Frames of Reference

Q: What does Amit Varma have in common with Obama?

2009-11-12T23:25:00.009-05:00

A: Both decided to enlighten audiences with their insight into the 'indicators of fucked up life' of their countrymen.

Obama had famously claimed that small-town Americans "cling" to guns and religion and xenophobia out of bitterness over lost jobs.

Amit, following in Obama's footsteps, has explored the reason why Orissa villagers find hope in superstition, take up guns and join Naxalism.

Ok, my question to you: What does the Jagannath Turtle have in common with Naxalism?
Answer: They are both indicators of the fucked-up lives of so many of the people of rural India. There is no development, there is little chance of upward mobility, there is often no law and order. Their lives are so screwed that they actually derive hope from a turtle that they think is Lord Jagannath. How sad is that?

Amit's explanation of Orissa villagers' superstition is even more sublime than Obama's:

But while we crush the Naxalites and go WTF over the turtle worship, it makes sense to remember why people give in to such madness. It is because of how abject their lives are. And if we don’t sort that out, we’ll have more batches of Naxalites after this one is dealt with, and more turtle gods. (A leech deity makes much more symbolic sense, actually.)

So, according to Amit, the Orissa villagers are superstitious because of lack of development, abject poverty, no chance of upward mobility due to lack of opportunity, absence of law and order etc.

Now some of us - the types who constantly mistake correlation for causation, might ponder over questions, such as, why, despite not lacking any of the aforementioned afflictions such as poverty, lack of opportunity etc. do most urban Indians follow all sorts of superstitious practices; from idol worship to numerology? Why do toasted bread slices bearing Jesus like silhouette sell for thousands of dollars on eBay in the US, a developed country which to my knowledge provides law and order and opportunities for its citizens?

May be it is a trait peculiar to us, who mistake correlation for causation, to wonder, how, without any mention of Naxalism in the Reuters report, did Amit find out about Naxal activity in the area. Especially when the map of Naxal affected districts clearly shows that the eastern coast of Orissa (Kendrapara is just northeast of Bhubaneshwar) is not affected by Naxalism. It may be that those of us who do not go about applying a standard template to every situation and spit out posts, wasted our time by pausing upon reading that the villagers thought of the turtle as Lord Jagannath; not some tribal God. We obviously should not have read, let alone trusted, those loony leftist bleeding heart blogs when they told us that Naxals are mostly tribals who do not worship the standard Hindu Gods.

I think, however, my skepticism is getting the best of me. Being an atheist and a rationalist shouldn't I be heartened by Amit's logic? If the reason "why people give in to such madness" is how abject their lives are, then all we have to do is wait for material prosperity. It is sure to wipe out the scourge of religion and superstition once and for all.

No?

A less flippant post

2008-10-16T00:14:00.003-04:00

This post is my response to Gaurav's and Kunal's comments on Kunal's post on Amit Varma and Ottoman.

From a first principles stand point I suppose everyone opposes the bail-out. You will be hard pressed to find a person out there who says that he/she supports the bail out cheerfully and without any qualms. It is not hard to discern that whichever way you look at it, the taxpayers are being dished out a raw deal here.

Most are in a catch-22 situation. Or a better analogy would be a Vikram Vetal situation. While they shoulder the burden of the Wall Street fat cats' greed and ponder what their response should be, Wall Street keeps whispering sinister questions in their ear about whether Damocles' sword will fall on them if they cut off the financial thread with which it is hanging on. However, if the taxpayer bails them out then it is a moral hazard and then the Vetal is free to do his shaitani again. Maybe not immediately, but when the memory of the crisis has receded. So you have taxpayers cornered. Not everyone knows economics and its not just lobbyist and Wall Street playing doomsayers but a variety of experts from varying ideological spectrum who think this is a once in a century crisis.

The point I am trying to make is it is futile to talk about this from a first principles standpoint. If we start arguing from that angle then it precludes all discussion. You guys win hands down. Because you will always talk about how things would have been different in an ideal situation where markets were truly free. That has never happened, hadn't happened leading up to the crisis and as such an honest discussion about whether or not your ideology's prescriptions were at least partially responsible for the cause of the crisis can never take place.

A doctor cannot make the argument that the drugs he prescribed to treat a patient for healing a wound did not work because the patient also had diabetes. Especially given that the patient had informed him before hand that he is a diabetic. Similarly, in spite of knowing the areas where there was or there would have been government intervention and voter pressure, if you prescribed policies that proved to be ineffective then you have to accept responsibility.

You cannot shy away from the fact that these were one of the best years for your ideology in terms of favourable public opinion, political muscle and policy backing for your ideological prescriptions. Even if the prescriptions weren't implemented enough to your liking, they were still incrementally better implemented than in previous years. So now to take umbrage under the guise that it was no fault whatsoever of the ideological prescriptions since they were not implemented in their entirety is disingenuous.

When these prescriptions were being advocated you guys knew exactly what the situation on the ground was. It was not as if libertarians were unaware of Fannie and Freddie's existence or the CRA or for that matter of government's agenda for promoting housing for the poor before Greenspan decided to keep the interest rate low or let the markets mess up before any corrective action could be taken. This, purportedly, to avoid unintended consequences. (As an aside. Could you explain why you think the unintended consequences of not increasing interest rates or letting the housing bubble inflate despite knowing that it is a bubble would have been worse than the unintended consequences of letting the market take its own course and now spending trillions to repair the mess. And if possible try to avoid getting into a discussion on how it is impossible to know a bubble before it bursts. There were many voices who were talking about this bubble before it burst.)

Regarding deregulation: Yes, it isn't entirely deregulation's fault as Democrats are shouting from the roof tops. But to deny that lack of regulation played no role in the crisis is not true either. Libertarians keep harping about the fact that banks are the most regulated entities. This is a complete non-sequitor. The crisis didn't happen because of the everyday regulated business of the banks. Rather it happened in the derivatives and credit default swaps markets which were entirely unregulated. There is absolutely no way of knowing what these contracts are, how many of these are there, what their value is, or whether the contracts could be fulfilled. All these because there was no regulation. Isn't transparency in contracts better for capitalism? Or has the defensive position you have to adopt wiped out the memory of your agenda to save capitalism from capitalists?

Another place where you guys need to take a hard look at is the idea that market players can come up with a self-regulatory mechanism because it is in their interest to do so. Well, the rating agencies were supposed to do just that. But we all saw what happened when Moody's and S&P gave triple A ratings to risky mortgage backed securities. So what happened to the libertarian argument here?

Just like Democrats are blaming deregulation free marketers are blaming Fannie and Freddie. Don't even get me started on the whining about how government forced sub-prime lending. Obviously, the banks didn't lend money to the poor out of any government pressure or out of any benevolence. They thought they could earn a hefty profit through sub-prime lending since the risk would be distributed owing to the trading in mortgage backed securities and derivatives.

I don't get it. I mean how can Freddie and Fannie be solely responsible for this crisis? Partly, yes. They did add fuel to fire by starting to deal with sub prime mortgages since 2004 on the suggestion of Congress. But essentially they were buying up mortgages from the banks, freeing their capital and then bundling a lot of these mortgages together and selling it in the secondary market where Investment Bankers and Hedge Funds were placing speculative bets on their prices. In fact, Fannie and Freddie claim in their defense that it was not just the Congress but market conditions that forced them into dealing with sub prime mortgages because the mortgage lending firms like Countrywide were threatening to take their business lock stock and barrel to the investment bankers who were more than willing to buy sub-prime mortgages and bundle them their selves and sell it in the secondary market. This would have meant a loss in profits for Fannie and Freddie who were answerable to shareholders despite being quasi government entities. It was the secondary market, and the swaps market that was built upon this secondary market to cover the risk of a credit event that has frozen the financial pipes. Fannie and Freddie had an agenda which was known to everybody in the market and that was to inject capital in the markets and aid affordable housing. The fact that they had a government guarantee was known. Yes, they distorted the market. But I would assume the market to be efficient enough to warp around this distortion and in fact leverage it to their advantage. There are several different equilibriums/equilibria where the markets can stabilize, right? This is exactly what the markets had been doing from 1968 since the formation of Fannie Mae. Why wasn't there a crisis before this. It wasn't Fannie or Freddie's agenda that changed but the market's gambling on the securities and the derivatives that changed the game.

One other gnawing issue is banker's compensation. Even Martin Wolf and Raghuram Rajan are writing about how the way the industry designs its compensation plans and bonus, results in perverse incentives to take the kind of short term risks that lead to crises like these. The banks know this is a problem as this has led to many crisis in the past. However, markets haven't come up with self-regulation to correct this. Banks have never changed their pay structure. Partly because if one bank does it and the other bank doesn't, the competitor might steal their best talent. But weren't the markets supposed to learn from their mistakes? This is a situation where no one wants to go first. Yes, you can say that it is the fault of the governments who keep bailing the banks out each time. But given that this (bail-out of banks after crisis) is bound to happen again and again with no change in the structure of compensation from the banks' side, should we just sit and watch repeated crisis unfold as leftists blame banker's greed and free marketers blame the government bailout?

Gaurav your point about boom and bust cycles would have been well taken had the boom been experienced by the general economy. During the Bush years the middle class wages had stagnated. Of course, middle class did benefit in absolute terms because market innovations led to price declines in most items which might have been considered luxuries some time back. I am not disputing that. But when you have financial elite whose wealth grows exponentially, which instead of trickling down gives a semblance of trickling up while the regular Joe does not see his income rise, it is bound to raise questions about whether there really was a boom. The boom benefitted the rich disproportionately because of Bush's tax cuts which libertarians support. And now you find the regular Joe is having to bail out these same fat cats who enjoyed the boom to avoid a bust for themselves.

The real question I think is whether it is better to digest a slight drop in growth with timely government intervention, despite its obvious inefficiencies and unintended consequences or let the growth be unhindered in spite of warning signs and then let everyone bear a massive hangover even though many didn't even get drunk. You guys' have always argued that the latter approach is better. Now in light of this crises I think the onus is on you to explain how and why?

I never thought I would live to see this day...

2008-10-10T00:43:00.005-04:00

The world economy is plainly in a poor state, but it could get a lot worse. This is a time to put dogma and politics to one side and concentrate on pragmatic answers. That means more government intervention and co-operation in the short term than taxpayers, politicians or indeed free-market newspapers would normally like.

This is from an editorial published by the Economist. Let me repeat, in case you missed. Not the Socialist Worker or the EPW, but the Economist. (this merits a spot on Ripley's believe it or not).

Wow! What next? Amit Varma giving link love to left-leaning economists? Oh wait. Damn!

You know something is not right with this world when the leftists start bothering about spending taxpayer dollars and the free-marketers clamour for government intervention. Heck, even the indomitable free-market Vaikuntha's dwarpals like Chanda, Prachanda, Bhadra, Subhadra, Jaya, Vijaya, Dhata and Vidhata are all silent while the evil governments of the world are looting their maid's money. To make matters worse. Nilu has declared,'Puke is passe.'

Depression looms I tell you. All these ominous signs portend so.

Do credits for Zohan include Eric Cartman or Awesom-O?

2008-06-05T16:34:00.003-04:00

After watching the trailers for Zohan I was reminded of South Park's Awesom-O episode where Cartman, pretending to be a robot, comes up with over 2000 movie ideas featuring Adam Sandler. The premise of the movie You don't mess with the Zohan which has Adam Sandler playing a Mossad agent who fakes his own death in order to pursue his dream of becoming, of all things, a hairstylist in New York, sounds eerily similar to the ideas Cartman comes up for the movie studios:

Awesom-O: Um... okay. How about this: Adam Sandler is like, in love
with some girl, but then it turns out that the girl is actually a ...golden
retriever, or something.

Producer: We'll call it "Puppy Love"!

Awesom-O: Okay, how about this: Adam Sandler... inherits like, a
billion dollars, but first, he has to, like, become a ...boxer, or
something.

Producer: Punch-Drunk Billionaire!

Movie buffs, according to Time magazine, saw in Zohan inspirations from The Big Lebowski and Borat. Which clearly rules me out as a movie buff or redefines them as people with a very elastic imagination.

Vijay Tendulkar's Kanyadaan

2008-05-21T23:29:00.004-04:00

I can't put into words the threat, visceral fear and a sense of dread I felt after reading Kanyadaan for the first time. It is my favourite play by Vijay Tendulkar. The theme is about an idealistic socialist who, having imbibed the values of equality in his daughter, is appalled by treatment meted out to her by her husband who is from a different caste. It shattered my idealistic notions about eradicating caste system through inter caste marriages. The play made me confront my liberal notions in a way that none of conservative opinion pieces written by thinkers ever could. I wrote the following comment on Aniruddha's blog where I have been a constant nuisance for the past couple of months.

Those of you have read this play and have a different take on it please feel free to comment on it. I would love to hear about your perspective on this issue.

Interestingly, my take from Kanyadan was different from yours. Of course, it exposes upper caste Maharashtrian hypocrisy. However, for me, the bigger take from the play was that it highlighted the complexities of solving sociological problems through a progressive framework.
The venture of 'engineering' a society and shaping its values so that a moral order compatible with the times can be established is every thinking person's dream. But attempting to accomplish that by disbanding or trying to alter an older cultural framework such as ban on marriage between different castes, does lead to loss of knowledge accumulated by that older culture, however corrupt it may have been, and also results in an indeterminable risk for the person who is a victim/guinea pig for such an experiment because of the exposure to an alien knowledge frame with no prior documentation and acculatarisation to the solution of the problems that such ventures may generate.
I thought the play illustrated this conundrum perfectly without ever taking sides. The upper caste family tried to solve/diffuse the problems through their historical knowledge frame about drinking and violent behaviour while the Dalit youth tried to approach issues in marriage through his learnt/observed behaviour or cultural framework from his impoverished childhood. Since both families had no recourse to a third knowledge framework to solve, mitigate, issues arising out of an inter-caste marriage, apart from a feel good, 'everyone is equal' kind of socialist framework of the father, which might sound great as rhetoric but never gives a concrete path to resolve the problems that crop up for the unfortunate guinea pig in such experiements.
The play, I thought, tried to highlight these complexities and I always am fascinated by Tendulkar's ability to go far beyond the typical Maharashtrian upper-caste acculturisation that he himself must have underwent and write stories so raw and visceral that one would have expected from someone like Namdeo Dhasal who probably has borne the violence that Tendulkar explores so unnervingly in his plays.

Gandhigiri, Puneri thaskyat

2007-06-02T14:40:00.000-04:00

This news from Pune had me in splits.

After being under construction for several months, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has finally re-opened the concretised stretch between Karishma building and Karve statue for traffic on Thursday. Last month, activists and residents of the area protested in a unique manner by cutting a cake as the repair work on Karve Road entered its third year.

(Unfortunately the comment section of this blog is not working since the switch to the new blogger and any comment exchange can only happen through email for the time being. Sorry about the resulting lack of conversation)

If he did it...

2007-01-18T23:53:00.000-05:00

Gaurav's post on Obama reminded me of an anecdote that my boss once shared with me. This seems to be eons away, now that I am into IT. However, at the time when I was mingling with reporters who were into congenital name dropping, it was no less than a scoop. In his post, Gaurav wrote about the infamous Clinton quote about his tryst with marijuana.

Remember when Bill Clinton was asked about smoking pot in college, he said he did, but did not inhale. Obama was asked the same question. he said he smoked pot... and also inhaled, because that is the whole point of pot.

Refreshing honesty at best, or impression of honesty at worst.

I am not a great fan of Obama as a presidential candidate. Despite that, I do admire his candor with respect to his substance 'abuse,' if it may be called so. I guess he is in a better position than McCain, who, in my opinion, has gambled way further by supporting Bush's decision of sending additional troops to Iraq. But, I digress.

I wanted to share something I know about Clinton and his 'smoked pot but did not inhale it' quote. I was working for United Press International (UPI) then (fall 2005) and our chief editor Martin Walker, former international editor for Guardian, told us that what Clinton said was absolutely true. Walker was Clinton's room mate at University college, Oxford and the pot incident happened in front of him. He told us that Clinton was allergic to smoke, as it induced him to cough violently. Clinton would go out of the room if anyone even smoked a cigarette. The pot incident was actually a dare. He said that it was sort of a ragging incident. Walker and a couple of his friends used to tease Clinton and call him a pussy 'cos he didn't smoke and dared him to try pot at a party. It was then that Clinton actually smoked pot. According to Walker he coughed violently and did not inhale it at all.

