was talking to some people who've traveled by air (both domestic and international) over the last few weeks and all of them have the same complaint : where is airport preparedness ?

Reminds me of the few (rare) occasions when Atlanta used to have a small (couple of inches worth) of snowfall. The city would grind to halt as it was totally ill-prepared for this.

Would that excuse hold for the large transit airports like London, Paris and Frankfurt ?
Why are they in such shambles the moment snowfall gets to be more than "usual" ?
Are they not watching the global trend of heavier snowfall / rainfall and cycles that seem swing to the extremes ?

IMHO : they seem to have an Ostrich mode to the problem ie. stick your head in sand (or snow) and it'll blow over ?. There also seems to be no "consequence" to this lack of preparedness that needs to be addressed.

Last I heard was that the governments were going to think of legislative mechanisms to pull up the autonomous airport authorities like BAA. Is regulatory the best way to address this or should commercial models push them ?

I'd opt for the commercial model anytime ?

The proposed ban on plastic pouches : Gutka + Paan

Whether or not this proves a boon to the individuals involved (those addicted to Gutka + Paan), this is certainly a welcome measure for the environment.

Over the last few years, I've seen rural India being peppered with this "pollution". Everywhere I go, from a nature resort to a religiously oriented city, I'm shocked and distressed to see these small plastic wrappers scattered around. Even yielding wetlands with paddy seems to not have been spared.

I had posted a few years earlier, that, I think this is probably the most polluting packing material around as they are too small to be picked and too large to travel down an animals throat unhindered.

Am especially scared of the new kind of packaging that seems to have aluminum foil enclosed with a thin enamel of plastic. These, I'm sure do not degrade at all ?

I now wish that this ban comes through at the earliest and makes a difference ?

Nominating and Voting for the most corrupt in Indian Politics

A team under the name "Mango Man" ie Aam Aadmi is running this poll.
I like the concept as it continues on my previous post where I think it is time we started the IgNoble series of awards.
Also, the timing seems right as I'm given to understand that next week (Dec 8) is World Anti Corruption day and some folks are planning a march on Saturday Dec 11 in Bangalore.

Do you think that the "Aam Aadmi" is now too jaded to participate in these "marches" ? Or, is there still hope in a democratic process ?

Please do go in and post your opinion on the following FB page(s)

http://www.facebook.com/MangoManAamAadmi?v=app_4949752878

World / International XXXXX day : Multiple choices ? How about world corruption day ?

For those of you who've missed it. Today ie. Nov 19 is World TOILET day as also International Mens Day !!!
I wonder if it is just a coincidence that both these are on the same day ? Maybe it was carefully chosen - just to enable a discussion point for all the conspiracy theorists ?

On a more thoughtful note... I wonder is there is method to this process or more importantly, given the web / social access in today's world, we can come up with a voting mechanism that'll allow us to choose / publicize and adopt these "world / international" days.

Also, I think, it is time we started to create a set of days where we follow the IgNoble principle

As an example, we should have a WORLD CORRUPTION DAY (esp. in the current Indian context) where we publicly recognize and AWARD those who've EXCELLED in the area of Corruption ?

I'm sure there will be a series of nominations and a voting process where we'll discover some real gems ?

Maybe this model of recognizing individuals will provide the necessary social impetus for individuals to squirm and detest ?

Karnataka - The new Bihar ?

We Indians have a tendency to generalize. About a decade ago, you could see NO development report published where the words "BIMARU" did not appear in the first few paragraphs somewhere. Bihar, as the leading member of the BIMARU states, would be the poster-state for all that seemed wrong in Indian politics.
Later, the antics of Lalu and kin(s) would trigger sniggers in the social sector.
Even elsewhere in the south, there were frequent debates on the efficacy of political rules with regional specialties.... eg. Amma's rule by sycophancy, Kerala's red brigade etc. Karnataka, seemed relatively staid in comparison.   

I guess that was just storm about to break ?

