Tharoor, Twitter And Controversies

Oops @ShashiTharoor has done it again! Does he serenade controversies or controversies have ways of seeking him out ?

I believe it is a little bit of both. For over-excited media channels vying with each other for TRPs, a candid Shashi Tharoor on a promiscuously open platform like Twitter, it is a wet dream and there is no way they could miss such golden opportunities to manufacture news. In this instance too the controversy couldn't have started without the media's active contribution. But then those were not verbal statements that were then put in words by a reporter to mean differently,the minister had tweeted them and they are still there for the whole world to see. How could he then have been quoted out of context ?

Well, the media is seldom neutral while reporting news , it tends to be far more judgmental and passionate, even to the point of being untruthful. In almost every instance of news reporting, the facts,allegations are never served in isolation but are packaged with the opinion of the journalist, which again  is influenced by her/his craving for sensationalism. This exactly isn't a secret, media's penchant for sensationalizing even the most drab story is very well-known but in Tharoor's case, Twitter seems to be a recurring factor. Twitter is just another platform, if at all Shashi Tharoor's statements were objectionable, they could have been made anywhere! In fact,  it is Tharoor's questioning of the Home Ministry's visa restriction policy that has stirred this controversy, why is "Twitter" emphasized and hyphenated with Tharoor on all news channels and print media ?

 This may be because the media and the government both have issues with a Minister of State airing his views on an open forum. Had he given the same statement to a handful of reporters, these very words might have sounded "refreshing"and the media could have hailed him but to devoid the media agencies from raking the moolahs is not something the latter can forgive or overlook. No wonder, at least one notable journalist, who also heads a television channel has gone on record criticizing the Minister for his twittering ways. Ironically, he himself did it on Twitter.

Apparently the government in general and Shashi Tharoor's boss and the Home Ministry in particular are not at all happy. It is not about going against own government, Tharoor as the Minister of State for External Affairs was merely cautioning against implementation of a stricter visa policy which were not taken well by several important countries. As such he was doing his job but what has annoyed a lot of people is the platform he chose. According to them, governmental policies are too sacrosanct to be even exposed to common folks' perception.



What does a career diplomat like Shashi Tharoor know on foreign policy making ? India is a democracy but that should be restricted to voting only! Once the ballot has been cast and a government is in place the people should go back to their toils leaving things like laws and policies solely in the discretion of the on the ruling elite, of course they can later be used during future electoral campaigns but till then the public have no right to know anything about the policies, at least not from the minister himself ! 

http://twitter.com/ShashiTharoor/status/7064122644

Posted By Danish 4:37 AM

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Cyber-Warfare And Mercenaries on the Web

Iranian Cyber Army hacking and defacing Twitter may be part of a broader strategy of the Iranian government and military to control the flow of information from its own territories as well as information directed at it from external sources.This is the contention of a Techcrunch article which has also been published in Washington Post.

If you are an active Social Web user then you must already know about the role Twitter played during the post-election turmoil in Iran. Not only was it the main service for communication among the protesters and the primary source of news coming out from Iran but it was also the platform on which a major social media campaign was launched to mobilize public opinion against the Iranian regime. Although,it was supposed to be a campaign by Iranians anti- government protesters, the West's involvement was quite conspicuous. As a matter of fact US administration intervened and Twitter rescheduled its maintenance downtime in view of the volatile conditions in Iran. I had posted my observations on this development in one of my previous blog entry, please check out (Tweeting a revolution or is it a black operation ?). This campaign was seen by Iran as an attempt by the West to exploit political turmoil in the region to destabilize the state. Thus, this latest attack and defacement can be seen as a retaliation.

However, the Techcrunch article goes on to hint that the attack may have been launched as part of a much larger plan!  Apparently, Iran has on Friday said that it is creating more efficient centrifuges that can be used in its nuclear plan by 2011. This and other reports like Iraq  accusing Iranian forces infiltrating into its territory are being seen as part of a larger diplomatic offensive ahead of the negotiations on Iran's nuclear program. The cyber attack on Twitter as well as some other anti-government sites could be politically motivated to send a message to the West that Iran is capable of engaging the adversary in cyber warfare too. This message would sound far more ominous when we look at the conflict from the prism of asymmetric warfare.