I haven't read Clinton's biography and don't know whether he mentions about this incident. I also know this sounds hard to believe given Clinton's propensity for lying, especially his lying under oath about sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. But Walker had no reason to be his PR agent, especially in front of a bunch of newbie reporters. He, in fact, told this anecdote in the tone of 'landga ala re ala' (the boy who cried wolf) story. He was talking to us in the context of Dan Rather's piece on 60 minutes about George Bush skipping the Draft and then recollected how a congenital liar like Clinton was actually caught on the wrong foot, not for his other nefarious deeds, but, unfortunately or fortunately, for something he was actually being truthful about.

I suppose I haven't got over the penchant for name dropping myself and hence the post. I seek solace in the fact that if name dropping was my motive, then talking about my interviews with Sanjay Dutt, Suniel Shetty and Padmini Kolhapure would have garnered my blog more attention, ;)

Jaan jaye par shaan na jaye; modern day Nero-giri

2006-07-11T15:07:00.000-04:00

Had anyone taken a MMS of Arun Patnaik - Joint Commissioner of Mumbai Police's conduct after the Mumbai blasts, it would have been more iconic and symptomatic of police apathy than this accompanying photograph. During times of crisis, precisely when swift police action is of utmost importance, these guys are busy, protecting of all things, their own clothes from getting wet.

According to an CNN-IBN eyewitness account, Patnaik wouldn't get down from his official car and inspect the scene of the blasts, till a umbrella was provided to him. This wasn't the only insensitive thing this chap did in the day. Gaurav, who did an amazing job with his timeline, wrote that Patnaik was busy playing the blame game on Television immediately after the blasts.

On CNBC, Patnaik was quick to shirk off blame saying security in trains is the responsibility of Railway Police. This when the first priority should have been getting as much information, forensic as well as otherwise, possible from the crime scene.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at this insane display of arrogance, insensitivity and vanity amidst such a major tragedy. The citizen journalist's eyewitness account on CNN-IBN spoke about how ordinary people who were themselves victims of the blasts were helping each other spontaneously and in contrast this JCP was warming his arse.

I would like to specially thank the Mahim Zone ACP Desai and his team. He was very active in the whole operation, although he is very aged but still actively got involved in the rescue operation.
I would also like to mention Arun Patnaik - Joint Commissioner of Mumbai Police. He didn't get down from his official car, till a umbrella was provided to him.

Local boys from the area did a good service of maintaining the traffic. I waited till the bomb squad arrived, and then a police tape was put around the blast area.

This reminded me of two similar and equally disgusting instances of authority figures who were fiddling while cities burnt around them.

First, the person in the accompanying photograph, K Kumaraswamy - JCP Vadodara who during Gujarat floods in 2005 who should enter record books for ensuring that his pants didn't get wet in waist deep waters.

Second of course was Brownie. FEMA chief Michael Brown was busy discussing his wardrobe during the crisis caused by Hurricane Katrina.

"My eyes must certainly be deceiving me. You look fabulous and I'm not talking the makeup," writes Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of public affairs to Brown on 7:10 a.m. local time on Aug. 29.
"I got it at Nordstroms," Brown writes back. "Are you proud of me? Can I quit now? Can I go home?" An hour later, Brown adds: "If you'll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you'll really vomit. I am a fashion god."

What are these people high on? Asli tidik bharte na hey asla vachlyavar... Shapath!

You are most welcome...

2006-06-15T20:22:00.000-04:00

The title of course is in anticipation of expression of gratitude on your part. I found this clip of the ultra-hilarious Mahabharat scene from Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron through Naveen's blog yesterday.

This easily ranks as one of my favourite movies for its satirical take on the 80s construction boom and the Antulay cement scam exposed by Indian Express under Arun Shourie and his batch of special correspondents (one of whom I know personally).

So without further ado just LYAO!

Tag!

2006-06-08T12:28:00.000-04:00

I have been keeping away from the blogosphere for a while. Been a bit busy with a lot of stuff and am sure this is a temporary break. Gaurav has tagged me invoking my only name to fame, my long sentences. So here I am pandering to the expectations.

I am thinking about – naveen job laglelya roommate la aaj ratri New York City chya kuthlya club madhe kapayche. For non-marathi readers… I am thinking about which hip New York City club would be the best to extract a party from my roommate who just got a job.

I said – Even after not updating the blog for almost 2 months friends still visit your blog even tag you. So Chetan… pretty please with sugar on top, BLOG!

I want to – be in her arms.

I wish – I was as intelligent, prolific and well-read as Ashutosh, as witty as Gaurav, as insightful as Ravikiran, as funny as Greatbong, as sarcastic as Gawker, as focused and experienced as Naveen, as easy-going as Suyog, as full of conviction as Gautam, as principled as Patrix, as sincere and honest as Krishna, as literary as Dubious, as creative as Amit, as wise as Sir and as questioning as Sanket. I also wish my writing exuded warmth like Shruthi’s writing does, was as lucid as Dilip’s, was as simple and uncomplicated as Manasi’s writings, was as fair and straightforward as Neha’s, as exciting as Mridula’s travel posts, was as lawyerly as Red’s, as fiery as Vulturo’s and as sensitive as Vikrum’s.

I miss – Vaishali’s cheese onion uttappa and SPDP, Savera’s medu wada sambar (sambar main dubake), Manmeet’s Chhole Bhature, Bedekar and Shree’s Misal, Sujata’s Mastani, Athavale dairy near New English school Ramanbag’s kharwas and the khuskhushit hot batatawadas wadas at Prabha raswanti griha beside it, Beleshwar’s (on canal road near Prabhat road) bhel, strawberry colada of CCD, Marzorin’s sandwiches and Burger King’s chicken burger, Kayani’s shrewsberry, Chitale’s bakharwadi, sabudana wada near Shaniwarwada, Wadeshwar bhavan’s idlis and the sugarcane juice in front of it near Kelkar Museum, bread patties from Tilak on Tilak road near Behere classes, the kulfi faluda from Poona Colddrink house near Tilak Smarak Mandir, the malai topped lassi from Dilliwala dairy near market yard, Pav bhaji and dabeli from n number of places, and I never thought I would say this but I even miss the Chinese food at the University tapris. Nostalgia is not always depressing I suppose. ;)

I hear – the sound of ‘that which ceases to exist when it is uttered and which breaks no sooner than it is spoken.’ Hint: A song by Simon and Garfunkel.

I wonder – What is the motivation behind doing what he does and that too in such an obnoxious manner? Whether there is an underlying philosophy behind Nilu’s writings, or is it just random mischief and tomfoolery, whether his writings are an attempt to crystallise his master morality or is it just about increasing his page rank? Is it a case of ‘knows the cost of everything and value of nothing’ or is it precisely because he knows the value of everything that he affords himself the luxury of nitpicking about the costs?

I regret – that I don’t regret my habit of procrastination.

I am – therefore I think.

I dance – to no one’s tune; unfortunately that includes my own tune as well.

I sing –only during antakshari where others are least bothered about listening to your voice.

I cry – out aloud when I miss a simple shot in carom or on the pool table.

I am not always – discussing politics and current affairs.

I make with my hands – tasty batata wadas.

I write – in an illegible handwriting.

I confuse –condescension with a non-existent word condescendation. ;)

I need – friends who live on the edge, and are a little insane as much as I need warm sensible and rooted friends.

I should try – and be judgmental once in a while, look at the world in black and white, not to be philosophical about events concerning me personally.

I finish – not a single task I undertake. And therefore I wont tag anyone else and leave this tag unfinished.

P.S. : My blog is currently being inundated with spam and therefore the comments are on moderation. However rest assured that all vile comments will find their place in the sun.

First personal post

2006-04-10T18:33:00.000-04:00

I moved to Jersey City this weekend. That was one of the reasons for the break in blogging. This almost feels like I am back in India. I am staying at this dingy place in the basement with three garbage bins right in front of the door and even found a Manickchand packet on the sidewalk. I had khasta kachori chatfor snack in the evening. Also for dinner at 12:30 in the night we had gone to a place called Baba Hut that had wooden benches and arrangement was just like those Amrutulyas where hostelites have tea in Pune. I was watching Aaj Tak which was playing a show called Subah at 9:35 a.m. India time with about half an hour devoted to fashion news. Seems like Aaj Tak audiences like to watch anorexic models while having breakfast, probably to feel guilty and not overeat. What a benevolent gesture on part of Aaj Tak. But all of the above were not responsible for making me feel like I was back in India. It was because I spent last night in darkness when while attaching a new bulb the fuse blew. First time since my coming to US I experienced what was an everyday occurrence in Pune.

Another thing that made me feel absolutely at home was last night at 12:50 a.m. when I my room mate overheard my call asked me whether today was my ‘Happy Birthday.’ I smiled as I was reminded of friends asking “when is your Happy Birthday’ when they wanted to know my birth date. So Jersey City gave me a nice birthday gift by inspiring reminiscences that made the dark boring night so pleasant with warm memories from India.

Wimpy liberals and strong conservatives stereotype turned on its head

2006-03-22T19:17:00.000-05:00

Drudge Report linked to a funny story today. A study has found that whiny insecure kids who run to the teacher with complaints grow up to become conservatives while confident, resilient, self-reliant kids grow up to become liberals. This turns the wimpy liberal/strong conservative stereotype on its head.

The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young
adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with
ambiguity.
The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging
loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls
were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeet! Of course, as with everything that sounds sweet to the ears there will always be caveats, which will ask you to take the news only after adding salt that will spoil the sweet taste. For instance the study is limited to the Bay area, the sample size isn’t representative of the whole country yada yada yada. The study does not mean that nursery school teachers in the conservative Red States are cursed with classes filled with little proto-conservative whiners.

Another way of saying it is that self-reliance predicts statistically about 7
per cent of the variance between kids who became liberal and those who became
conservative. (If every self-reliant kid became a liberal and none became
conservatives, it would predict 100 per cent of the variance). Seven per cent is
fairly strong for social science, but it still leaves an awful lot of room for
other influences, such as friends, family, education, personal experience and
plain old intellect.

Those caveats can be brushed off by liberals by saying that they are like the warnings you hear after drug ads. Do not take the pill if you have liver problem of heart disease. Common side effects are mild and may include diarrhea and vomitting etc. That stuff is supposed to be ignored while regaling in the pure mellifluous flattery that this study is, if you are a liberal.

The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into
bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests.
[…]
...insecure kids look for the reassurance provided by tradition and authority, and find it in conservative politics. The more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives to the way things are, and find liberal politics more congenial.

Chew on that you sissy Charles Krauthammer. I've got to go… There is much boasting to do and friends' legs crying to be pulled.

She would have made Ayn Rand proud

2006-03-20T04:25:00.000-05:00

Some time ago Nilu switched from posting nasty and provocative comments on other bloggers and initiated an interesting discussion. He asked his readers to name their favourite character in Mahabharat and explain the reasons for their choice. Karna was of course excluded because then the topic would have been entirely Karna-centric.

A very interesting discussion brewed in the comment section and a few of the commenters mentioned Gandhari as their favourite. Nilu did a second post asking readers to come up with a character analysis of their favourite women characters in Mahabharat. I was really looking forward to reading about Gandhari as I hadn’t given much thought to her character before this. Unfortunately that post didn’t get much response.

However, his post prompted me to think about women characters in Mahabharat and the first one that came to mind was Ganga. I wouldn’t say she is my favourite, but she is definitely the most intriguing of them all. I still vividly remember how as a kid I felt extremely uneasy while watching the initial episodes of Mahabharat on Doordarshan. Ganga used to take her newborn babies and cast them into the river and return smiling to Shantanu, her husband. I couldn’t fathom the motives and was too young to understand the story completely and felt extremely scared.

As with most Indian mythological tales the story owes its twists to curses. Ganga has promised to help Vasus, who have been cursed to lead the lives of men upon angering Vashishta rishi. She agrees to be their mother and kill them as soon as they are born so that they can return to their heavenly existence without spending time on earth.

Strip the epic of all the mythology/curses etc. and then look at Ganga’s actions. If one overlooks the fact that she drowned her children to help the Vasus get rid of Vashishta's curse, then Ganga comes across as someone who is ruthlessly, unambigiously selfish. Her conditions for marrying Shantanu may put any present-day pre-nuptial agreements to shame.

O king, I shall become your wife. But on certain conditions that neither you nor anyone else should ever ask me who I am, or whence I come. You must also not stand in the way of whatever I do, good or bad, nor must you ever be wroth with me on any account whatsoever. You must not say anything displeasing to me. If you act otherwise, I shall leave you then and there. Do you agree?

She has Shantanu by the balls and despite him being the king, she is the one whose dictats are followed. She definitely knew how to keep a man under her toes. He does not even utter a word as she drowns seven of his children for the fear of her deserting him. This gives you an insight into her complete hold over him. By keeping Shantanu guessing about mystery surrounding her actions, she adds to her allure.

Imagine what it must have taken to be such a free bird for a woman in the era of pativrata naris like Draupadis and Gandharis. In C Rajagopalachari's version, one gets an insight into her motives behind drowning her children. It is sinister to say the least.

"O great king," she replied, "you have forgotten your promise, for your heart is set on your child, and you do not need me any more. I go.

Ganga comes across as someone who is ruthlessly selfish and someone who wont share her love no matter what. No character of Ayn Rand comes this close in their selfish love. In fact, Ganga is the quintessential Ayn Rand character. In a way it can be looked as if she leaves because she realises the king loves the child more than herself and her conception of love has no place for sharing. A truly fascinating woman!

Do contribute your take on women characters in the epic in the comments section, especially those of you who like Gandhari. I am really curious to know which aspects of her character you guys find so admirable.

Cartelian logic: 101

2006-03-15T18:46:00.000-05:00

Chapter 1: Longest leap of faith axiom by Libertarian blogger and renowned Cartelian Aadisht

If you find this advertisement tasteless then you belong to a certain 'leftist religion' that venerates poverty.

But wait! The lesson in logic is not over yet. Did you know that you are also a condescending prick who looks down upon liberalisation, just because you find that Brand Equity ad tasteless? No! It's elementary my dear Watson. Benevolent human beings that the Cartelians are, they enlighten you advertisement-haters about 10 Commandments of your religion they have oh-so-helpfully compiled. Don't you see the obvious logical inconsistency in that position? Sigh!

What would this world have come to had we not had the Cartelians to remind us of our elementary lessons in logic!

Therefore students the next time you decide to find an advertisement tasteless, you better check with the High Council of the Cartel about its stance, unless you want to be derided by them and their numerous 'enlightented' followers and forced to join as members of this ghastly leftist religion.

Update 2: My comments are back online at Aadisht's blog.

Update: Aadisht has clarified his stance here. He only meant to call out the three bloggers he had linked to and wasn't trying to forcibly convert the rest of us who also found the ad offensive. So the charges against him under the anti-conversion law have been dropped. I have many issues with his clarification and have left a detailed comment there. Those interested may read it there.

Apology: Drunk as I was in my zeal to score cheap debating points I saw things which were never there in the first place, I must apologise to Aadisht for misrepresenting him. He never called anyone a 'leftist fool.' I have said he did while responding to Kya yaar tu bhi in the comments section of this post. I have removed the following line from the post. You illogical dumbos, don't you understand that you cannot hate that ad and yet profess to be in favour of liberalisation. I very clearly misunderstood and unintentionally misrepresented him on this one.

D.C. bloggers' meet

2006-03-13T07:59:00.000-05:00

The Washington DC Bloggers Meet held in the food court of Union Station was a grand success. And if you are brushing this off as an expected statement coming from a not-so-famous blogger going gaga after meeting veteran popular bloggers, take your news straight from Greatbong himself. Even he concurs about the meet's success. In fact the first sentence is his quote. And no, this time round he is not being sarcastic!

From left: Sunil, Ujval, Michael, Arnab, Chetan, Ravikiran, Piyush and Arzan (click to enlarge)

The meet started at 12:00 p.m. but I got there horribly late even for someone swearing by Indian standard time. But it paid off. I got the best seat at the table. With "Happy Birthday" boy Ravikiran to my left, Michael Higgins to my right and Arnab the Greatbong bang in front of me, I ~~felt as if I was at the head of the table~~ had a wonderful time. I sure do hope certain qualities of people you interact with actually do rub off on you. Because if that is true, the quality of writing on this blog is going to hit the fan.