For the last few weeks, I've been agonizing over the new "titles" bequeathed to this state....
Outlook carries a coverpage that screams "Most corrupt state of India ?"
Elsewhere, there are are vivid pictures of our politicians baring their chests a la Salman and that too in the house ?
The numbers being brought out for each MP shames the animal world with comparison to "horse trading".

So much so, there was even a quote by the respected Lok Ayukta (uncharacteristically, Karnataka is one of the few states where this post seems to be making a mark) Justice Santosh Hegde that he has seen a steady degradation from government to government ? Each new one is more corrupt than the last ?

Where does this leave me/us as self respecting local citizens ?
Fuming internally is only a short term option and I'm sure that one day the very same politicians will be made to pay ?

US's new Anti-Outsourcing offensive : Should India retaliate with a No-US IT product in E-Government response ?

Last week saw growing concern with the anti-outsourcing stance taken by the US. The latest being a couple of "new" statements by Obama + Ohio's blanket ban on outsourcing state government projects ...

What does India do ?
     - Obviously the first option would be to make the appropriate noises at the right levels (see the call upon PM to make a statement etc)
     - Next, we could petition the WTO / Trade agreement etc.


What surprises me is that there seems to be no voice at all at the Indian E-Government spend level ?
India's spend on E-Governance / IT for infrastructure will probably far outstrip the income for specific US states (put together). Would it be a good idea just to start saying a corresponding "NO" to the Microsofts, the HPs, the IBMs and the Oracle's ?

I'm not sure if we know enough to state if these will help / hurt us locally, given that IBM is probably the biggest IT employer in India today with possibly more people than TCS ?


Let us face it, the best way to tackle a commercial decision is to respond in the same space.
Do we not hear that China & India constitute the biggest markets for the world ?
Do we also not see China exercising a lot more "independence" in their decision process ?

Are we going to just a high level sabre rattling with things like Blackberry (Canadian though), Skype (US now - no longer European ?) etc ?

Who should take a lead ?

Rework on Infrastructure : Money down the drain

While there has been growing focus on the CWG preparedness, I was wondering if anyone watched over the amount of re-work that happens on Infrastructure projects in India. Surely, there is a whole LOT of money down the drain ?

A case in example is a drive down any of the Bangalore Metro building sites - esp the stretch around west-of-chord-road to mysore-road. I've noticed that almost every SINGLE casted pillar has been broken down either for faulty design or build-to-spec. You'll see big monstrous piles of concrete + steel all around the pits. In parallel, you'll also see new round of truss and casting going on.

Was the design spec wrong or was the build quality wrong ?
In either case, we seem to accept shoddy work from all infra projects and then do a post-mortem analysis on where the money went ?

Less said about BBMP's track record the better.
I still hang my head down / cringe while taking the crazy "U" near Cauvery theatre / while driving past the UAS wall that killed a teenager.....

Googles' data analysis API : Are all of our actions going to be "predictable" ?

I know there are lots of people talking about the fact that Google has just announced that the "VOICE" option will be available as part of gmail.... actually, this is "stale" news IMHO. Google talk plugin has been available for a fairly long time and things like VOIP utilities (like voice-to-speech conversions etc) have also been available. It probably is going to see more mainline usage now.

However, one of the other announcements ie. availability of data analysis API (although only in the US on an invitation basis for now) is probably more revolutionary  - assuming this works as expected.

Basically, this would allow for anyone who has access to raw data to push these to the "google cloud" and come up with some predictable data points ie. what if analysis for free !

Yes, this does assume that the data is going to get loaded onto the web, that someone will push and pull back these analysis structure etc. However, the availability of these utils is surely going to change some "real time" dynamics ?

Can you imagine that I can not only do route planning, I can also put together some model where I can also produce results on traffic behavior based on some past patterns ?

Or, to our detriment, someone is going to start "pushing" their choice of "wine & cheese" the next time you are going past a shop at a particular time of the week ?

As with most of cutting edge - this, again, comes with a double edge ?

Learning new languages : Are we forgeting this due to dis-use ?