Only time can tell how accurate this speculation is, but i myself have little doubt that the internet is fast becoming an arena of political games; games that go beyond mere propaganda campaigns,crowdsourced diplomacy to system disruption through Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. In one of my earlier posts ( Is Cyber-Warfare On Social Web same as Terrorism  ) i have discussed how politically motivated attacks and nation-states conflicts spilling over to the internet are affecting the common users, this could be another instance of it. However, it is not really clear if this group called Iranian Cyber Army is indeed a government supported group or just another group of nationalistic individuals acting on their own accord but with the tacit approval of the Iranian government. The flaw in the argument is that an hitherto unknown group of hackers, taking down Twitter may hardly procure any bargaining power for the Iranian regime! No doubt Iran is actively pursuing its nuclear program as well as cyber-warfare capability, but why should the US and EU concede any  ground to it because it could take down a popular micro-blogging site ? From another perspective, it is quite possible that this news report may be part of the social media campaign against the Iranian regime that has been going  for quite sometime.

Posted By Danish 3:20 PM

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Will Twitter Go Down With The Waves

Twitter has been down for more than 2 hours,the last tweets on my time-line reflect panic as one would expect from the passengers of a ship as it goes down with the waves! Well, i haven't got a Google Wave account yet, the analogy is partly coincidental :p

Was i surprised? Not at all! This is not the first time that the micro-blogging site has gone down, since past few months,outages have become a regular affair and most likely will continue for a while. No! I don't mean to say that the guys at Twitter are not smart enough, indeed, it would be foolish to say that for guys who came up with such a brilliant concept such as Twitter. The only speculation that can be made is the probability that the issue lies deeper than it seems to us.

Outages are not specific to Twitter alone, most popular services including Google, Gmail and Facebook have had their blues too. It is an irony of fate that the very participatory nature of the Social Web is also the factor that takes it down often. For instance, the Internet traffic generated by Michael Jackson's death was much more than the servers were prepared for; it seems that most of the people in the world decided to use the Web to find more information about MJ, unprecedented numbers of requests coming in was interpreted as a DDoS attack by Google which then went into emergency mode. However, other Social Web sites such as Facebook, Friendfeed, MySpace and Twitter of course are far more open, consequently they could not balance the load and crashed.

So couldn't they build the service keeping load balancing in mind? This question is complex too, the Web is evolving at such a rapid pace that it is no longer possible to follow the traditional model where even the tiniest detail has gone through analysis and validation before the development has actually begun. Most of the popular service providers of the day are widely used for features some of which had not even been foreseen when the service was built for the first time. Adding newer features to existing applications is a continuous process that is conceived of and implemented in response to changing paradigms. Quick adaptation and innovation-on-demand is what drove their growth and has enabled them to change the way we use the Internet now.

Keeping the above scenario in mind, it is easier to understand why Web 2.0 websites often face scalability issues. Most of them had started up targeting a small segment of users, with plans to upscale operations on a future date. But as the service becomes popular and the user base increases exponentially, 
 too many requests lead to bottlenecks that make the system defunct for a period of time. There are technical reasons of course, I have come across quite a large number of papers blaming Ruby on Rails, the framework on which Twitter was built. This aspect cannot be refuted absolutely when one considers the fact that this framework has not been proven on large-scale application development.  Facebook has addressed this issue by migrating the background code, it also has a limit on the number of friends a user can add. But there has to be something more than the weakness of the development framework.

One of the reasons that i love Twitter for is the fact that there is no restrictions apart from the 140 characters per tweet limit and the model itself. Unlike IMs or Social Networks, Twitter delivers messages from multiple users to multiple users. This makes every user a center of information propagation or many-to-many messaging system yet the server remains centralized, so as the number of users increase the processes increase exponentially since every user follows an unspecified number of users and is in turn followed by other users. i am not aware of the business logic or algorithm used by it but can understand that it must be efficient enough to handle all those transaction most of the time. However, the frequent outages suggest that something at the fundamental layer needs a re-look at.