As far as reconciling online personas with real life faces go, my guess about how Ravikiran may be in person went for a complete toss. Going by the short, pithy and insightful sentences explaining serious policy issues in a dispassionate manner on his blog, I had expected him to be a very serious looking guy with a moustache who cracks Mallu jokes with an expressionless face. Apart from the bit about moustache, I was proved wrong on all other counts. He greeted me with a warm disarming smile that had no trace of any pomposity or arrogance, which many people have accused him of online. He said that his objective was to get me drunk so that I start speaking in long sentences and everyone gets to know what actually went into the making of the longest comment. We got to hear the 'You don’t come to the cartel, the cartel comes to you' explanation upon being asked about the necessary and sufficient conditions regarding its membership from one of the most prominent cartelians himself.

While in case of Ravikiran, my online perception of him had tough time conforming with reality, in Arnab's case it was exact opposite. He came across exactly as he does on his blog. Enthusiastic, funny and eager to discuss diverse topics, he is as eloquent while discussing as his writing on his blog. He talked about a range of topics, which included Mithun, his latest post on terrorism and the trolls on his blog. Ganguly posts and their responses and behavioral characteristics of his trolls, who never fail to crack me up with their inability to process sarcasm and their angry-to-the-point-of-frothing-at-the-mouth responses were also dissected.

Michael had done a wonderful job at organisation. Beginning from the choice of the venue to minutiae like table signs, it was obvious that a lot of thought had gone into the organisation. The clinching evidence of course was Ravikiran’s birthday present. Along with a delicious cake with gold coin shaped chocolates on it, Michael had also got Ravikiran flushable wipes to reassure him that not all Americans are crazy and that the market here does offer a choice for those who are worried about America's 'toilet gap' with Japan. Michael regaled us with stories about cricket and the first match he had watched. He has blogged about it. His interest in cricket and his knowledge of the game is awe inspiring.

The most amazing feeling was when I realized that I felt surprisingly at home amongst bloggers whom I had never met before and some of whose blogs I hadn’t even followed. I suppose just the shared experience of blogging and having followed some prominent blogs is enough to feel that connection.

Ravikiran grinning as he shows off his birthday present

I am thankful to Arzan for driving down to D.C. and bringing Ravikiran along with him. I had read Arzan's comments on Sepia Mutiny and loved the image of the bike as the header image on his blog. Arzan impressed me with his enthusiasm. He seemed genuinely upset with US Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) as he recounted his experiences there. He has a blog post comparing Indian Regional Transport Office (RTO) with DMV.

Seema was the sole representative from the other half ;). We discovered that both of us are alumni of the same university. She has studied International Development. Given that there were very few Indians that I met at my university during my time there, it came as a nice surprise to meet an Indian alumna and that too at a bloggers’ meet. Piyush Gupta was the political junkie at the meet. He spoke animatedly about following the due process of law, corruption and sparred with Ravikiran regarding the need for primaries in the Indian political system. You could feel his intensity and passion and desire to do something about the state of affairs in India throughout the meet.

Eswaran, who commented on Ravikiran's blog during the longest comment controversy was curious to see me and Ravikiran interacting together. He semed well-versed with all the happenings in the blogosphere and I was surprised that he did not have a blog himself. He seemed to have followed almost all the blogs I had. Him, me and Arnab got extra time to spend together as we came together by the metro. Yourfan and Yourfan2, the two famous commenters on Arnab’s blog would have reason to be jealous of Eswaran. He stays in the same apartment complex as Arnab.

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to interact much with Ujval, Vinay and the two Sunils. I hope that it happens at the next bloggers meet. Of course I wish to to interact through their blogs.

Thanks Michael and Arnab for organising this event and everybody else who attended the meet. Count me in for any subsequent meets. Finally in Amit’s words, ‘fun did come’ and I had nice time flirting with her at the meet.

Vintage Kya yaar tu bhi

2006-02-05T04:23:00.000-05:00

Since I am still resisting updating my blog professing some important business that has kept me occupied (which is reality may just be a cover for my laziness) I am posting a comment by one of my favourite commenters in the blogosphere... Kya yaar tu bhi. For a brief introduction to this 'hasti' read his comments here and here. This comment was posted on The Other India blog on the post regarding income disparity. The comment policy of the blog reagarding off-topic comments and use of language has probably led to the deletion of the said comment. Since my blog does not have any issues with language and since I think that CEO salaries is one issue that rallies even otherwise right leaning persons, it might be interesting to host a discussion on this topic. So feel free to voice your opinion in the comment section.

Can give you very simplistic US POV ( no inflation etc. )

Say software shop = 100 programmers, 1 Ceo
100 pgmmers work for 1 year @ 50,000$ salary to code product foo.
cost of foo is atleast 100 * 50,000 = 5,000,000 usd
in reality, cost of foo atleast 4 times ie. 20,000,000 usd ( office,pc,bijli,lagaan etc )
now our "lazy ceo" goes to work & identifies a million user US market
per user foo price $100
1,000,000 * $100 - $20,000,000 = $80,000,000 "profit"
so ceo takes that 80 mil, keeps 20 mil aside ( cost of foo for next year ), another 10 mil for r&d, so 80-20-10 = 50 mil.

so
1 programmer = $50,000
1 ceo =$50,000,000
disparity = 1:1000

next year, US market saturated. only 300,000 customers.
300,000 * 100 = 30,000,000
ceo keeps 20 mil aside for foo, 9 mil for r&d, takes home 1 mil.

1 programmer = $50,000
1 ceo =$1,000,000
disparity = 1:20

ceo wife children used to royal lifestyle. they can't stomach huge diff in paychek, so naturally file for divorce, childsupport, alimony…

now our bachelor ceo works twice as hard, spends all day in office.
suddenly one strange socialist country decides to liberalize. our ceo goes into overdrive. schmoozes CM, FM, PM, every bereaucrat & jamadaar of this socialist country paid off.
next day US market india market = 10,000,000

10,000,000 * 100 - 20 mil foo - 10 mil r&d = 970 mil.

1 programmer = $50,000
1 ceo =$970,000,000
disparity = 1:19400

with new riches ceo buys brand new supermodel wife, big bed, lot of sex.
all this is too much for H1B programmer Muchkund Dubey.
Dubey goes to ceo and says, first you make 1000 times my salary, then 20 times, then 19,400 times! I don't like this widening disparity.
ceo says - where it is widening ? sometimes it widens, sometimes it shrinks. it shrank from 1000 to 20, now it increased from 20 to 19,400, next year who knows…
Dubey says, no, no, so much disparity create social instability. i must be paid more to reduce disparity.
ceo says, why, are you doing more work ? did you find new market or did i find it ? did you take risk and form company or did i ? did your wife leave you or my wife ? are you paying child support or am i ? did you bribe CM FM PM or did i ?

Dubey quits in disgust and returns to mera desh bharat.
There he tries very hard to form company. but because he is confused with all these conflicting social implications of disparity etc, his company goes bankrupt on first month payday itself. his employees lift him on their shoulders and throw him out on street to the dogs.

poor muchkund dubey joins some GoI org CSD & writes long long article about widening disparity and simmering social tension. said article done cut paste job on leftist blog and i am commenting for that. meanwhile our ceo makes the remaining 99 employees work harder, saves the dubey salary of 50,000 which is given as pocketmoney for infant baby of supermodel to buy diaper made of soft cashmere cloth.

In Google we trust(ed)?

2006-01-31T07:13:00.000-05:00

This is a tentative post. I have been caught up in something important and haven't been able to update my blog. This piece is a compilation of two comments I made on this issue and will be rewritten properly as soon as I get time. They are haphazard and may be repetitive in parts and incoherent too. My apologies to those of you who regularly visited the blog checking for new posts. Updates should be regular henceforth.

In my book Google is not worthy of scorn being heaped on it. The same media which is criticising Google has no qualms when it compromises with the Chinese government to curry favour. I think more than the action itself, it is the company which did that has outraged people. Somehow Google itself had built this holier than thou halo about it which has now shattered. People are finding it hard to shed their image of Google and find it hard to digest their favourite benevolent geeky boys next door suddenly treading into a moral muddle.

Besides Google is particularly having it hard from both sides of the aisle. The conservatives are worked up because of perceived help to communism(How can anyone in his 'right' mind can call China communist is another issue) As Gawkar in his blogpost said the same conservatives who are crying hoarse about Google aiding commies have no qualms going gaga over Fox news without a trace of irony. Given Murdoch's deals with China which are more acomodative or in fact supportive of the Chinese regime, they have no right to take a high moral ground at all. From my discussions with Suyog it seems the Liberals are outraged because of another issue. They are linking this issue to the fact that our blue eyed boys would never have done anything like this were it not for the evil market forces prevailing on them ever since they have gone public with their IPO. They think somehow the shareholders are holding Page and Brin by the scruff and forcing them to deal with China.

In real world terms whether Google enters Chinese market or not is a non-issue given the fact that whether it entered or not would hardly have made any difference to freedom in China. It was not as if Chinese government was going to wake up one day and lament, 'Oh look! We have deprived our population of so much information through Google because of our repressive policies. Its time we change.' In a globalised economy it is impossible to be consistent and morally right about corporations dealings with countries which how shall we say are currently out of favour. If you really are that outraged by the lack of freedom in China choke their economy till they acquiesce. But that would bring down an economic slowdown everywhere. As a company expands this is bound to happen and earlier we get used to this the better.

Check this essay. It dwells on the topic of companies and moral responsibility beautifully and in an even handed manner. It deals with corporate philanthropical initiatives and tainted money, particularly about Harward University accepting grants from Exxon whose interests in South Africa were construed as abetting the aparthied regime. I think the same logic that the author explains applies to Google's case.

It is the same argument that the payton paper which Suchi pointed out during the Tsunami discussion on my blog. I believe his logic applies more to the Google/China controversy than apartheid which was pre-globalisation. Then there could have been a difference. Now whether google goes in or not is not going to change the Chinese regime's heart. Besides if you want to take a moral high ground about freedom then stop dealing economically with China altogether and be willing to bear the global economic downturn that may occur. After all that is the best way to twist Chinese govt. arm and submit them to accepting democracy.

Why was there no hue and cry when Google agreed to censor Nazi related sites in France and Germany? Also paedophilia is censored in many countries. If one takes a 'there should either be complete freedom or no freedom at all' sort of a moral stance then there should be no double standards and the same yardstick should be applied elsewhere. That is the problem with moral stances always. In a globalised economy you can never get away without being a hypocrite. There will always be one small component that will be tainted. Besides I agree with Brin when he says that little freedom is better than no freedom. And you are discounting the ingenuity of the Chinese citizens altogether. Do you think that they aren't smart enough to coin new terms in place of democracy and human rights and falun gong to talk about the same things secretly? Also Google is not starting blogger and gmail so there is no question of the govt. arm twisting it to extract personal info about a user who has accessed some unwanted data. Also Google is going to have a note whenever the results are censored. Currently google results are censored by the Chinese and the readers may not even realise that they are missing out on something because it is being censored. Whereas once they know that they are being censored at least there is a chance of outrage being kept simmering everytime this happens. Only thing where you can fault Google is that they are going agaisnt their moto of 'do no evil.' But as you yourself have said in your post on terrorism evil is a subjective term. Once even dealing with a communist regime would have been considered evil. But we have seen the benefits reaped by the ordinary Chinese because of this so called 'evil.' And besides a company evolves. It is foolish to expect google to have the same policies as it had when it was a small start-up. That is not hypocrisy, that is maturity and much needed change owing to its adaptation to economies of scale. There will be newer geeks who will form the next Google through a technological invention. Google has now moved in a different league and it has earned its place through fair means without breaking any laws.. Another thing is if and when China becomes a democracy what is Google going to get in return if it stays out. a big zero. Because Yahoo and MSN would have a significant market share by then. Why should Google a corporation lose out to competitors through no fault of its own. It is the responsibility of the govt. and not Google to define the interactions permitted with such regimes. So long as it is breaking no law I dont see a problem.

I am going to make a logically well-argued post. But feel free to point any holes in this one till then.

Mahablogartha: Contemporary Contextualisation of Blogosphere Rants or CCBR Part 4

2006-01-16T01:42:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: This post is a work of fiction. However, resemblance to any person living or dead is not coincidental. They are real people some of them are my friends. I have merrily caricatured them. My apologies to the lay reader. This post is not for everyone and can only be understood and contextually appreciated by those who had followed the unfortunate exchange between two prominent bloggers Hawkeye and Gaurav and the resulting vitriol in the comments section reagarding Crystal Blur's Mahabharat spoof.
continued from Episode 3: Meet the spoofer

Episode 4: Tu tu, main main

Narrator: In the blogosphere, Hawkeye whose real name is Bharath has his own little kingdom with a dedicated band of loyal readers. He claims to worship logic and hate hypocrisy. Once writing a post arguing against support for Ganguly getting a decent exit he went as far as saying, “Anything that focuses on emotion and not logic is stupidity.”

(Hawkeye notices Crytal Blur, Vyasa and Ganpati and eavesdrops on their conversation)

Crystal: I am really worried about this Chetan. He is probably the only guy on earth who writes 2000 word posts and 5000 word comments without a single reference to sex in it! I don’t friggin believe this. And to top it all he titles his post Mahablogartha. Try as I do I cannot find any reference to sex and violence? I am getting worried about our future generations here. He is sending them the wrong message about our heritage.

Vyasa: From what I gather even his love letters must have been filled with essays on political economy. No wonder his girlfriend left him. Poor child. I don’t blame her. Tsk tsk.

Ganpati: Vyasa, we all know you are still a virgin. So stop trying to use Chetan’s example to validate your own status as a single.

Vyasa: For the last time Ganpati, main virgin nahi hoon nahi hoon nahi hoon.

Crystal: Chetan missed so many chances to infuse some much-needed testosterone in the writing. He could have inserted a rain dance sequence when he spoke about water cannons, he could have published the lurid details of a private diary of a feminist, described in detail those nude protestors who fight against fir. Huh! I think I am expecting too much. I mean what kind of a man refers to Pamela without uttering a word about her boob-job! What a pathetic loser! Is he gay?

Vyasa: We don’t have to worry, our version rocks. This sort of writing will only appeal to 35+ demographic. No moolah there.

(Crystal goes ahead and starts typing a comment on the computer)

Crystal Blur says… comment posted on December 28, 2005 6:06AM
Contemporary Contextualisation, my foot. This is a bloody systematic attempt at Contemporary Sterilisation of our sacred lore. In the land of Kamasutra and Khajuraho you are perpetuating rabid ignorance. It is because of stuff like this that Indians think a child was dropped in Kunti’s lap when she was praying. I hope you do realise that you are promoting the Western/Christian concept of stork delivering babies. You are being anti-Hindu and pro-Christian. You offend devout Hindu’s like me. Ugh! Such backdoor Christian apologists.

Narrator: Hawkeye listening to this talk has his knickers in a tight twist by now.

Hawkeye: (addressing the audience) Look at Crystal. Introducing our innocent Ganpati, omniscient God of knowledge, to such blasphemous carnal things like sex. And to top it all she calls herself a devout Hindu! If she was really a Hindu wouldn’t she have known how chaste our Gods are? Take Lord Krishna for instance. I am certain she will twist his sacred platonic relationship with Gopis as some kind of an orgy. Why do people find it so hard to believe that Krishna was being benevolent and merely helping the Gopis carry pots over their heads? Such twisted minds I tell you. And what if Indra did sleep with Kunti and danced with Apsaras and flirted with other Gods' wives once in a while? What is the big deal? It is strictly his private matter. Did she give a thought to how westerners might perceive this? Why do we have to corrupt the innocent and pure westerner’s mind talking about such filthy things like sex. I sense a huge conspiracy here. She is out to denigrate Hindusim.

(Hawkeye goes to type the comment)

Hawkeye says…comment posted on December 28, 2005 6:50AM
To Everyone: As an MBA student I came here to defend free markets but this stupid little blogger called Crystal has raised my hackles. I am not a prude to give a lecture on sanctity and all. But I will give it anyways. Contemporary contextualisation eh? Show me one thing that is contemporary here? Is her series about software or BPO? Is it about moral policing? Is it about Laloo? Is it about IIPM? No. It is about sex! This is made-for-porn-channel material. Since when did sex and porn become contemporary? Does she know we are living in the 21st century?