We, the family, decided to step out for a quick lunch today. Given that it was an unplanned decision on the way back home, we made our way to the neighborhood "New Shanti Sagar". For those who're unaware, these are local vegetarian food joint that are fairly ubiquitous in Bangalore suburbs.

While we were having soup (that comes with the set meal), I watched around. There were 3 neighboring tables. One on our right had a father and son pair who were clearly Malayalam speaking. They conversed in a combination of English and Malayalam (just as we were doing a Kannada + English combo at our table). In front of us were a team clearly from the north of India. These folks were conversing in Hindi.

The captain taking the orders came around and seemed to pick the language of the table by some logic. He took the order from the pair next to us in English. Ditto for us until we ordered in Kannada and then he switched to Kannada all the way through. For the folks from the north - he started taking the order in Hindi.

I had observed the above with no special thought at all - it was "normal" in my mind - until an "Anglo-saxon" couple walked in. Suddenly, the equation seemed to change....
    - The waiter and captain seemed to fuss around in English, while the couple were making a fantastic effort in trying to speak "Kannada".
    - The Hindi speaking team switched to a combo of English and Hindi (seemed to automatically include Hindi)
    - The father and son pair started to use more of Malayalam

The most natural folks were the foreigners who continued to struggle through Kannada interspersed with English and signs....(lesser spice etc)

What struck me most was
  - The lack of efforts on the part of the other folks (from within India) in trying to use the local language
  - The apparent "need" to switch the level of use in their own mother-tongue in front of visitors

IMHO - we'd have a more casual and better world if people just followed their natural instincts to communicate just as tourists would ?

Tour of select government schools in Madanpalle, AP : Mixed bag / mixed reaction

The last 2 days saw Subbu (key member of Sikshana) and I visiting a number of schools that we've adopted in the Madanapalle area of AP. While, for Subbu, this was a follow up meeting, it was a "brand-new" experience for me. Given my lack of local language (Telegu) skills, my role was more of an observer than a real player.

I came back with mixed feelings : Some good / positive outcomes where we (Sikshana) seems to have made a dent and some real worrying points. The worrying points first....

a. In 4 of the 7 schools (particular area), we found a couple of students (typically boys !) being classified as MR ie. euphemism for Mentally Retarded by the local teachers. These were all for class 4 students. While it is certainly not rare to find these in government schools, what was shocking for me was....
   - The ratio of such classification ie > 15% in some of the schools
   - The "casual" manner in which these kids were being discussed in front of the other students. Esp. the usage of words like "duffer" etc.
   - Resignation / acceptance on the part of the teachers that they (the students) were in some way beyond redemption and hence the need to exclude them in counts of any kind for literacy levels.

There is a definite need for some kind of an independent survey and support structure in these schools. Given that the classifications I saw were already at class 4 (typically 8-10 age group), I'm afraid that some of these branding would have already settled into the psyche of the kid in question ?

 b. There seems to be growing resignation on the part of the government teacher (maybe as a result of years of non-involvement) that they have NO SAY in the structure of pedagogy / testing process etc. Driving to a distinct lack of ownership. Case in point :the new "benchmark" tests


    - There has been a new introduction of something called the "Benchmark" test for class 4 that seems to have almost ZERO relevance to the field situation. In this test, a class 4 student is "benchmarked" on class 4 syllabus !. The baseline is not even class 3 where I'd see some logic to the process ?
    - The marks / questions and gradation all are not linked to each other ?
    - The teachers, when questioned, state that they've raised this at their internal meetings, but, have not got a remedial message. All are busy either administrating these tests (one more in the series) or justifying the results !
   
More importantly, there seemed to be a certain level of resignation on the part of teachers to the fact that the government would eventually "privatize" the whole primary education process and hence there was no real incentive to "voice" their opinions ?

There were however, some silver linings. We were thrilled to find a school which had ALL (100% of the students in class 4), capable of reading / writing Telugu fluently.