As i said in the beginning i do not have a Google Wave account yet but from what i have read and seen in the Developer Conference preview video, the architecture is more inclined towards being a distributed one rather than being centralized. i wonder if the folks at Twitter have looked in that direction, if the server is unable to handle the load now, waves of users are just starting to migrate to Twitter. Read: Has Cattlegate Opened The Floodgate?

Also read : http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/22/twitter-at-scale-will-it-work/

P.S.: Inviting my friend netgenre to write a guest article on data marshaling in the above context

Update
 Recently i came across (through Twitter, of course) a excellent article at High Scalability which offers to explain the different factors responsible for the scalability issue of most social media sites. i found the part on Pull-on-Demand vs Push-on-Demand approaches quite interesting. In the first approach, which  is followed by Facebook ( according to the same article), the service queries all your friends,fetches their updates and changes and provides them to you at one place. So if you have 1000 friends, it makes 1000 queries to show your friends update. So with every new user or even connection the number of queries to execute rises exponentially.
 In contrast, Push-on-Demand approach deals with updates in a different manner. Rather than waiting for queries,.it pushes the data to friends right when it is changed! The user no longer needs to pull data, since it is already there when s/he logs in. Of course this model is not without drawbacks but that is beyond the current scope.
But more importantly, which model does Twitter use ? 
i am not sure, but most likely it uses a hybrid of both model...Just a guess right now ;)

Posted By Danish 12:47 PM

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The N00B's Guide To Twitterverse

Picking up the thread from the last post, I will try to demystify the basics of Twitter for the benefit of the complete N00B. Here is how twitter works and the meanings of the terms that baffle you the first time you start using it.

Twitter Jargon

Tweet - The only question that drives Twitter is "What are you doing?" and a Tweet is a response to that question. If you are into social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut or even a Skype or GTalk user, you must already know what the status message means. But unlike the other services, the status message on Twitter i.e. the Tweet is not a passive message but the medium of communication or the counter-part of the IM you send to your chat buddy. However, a Tweet is generally visible universally unless, of course you have blocked a person. A Tweet can be of 140 character length only, which could be one of the reasons why Tweets travel faster than anything else i know of.


Handle - Username, this is important as it is likely to become your identity on Twitter, for example my Twitter handle is danishctc. You can find my profile on twitter by simply typing http://twitter.com/danishctc in the location bar or your browser. You can also reply me or mention it by simply prefixing my handle with the @ (at) symbol : @danishctc

DP - Stands for display picture or avatar. It is highly recommended that you put up your own picture as DP.


RT: Retweet is nothing but the same tweet being posted again by another user. There could be many reasons for doing this but the most common ones are- the person liked the particular tweet and would like to share it with her/his followers  and the original Tweet is kept to make sure that the response is seen in the context. To retweet, you can copy the whole tweet along with the original tweeterer's handle (prefix the @ (at) symbol to the handle ) and type RT right at the beginning. (Most clients make this easy, explained here just to make sure)

Screenshot of my convo with de3p , pushkarbhatt
Replies/Mentions: these are tweets by other users who have either replied,addressed or mentioned your handle. A handle prefixed by @(at) symbol is treated by Twitter as a tweet meant for that particular person and shows up on his timeline; for example- "danishctc: @anandmisra hi"

DM: Direct message, visible only to the recipient. Normally, all clients have a functionality to let you send direct messages to your friends but you can send dm by simply typing the character D before the handle.
Example:
"danishctc: D anandmisra this a dm"

Friends - Twitter is people-driven, if you want to harness its power then you have to follow people whose updates you would want see. You could start following people in the suggested list that Twitter displays when you sign up or celebrities you already know ( for example Shashi Tharoor, Celina Jaitly, Gul Panag) but it is important that you find other like-minded users to make your tweeting productive. As with so many services, Twitter can also import your contact list from other accounts and suggest your pre-existing contacts that are already on Twitter. To follow them you can go to their profile page and click on the link "Follow" (Note:  Following a large number of people in a very short time is seen suspiciously by Twitter since spam bots seem to follow a similar pattern, trying interacting as much as possible )

Followers - These are people who are following your updates. They are important from your point of view since they are your main audience as well as customer-base.