This is the problem with us forward thinking Hindus who make fun of ourselves. We never level the playing field by making fun of other religions. Therefore on behalf of all Hindus I hereby call for reservations on the basis of religion in the creative writing sector. After all our minorities should not feel left out. So henceforth if an author starts spoofing a book of Hinduism, s/he can only spoof 80.5% of it. 13.4 % of the remaining material should be from an Islamic scriptures, 2.3% from Christianity, 1.9% from Sikhism, 0.8% from Jainism and 1.1% drawn from atheist/agnostic and other sources. Within 80.4% Hinduism there should be internal reservation. None of the Shaivite, Vaishnavite or Shakti sect followers should feel that their Gods are being unfairly targeted more than the others. And while we are at it, the author should ensure that the six Vedic schools are also spoofed equally. Additionally, the number of sexual references while spoofing, should also be proportionate to the demographic mix amongst the Hindus. The same applies to Protestants and Catholics / Sunnis and Shias etc. A committee called NRKD committee comprising of prominent Non-Resident-Knicker Dhari’s will be strictly monitoring the content. And mind you wannabe authors, it’s in your best interest not to get their knickers in a twist.

To Crystal: Jao pahile us religion ka spoof likhake lao jisne poojniya Modi aur Thackeray ko pareshaan kiya… Jao pahile us religion ka spoof likhake lao jisne Dara Singh jaise pyare insaan ke character ko hamesha ke liye Staine kar diya… Jao pahile us religion ka spoof karke lao jispe kiye gaye PJs ne mujhe bore kiya… aur fir.. aur fir Crys main tumhare Mahabharat ko endorse karoonga.

(Hawkeye leaves. Writes a post on his blog calling Crystal stupid, idiot.)

(Gaurav enters the scene and reads Chetan’s blog entry utters a single word Dude! and proceeds to read the comments. He spots Hawkeye’s comment and his face turns ashen. He goes over to Hawkeye’s blog. There 50 of the 53 commenters have already approved of Hawkeye’s reservation idea and denounced Crystal. Gaurav returns all charged up to type a comment on Chetan’s blog)

Narrator: Gaurav was already feeling gheraoed by the socialist revolutionary forces. All this talk about revolution had really rankled him. After Chetan’s long comment bravado any naya-navela blogger would get his 15 minutes of blogosphere flame oops… I meant fame, by attacking the Libertarians. The constant chipping away at Libertarian economic agenda had already got Gaurav’s goat. And Hawkeye’s comment portended that Libertarian social agenda too was being hijacked. All this was too much to handle for Gaurav. In a brash act he decided to take Hawkeye head on.

Gaurav says…comment posted on December 28, 2005 7:33AM
Some people!
A spy from the PMK-Sena-Taliban combine has infiltrated the Indian blogosphere! Don’t be misled by his concern for leveling the playing field and his use of playing field lingo such as ‘stupid little blogger.’ Make no mistake; Hawkeye is here to disrupt our playing field. He is a neo-prude. The difference between prudes and neo-prudes is that while prudes wear parachute-like ‘hava ane de’ style khaki half pants, the neo-prudes’ pants are longer. While prudes are nut-cases, neo-prudes are pesky. How dare he attack Crystal personally! Doesn't he know that only the Cartelians reserve the right to attack others that way? And lastly, who is he to get offended about Mahabharat? It is Crystal's heritage as much it is his. Hasn’t he watched Jaane bhi do Yaaron? (Suddenly becoming nostalgic) Waah! What a film.... In the spirit of the Mahabharat sequence in Om Puri’s voice I say to Hawkeye: Oye! Mahabharat tere akele ki nahi hai, hum sab shareholder hai! (In the original it was Arjun, played by a goggle sporting Om Puri, who says, "Draupadi tere akele ki nahi, hum sab shareholder hai!")And regarding the names you called Crystal I say to thee in Pankaj Kapoor’s voice, “Nalayak, adharmi, durachari, vamachari, bhrasthachari, bol sorry!”

(Gaurav leaves the stage shouting “Jai ho! Crystal jaisi Sati nari ki jai ho!”)

Narrator: Hmm. I wish somebody had said “Shaant blogadhari Gaurav. Shaant!” before he typed that comment. This comment turned out to be the start of a flame war, which reinforced my belief about the concept of kaliyug. Those Jaane bhi do yaaron fans need not sulk. The dialogs did not end here. What followed next had 90% of the bloggers chanting a la Dhritarashtra, “Ye sab kya ho raha hai!”

By usurping the role of blogosphere superhero, Shaktiman and trying to safeguard freedom of speech, Gaurav had taken a serious panga not with Hawkeye alone but with all the self-professed blogosphere ‘Bhakti-maans.’

Narrator: Now before our blogosphere pychoanalysts come and prejudice your view regarding both our protagonists through their comments, let me give you the true story behind their motivations. Hawkeye is not the neo-prude at all. I know, I know what you are thinking about contradicting his own statement about emotion and stupidity. But, hear me out. What if I tell you he was merely posturing… that he was had a strong self-interest/stake preventing Crystal’s series from getting famous. I have read his other posts and I can vouch that Hawkeye is quite an intelligent chap and not your stereotypical NRKD. He knew that if Crystal's popularity continued to grow, the next book under Crystal’s scanner would be Ramayan. And Crystal would need to pick on someone in Ramayan and stereotype the character as gay. Now think of a character in Ramayan who is sensitive, is not afraid to shed his tears, who is caring, is exact opposite of a MCP, in short a gay/metrosexual stereotype. Bingo! Bharath, Ram’s illustrious cousin. Being the smart guy, Hawkeye a.k.a. Bharath had figured out that he would be the butt of gay jokes following Crys' carticature of his namesake. Plus Bharath planned to come up with a Vishishtha Avavaitik take on Mahabharata. Crys’ take from tantric sexual perspective was giving him nightmares thinking about shrinking sales. That why the vicious attack.

Now about Gaurav: Apart from the frustrations mentioned earlier regarding sinking fortunes of Libertarianism, there was a selfish reason behind Gaurav’s outburst. Ever since the IIPM fracas Gaurav had to project a Yudhistira like image of upholder of principles. He was feeling severely constrained as his readers expected him to write just about serious stuff. He saw in Blur’s writings a chance to reclaim the naughty Gaurav. He knew sooner or later the character of Yudhistira would appear in Blur’s writing. Gaurav was smart enough to know that Blur was capable enough to sexy him up a little bit. He knew that by linking from his blog Crys would be beholden to him and would go a little easy on Yudhishtira. Gaurav thought he might even be able to convince Crystal to spruce-up the drab image of Yudhishtira and in the process giving him an image makeover. And therefore his defense.

(Garry a.k.a Hannibal Lecter enters the stage)

Mahablogartha: Contemporary Contextualisation of Blogosphere Rants or CCBR Part 3

2006-01-09T08:43:00.000-05:00

Mahablogartha: Contemporary Contextualisation of Blogosphere Rants or CCBR Part 2

2006-01-08T02:04:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: This post is a work of fiction. However, resemblance to any person living or dead is not coincidental. They are real people some of them are my friends. I have merrily caricatured them. My apologies to the lay reader. This post is not for everyone and can only be understood and contextually appreciated by those who followed the controversy over my long comment against Libertarians and those who have a vague idea about contents of Amit, Gaurav and Ravikiran along with Shivam, Mridula Dilip D'Souza Great bong and Nilu's blogs.

continued from Episode I: Liberterminator 2

Episode II:Comments comments everywhere not a sensible one to read.

(A blog reader who goes by the name Indian or North Indian and who is the star commenter on Greatbong's blog enters the stage)

Narrator: This character has problems understanding meaning of the words such as satire, sarcasm, irony etc. It is a serious mental condition that afflicts a tiny minority who can be easily found in the comment section of Great Bong.

(Indian proceeds to sit on the computer and types his comment)

Indian says... posted on December 27, 2005 9:03 PM
Chetan thinks he knows economy? Economy my foot you should be sent to 3rd grade you oxymoron! Notice how he licks Laloo’s boots there. I bet that is because he is seeking a ticket from RJD. Only Indian politicians must be reading this blog. It caters only to their intellectual level. I bet he is that dickhead Ganguly’s ardent supporter. Some Chetan Chatterjee or something I am sure. A Bengali, Laloo supporter, commie sympathizer and a Ganguly lover to boot! Lord save India.

(TTG enters. @#^#@c &#% %@*# he keep uttering unintelligeble expletives while reading)

TTG says... comment posted on December 27, 2005 9:35PM
What the f***! On some other day I would have ranted but after reading this piece my throat has gone dry out of expletives.

(Seven Times Six enters the blog takes a quick glance at the article, reads skipping 10 lines at a time and then goes on to bang his comment)

Narrator: Chetan is finished now. Seven Times Six has read Atlas Shrugged 42 times and daily recites John Galt’s speech as morning prayer. Looks like this is going to be a lot of fun.

Seven_Times_Six says... comment posted on December 27, 2005 10:13 PM
Ugh. And what exactly is Chetan trying to say? Such backdoor statist apologists with uber ethical conceit! You make my blood boil!!!!! You are out to ruin our nation. Perhaps somebody (Ravikiran/Sauvik?) could start a discussion on some of the implementation aspects of an incentivized NGOisation of India?

(Shivam enters. Reads the comments goes towards the computer for commenting)

Shivam says... comment posted on December 27, 2005 10:13 PM
I am kicked about this Chetan. You have kicked my Libertarian friends real hard there. Now lets see what magical logical fallacy they conjure up to save their skin. And by the way I disagree on one point. Globalisations’ most celebrated baby is those horrid sweatshop call centres. The BHLs may come next. And Chetan I suggest you delete the comment by Indian and TTG. You ought to tell them that D***head and F*** are words fit to be in a urinal not on your blog.

(Wannabe Cartelian makes an entry. Reads the post twice. Occupies the Computer for a long time. Keeps reading all the wikipedia posts on Logical fallacies and after about an hours starts dancing while shouting Eureka! at the top of his lungs.)

Wannabe Cartelian: says... comment posted on December 27, 2005 10:43 PM
It is simple really! You are using the Broken Window fallacy. Just because the BHLs disrupt something and help the economy temporarily does not mean anything. The same money could have been productively used elsewhere. Have you ever come across something called opportunity costs? Ugh! And he thinks he is such a know all!

Wannabe Cartelian: (Singing aloud while dancing as he leaves the stage) I think this is it! I have scored it this time round. I am sure Ravikiran, Yazad or Madman will notice this absolute brilliance of mine in penetrating Chetan’s arguments. I better mug up all those fallacies before I sleep. They may call me anytime now for the interview to enter the cartel. I rock!

(Ravikiran enters with a solemn expression. Takes down a few notes and thinks hard. Then proceeds to the computer to type the comment.)

Ravikiran says... comment posted on December 27, 2005 11:23 PM
@Chetan What recursive caricaturing! Even me, the condescendingest cartelian, don’t tread this far out in my war against the non-cartelians. This is just too much.
@Wannabe Cartelians: At first I thought that Chetan was committing the good old Broken Window fallacy. But a closer reading will make it clearer that he is in fact pointing out the Broken Window fallacy. To be precise, he is pointing out that the GDP calculation fails to correct for the broken window problem. Is Chetan right? No. But which part is wrong and why?
Narrator: Ravikiran goes home and poses this same question on his blog. But three days and four trackbacks later the comment section is still blank. Ravikiran then went ahead and posted the answer and wondered aloud whether his blog traffic had dropped because none of the Cartelians could solve the question or whether one of the Cartelians had transmitted his selective amnesia to others. The Cartelians maintained their stoic silence even when the answer was posted and the comment section there too remained blank.

(Desipundit links to the post. Vulturo does not call this post brilliant rather links it without using a adjective. Titles the post Liberterminator Part 2. A trackback can be seen on the blog)

(Nilu enter the stage sneering)

Narrator: Here comes the maanga. He fancies himself as Karna who lost out his rightful place in the cartel to Yudhistira aka Gaurav. Gaurav earned his nicknameYudhistira because of his insistence on following the Dharma of right to freedom of speech during the IIPM fracas. Not many were happy about his assuming the name of a character from Mahabharat.

Nilu says...comment posted on December 28, 2005 1:23 AM
@Ravikiran: Why did you bother to state the obvious? Why are you beating to death these settled issues?
@Chetan I think I have found a replacement for Raapi finally. Chetan you replace Raapi and will be linked as Puke Fest #1 on my blog.

(Mridula enters, reads the comment and rushes to Desipundit)

Narrator: Mridula loved the post and wondered why Vulturo linking to it via Desipundit did not call it brilliant. She goes ahead and poses this question on Desipundit’s comments. Anirudh arrives there at the same moment and thinks that only Libertarian posts are getting tagged as brilliant. He too posts a comment there complaining about double standards. Vulturo sees the two comments and decides he has had enough of hearing backdoor statist positions for the day and goes ahead to delete the two comments. I think this is getting interesting by the minute.

(Mridula enters again, she looks mighty irritated and quickly types in the comment)

Mridula says... comment posted on December 28, 2005 1:23 AM
Sorry for the diversion everyone. But something has happened at Desipundit. Vulturo has deleted our comments. Here we are reclaiming our legacy and ushering in the revolution and all and this chap has the nerve to go on deleting our comments. Comrades it time to attack!

Dilip D’Souza says...comment posted on December 28, 2005 1:53 AM
@Chetan That post was so Heller like. Reminded me of Yossarian. I think what you said needed to be said. I hope this sensitises the city bred yuppies to think about the downtrodden. I just wish you had also spoken about the economic benefits of preventing slum demolition.

Narrator: There are a few anonymous commenters who have nothing better to do so they keep on entering Dilip’s name on technorati throughout the day and follow him wherever he goes.

(Immediately after Dilip leaves, Anonymous enters, the actor playing the part is wearing a saffron hood)

Anonymous says... comment posted on December 28, 2005 2:15 AM
Look at Dilip. Speaking about Hell and all. Peddling all these Christian concepts at the drop of a hat! And why I ask does he need to talk about the slum demolition. Just because all his favourite Muslims stay there!

(Shivam reenters)

Shivam says... comment posted on December 28, 2005 2:15 AM
@Mridula: Vulturo is my friend and therefore Chetan’s friend too. So it shouldn’t bother if he titles it Liberterminator or This post sucks. About deleting your comments, there ought to be a reasonable explanation and Vulturo is a good boy. Let us not jump to conclusions here shall we?

Mridula says... comment posted on December 28, 2005 2:56AM
@Shivam Yes, just because he is your friend does not give him the right to delete my opinions. And yea I will jump to whatever conclusions I deem fit. I don’t need you or your friend to tell me that. More power to your friendship, may it get you linked at DP for 'directly attacking' cartels again and again. I am going now to warn other comrades that we have a spy amidst us. Ugh! Such backdoor rightist Libertarians!

(Crystal Blur enters along with Vyasa and Ganpati )

to be continued...

Update: Read Episode 3: Meet the spoofer

Mahablogartha: Contemporary Contextualisation of Blogosphere Rants or CCBR Part 1

2006-01-08T00:54:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: This post is a work of fiction. However, resemblance to any person living or dead is not coincidental. They are real people some of them are my friends. I have merrily caricatured them. My apologies to the lay reader. This post is not for everyone and can only be understood and contextually appreciated by those who followed the longest comment in the blogosphere controversy and the subsequent discussions.

Episode 1: Liberterminator II

(Lights are dim. A computer is kept on a table at the corner facing the audience. The back of a relaxed chair can be seen behind the table. Another chair sits bang in the middle of the stage. Using a LCD projector, the contents on the screen of the monitor are projected on the back curtain. An idol of Ganpati can be seen kept in a showcase to the right of the room. A door is present on a wooden frame in another corner and the nameplate reads ‘Indian Blogosphere.’ Chetan enters through this door. Spotlight follows him as he sits on the computer and begins typing)

Narrator: This is Chetan, a newbie to the blog world. He has been sulking for long and suffers from severe inferiority complex ever since his girlfriend left him because of his Libertarian leanings. Yes, my friends this fierce Liberterminator of ours was once a Libertarian himself. His girlfriend however was an animal rights activist and had to be hospitalised as she fainted hearing Chetan’s passionate defense of the livelihood and economic freedom of those involved in fir and Shahtoosh trade. Since then Chetan’s misdirected anger at Libertarianism finds outlet on his blog. Shhh! None of his readers are aware of this background.