As Subbu commented : this was a real Independence celebration for the class ie 100% literacy 

Indian style innovation ie. Jugaad : Alive & kicking

Over the weekend, I was in BR Hills (Biligiri Rangana Hills) in Yelandur taluk of Karnataka with some friends. We reached there post 4:30 PM and it was almost sun-down by the time we got to the top.
For those who've not been there : it is a great view to see miles and miles of green forest + rolling hills in all directions esp. with the orange hue of the setting sun on the "hillock enveloping" clouds.


Given the picturesque setting, it was obvious that there would be some professional photographers who'd want to click snaps of tourists (with the right background ?) for a fee.

What caught our attention was not all of the above, but the 2 large boxes that were placed on a jutting rock in the center of the clearing. These boxes had a whole lot of people around it all "oohing" and "aahing". Curiosity piqued we walked up to the set of boxes and realized that it actually was a colour printer covered on all sides with wooden slats ie. weatherproofed !



It took us a few minutes to realize that we were actually looking at the Indian version of instant photography !.


The printer in the center was the place the couple of photographers would zip to post a "photo session" and print (for a price) copies of the individual tourists. The second box was a portable UPS for powering this printer !


Clearly, Indian "Jugaad" is alive and kicking. While I'm sure there will be a lot of people who'd comment on the lack of portability, unwieldiness of operation etc, the photographers themselves, seemed very nonchalant. They were showing off crisp photographs and doing some brisk business.

Hats off and power to the spirit of innovation....

India's new Rupee symbol : An amalgamation of old & new ?

For those who've not seen the news - India now has an official Rupee symbol (see below)

I like the look.
Excellent combination of the Devanagiri "Ra" and the English "R". During the release there was apparently a point made about how it represents the Tricolour + Ashoka Chakra ?

Now, that is one bit that I cannot see ?

In any event, it will probably take some time to catch up on official usage - but, given the timing, I think it'll certainly catch on very quickly.

Activity based learning as part of SSA : Chennai's focus + time to debate

I think there was a co-incidence of sorts on this topic. Just yesterday, as part of the Sikshana Outreach program @ Kanakapura, we were discussing this with some NGO's out of Chennai ....
ABL is the structure that essentially came out of Rishi Valley (and earlier from Neel Bagh) - not that I knew of this much earlier, I've read and learnt about this recently.

Why is this relevant ?
Simply because, yesterday I was surprised at the numbers that was being talked about at Tamilnadu's ranking in the ASER tests. I would have expected them to be in the top 10 if not the top 5. However, I was told that they are probably not even in the top 25 !!??


I think I'll have to look at ASER results and match that with the ABL results that gets published to find out where the difference is.... some work for the coming weeks.




NEWS ARTICLE from yesterdays HINDU - what a co-incidence !


Sibal to visit activity-based learning schools
Special Correspondent CHENNAI: Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal will visit activity-based learning (ABL) schools in the State next week.
In the wake of the commendations the implementation of the ABL scheme has received across the country, the Ministry had conveyed to the State Education Department that Mr. Sibal wanted to extensively spend time on July 14 to learn how the implementation in Tamil Nadu differed from those in other States. The idea was to involve the Human Resource Ministry and prepare a compendium of best practices that could later be implemented across the country.
State Education Minister Thangam Thennarasu confirmed that Mr. Sibal had expressed desire to visit the schools. “We are lucky to have a dedicated team of officers and teachers who have spared no efforts to implement both activity-based learning and the active learning methodology (ALM). It is a recognition of their efforts.”
The ABL and ALM are being implemented by the School Education Department as part of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), a nationwide effort to improve capabilities of all children through provision of community-owned quality education in a mission mode.
The broad aim of SSA is to provide useful and relevant elementary education to all children in the 6 to 14 age group by 2010 and to bridge social, regional and gender gaps, with the active participation of the community in the management of schools.
The SSA wing of Tamil Nadu carried forward the ABL of the primary classes into middle school or upper primary — classes 6,7, 8 through the ALM.
In 2007, 10,000 middle schools across Tamil Nadu underwent a dramatic refreshing learning process, empowering the learner to break into knowledge systems effectively, whether in the textbook or in the world around. This came as a relevant ‘chapter two' to the implementation of the ABL in nearly 40,000 schools prior to that.