Favorites- If you find a particular tweet interesting and dont want to lose it in the melee, you can add it to your favorites. To add a Tweet to favorites, click on the star icon, the Tweet can now be found in the  favorite section of your Twitter profile.


 One of the major advantages of Twitter is the fact that it is not limited to a single client, single domain or even single device. I prefer tweeting from mobile rather than the desktop.

The original interface for interaction was Twitter.com and continues to be so since that is where you manage your account and set preferences. This is also the site you should be using if you are a new user.However, this interface lacks certain features for more advanced users but this is aptly compensated by numerous third-party clients.

Clients- There are plenty of clients avaible, download the one which meets your expection. On desktop/laptop, i find Tweetdeck the best, followed by Twhirl and Seesmic. Firefox add-on, Twitter Fox is another client that i find myself using a lot. On mobile (i use Nokia N95 8GB), Gravity comes across as the client with best features but i have also used Fring and Twibble for tweeting.
There also some very cool web-based clients that you should check out: http://dabr.co.uk and http://slandr.com 

Update - Thanks to Softykid for reminding me about Snaptu, a mobile client that i had heard a lot about yet  never got to installing it. But now that i have done it, it is strongly recommended that you try it out :)

P.S.: Thats it for now, hope someone finds it useful coz i didn't get much pleasure compiling it! not my kinda thing ;)

The Twitter Song 

Posted By Danish 8:05 PM

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Has Cattlegate Opened The Floodgate ?

Holy Cow! Shashi Tharoor's single tweet has taken Twitter to every nook and corner of India. Now, even the most obstinate bull squatting in the middle of the vegetable market wants to know what Twitter is all about. Of course the cows let loose by their owners to graze in Indian streets are equally curious even if they are not mooing it. Indeed, a lot of people are signing up on Twitter, a vast number intend to do it in near future. But I am a bit skeptical, if most of the people have an understanding on what Twitter is and how it should be used.

I have posted some of my own experiences here

There some facts and opinions that I should mention before proceeding further. I think all Internet users who are not on Twitter can be broadly categorized into 3 categories. The first category includes people who use the Web minimally, their professional as well as personal agenda doesn't allow them to explore the social aspect of Web. As such the whole social media debate is irrelevant to them, at times they are indistinguishable from machines .

Then there are people who think Twitter is just another way of wasting one's time that could be utilized for creating artificial intelligence or achieve major breakthrough in stem cell research. However, you won't find them doing either, instead, you can find them participating in Orkut. Socialization, interaction, collaboration to them means going through photo-albums of this cute chick they came across in the friend list of another friend's friend. The main activity would include sending persistent add requests, leaving flashy images,ASCII art or corny scraps in Hinglish or broken English or do stuff that require little or no intellect. People belonging to this category, who think that the phenomenal growth of twitter userbase, eminent personalities and biggest organizations and almost every website extending tweeting functionality, is because of a social media hype and
who are convinced that Twitter is a waste of time should strictly continue with Orkut, Twitter would be an incompatible medium since the latter requires intellect!

However, there is the third category of users who do not doubt the utility of Twitter but are still not using it because they don't fully understand it or it has not worked for them. Indeed,there is not a single social website that one can join up and start enjoying or get results from day one. How effective social networking sites turn out depends on how well the user has created her network. This is especially true with Twitter since there are no photo albums of users, no social games or "which movie character you are" quizzes (well, there are mechanisms to share images, files etc but they are not integral part of the architecture.) . In other words, your experience on Twitter depends totally upon how you interact with other users (Tweeps). If used properly, it opens a completely new world of options, from real-time news to reaching out to targeting customers/audience and getting the most relevant answer to your questions. The potential is immense! In my follow-up post, I will try to compose a guide for beginners.