(While the narrator is recounting the juicy details of Chetan’s breakup, Chetan is furiously typing on his blog and the audience can see his words projected on the curtain)

Chetan: Ever wondered about the hypocrisy of those chest-thumping Libertarians? No na! How did you guys ever let those intellectual pretenders become so influential? I am quite certain you scrutinized the steps of their proof but couldn't find a chink in their armour. But did you bother to check their given conditions? Arre udhar hi to dhokha kha gaya na India! Their axioms only were incorrect. They chose only the ones that would help them reach the QED/hence-proved-that step fastest. It's another matter that you guys have nothing to show as your own set of axioms apart from your good intentions. But those are enough I tell you. Even simple axioms such as good intentions are enough to pierce through their intellectual armour. Tum log bhi na. They beat you black and blue with their stick of wikipedia posts on logical fallacies. Did it ever occur to you that they themselves might have created those posts? Proof, you ask me? Just look at how they react to any small criticisms of wikipedia and you will get your beloved proof. Humph!

(Chetan is now charged up and all and gets up from his seat and addresses the audience directly. What he speaks appears on the screen on his blog)

Chetan: Now come on all of you who are new to the blogosphere, Come ye all, who are upset that the Cartelians don’t link to your blogs. Join me my fellow bloggers, you, whom they unfairly target. Follow me guys, all of you who don’t understand what the Cartelians say but nevertheless are certain they are wrong. And last but not the least all those got-nothing-else-to-do-but-wait-for-the next-flame-throwing-contest-in-the-blogosphere-types, here is your niravana : -

Friends, Blogans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury the Cartel, not to praise them;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interréd with their bones,
So let it be with the Cartel….The noble Chetan
tells you that the Cartel is ambitious:
If it is indeed so, it is a grievous fault,
And grievously shall the Cartel answer it….
Let us together expose the emperor’s pretense of clothing.

Narrator: Thus began our pompous hero’s journey into the morass of duplicity, sophistry, double standards, crass generalizations and mischaracterizations in the name of arguing for some obscure concept like diversity of opinion.

(Chetan returns to the computer and begins typing a post)

Narrator: Unfortunately, our hero’s popularity fell as fast as it had risen. And this is story of the post and subsequent comments that killed his calls for blogosphere utopia through revolution against the bourgeois Cartel.

Chetan’s Post: The Cartelians always talk about hypocrisy. They love chomping Chomsy, mooring Michael Moore and kicking our Gods of small things. Today I shall expose their intellectual myopia and hypocrisy in the context of leftist intellectuals, environmentalists, human rights activist, animal rights activist, anti-market and anti-globalisation protestors. Henceforth this group will be referred to as BHL (Bleeding Heart Liberals for the uninitiated). Try pinning Cartelians down about who they think is globalisation's most celebrated baby and they will tell you orthogonal things like mobile phones and cable television. Actually, they are lying through their teeth! The coveted title of most celebrated baby should go to the BHLs.

Narrator: (Sneers) I think Chetan is actually taking the blogosphere for a ride. The real purpose behind this post is altogether different. Me thinks he is writing this post in the hope that his former girlfriend comes across it watches him repudiate his Libertarian ideals and takes him back. Tut Tut.

Chetan’s Post: Don’t take my word for it dear readers. Imagine what the global economy would be without the BHLs.
Who do you think keeps afloat the airline industry tottering on the verge of bankruptcy from going bust? Why, the anti-globalisation brigade of course. How? By purchasing tickets to locations such as Cancun, Doha, Brussels, Kyoto and Geneva and that too off-season! Imagine the revenue the airlines generate as these lovers of water cannons come in droves to (enjoy rangpanchami?) err… protest. But have you ever heard these Cartelians acknowledge their contribution? Never. Next time remember that the low airline fare you pay is owing to the benevolence of these BHL’s who have managed to keep the competition intact in the airline industry.

Not convinced? Here’s more…
How do you think these protestors organise? They come from different places across the world/country. How do you think they communicate? Mobile phones and the Internet of course! Now imagine the jump in sales for the mobile companies. Were it not for the protests do you think our anti-market good-intentioned environment friendly BHLs would have ever bought into those unnecessary choices offered by the evil profiteers? And what about Internet advertising? How do you think Yahoo/Google/MSN get their email customers without these guys joining the debate on their groups. They also are forced to use computers thus boosting hardware sales. Self-righteous people that they are, the BHLs are the only ones who pay for their software. Ask the Cartelians whether they use licensed software and they will blame the government for not implementing laws. Shifting the goalposts, anyone?

Still Unconvinced?
Here is the damning proof of their candidature for being the most celebrated babies. The media industry. Arre do you think the industry could have survived one day without BHLs? Were it not for the BHL’s compulsive need to be on camera, how do you think reporters would have gotten their stories. The insensitive parading of the human right abuse victims’ tears by the BHLs is tailor made for the queasy dinnertime visuals during the 9O’clock news. All the sensational issues of the world, all the controversies, shouting in favour of aid for Africa, all the protests, tree-hugging, breast beating all for a good cause; keeping the media industry running. Would you have bought the foreign magazine you never read had it not featured Pamela Anderson wearing cabbage leaves plugging for vegan lifestyle on its cover? All the Rupert Murdochs and Ted Turners of the world have only the BHL to thank for their fortunes.

I am sure by now you are convinced. For those of you who are themselves BHL there is more:
The free market guys only worry about the profits of the big corporations. It is only our dear sensitive BHLs who cater to the small trader. Notice their contribution to the local economy. All the placards they need are built by the humble carpenter. The flags and the confetti are provided by the local storeowner. The local florist gives BHL flowers to plant in a handsome soldiers’ guns. The small shopkeeper in the neighbourhood provides them with Bisleri/Aquafina bottled water. After all, our city bred BHLs have to visit all sort of places and won’t they fall sick if they drink the tap water funded by the result of their lobbying for socialist programs. Mind you, this in no way deters them from supporting our Great Leader Laloo’s attempts at banning cold drink/mineral water sale in trains. Unlike the Cartelians the BHLs can live with contradictions. Ever wondered what courage and commitment to their cause must it take to live a life filled with such glaring contradictions? How can the Libertarians be blind to it I don’t understand? No they are not blind. They have kept us blind with their obscuratist control of the blogosphere. They never have and never will acknowledge the contribution to the GDP by the BHLs. Their mantra of GDP=development has no place for the GDP contributions by our BHLs. So yes, let us reclaim what rightfully belongs to the left of center. We run this economy and we shall regulate it!

Narrator: I bet his girlfriend will take this juvenile ignoramus attempt at finding a common ground as a vindication of her decision to dump him. On a serious note, this post proved to be the last of Chetan. The comment section killed him.

(After that valiant effort at penning the post Chetan leaves the stage with his chest pumped up)

(And now the readers start trickling in on the stage to read his blog. Most readers leave after taking a look at the length of the post. Those who do manage to read halfway are riled enough to comment immediately. They go to the computer table and start banging their comment on the computer as the audience watches it on screen)

(A blog reader who goes by the name Indian or North Indian and who is the star commenter on Greatbong's blog enters the stage)

Narrator: This character has problems understanding meaning of the words such as satire, sarcasm, irony etc. It is a serious mental condition that afflicts a tiny minority who can be easily found in the comment section of Great Bong.

(Indian proceeds to sit on the computer and types his comment)

Indian says... posted on December 27, 2005 9:03 PM
Chetan thinks he knows economy? Economy my foot you should be sent to 3rd grade you oxymoron! Notice how he licks Laloo’s boots there. I bet that is because he is seeking a ticket from RJD. Only Indian politicians must be reading this blog. It caters only to their intellectual level. I bet he is that dickhead Ganguly’s ardent supporter. Some Chetan Chatterjee or something I am sure. A Bengali, Laloo supporter, commie sympathizer and a Ganguly lover to boot! Lord save India.

to be continued..

Update: Read Episode 2: Comments comments everywhere, not a sensible one to read

A tsunami of dilemmas

2005-12-27T17:16:00.000-05:00

Last year after the tragic tsunami I came across the phenomenon of on-campus fund raising in the United States. It exposed me to a whole different ethos. At first I felt queasy at the manner in which the Americans went about raising funds, but over a period of time I began to appreciate their approach better. Yet, one year after, and having seen lot of other responses to natural disasters, I still haven't resolved my dilemmas completely.

After the school reconvened for Spring in January 2005, I was hit with flyers advertising free pizzas for coming to Room 240 at 5:00 pm. The words Free Pizzas were in a large bold font and below that in a smaller font the solemn purpose for the meet was stated. "To organise a comprehensive strategy for fund raising for the tsunami victims."

It had been just four months in the States for me and I carried a lot of baggage in terms of my Indian socio-cultural background. At that time I remember I found it jarring that people had to be induced by offering free pizzas and a soda for the noble objective of raising aid money for the tragic tsunami victims.

I went into the meeting all eager to contribute and help gather more funds. Almost 50-60 students showed up, out of which only 10-12 people participated in the actual discussions. Others were there for the free pizza. (The organisers were clever enough not to open the boxes till the meeting was over) The discussions were mainly about how to go about organising funds. They debated whether a party at the neighbourhood food joint would be more profitable or a party at a neighbourhood bar during the happy hour. In the end they decided to do both. The way these parties generate funds is that people are invited to come in large numbers at the restaurant/bar. The restaurant/bar owner gets a lot of customers at one go and he promises 15-20% of the bill in donation. So more the people having fun and spending, the more the donations collected. Somebody also came up with the idea of hiring a DJ and having a dance party on campus with tickets selling for $30. In one of my conversation with an NRI kid, who was coordinating the effort, she talked about how by taking this initiative she has enhanced her CV and improved her job prospects etc. I am not clear about this but apparently you earn some credits from your school for community service or something. This seemed to be a common thing here.

For me, the naïve 'fresh off the boat' Indian student, this was unbelievable. With my middle class background, the only fundraising I knew of was passing around a tin dabba covered with white paper and 'DONATE' written on it with a green sketch pen. Another form of fundraising I remembered was those embarrassing situations when as school going kids we were given a sheet of paper by Helpage India/Blind Youth Association and went about apartment complexes seeking money for those organisations. We expended all the goodwill we had earned with our neighbours (by not playing cricket on Saturday afternoons while they slept or by allowing their little kids to be part of the apartment cricket team) for this purpose. It was awkward and embarrassing. I used to pray that not every one of them follow the example of the neighbour who had proudly put in the amount of Rs. 2 besides his signature.Somehow my rich friends used to come up with amounts like Rs.1500 with Rs. 1400 donated by their parents, while I could gather only Rs.150. But I am digressing.

So coming from there, it was a huge leap for me into a setting where there were free pizzas and cans of coke just for offering suggestions, where it was ok to talk about enjoying yourself by dancing to raunchy hip hop and drinking alcohol; all for the cause of raising money for those tragic victims who were homeless and crying their eyes out. It seemed to bother no one's conscience but my own that I will be having a wonderful time drinking booze and having good food while the people in my country have lost thousands of their loved ones. I was raised in a home where Diwali and Ganpati celebrations used to be cancelled if a distant relative had died as a mark of respect. I remembered at the time of Bhuj earthquake I was in Fergusson College in Pune and a similar student body had been formed to organise a response. But there were no parties at Vaishali restaurant nor was there any talk of a 'Earthquake Bash' at the local dance club. Talk only centered around bringing more and more people to donate. If I remember right many colleges cancelled their annual college festivals as a mark of respect and mourning.

In India donation has to be associated with sacrifice. Otherwise it becomes meaningless. Newspapers may not carry stories about an industrialist donating 20 lakhs for a cause, but there will always be stories about how a retired schoolteacher with a salary of Rs.2,000 donated his lifetime savings of Rs. 20,000 to the victims etc. Indians empathise with that teacher more than the industrialist whose money actually makes all the difference. The sense of sacrifice is valued more than ruthless utilitarian view of what benefits more in real world scenario in absolute terms

But somehow the students here did not have any such compunctions about not sacrificing anything. They weren't sacrificing anything. If not the parties they would have spent the money at some other bar anyways. The money they were spending was not pinching them in any manner. They faced no such moral dilemmas as I did. And this was what set me thinking. Looking at it from a moral relativistic perspective this just proved that what I thought as moral was not an American's idea of morality. What I considered to be universally valid conscience prick was not universal at all. And when it comes down to it, the funds generated through the parties the Americans arranged, far outweighed any funds I might have collected going around holding a dabba in my hand.

It is the classic quandary of ends and means. If only I disregard the means, and focus on the ends, yes, the American system of fund raising works great. I am forced to acknowledge that. By incentivising fund raising for the youth, the amount earned is just phenomenal. I am not blind to the fact that had it not been for those parties, the donations would have been far less monetarily. So what is wrong about spending on alcohol and having good food yourself if in the end it is all for a good cause? Surely, my going into mourning was not going to help those Tsunami victims at all. They wouldn't know and wouldn't care less if I cried my eyes out for them or went on a fast or if I drank alcohol or ate good food or flirted with a girl on the dance floor. So long as they receive funds without hurting their own dignity in the process, I don't envisage a protest from their side about the source of funds. In fact this idea is brilliant. Everyone benefits. The students were going to spend their Saturday night out anyways. They merely spent it in that particular club. The club owner made a profit regardless. He did not lose any money. If his profit margin was 30%, he got twice the number of customers on a normal day and so in numerical terms his profits were more and so donating 20% of those was no big deal for him as he would have earned a 10% profit regardless. Add to this the 'look good on CV' argument. If by linking fundraising to a PR campaign for the student one can ensure enthusiastic participation, why not? It takes nothing away from the fund raising.

Apart from that, implicit in the idea of going into mourning is lack of spending and therefore loss to the economy. Whereas an American is actually spending and pouring money into the economy and the health of American economy might benefit the Tsunami victim through the invisible hand of the market. So from an economic perspective this is an open and shut case. In fact there was no case here at all. If raising money is the goal that is what should be the focus. So I have to concede that this model is great. Whether it will be replicated in India, I do not know. It is possible. However, a more creative alternative might be finding better ways for incentivising the sense of sacrifice while adopting this model. If one can weave that sense of sacrifice into an Indian fundraising party the revenue might be much more rather than just a consumerist feast.

Bottomline, I am sold out for this American idea for fundraising.

Then what is the word dilemma doing in the headline of this post? I have resolved my compunctions at this 'partying' model of fundraising but am still confused about the implications if this model is stretched any further.

The problem with a morally relativistic perspective is that only your imagination is the limit. Would you be equally comfortable had a brothel in Amsterdam organised a similar fund raising by inviting patrons to spend a night in their brothels? Economically there is nothing wrong. One can argue that an unintended consequence may be that a family man may be tempted to cheat on his wife 'for a good cause' etc. But even then the loss to the world economy by a couple of couples separating is far less than the gains by the revenue generated. The same may be the case about Dawood Ibrahim writing a check of 20 crores for tsunami relief. Would you accept it? Do the ends justify the means in these cases? Should laws of economics alone determine all human decisions? I have not resolved these dilemmas. Feel free to post what you think about this in the comments section.

P.S. Before posting your response do read this article from The Week's anniversary special issue about how Indians think. It captures the Indian mind perfectly and is aptly titled "We are like this only."

Of bats, balls and corporate brains

2005-12-21T18:44:00.000-05:00

Guys, how many times have women accused you of thinking from the crotch? A new study proves that their question wasn't way off the mark. There is indeed a strong correlation between balls and brains. Scientists have established an inversely proportional relationship between the size of balls(testes) and size of the brain. In short the bigger the brain, smaller the balls and vice versa.

The December 10 issue of the Economist carried this article under the section animal behaviour. The scientists came to this conclusion after studying 334 species of bats, the second-largest group of mammals. (The largest group of mammals comprises of rodents.)

The hypothesis they were testing came in two parts. The first was that in any given species, the average male's testis size as a fraction of body weight will depend on the behaviour of that species' females-in particular, how promiscuous those females are. The second was that, given that brain tissue and testis tissue are among the most expensive to maintain physiologically, and that bats have a very tight energy budget, bigger balls would result in smaller brains.

The team knew, from work done some time ago, that the first part of their hypothesis is true in primates. Greater promiscuity in females does, indeed, lead to bigger testes, presumably because a male needs to make more sperm to have a fighting chance of fathering offspring, if those sperm are competing with sperm from a lot of other males. Gorillas, which discourage dalliances between other males and the females of their harem, have small testes. Chimpanzees, among whom females mate widely, have large ones. Human testes lie between these two extremes.

So guys the next time a woman blames you for thinking from your crotch, immediately shift the blame back on her promiscuous behaviour, which has limited the size of your brain.