Should Justice Hegde get into politics himself or How do we break the cycle ?

I have been following the back-and-forth on Justice Santosh Hegde's resignation from the Lokaykta offices with growing pessimism. Here was a man who was willing to bell the cat (so to speak) and instead of empowering his team, we are now faced with the possibility of his office turning to be an insipid "reporting" tool !

How do we break this impasse ?

Reminds me of a time when we (as a Nation) went about asking for electoral reforms and lauded the changes brought in by the election commission. Until then, we (or atleast I) thought that Election commission was just a bureaucratic organization with no "teeth". Today, I'd give them their due credit for cleaning up (with substantial success) things like electoral rolls, ensuring adherence to the code-of-conduct etc.

During one of the meetings that I attended with Justice Hegde, he was categorical that he did not want a political office. My thinking today is - maybe he should stand for one !
Maybe, an electoral mandate will FORCE the elected individuals to wake up and act on a specific mandate.

Alternatively, if he is still not willing to get into the political arena and fight an election, maybe, as individuals and citizens can elect him as an extra constitutional watchdog ?

As a democracy, the voice of the citizens should formulate our policies - should it not ?

Good / Better user interfaces techniques : Example of the worldcup schedule

I was pointed to this page a couple of days ago by a posting in my old company network ie. Tulbuddies.
As usual, I kept the URL aside and did not bother until I was surfing last evening and happened to check out the schedule - was blown away with the simplicity and completeness of the UI design.


When you have time, please check out http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mundial/sudafrica-2010/calendario-english.html

I love the way Adobe flash has been used in the structure and I'm sure this will look better if I had a touch screen rather than a point-&-click mouse.

Goes to show that we need to all unlearn our old usability metaphors (of quick-keys etc) and re-think how we can deploy multidimensional UI structures both in these kind of static pages as also reports and business intelligence within applications.

A game changer in the traditional server industry : SeaMicro ?

I came across an article about SeaMicro and then went onto their site to find out what the noise is all about.
I think they've done a game changer as most people seem to be point out.

For the un-informed - What SeaMicro has done is to bring in virtualization to the hardware industry. They've pulled together 512 Intel Atom processors onto a single 10U Rack.

This means that they've effectively brought together a hugh change in running costs (Power @ 1/4 of a normal system, space usage @ 1/4 of the normal system) etc.More importantly, if they can deliver on manage'ability' - then, I'm sure they have a winner.

It is supposed to be able to run the standard OS (off the shelf) and this is probably the key to adoption. The first beneficiary will be the people who are trying to offer Infrastructure as a Service for the the cloud folks.

Let us wait & watch the uptake...

Providing Solar Lanterns to stimulate productivity in rural India : Options

It was good to read in the papers today that some of the "Bulleteers" were going to collect money (@ a minimum of Rs. 500/- per person) and donate that towards a Solar Lantern in Tribal Areas.

As part of Sikshana, a trial has been run in Kanakapura school district where we've seen some very encouraging results. Please see the posts @
       http://sikshana.blogspot.com/2010/03/lighting-for-night-studies.html or just http://Sikshana.blogspot.com

As we had anticipated, there has been a marked increase in results during the period of intervention. While it is too early to demarcate the impact of the individual programs (remedial + lighting for extended study hours), the social impact is indisputable.

This also goes to prove the point that an effective light extends the time available for a family to come together, spend time indoors during evenings & nights without need for a smokey, smelly and risky kerosene lamp.
It also seems to have an efficient ROI on the spend.
    Cost of each lantern : Rs. 600 (Approx USD $ 13 at current conversion)
    Expected /Average life of Battery : 2.5 years (I've used this as life of LED seems irrelevant as battery is the bigger 'replacement' cost over the life of the equipment.
    Average charging time for a 2-3 hour usage in the night - 6 hours.