Posted By Danish 3:37 AM

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Transparency, Radical Trust and the Indian Democracy in the Age of Web 2.0

Every time i see @shashitharoor defending his tweeting habit on TV i can detect a gleam in his eyes which betrays a feeling of incredulity within him. WTF?! They seem to say, shouldn't his government be grateful that he is connecting it to nearly a hundred thousand people? One could say that may be Tharoor's long stint at UN has made him forget the epitome of doldrums that our babudom is, but that wont be the whole truth. Managements in most large organizations world wide are scared of new things (and for good reasons too) but that's part of the larger social media debate, this post is about the Shashi Tharoor question and about Twitter.

Shouldn't a democracy like India support transparency as the UK does, for instance, Tharoor asks. The penetration of Internet technology in India has not been deep enough to become part of our lives as it has been with the American and the British. India may be emerging as a software giant, but the majority of Indians, including those belonging to the IT workforce view the Internet as an unreliable medium. True, everyone right from the governmental departments to the small-time trader use the Internet for things like e-mails and correspondence, online booking and shopping and propaganda. But these are traditional tasks that the Internet makes easier, they don't harness the real power of the Internet.

The real beneficiary of the Internet have been those who have been able to leverage its powers. Let us not forget that there has been a major paradigm shift in the architecture and usage pattern of the Internet. It now goes by the moniker, Web 2.0. Tim O'Reilly opines that a significant characteristic of Web 2.0 is the fact that businesses are embracing the web as a platform by building applications and services keeping the features of the Internet in mind instead of expecting the Internet to transform itself to suit traditional models!
Yet, a large section of the literate Indian population still consider the Web as something that should be used strictly in a manner that keeps the user insulated from the other users.

In the early days of the Internet revolution, anonymity was a major factor which encouraged participation and for good reasons too. But Web 2.0 revolution has changed all that, users now are not only using real identity but are also trying to put up as much info about themselves as possible. Discussing the various aspects of the changing user behavior is beyond the scope of this post, the point i wish to drive is that if anonymity was the flavor of Web 1.0, trust and transparency are the pillars of Web 2.0.

Lets take Wikipedia as an example, a reference site that can be modified by anyone with access to the Internet! A decade back, the majority of people would have scoffed at the idea. Indeed, Wikipedia was not an instant hit, it came out as a winner with the passage of time. But Wikipedia introduced the idea of radical trust which went on to become one of the distinctive features of the Web 2.0 meme. Almost, every successful Web 2.0 enterprise has been based a collaborative platforms that believe in actively engaging with the consumers and using the feedback to offer far more customized services/products the consumers.

For Indian democracy, this a great opportunity for interacting better with the people. The incumbent governments stand to gain the most by connecting to the voters directly, redressing most problems would be an impossible task but letting the people take a glimpse of the working of the government can actually instill much greater confidence of the people in the government. In fact, the opportunities are immense, if the Ministers, bureaucrats and legislators are willing to come of the time warp and connect to the people. Instead of trying to discourage Shashi Tharoor, they should actually be encouraging other Ministers and spokespersons (as well as issuing- DOs and DONTs lists) to use the power of the Web 2.0 to strengthen democracy.


Reference:
http://oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=2

Posted By Danish 9:02 PM

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Is SRK's Detention A Big Deal ?

Shahrukh Khan detained by authorities in Newark and all hell has broken loose since then! From man in the street to the Minister of External Affairs of State @shasitharoor, most Indians are outraged but some people around me, online as well as offline seem outraged by the outrage!

Of course, holding an opinion that contradicts general percepts is an essential trait of neo-conservative intellectualism. One cannot claim to be an intellectual that if s/he is found to harbour the same opinion that the more common segments of the society do. I myself have been guilty of that often so this is not aimed at anyone specific. Coming back to SRK issue, those apathetic towards it have a couple of very valid points:

• Thousands of people are facing the same problem everyday, why call foul now that SRK has been subjected to the same treatment?
• The second point is that SRK is taking advantage of the incident to publicize his forthcoming movie.
  