Bat testes range from 0.11% of body weight in the African yellow-winged bat, to a whacking 8.4% in the generously endowed Rafinesque's big-eared [sic] bat. (The largest primate testes by contrast, those of the crab-eating macaque, are a mere 0.75% of body mass.) And the small balls were indeed found in species where females were monogamous (though they might be members of harems), while the large ones were found in species where females mated widely.

The most fascinating aspect however is the reason why this happens. It is the tight energy budget available for the body that enforces such trade offs. The word trade offs immediately made me think and triggered an analogy of this situation to a company/corporate setting. Everyone would agree that the Research and Development wing represents the brain while the marketing department is the balls of the company. (My apologies. Please bear with me. It is not my intention to speculate on the brain and testicular sizes of those of you working in marketing and R&D departments). And similarly the consumers are like the female of the species. Given the tight budgets, there is always a trade off between the budgets for the two departments, R&D and Marketing. Interestingly the results of the study can be seen in action in a corporate setting. The more the consumers (more promiscuous the females), the bigger the marketing departments (balls), while lesser the consumers (less promiscuous females), more the R&D budgets. Just think about it. As a company grows bigger, the market demands force it to focus on marketing for growth, while for a smaller company, the best bet to make it big is to focus on its R&D. So even though Microsoft became a leader through its R&D, it shifted its focus to Marketing as it got bigger. Same thing can be seen if you study the history of other technology firms.

This analogy also works in case of blogs. The newspapers are the bigger companies with large number of consumers, so they can afford to overlook their editorial section and focus on the marketing, ala Times of India. Whereas blogs have to exclusively focus on the intellection/editorial aspect to keep their readers hooked. When the scientists carry out the study on humans, I suggest they should study the ball sizes of bloggers. They might come up with some embarrassing results. :) A conversation with my roommate was revealing. I was teasing him for not following blogs. He shot back saying, "how will I find time for porn if I 'waste time' on blogs?"

Jokes apart. This made me wonder how analogous is this relationship between a corporation and a human body? For instance the digestive system can be likened to the production department, the nervous system is just like the corporate communication department. It seems to me that the study of human body may hold some valuable lessons for the corporations and management students. And if we bring Darwinists into the mix, they might shed light on the analogies between evolution of species and evolution of corporations.

Almost every Economist article ends with a tongue in cheek witticism. That is their trademark and which is one of the reasons it ranks as my favourite magazine. At the end of the article Economist poses the question, is it better to be virile and dim, than impotent and smart?

What say you?

P.S. (When I told an American friend about this study, he shrugged and was surprised that a study was actually needed to prove this. He said, going by the scene in American college campuses, everyone knows that the brainy types hardly receive any attention, while the dumb football players have all the fun.)
I have edited this sentence out of the post as it adds no value to the point being considered and as anonymous in the comment section has pointed out, my American friend wasn't being logical. A footballer uses different aspect of his brain. I stand corrected.

My gripe against the Libertarian stranglehold of the Indian blogosphere

2005-12-17T13:27:00.001-05:00

Those of you coming to my blog curious about the long comment I posted on Shivam's blog and Desipundit, feel free to post your rants and raves here. I have defered to Shivam's request not to make the comment into a post and let it stand as what he characterises as the longest comment in the Indian blogosphere. Once again, my sincere apologies to those Libertarians I inadvertently offended and mischaracterised. I respect you guys and all of you are really intelligent, but I felt muffled on account of your extreme influence in the blogosphere and that kept me going and going and going.

P.S. Incidentally this will also mark as the smallest ever post on my own blog.

Update: There has been a nice back and forth going on about this topic here between me Ravikiran and Eswaran.

Update 2: This discussion has reached its end and it can be followed in its entirety through the 80 comments on Shivam's blog and 58 comments on Despundit. I enjoyed the interaction thoroughly and thank all those who participated. Also special thanks and admiration for the Libertarians, who took this so sportingly even though there was enough provocation.

Update 3:

Both the links, Desipundit as well as to Shivam's blog no longer exist. The original comment can be found here.

In the last several years since the comment, my views on the topics expressed therein have changed considerably. Some statements in that comment make me cringe and there are several views expressed in the comment which I no longer subscribe to.

Plagiarism, double standards, bloggers and self-interest

2005-12-04T16:23:00.000-05:00

Lately the Indian blogosphere has gone hammer and tongs after plagiarism. Journalists and film reviewers are at the receiving end of bloggers’ wrath and sense of indignation. The recent expose of the reviewer Gautaman Bhaskaran from the Hindu left a bitter taste in many readers’ mouths.

While everyone was ranting about the great wrongs that were being committed in the name of journalism, Suyog had a very different take on the issue. He questioned whether our indignation was justified. Whether bloggers ought to have reacted as strongly as they did? He presents an interesting and definitely a thought provoking perspective. I must commend his courage in having the honesty and the balls to write what he wrote knowing the prevalent mood in the blogosphere. We definitely need to challenge our views and not reinforce them by reading similar perspectives and for helping that cause, hats off to Suyog. Despite this, I will argue from a purely self-interest point of view -- plagiarism, at least in the mainstream media will always be a big deal.

Suyog raises the following pertinent points: -

Anu Malik has lifted innumerable tunes for his movies; so what did you do? Stop listening to his music altogether? Did you mail him and ask him to stop getting inspired? Because the music was plagiarised, did it stop you from buying the CD of Murder because you loved the song “Kaho Na Kaho?”
Most Bollywood movies are inspired by Hollywood. So if Munnabhai M.B.B.S was inspired Patch Adams, would it make Munnabhai a less enjoyable or a less better film? Once you discovered it was inspired, did you decide not to watch it at all? Did you Blog about it?
You know all too well that you most Tommy Hilfigers you get in India are fake, didn’t you? Did it stop you from buying them? Did you mail the maker or the textile company about shamelessly copying Tommy’s designs?
Most drugs and medicines in India are more or less variants of the drugs made after considerable research in United States – and that is why India is now having newer laws on drugs and medicines. So, what do you call Crocin or Anacin? An “inspired” drug? Will you stop having it if you are sick?
Did you hear that Chinese versions of Energizer batteries work just as well and sell for three times cheaper. You wouldn’t buy it would you?

To this litany I would add that many of the bloggers who blogged about this issue may have been using pirated version of Windows, MS Office and Photoshop not to mention numerous games, and must have hundreds of MP3 songs on their hard disks for which they haven’t paid a paisa to the producers. After reading this, his question seems almost rhetorical, “Is plagiarism really that big a deal?” According to Suyog, in other cases we have learnt to live with such copying and stealing. Over a period of time we have gotten desensitized. He further argues that in near future it wouldn’t matter if a journalist or a blogger plagiarises.

The point is this: Plagiarizing is frankly not that big an issue as it is made out to be through Blog journalism; one just needs to think a little bit beyond the obvious and see that originality as a concept itself is very rare; everything else is more or less plagiarised of one thing.

What he has said applies perfectly to the 'media' that he has cited. I would pose the same question that he asked. Why don't bloggers protest in the above instances, but do so in case of newspapers? If one looks at this ethically (and there is definitely a case for looking at this ethically), the bloggers will fall flat on their faces because of the double standards they adopt. But instead of tackling this by saying that we adopt double standards and should rectify them before we attack anyone else, I think, an interesting question to dwell upon would be, what induces us to adopt these double standards. By dismissing people who protest at plagiarism in news media as people who 'don't see the point' is premature.

Relationship between mainstream news media and readers
What is it that infuriates us when we see plagiarised content in mainstream media? The key word here is media. Suyog’s argument is self-serving because of the broad brush he uses to paint the media. We need to discriminate (pun intended) between the news media and entertainment media. Plagiarising, getting inspired, lifting off etc. will never be tolerated by the public in the mainstream news media. Plagiarism, when it comes to news media (unlike other entertainment media such as films, serials, advertising etc.) is a serious issue because the prime relationship between the news media and the reader/viewer/listener is of trust. We trust the ToI's, Indian Expresses' and Hindu's of this world far more than any film director, musician or cloth maker. The currency in which the public trades with the mainstream media is trust. It is because of this relationship that we buy a particular newspaper or watch a specific news channel.

Consider this. You invest some money into a bank. Later you find out the bank manager starts giving away loans to his friends without mortgage. When you quiz him about it he says, "What's the big deal. Don't you help your friends? Do you protest when others are helping their friends? And so what's wrong when I do it?" What's wrong here is that you expect a certain responsibility on that person's part. The bank is making money because of your trust. Your relationship with the bank is based on trust just like with the newspapers’.

We lend them certain power on our (citizens of a democracy’s) behalf so that news media inform us about the current events and happenings truthfully, first hand and without bias to help us make wise decisions in our personal life. Readers expect the news media to give them as close a picture of reality as they can. For this the journalist has to be closer to reality. Talk to real people, work hard to get phone numbers, discuss with experts from different walks of life. Only then can he/she present us the true picture, not by plagiarising.

In contrast, you beget no loss in any form when you watch plagiarised films, and listen to plagiarised music. Sometimes you knowingly choose to view a film or listen to music knowing that it is plagiarised. In these instances there is a financial gain in such a transaction for you. For instance, when you buy a Chinese made battery or a purchase fake Tommy Hilfiger pant or buy pirated software. So it is to your benefit and therefore you do not protest. (I must state that this does not mean that I support the above things. I am just pointing out the facts and that even the ones who lament hypocrisy are hypocrites themselves and it's better to understand issues taking into consideration human foibles rather than paint it in black and white in an ethical languge.)

Besides, what Suyog mentioned about inspiration, and other things are not applicable to the news media because news by definition is reflection of reality and not a creative endeavor where someone borrows from somebody else, tweaks it a little and melds it with something else and produces something new. Journalism is about getting as closer to the truth as possible not creating layers where there is a greater likelihood of it getting distorted. Creativity involves certain imitation. This is not to be tolerated but even expected. But people don’t like anybody tinkering with reality.

We invest in news media monetarily, psychologically and sociologically. We also invest in the individual journalist who covers the events. For instance, a report by Barkha Dutt is much better regarded than a novice television reporter’s. The same applies for an op-ed piece by renowned journalists such as Shekhar Gupta and Saeed Naqvi. We give regard to their opinions and trust their intelligence. Tomorrow if we find that their opinions were borrowed from someone else, then we will lose respect for them and the next time they write something we wouldn't lay much in store for it. It would be like the story of crying wolf where even when they say something genuine tomorrow you will think they have plagiarised and hence have no say in the matter.

Now you may argue that this is very much true for news articles, but does it apply really to plagiarising in reviews and other feature stories? Will one day readers overlook plagiarisation here? A New York Times review is written with the sensibilities of the New Yorkers and not Indians. Gautaman's review would have been richer had he compared his knowledge of Indian films and personalities. If he had viewed the film from his Indian viewers’ perspective, his readers would have identified better with the film review, rather than the obscure Hollywood figures he quotes to appear sophisticated. Because of his laziness, the reader, who has paid Rs.3.25 to buy the Hindu, suffers. He/she suffers also because after reading the review he/she might never watch the movie because of the interpretation that 'it seems to be too artsy' since he hasn’t heard the big-wigs' names quoted in the article. So he/she might miss out on a good movie because of Gautam’s laziness. This, despite the fact that the reader may have purchased Hindu just to read the review and make a decision about which film to watch. The reviewer is someone with whom the readers develops a relationship. In the Times of India I knew Khalid Mohammed was biased towards Shah Rukh. I knew I rarely agreed with Nikhat Kazmi’s reviews. Readers have a relationship with each of them and would punish them badly if they betray the trust. So yea readers will always make reviewers pay a price if they plagiarise.

Overlooking plagiarism in other media
The other media that Suyog mentioned; films, songs and other stuff don’t have as big a direct impact on our everyday decision making as the news media do. But don’t we trust filmmakers and musicians as well? How many times have we gone to a movie and threw our hands in frustration seeing a badly made copy of a film we have already seen. We do pay Rs.80 for watching the film as against Rs. 2 for purchasing a newspaper, so why don’t we find many people blogging about this? When we (as in urban-centric, college-educated, well-read, upper-middle class) look at plagiarisation in films and music, we automatically assume that rest of India thinks like us. Take the example of Awara Paagal Deewana. I had lost track of the number of movies it borrowed from and so it can be taken as the best example of plagiarism. How many Indians had seen the films from which it was borrowed? The Matrix, The whole nine yards, Mission Impossible 2 and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon aren’t the typical movies a man on the street watches. They, more than us, contribute to the profits of the Bollywood producers. They are hardly aware of the copying. And it doesn’t bother them one bit even if they find out it is copied because they wouldn’t have understood the Hollywood plots because of American accents anyways. In fact they have an incentive in patronizing such films, as it saves them money and time in watching the originals.

The same goes for music. How many amongst us (the stereotype mentioned earlier), let alone man on the street Indians had heard the originals before we purchased Anu Mallik’s album? It is only after a geeky music lover boosts his own popularity around college campus talking about the original in an obscure album, that you find out that the song you liked so much was ‘inspired.’ (I remember the first song I came to know was copied was Tamma Tamma Loge… do you think even 0.1% of Indians had heard the original African (or was it Caribbean) song?) Most of the times the word spreads about plagiarism months after the song is released. By that time you have already invested your money. When you find out it is a copy, you are angry but you really like the song, lifted or not. For you as a consumer after having spent Rs.50 buying that cassette it makes no sense to purchase the original music costing Rs.100 (foreign music costs more). Now what is the choice? Definitely cribbing; trying out newly learnt invectives on Mallik and living with your purchase. If the original had been more popular amongst the janta, Anu Mallik would have to kiss his own arse.

And if you think this is not true, consider this. When the song Didi by Middle Eastern singer Khaled was introduced in India it was an instant hit. If you are from Maharashtra you will know that a song’s popularity depends on the number of Ganpati Mandals playing it and believe me even the most rabid Hindu nationalist mandal didn’t have any qualms repeating this song on their speakers. Then Anu Mallik came up with two variations of the same song. But they flopped miserably. No one even remembers them and yet Didi even today strikes a chord. The same happened with Macarena. The original was so popular that the Hindi one never really had a chance. The point I am trying to make is that viewers and listeners do punish plagiarism even in films and music. But only when they haven’t spent their money already and when they do not have a monetary stake or self-interest in supporting the plagiarised material. So though they may be angry at the unethical ways of the musician they know that protesting isn’t going to go anywhere and there is no benefit that can accrue to them.

Now coming to the news media, the relationship is much different here. You spend money on one particular film, music album, piece of clothing etc. only once. You don’t go buy the same cassette everyday or watch the same film in theatres over and over again. But newspapers you buy everyday. Even though the content is different the format and the product is the same. It is a continuous relationship fostered over years. One of the reasons why people don’t stop reading Times of India is this sense of loyalty and habit. So while you may be extremely disappointed after knowing that a film was copied or music was lifted you are smug in the knowledge that you won’t be buying the cassette again or spend Rs. 100 on the film again and protesting harshly on blogs therefore would be of no self-interest to you. Whereas every reader knows that he/she will buy the newspaper tomorrow and will be spending Rs. 3.25*365 every year. If its quality suffers, the reader has to bear with it forever. So the readers protest purely out of self-interest. Apart from that as I already mentioned in my earlier comment, a newspaper’s price is much more than its sale price. It isn’t as simple as ‘for Rs.100 I can buy 40 ToIs’ and hence I should be worried more about plagiarism in films and music than in newspapers. Mainstream media can help you save a lot of money through its news. It can help you make sound financial decisions depending on the political climate. If everyday a new cooperative bank is being exposed for its fraud, a reader will never put his money in cooperative banks. The stock market reporting is another example. A person may never buy a house in a locality where he reads reports of crime everyday. The same applies to film review. Imagine how much a person would lose experientially and monetarily over a year’s time by reading problematic reviews and then choosing to go or not to go to the films. If the newspaper started plagiarizing never telling the reader what he needs to know, never telling him the truth as they see it, merely borrowing from foreign sources, these benefits would vanish. And the reader would definitely switch. So I don’t agree with you at all that over a period of time plagiarism in news media will be no big deal, just as it is not in films and music. It will always be a big deal if it happens in the mainstream news media.