In effect, for less than Rs.2 / day over an year, every family can have almost full light coverage during the nights. I'm sure the social impact & dividends are going to be larger & better than what our trial has produced w.r.t 10th standard students.

Can we hope for green / micro-financing folks to take this up as a larger program ?
Imagine the opportunity to rewrite the words "burning midnight oil" !

US "discovers" $ 1 Trillion worth of minerals in Afghanistan : Really ?

It has been a long time since I posted onto my Blog. Basically, have been trying to get off the earlier note that I used to blog on under "Inatech" to a more "open" topic.

What better topic than this ?

Was not at all surprised to hear of this discovery. Infact, the only question I have is - why now ? ie. Why is the press release timed for now ? Esp. the bit related to to how Afghan soils contain a LOT of Lithium ?
Maybe post the BP spill, US is really (I mean seriously) looking for a new-age Saudi ?

Over the last few years, I've read time and again how a new 'find' of natural resources spurs a frenzy of social unrest. Even in India, my guess is that a significant portion of the problems related to the insurgency (Naxals) is probably related to the proverbial war between development (eg. Mining) and sustenance (Local living).

Imagine the same set, but, from a global perspective ?
My guess is that Afghanistan has another set of challenges coming through - this time, it may actually be more difficult.

Will red tape hit Angel Investing in the US of A ?

I read with a sense of Deja Vu' this morning, the post in a few VC sites about the new "Dodd's Bill". I think this is going to impact the angel / incubation business very adversely in the Valley. While we folks in India are used to working with similar set of restrictions and have gotten used to this - not sure if the valley can support such levels of compliance. In short, we are going to say "goodbye" to back-of-the-napkin deals & termsheets.

There are 3 specific clauses to the bill :
     The bill would require startups raising funding to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and then wait 120 days for the SEC to review their filing.
     The bill raises the wealth requirements for an “accredited investor” who can invest in startups — if the bill passes, investors would need assets of more than $2.3 million (up from $1 million) or income of more than $450,000 (up from $250,000).
      The bill removes advantage of federal pre-emption allowing angel and venture financing in the United States to follow federal regulations, rather than face different rules between states.

Street Art : The Bangalore model is spreading !

I was in Chennai last week and was very pleased to note that some stretches of the roads are getting a set of street art (ala the paintings along roads in Bangalore). I saw some work on the Dr. Radhakrishnan Salai and it looked very nice :-)

I hope this is a model that gets replicated very quickly across all other Indian towns. It is certainly a welcome change to the numerous bills pasted on the walls. I'd rather look at the painting of a "pile" in a monument than an ad for "piles" !

My other fond hope is that these paintings do not get plastered with the various political posts / movie posters etc. Who knows - this may be the precursor to getting to a NO PAAN spitoon areas also ;-)

Moving Individuals to the cloud : Is this cirrus or nimbus ?

Just learnt that Google has announced public APIs for Google power meter.

What this does is allows individuals to setup on the cloud (google personal home) a ticker that will get a set of feeds from individual power meters. This feed allows individuals to track their power consumption. The question is - will this work ?

I guess it makes sense in those cases where the utility provides a feed directly to google / cloud. It also makes sense when devices start to get intelligent and transmit power info to the web - but, that IMHO is still a looong way off ?

So, why bother ?

I actually think that this is a neat way to get people to incorporate the "talk / transmit" capability into devices. Just like most telecom / IT equipment comes with a "call home" option, my guess is that the structure will allow for this to reach out on the web.

Will all these devices talking together make it a chatter ?
Hmmmm.......

_________Google Powermeter image from their website________

The fire @ Carlton Towers in Bangalore : A tragic tale of un-preparedness

I watched with a feeling of shock, horror and plain helplessness the tragic set of events unfolding on the television. For someone who has gone through a similar evacuation exercise a few years ago, it was painful to see that there has been NO improvement / NO LESSONS learned whatsoever !

It was pitiful to see people jumping out of the 7 floor structure with the fond hope of hitting a small square held by groups that was to act a safety net !