I have little doubt that the second allegation has some substance. SRK's initial statement that he was targetted because of his surname "Khan" sounds too conspicous to be a coincidence with the fact that the title of his latest movie is,"My name is Khan." In the age of social media, an incident that helps you your brand name go viral is nothing less than a dream come true. A shrewd buisnessman like SRK would undoubtedly exploit the issue for making loads of money and perhaps that is what he is doing.

However, this does not change the fact that US immigration policy is utterly discriminatory and unjust. Time and again Indian citizens and even Ministers have been subjected to discriminatory treatment. Post-9/11, the US has been following a number of security policies which have been termed as prejudiced, unethical and in some case (like Guantanamo Bay prison) inhumane. There are people who believe that these rules have helped US thwart more terror attacks on its soil but that is not quite true (I have discussed this in one of my previous posts)

All that it has given is a sense of estrangement and humilation among a large section of global population. Forget the common man, the list of Indian celebrities detained/stripped frisked include former President APJ Abul Kalam,the then Cabinet Minister George Fernandez, Wipro Chief Azim Premji, actors Aamir Khan, Kamal Hassan, Mamooty, Irrfan Khan and scores of less popular Indian celebrities. Background information on any of these individuals shouldnt be difficult to access. After all, these people virtually live under the gaze of the public! Let me reiterate the fact that i am not justifying VIP culture, all i am saying is that since all of these people are well-known, collecting background information about them shouldn't be difficult at all. Moreover, it is not just frisking and question-answer sessions, from what earlier victims have described, it is an interrogation which can leave any one distressed

These incidents merely reflect the arrogance that the US officials display when dealing with Asian visitors. Arrogance which has resulted in traumatic experience for people whose only fault consist in carrying a Muslim name. No sovereign nation with even an iota of national pride can afford to allow its citizen being mistreated on regular basis. Brazil in 2004 gave an apt response to US racial profiling policy by implementing a policy of finger-printing US nationals only!
I would conclude with the question which has been it the back of the mind ever since Kalam was frisked. Is Musharraf subject to the same treatment that India's former President and one of its most respected citizen.

Posted By Danish 2:44 AM

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Is Cyber-Warfare on Social Web Same As Terrorism

If you are a web user then you must already know that some of the most popular social web sites including Twitter, Facebook,LiveJournal and even Friendfeed were taken down this week by miscreants. It is perhaps one of the largest co-ordinated DDoS attack since the attack was launched simultaneously on Twitter, Facebook and other popular social media sites. As a consequence Twitter was down for several hours outraging users like me addicted to Twitter. Even a day later the micro-blogging service was running slow and had major connectivity issue with clients. It is not surprising at all, Twitter already has an inherent scalability issue, its far more vulnerable to denial of service attacks.

A typical DoS a(Denial of Service) attack is one of the oldest techniques cyber criminals employ to cause damage to sites. The technique is wickedly simple, a large number of requests are sent to the victim server which, it is unable to handle and thus crashes or slows down considerably. Often this technique has been successful but compared to this the DDoS is far too powerful. In DDoS (Distrbuted Denial of Service) hundreds of thousands of computers are used to send data and flood the network, these computers may be in different parts of the world but all of them would have been infected with a malicious code that allows the attacker to remotely control these computers. A collection of hijacked computers is called a "botnet" which according to latest news are actually availabe for hire at a relatively cheap price.

Coming back to Twitter outage last Thursday, what is really alarming is the fact that it seems to be politically motivated with probable involvement of state-actors! Apparently this highly synchronised attack was not a random anarchist act, it was targeted at one individual, a Georgian blogger, going by the name "Cyxymu," (the name of a town in the Republic of Georgia), who had accounts on Twitter, Facebook,LiveJournal, Blogger and YouTube.[source] As is obvious, fingers have already been pointed at Russia, especially after the last years cyber-warfare between Russia and Georgia.