Market perspective
Considering it from a purely Market perspective too plagiarism will be made a big deal. Every entity in the market works towards making it as efficient as possible. And it serves the customers better if this happens. Bloggers by protesting against plagiarism are doing just that. People who don't like Times' articles that are plagiarised through Cosmopolitan may be buying it for its other stories. But since they are paying for the entire Times they have every right to protest. If you notice the reactions to the Hindu plagiarisation, they are all of disbelief. This is because many people pay a high cost (the Hindu is much expensive than Times or Express) for Hindu just because they are so trustworthy and unbiased in their content. So from a marketing perspective, there is nothing really surprising about a customer demanding his right. And the paper that plagiarizes and that breaks its contract of trust with its readers will suffer circulation losses in the long run.

If I were put on a spot here I would admit that plagiarism lifestyle articles and some stupid ‘10 ways to please your man and get him to get your favourite chiffon’ type articles were never a big deal and probably our double standards will eventually not extend to their sphere. Yet, it remains to be seen whether this will actually transpire. As someone who has great faith in the mainstream media despite whatever any blogger may say, I would be unconfortable accepting that. Also there is a prettier, more elegant, less embarrassing way for mainstream media to deal with this issue. Namely, just name the source upfront. Since your readers cannot afford cosmopolitan anyways, they would be glad to read those articles in your paper. All the newspapers will lose is a little revenue paying cosmopolitan and give them credit in the story. But this will be a worthwhile investment as they may save crores on lawsuits and at the same time not lose circulation due to an ethical person backing off. As the market evolves it is not a long shot to expect this to happen. And I am sure it will. Hence yes though today it seems likely that the lifestyle articles will pass into the category of no big deal, but tomorrow I trust the market to bring them into its fold.

So, if anyone has issues when someone argues about plagiarism from an ethical perspective because ethics demands that there be no double standards look at the blogger reaction from the marketing standpoint and it will make much more sense.

Balbir Pasha ko kya hua tha?

2005-12-03T03:59:00.000-05:00

If your answer to the above question was AIDS, then you can collect your free passes for dinner with Pasha by mailing me. You obviously are amongst those blessed beings who were touched by Pasha’s presence in your surroundings. For those unfortunate ones who are trying to remember which of the two camps, Dawood’s or Rajan’s, did Pasha belong to, this post might be a good start.

Balbir Pasha was an everyman who took it upon his shoulders to bear the cross of Indian society’s reluctance to discuss AIDS and sex related issues openly. Like Atlas, he carried the weight of the guilt of entire Mumbai, the metropolis that Suketu Mehta has rightly called a ‘city in heat.’ Pasha chose to a lead a life of ignominy just so that those teeming bambaiyas could know the about AIDS victims and Pasha’s fate did not befall on them. Balbir Pasha was the fictional alter ego of the truck drivers, taxi drivers, jobless and blue collar workers of Mumbai. A wonderful advertising campaign was devised by Lowe woven around his character and I remember it was a hit when it was first unveiled. For months Balbir Pasha was the most talked about man in Mumbai. He beat Digen Varma (Whatever happened to him?) hands down when it came to creating a buzz.

What reminded me of Pasha today was Sepia Mutiny's post on world AIDS day. The photograph accompanying the story shows a visibly poor woman walking with her child and in the background a public service message is painted in English that says ‘One way to stop AIDS, use condoms while having sex.’ Whoever came up with such a bland slogan? And I am not saying this just because my slogan won the Desipundit slogan contest. :) Now that I have publicised that lets move on. Let’s forgive their wording and sense of rhyme and focus on the language. To believe that the woman or the child in the photograph know English would require a leap of faith as large as believing that the character Balbir Pasha actually exists.

The Balbir Pasha campaign on the other hand was in complete contrast in reaching out to its intended audience. It used catchy slogans in conversational tone. The campaign consisted of huge cut outs and posters stuck on billboards with some drawings (usually the silhouette of a woman) and a sidebar, which carried in large font the rhetorical question: Balbir Pasha ko AIDS hoga kya? Later there were radio and Television messages too.

The following were the slogans:-

Balbir Pasha ki regular sirf Manjula hai par Manjula ke kai regular hai.

Balbir Pasha sharab ke nashe mein condom lagana bhool jata hoga. Ek baar bhi condom na lagaane se AIDS ho sakata hai.

Pasha sirf swastha dikhnewalon se sambandha rakhta hai. Par dekhne se pata nahi chalta kise AIDS hai.

Aao milkar haath badhaye Balbir Pasha ko AIDS se bachaye.

My observation was that the campaign was incredibly successful. I actually heard youngsters asking the right questions, look at the Billboards and having discussion about sex on the street. It was successful in removing the taboo because of the language used. Everyone could empathise. The man on the street knew that Balbir Pasha was just like him. He drank alcohol, visited brothels and wondered about AIDS.

The Balbir Pasha campaign however ran into trouble and was shut down in mid 2003. And no, it wasn’t because the Balbirs and Manjulas of the world approached the courts to file a defamation suit against the ad agency. Nor was it the bloggers’ favourite punching bags, government or Shiv Sena, playing killjoys, as is their wont when it comes to such bold themes. The script unfolds like an Agatha Cristhie novel. The most unlikely suspect is the culprit. It was actually the NGO’s and our dear Ms. Shobhaa De who came down hard on the campaign. They found the campaign incredibly sexist as they thought it was sending the wrong message regarding women. They were worried that people may assume that only women spread AIDS.

To their credit, the perpetually whiny NGO’s for once got carried away with the creative energies unleashed by the ad campaign. I remember one particular person opposing it had said.

Pasha Ho Yaa Asha AIDS Se Na Bane Jindagi Tamasha.

In my book, the award for 'fostering public and private sector cooperation in an unlikely medium like public sevice advertising,’ went to Amul. Those guys are utterly butterly devilicious! They used the same format of the poster, the same colour combination, woman's silhouette et. all and created the following slogan:-

"Balbir Pasha roz savere kiske saath jaagta hai." with a Amul Butter in the same font as Balbir Pasha with "Regular Item' printed below. I mean seriously these guys should be worshipped.

The government pulled down the campaign and the last I heard it was reinstatedwith newer posters and themes in November 2004. So if anybody Mumbaikar can provide the new slogans please share them here, I am eager to know Pasha’s recent antics.

As an aside, how much I miss advertisements from India!!! In comparison to the stock ‘100 percent APR financing’ ads in the US, they are so rich, layered, quirky and a zillion times creative and fun. I think advertising more than Bollywood or any other clichéd entity, serves as the symbol of national integration. Advertisements truly unite us across class/caste/language and religious barriers. Bollywood movies have their own target audience which varies from class, rural/urban etc. Whereas everyone can relate to ‘washing powder Nirma’ jingle or the ‘Deepikaji aaiye aaiye aapka sab saman tayar hai’ baritone inspite of the fact the buyer comes from a upper class background and has never bought anything but Aerial and Surf Excel.

Lekin ek baat kehana to hum aapse bhool hi gaye…. Ghabraiye nahi hume kuch nahi chahiye… Hum to bas itana chahte hai ki aap world AIDS day ka celebration Balbir Pasha ka naam leke kijiye.

Ajmer's culture police Vs. blogs' anti-taliban squad

2005-11-30T22:11:00.000-05:00

The blogs seem to have converged on to the ‘talibanisation’ of Indian culture theme based on this BBC story about the Ajmer district administration posting guidelines to "educate foreign tourists about local culture and sensibilities." Ashutosh, Mridula and Sepia Mutiny have separately talked about this issue

My first reaction to the story was similar to theirs. “Just another ploy by the district administration to enforce a morality code.” The context provided in the BBC article and the non-derisive tone of it however made me ponder whether it is really as reprehensible as the blogopshere is portraying it to be.

Our reactions to such stories are no less stereotypical and predictable than reaction of a Shiv Sainik to skimpy dresses. We tune out and look at all of them as an attempt to enforce antiquated views, missing the nuances and the context of the particular case.
The context provided by BBC was revealing. The case of the Israeli couple kissing after a Hindu wedding in a temple had happened in Pushkar, which is 14 km away from Ajmer city and part of Ajmer district administration. There was a hue and cry after this incident happened. It was a spontaneous reaction of the locals, since they found kissing inside a temple unacceptable. Therefore, I think, it is fair to assume that kissing in public might affect local sensitivities. In fact the couple was charged Rs. 500 by the court. The other example provided about the Finnish lady walking naked on the streets was bizarre and I am sure is a one-off incident.

The following are the guidelines:

· Men should never touch women in public, even to help a woman out of a car, unless the lady is very elderly or infirm
· In Indian culture... men socialise with men, and women with women
· Married couples in Asia do not hug, hold hands or kiss in public. Even embracing at airports and train stations is considered out of the question
· Generally it is improper for women to speak with strangers on the street and especially to strike up a casual conversation
· Drinking alcohol or smoking in public, no matter how innocent, are interpreted as a sign of moral laxity and are not acceptable.

Given our socio-cultural background and the India that we have lived in, these seem 18th century norms. But what is wrong with posting guidelines? Nobody is getting fined. There is no possibility of a jail term. The tourist is free to flaunt them if he/she deems fit without any hassles, apart from those he/she might face from the local population. One might argue that this may dissuade the tourists from coming to Ajmer and lead to loss of revenue. Since the tourist is the customer we ought to be catering to his/her needs not ours. But a tourist is not your regular customer. He/she is visiting the tourist location to experience the art/architecture/customs/culture of that place. In fact, wont packaging the experience smartly by allowing them to live the way locals do for 4-5 days might be a better marketing strategy. The egalitarian cosmopolitan ‘untalibanised’ India they can experience in the Bombays and the Bangalores, but a tourist comes to Rajasthan precisely for the exotic. The guidelines might actually help improve tourism as locals may not balk and react adversely by trying to protect their culture by banning tourism altogether or for that matter look at the tourists condescendingly for their ‘lack of moral values.’ Besides tourism isn’t about fostering a melting pot culture. It is about getting a flavour of the place. And I don’t see any reason why the place should change its social norms to accommodate the tourists.

The next thing I say may be very touchy. I am not saying that this is true, but just as a matter of conjecture. We need to reflect whether part of this stems from our inferiority complex vis-a-vis western culture. I know I am going out on a limb here. But if this were the other way round, and tomorrow a lot of tourists from India started visiting the United States and while walking around in public gardens begin plucking flowers or shouting out to each other in public places or go to a national park split in groups and start playing antakshari singing songs at the top of their lungs or do something that goes against the accepted normal behaviour in the U.S., then do you think the Americans wont post any guidelines? I am willing to bet the district administration may consider imposing a fine. That no Indian will do such a thing is because we immediately consider the social norms of a western country as innately superior and therefore try to be as discreet about our own wants and sensibilities. That is not to say that we should go ahead and start playing and screaming songs under moonlit sky when visiting Yellowstone or Shenandoah, (those Grizzlies and the Deer might file a lawsuit!) but just as we automatically respect others’ customs and social norms what is wrong in expecting Western tourists to respect ours? And while we are deriding the guidelines the affected people find it perfectly reasonable. The tourist couple quoted in the article think they make sense.

"It is quite important to know things beforehand about local sensibilities, like covering your arms and not getting too close to your partner in public."

Her partner, Wayne, says: "We do not kiss or embrace each other in public because I know it is not liked here. When you open up a bottle of beer you can make out from the looks around you, it is not liked," he says.

He is saying it that he can sense the resentment about drinking in public. The guideline about public drinking is more for protection of the tourists themselves, to avoid somebody hitting on them just because they are drunk. Loathsome though it is the reality is that Indian men immediately assume that a woman who drinks is ‘available.’ This happens in the hippest of pubs in cosmopolitan cities let alone Ajmer. Why then is it so condemnable to state the obvious that Ajmerians interpret drinking in public as morally lax? It's better, I think, to warn the tourists rather than have a case like the couple kissing getting fined which gets so much publicity in the international media that it ultimately affects tourism more than any guidelines can.

Read this well-written post about the Indian reality of women and men fraternising separately on college tours. Many of us may have experienced how on college trips boys and girls inevitably spread out in separate groups. Even today in cities women sit separately in classes than men. This particular article refers to the state of Kerala that has the highest literacy. Yet, when the guideline states that men socialise with men, we are aghast at the ‘talibanic’ implication. We need to face the reality. Sad though the state of affairs is, it nonetheless exists. Denying it because it is embarrassing and suggesting that the Ajmer administration is out of sync with the true social reality is simply being in denial. They may be out of sync with the urban India’s social reality, but they aren't providing these guidelines for the rest of India, are they?

Yes, Rajasthan’s customs may be antiquated. As educated, well-read people we might find them unacceptable in today’s egalitarian world and would like them to change. I would love to see that happen too. But I think we should let the change stem from within. When the young men and women in Rajasthan are more educated I am sure they will come to the same conclusion that we do regarding acceptance of display of public affection. These should be debated and discussed in the community rather than being forced down their throats by asking them to be ‘tolerant.’ Why can’t we be a bit more tolerant of their intolerance? Let the Rajasthani people make the choice rather than us telling them that they are shaming us by not being accommodating of western culture. Condescending to them about their culture will only provoke an even adverse reaction.

A beautifully written and well-sourced article about Pushkar is carried by Outlook in this weeks issue. It is an amazing tribute to the city of Pushkar and its people who have absorbed many of the tourist influences.

But Pushkar is a unique anthropological case study on how a few thousand visitors from abroad can sustain a sleepy temple town and its economy and make an impact on its lifestyle and culture. It shows in the Ganesha T-shirts, in those single, white females riding pillion on the mobikes of the local dudes, the precocious, multi-lingual kids who can sell just about anything to anyone, and restaurants that go by names like Pink Floyd Cafe. There’s a strange bazaar mix of the ancient and the modern, the sacred and the profane. Besides the mantras, the most oft-heard chants are of trance music. Internet cafes still run on dial-up rather than on broadband. Nutella and Marmite flood the local stores. Rickety camel carts move around with AIDS awareness banners.

This is the same town, which lashed out at the Israeli couple kissing, and yet is accommodative of so many outside influences. This is the same town who’s Brahmins called for those guidelines and yet are vocal in saying that they do not want a ban on the tourists. The tourists themselves find the guidelines helpful. And here we are reveling in our own interpretation that India is getting talibanised with a not so subtle reference to the Muslim population of Ajmer. I find it unfortunate that we choose examples that we can condescend to while ignoring the local population’s capacity to change, albeit, at their own terms.

Insecurity thy name is woman

2005-11-27T21:59:00.000-05:00

I thought men bashing was passé. What real purpose can it serve when even the bashers admit that the one being bashed has thickest skin amongst species? I mean I understand where the flogging a dead horse idiom comes from, at least indulging in that serves a cathartic purpose. But male bashing is like flogging a live rhino who smiles wider every time you hit him. This male bashing post made me wonder why such simple logic is lost on women. Oh! Horrors of horrors, was that gender insensitive, politically incorrect, Oh-my-gosh-you-didn’t-say-that, kind of a comment?

Pardonez moi oh wise reader I was merely… what did she call it? Hmm… generalising. Trust me, given the post I am responding to, generalisation should be the least of my worries. The author herself has said, “And by men I’m talking about the entire male population - from uncles to fathers to boyfriends to brothers. Don’t give me that shit about generalization, because I’m not buying it.”

And what does this nouveau belan-morcha-party candidate have to say about our poor uncles, fathers boyfriends and brothers? According to her men are responsible for women wanting to change something about themselves.

And why do we do this? Why do we give in to these insecurities? Why do we constantly fret about the look of our bodies? Why do we subject our bodies to damaging diets? Why is our appearance an unconscious and perpetual concern? Because society places value on our looks. And by society, I mean men.

And what is the evidence provided. The prosecution is accusing men of the nastiest of crimes such as the following: 1) Being their honest selves – “They all drool over the good-looking babes.” 2) Fantasizing – “They have intricately detailed porn-movie-style fantasies about sexy bombshells (even if they have no real chance in hell of getting that woman!)” and the worst of all 3) Gossiping – “At some point in their lives, they’ve gotten together with their buddies and discussed who they’ve slept with or who they’d like to(real or imagined).”

What a world we live in? Truly there is no place for such ghastly crimes. Therefore the author offers a solution. Before I reveal the elegant solution, here is a pop quiz. What do you do when robberies increase in your neighbourhood? You might think of locking your house, increasing policing and punishing the culprits. I too thought that. But you know what, we were wrong. The solution to fight robbery is to go out and rob others just like the robbers are doing. "But then don't you lose the moral right to criticise?," you may question. But such concerns are irrelevant in the author's if-they-can-do-it-so-can-we kind of utopia. At least that’s what one concludes after reading the author’s solution. She exhorts her female compatriots to do exactly what the men are doing. “My idea? Let’s treat them the same damn way.” She wants women to hoot and whistle and check out and admire men’s cute(???) behinds so that men feel insecure.