Where are the high rise fire tenders ?
Where are the jet pumps for targeted fire fighting ?
Where are smoke masks with torches that would allow people to enter and rescue ?
Where are the external breathing apparatus that is so crucial in providing oxygen ?
Where is the fire lane that would allow easy entry and access ?

Unfortunately, there probably will be no answers today, this week or next and in a month maybe this city will forget and move on ?

For once, can we, the citizens of the city please get together to correct this apathy ?

Am signing off - a very disturbed individual..........

NRI's to get the right to Vote : How much of an impact is this ?

I've seen several posts on this subject over the last few days. Some are aghast at the thought - simply because they've seen or have been subjected to "sermons" from their NRI friends and family that illustrates all the "ills" of their homeland. Some are thrilled as they think they can be a major influence. If you ask me for my opinion - the first reaction is that of confusion and the question "why" ?

Why do we think this is a good option ?
Is it because this gives a "feel good" factor for the NRI ? Do the small number of votes really matter when it comes to a decision ?
Is it because this will allow the government to raise a "tax" at some time in the future ? I mean, if you want to exercise your franchise - should you not pay a small bit to the country that gives you this franchise option ?

In all probability, there is a much simpler answer to the question "why ?" - maybe it just DOES NOT make a difference ?

My first reaction to the book - Connected : The surprising power of socal networks

Last week, I got a surprise pack from my friends over at Accel (a venture capital company). In the package was the book by Christakis & Fowler which as a best seller for 2009.

The book is titled Connected : The surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives. A long title, but, will probably be referred to as they do in their website connectedthebook.com

I think this is an extremely well researched book in the sense that there has been an attempt to cover linkages / social networks from both a behavioral aspect and a media / tool aspect. While some of the analysis result seems to be quite obvious (maybe my Asian - relationship oriented thought bias is showing), some are quite revealing.

There were 2 major "current news" items that kept flashing in my mind while reading the set. The first being the H1N1 scare that most of India saw a few months ago with the media feeding in a frenzy for the first few days. I guess saner minds prevailed over the news channels from day 3 of transmission.

The second news item was much more recent and "topical" - this was the scare in a textile unit where people were driven off to the hospital complaining of dysentery and stomach ailment.

Apparently, there was no problem with the water (infact, most people I know tend to carry water today), there was no food distributed and the air was "normal" ?. We are not talking about a couple of people here - the total was closer to about 70 individuals with only one being retained in the hospital for a "real" cause ?

Seemed like a touch a "socially" stimulated disease ?

Catching up in 2010 : More frequent posts ?

Last week was filled with some news that means I need to catch up with a single post with 3 sections.....
The first news-item that I wanted to comment and blog on was related to Justice Santhosh Hegde winning the Times, man of year for Bangalore. Well deserved indeed.

I think that the public is tiring of the political and other value loss and is looking for "role models". Justice Santosh Hegde aptly fills this void. While I'm sure there are a lot of people around who'd like to emulate him but will come up with tons of excuses as to why they cannot do so / or why their line of work will not allow them to do so, he'll continue to be an example of the axiom "Walk your talk". Kudos to him for highlighting what is possible and more strength to his cause.
___________

The next 2 posts are related by death :-( ie of Dr. Vishnuvardhan and C Ashwath.

IMHO, Ashwath's death was overshadowed by the the "noise" around the demise of Kannada theatre's "Sahasa Simha". I've been a fan of both, but, was hurt with the repeat madness that the cities showed. Am convinced that this is not a "fan" or "following" issue, but, larger motivation as a mechanism to hoodlum-hood.

It is aptly evident from the fact that most of these are an urban phenomenon. None of the millions of fans in the rural belt have gone out and created trouble. They've chosen to pay homage in a personal manner and have behaved in a much more dignified manner. I'd like to think that their silent tribute is more meaningful ?

RIP gentlemen : You can rest in peace with the knowledge that your volume or work will remain as a testimony to your talents. You've certainly left deep footprints in the sands of Kannada's time