In men’s defense I will say this. Yes men do all those things they are accused of and more, but that doesn’t make them the sole cross bearers of women’s insecurities. Equally, if not more, other women are responsible for making women feel that way.

Consider this. Ask a man what he thinks of a particular girl. In most cases the answer may be: She was beautiful, an absolute pataka, cute smile, she had huge boobs, or she had a fantastic figure. Now pose the same question to a woman. “Her nose was too sharp,” “She needs to trim her eyebrows,” “She had applied grey mascara, can you believe that? What sort of a tramp does that?” “She has long neck?” Etc.

Now tell me whom amongst the two would you call obsessed with beauty and therefore responsible for making women feel insecure? Aah! Do I hear someone say that even though women do that, they do it only because men have set those impossible standards? Now wait a minute. Men don’t even notice those things! Men don’t know the difference between mascara and eyeliner. They don’t realize when a woman’s hair is flat or shiny or dull or frizzy or whichever other states women lament about their hair. Ask a man about a woman's hair and his answer has to be amongst the following. Either short of long. And as far as the author's comment about being conscious of 'hollow cheeks and knobbly knees'… I was amongst the ones who have been with most of the groups who drooled in Pune’s colleges and haven’t once heard a fellow drooler commenting on knees and cheeks. C’mon we have better things to notice! At least give us that. I am not saying that what men do is laudable or that they can be completely absolved of the blame. I am arguing that despite their flaws they concentrate on the basics of beauty and hence aren’t the culprits in making women feel insecure. That medal belongs to women themselves for making others of their kin feel miserable.

The common conversation in an Indian household when a man buys a gift for his wife goes like this.

Wife: It’s so beautiful. I really like it. That was so thoughtful of you darling to remember.
Husband: (Blushing, trying to get closer for a hug.)
Wife: But couldn’t you find something in Raani colour? I already have three green dresses.
Husband: (scratches his head trying to figure out what Raani colour looks like.)
Wife: What am I going to do with another green dress? Humph. It's equivalent of not having one.
Husband: (trying to salvage the situation and the evening which seems to be slowly moving downhill) But darling don't you think there is also a shade of blue in there. I think. Besides you look gorgeous in green.
Wife: Do you mean I don’t look good in Raani colour? I have told you so many times not to repeat colours. You never listen.
Husband: (His neck is slowly getting buried in his shoulders.)
Wife: And look at this embroidery. Even that is not done properly. That shopkeeper swindled you, and you being you bought this for a fortune. Plus this dupatta wont even go with any other dress.
Husband: (By now has given up all hope and has settled on the sofa and is busy reading the newspaper)
Wife: I think I will gift it to Lata. Her wedding is coming up soon. I am sure she will like it. You men never have any eye for beauty.

Now assuming something similar happens in 70% of the households, one thing is clear -- men really don’t care about such things. Yes they notice the dress but they don’t link it to the other dresses of women or for that matter the colour, texture, design embroidery and other details that women are on a lookout for. They don’t notice all of the other things women spend 2 hours ‘making-up’ for. They did rather the woman miss the make up session and they reach the function on time. So if men don’t notice whom do the women do it for? Obviously for themselves and other women. So there you go. Set your house in order first before you go about calling names to others.

This attempt at pinning the blame on men fails on another front. Yes, men do drool and swoon and do all sorts of other nasty stuff but only to girls of age. What then can explain 3-8 year-old little girls’ fascination with lipstick and beads and pins, dressing up her dolls etc. There is no pressure on them. They don’t do it to impress guys or because they feel insecure. One has to admit that we inherit some unique gender qualities as part of our evolutionary make-up. And part of them involves a woman’s fascination with beauty. What’s wrong with celebrating our differences? If you look at it there is nothing really objectionable about it. After all what’s wrong with indulging oneself by pampering your body and wanting to look good? The problem comes when you start feeling insecure. Now that is entirely your problem and you should learn to deal with it. If a beautiful woman passes by and a man admires her it doesn’t mean he loves her more than his wife/girlfriend or that he feels his wife should be like her. He very well knows that he is never going to get a woman like that. But that’s what fantasies are for. That’s why they are called fantasies. They serve a very healthy psychological purpose for both men and women. Yes women may have much more politically correct fantasies, but they do fantasize about things that come naturally to them owning to various genetic, hormonal and sociological reasons. The author's suggestion to women about fantasizing the same way men do is absurd. How can anyone enjoy a forced fantasy? It's like asking men to fantasize about women's nature instead of their bodies. A welcome suggestion, but unfortunately never gonna happen!

When men admire a beautiful woman walking down the street; they aren’t trying to make a statement about their wife/girlfriend’s beauty. The point to remember is the man despite his admiration still loves his wife/girlfriend many times over than the other woman. That woman’s beauty is a matter of fact and he is simply stating it.
A wonderful quote on this subject is by one of the first famous women writers Madame de Staël -- "The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man." This need not be so. His wife/girlfriend can hear him and agree or disagree with him about his conception of beauty but she doesn’t have to feel inadequate because of it.

And regarding being slim and conscious of their weight, who has perpetuated that standard? For every man who loves a slim femme fatale you are likely to find a man who loves a voluptuous figure. There are many who love ‘aunties,’ (however despicable that may be, its the truth)who are nowhere near the hourglass standard. I agree that those sexy models in porn movies fascinate men. What makes the woman in porn so erotic is not her red lips and her fake breasts, but the fact that she's "crazy." She's ever ready, always willing to do anything to please a man. Ask a man whether he would want that sort of a woman as his wife/girlfriend. The answer is no. Men don't have much trouble distinguishing between reality and the weird world of commercial raunch. So why should a woman feel pressurised to change her looks? Generally in the long run a man prefers a decent, intelligent woman as his wife. Another example would be the cosmetic industry. Women, not men, populate the cosmetic industry. Fair and Lovely ads are created for women by women and not men. It’s women not men who buy women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan and Femina. Those are the worst offenders with their anorexic photographs and stupid articles about '10 ways to please your man.' Look at the mainstream print media. When men commentators and op-ed writers weigh in on political issues and women political personalities, they never refer to a woman’s looks/dress etc. But read Shobhaa De and Maureen Dowd’s columns and you will find detailed information about Teresa Heinz Kerry’s Botox and Condi’s shoes and Uma Bharti’s shocking orange to Sonia’s sarees. Now who is setting the standards here? Men admire Madeline Albright and Condi Rice's of the world regardless of their beauty quotient.

Also, women have set worse standards when it comes to men. Yet how many men do you find blogging about……. “Oh I have to study so hard…… I can’t find time to read a book or enjoy my youth since I have to land a good job…. I have to leave my favourite field and find a well-paying job because it takes longer to settle in the field I love and one doesn’t find a wife after one is past 30…. I had children and now I can’t take a promotion because it involves shifting the family etc.” They don’t say that because they are confident in themselves. Their locus of control is within them. They know that life is tough and this is the way the game is played. They do the above-mentioned things for themselves as much as for the women in their life. Despite the harsh standards, they take it on their chin and move on rather than blame women.

Despite this, men are vulnerable and touchy about things. But these aren’t the things our belan-morcha-party wishes to target. For instance, men would care two hoots if women went about admiring other men. Look at the responses to the post. Majority of them are from women who have praised the endeavour. Men didn’t even care enough to respond. It’s not something that bothers them. I mean I would have applauded it if the author had said something to the effect of “Let’s make men feel insecure about the things that matter to them.” Then it would have been an intelligent move. Because one is exploiting the innate differences between the sexes rather than a blind copy-cat game. An intelligent punishment for men would be women appreciating other men’s wit, intelligence, sense of humour, wealth, job, status etc. and then stand back and just watch the man in their lives squirm. Then watch a man’s reaction as he defends his bruised fragile ego. It’s juvenile to assume that men would feel the same way if women drooled over other men.

And before I sign off…

I know a few smart girls who’ll toss their head, and say bah! I don’t care if I look like a frump! But I will stick by what I said. I think deep inside, the desire to look beautiful exists, but their intelligence finds the desire ridiculous and tries to squash it by doing the very opposite.

Now that’s a queer statement. It’s condescending towards all women because it implies that apart from the few smart girls, all other women don’t use their intelligence. Just imagine a man insinuating this and daggers would have been drawn pointing out his chauvinism.

Are Bloggers splogging a dead horse in urging Google to take action?

2005-11-24T03:51:00.000-05:00

Ever since Google took over Blogger from Pyra Labs in 2003 there has been enough speculation about the motive behind this acquisition. Immediately after the takeover Google gave away free the premium services for which Pyra Labs used to charge a fee. Since then the blogosphere has increased exponentially. Technorati tracks 19.6 Million weblogs according to the latest survey. Out of them, it can be safely assumed, Blogger hosts more than 50%. Even considering decrease in bandwidth and storage costs, this must still be a considerable expense. Not only does Google have to manage the site's hardware but also the personnel, who must be charging a handsome salary. Hence I find it hard to glean any monetary gains for Google, at least for the time being. I found a post written in June 2004 that analysed the same problem. The author came to the conclusion that Google was losing money. I doubt if the picture is any different today.

The initial theory was that folks at Google wanted to optimise their search engine by observing the linking patterns and preferences in blogs. But couldn't Google do that without buying Blogger too? Its crawlers could have flushed all the information on blogs regardless of who owned it. Is it then, as some suggest, just a public relations move to earn goodwill? But surprisingly Google's logo never figures anywhere on Blogger. So, not everybody is even aware that Google powers Blogger.

One explanation can be AdSense, those small text ads you may have noticed on Gaurav’s blog. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on a per-click basis. Google utilizes its search technology to serve ads based on website content, the user's geographical location, and other factors. Then why is it I wonder that Google doesn't display the advertisements on every blog regardless of whether the blogger subscribes to AdSense. Surely people would continue using the service, as has been proved by the popularity of Gmail despite the incorporation of advertisements. Besides out of millions of blogs only a few are updated regularly and a minority amongst these use AdSense. I find it hard to believe that money made from this alone would justify the expense on Blogger. Besides as the article analysing this issue mentions.

But the advertising revenue per page view is surely a lot lower for Blogger than for the Google search engine. People using the Google search engine are searching for something specific, so it’s probably about ten to twenty times more likely that they will see an ad at the top or right side of the screen that they will be interested in.

The Problem of splogs

An additional twist to this issue has been the advent of spam blogs or splogs. A splog is any blog whose creator doesn’t add any written value. The splogger opens numerous blogspot accounts through computerized bots, enters into the blogosphere stealing content and keyword rich posts from sites and starts generating revenue based on that content. The purpose is to increase the PageRank of the affiliated sites, get ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed. This ends up skewing blog searches as these faux links draw in visitors who click on pay-per-click advertisements provided by AdSense on the splog.

Many bloggers and netizens vented their frustration at Google in this Guardian article for doing relatively little to stop people from setting up spam blogs.Currently Google merely responds by taking action when some volunteer reports a splog or when bloggers flag a particular blog. Google doesn't actively scour blogspot addresses itself to sort out the problem. Google recently implemented CAPTCHA, a system which shows users an image of a word that must be manually entered, but is distorted to deceive automated software from setting up false accounts. Netizens however are not satisfied. They want Google to enforce a $1 entry fee to dissuade sploggers or make CAPTCHA mandatory before every blog post on comment on blogspot. Google has no plans for implementing the suggestion as they look at it as an inconvinience for their users. This led many bloggers to speculate that Google's inaction was not surprising given their conflict of interest in the matter.

It makes perfect sense that having as many blogs as possible using Google Adsense would make Google more money. The more blogs that are set up using Google Adsense the more exposure the advertisers have, and the more Google charges for that exposure. It seems to me it's clear where the money goes.

Sounds perfect until you realise that if splogs are detrimental to anybody, it is for search engines, whose results go haywire with these phony links. Google is especially vulnerable because of its crawlers who flush all links on the Internet. So why would Google want to put spanner in their own works by feeding contaminated fodder to their cash cow. Google's corporate philosophy focuses on constantly optimising its search engine, (most profits come from this product) and I think Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google know better than to allow short term profits cloud their judgment.

Hence my question still remains. How does Google earn money through Blogger? And if it doesn't, then why have Blogger in their portfolio? Answers anyone?

Celebrating the Sisyphean contest between knowledge and confusion

2005-11-21T06:39:00.000-05:00

Welcome readers,

Raison d'etre of this blog :-
The usual fare of reviews, media articles and random musings will form the backbone of this blog. But that isn't its existential purpose. Resting on that strong backbone would be posts containing contrarian views. When conventional wisdom seems to congeal around some theory/ideology/policy issue, this blog will raise a red flag. In financial market terms, a contrarian would tend to take the view that, in most circumstances, widespread bearishness leads to rallies while widespread optimism leads to disappointments. For the proponents of a particular ideology and their readers (sometimes including myself) the reasoning I will be arguing against may be self-evident, and the path to be followed crystal clear. That is precisely the time when someone needs to infuse conflict for making the process more efficient by creating confusion and therefore forcing a fresh look at the arguments trying to make their foolproof through an iterative process.

The next generation usually finds the chinks in their preceding generation’s intellectual armour that too in an unlikely case when they don’t manage to pierce through it altogether. I am not in a mood to wait that long. All the despised ideologies of today were once championed by the intellectuals of that time and we have seen the consequences of their intellectual myopia be it the communists, the socialists, existentialists and people belonging to any other lists. I believe what we think in a particular era as self-evident, is just a matter of groupthink. Somebody needs to take up the dirty work of playing the devil's advocate. It's very difficult to prevent intellectuals of an era from being swayed by the dominant ideology of their time and therefore it is always fruitful to pause and think if we are following the same fate.

Given the times, that always curve our thinking in a particular direction, it seems this blog might take cudgels with free market chaps. Propriety demands that I must mention here that as things stand today I am an Adam Smith Wealth of Nation-thumper true-blue dyed-in-the-wool-free-marketer myself. But I am tired of all those blogs lamenting things-would-be-so-much-better-only-if government pulls out its nose... or just-free-the-entrepreneurship-spirit and look at the miracles. Most read similar books, follow the same blogs and go ga-ga over the same theories and dismiss the others’ reasoning, since they rarely give it a hearing. Yes their arguments may ring true, but the entire thing is intellectually boring for me as a reader. Every time I read such posts I go Duh! Tell me something I don’t know… What’s the big deal? I don't feel challenged and neither am I forced to think critically. I feel given their readers' socio-economic background, especially in India, free-market theories are like preaching to the converted.

Such contrarian posts won’t be too frequent. However, rest assured they would be most unsettling and sometimes even infuriating. Many a times my own personal views may clash against the view I am advocating and therefore such posts may not be entirely convincing.

Whatever they are, one thing is for sure, in true Truman tradition they are intended at confusing.

If you cannot convince them, confuse them. --- Harry S Truman

In blogosphere most humans tend to veer in directions that bolster their points of view. I find it intellectually lazy that people search for comfort in views of the followers of their own ideology instead of challenging their views by reading and analyzing the other side’s argument which is available in ample measure thanks to the blogosphere.

The name of this blog reflects its philosophy. The posts here will try to look at issues from different frames of reference, from different pehlu or perspectives/dimesions, which may not be obvious at first glance. Personally I love the ‘Aha’ moments in life when suddenly just by changing my perspective I am forced to take a fresh look at the entire gamut of knowledge I have networked in my brain. I would strive to create those Aha moments for my readers.

Celebrating the Sisyphean contest between knowledge and confusion is the catch phrase of the blog. Here the word Sisyphean is not used in the normal context implying futility. Instead it’s part of an imagery. If one were to imagine oneself as Sisyphus – just that instead of pushing a rock, constantly acquiring knowledge to clear confusion and just when a person acquires that knowledge he/she realizes it leads to even more confusion. So it’s like being condemned to push that rock, as soon as it reaches the top, it rolls down and one has to start all over again. The blurry objects on the horizon towards which we rush, once cleared, are merely replaced by newer blurry objects. Yet there is a sense of achievement despite the futility. The tug-of-war between confusion and knowledge is in itself enjoyable regardless of the outcome. And hence the raison d’etre of this blog I proudly proclaim is to engender confusion, loads of it and above all to celebrate it.

“Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart,” wrote Albert Camus.

I agree, one must imagine Sisyphus happy.