Only weeks back, there were reports of sustained Denial-of-Service attacks on US and South-Korean websites and most likely these are going to continue sporadically until it breaks out into bigger cyberwar or the political objective is met. Earlier, there have been politically motivated large-scale attacks against Eastonia in May 2007 , Ukraine and Lithunia besides the occasional but highly damaging attacks on US sites by Chinese hackers. China is reported to have been preparing for large-scale cyberwar. Of course, Jihadists can't be far behind! However, as with everything, the earliest politically motivated cyberwar involving DDoS was launched against Serbia under the auspicious of the US. Its another matter that, Serbians were equally successful in counter-attacking the NATO on cyberspace.

But as of yet, there hadn't been as big a collateral damage as has been the case in last weeks outage. The Social Web has become a very important political tool as we learnt very recently from Twitter's role during Iran elections and the massive protests later on. Indeed, web is quintessentially a democratic platform and we can expect far more political activism online but there is also the fear that the involvement of state-actors in disruption of what can be called "essential services on the web" is an alarming trend. If attack on civilians in real world is called terrorism and unacceptable in any manner, an attacks that disrupts Social Web cannot be considered any less than cyber-terrorism. May be we need global treaties or similar legislations to ensure that our social web lives are not held ransom by nation-states' military and intels, cybercriminals or cyberterrorists.

Update
A few hours back, Twitter came under another attack which disrupted the service for 30 minutes. At 12:17 P.M. PT Twitter confirmed the attack on its status blog.

More information....

Posted By Danish 5:52 AM

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Will Twitter Go Down With The Waves

Twitter has been down for more than 2 hours,the last tweets on my time-line reflect panic as one would expect from the passengers of a ship as it goes down with the waves! Well, i haven't got a Google Wave account yet, the analogy is partly coincidental :p

Also read : http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/22/twitter-at-scale-will-it-work/

Posted By Danish 1:15 AM

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The ant and the grasshopper: behavioral implications of an age-old fable

Everybody, or at least most of us who have gone to the school have read Aesop's tale of the Ant and the Grasshopper. The grasshopper plays, has fun on a summer day while the ant labors to store up food in its dwelling. He even mocks the ant for slogging instead of having fun. But when the winter sets in the grasshopper finds himself starving and begging at the doorstep of the ant who has enough reserve to last the winter. The moral of the story is clear- there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. In other words, hard work pays and also, if you are idle and are having fun now,you will have to pay for it in the future.

An interesting aspect of this tale is the ant's perspective. While the earliest version has the ant rebuking the grasshopper,later versions have her taking in the dying grasshopper out of kindness. In any case, it can be safely assumed that the ant finally has an almost sadistic pleasure when nature proves her right. We can almost hear her saying,"I told you so!". Indeed, vindication of her stand would not be complete with her having reserve of food only,the grasshopper should suffer too. Without that, her hard work during summer won't be justified!
However,things don't turn out the same all the time, Somerset Maugham's version of the Ant and the Grasshopper has two brothers, the elder brother, George is a hard-worker while Tom the younger one is an idler and a spendthrift. George lives a life of discipline, does all the right things, saves a third of his earnings so that he could retire bit early and live a comfortable life. Tom, on the other hand, lives to enjoy the present, he cares too little for the future and his expenses often have to be borne by the hard-working George.

However, as the narrator of the story finds from George, Tom doesn't really suffer in the end for all waywardness in youth. Just when George thinks that Tom is about to pay for not planning or saving money for the future, the latter goes on to marry a rich lady who dies within a few years leaving her fortune to Tom! George is outraged that his spendthrift brother has actually been rewarded for all his vanities and indulgence! Does George hate his brother? After all, he has, time and again spent his own hard-earned money to keep Tom out of trouble! Yet the narrator finds him unhappy at the good fortune of his younger brother! What has probably annoyed George the irony of fate that his own hard-work pays him far less than his brother's loose ways. It is a feeling all of us have had at some point in time.

This is such an integral part of human emotion that it can be seen in our casual behaviour too. And it doesn't always have to be hard work only, it could be anything which requires a certain amount of dedication, diligence and more importantly self-denial.
Indian society is going through an exciting phase, the traditionally subdued segments are asserting themselves and over-running elite bastions by sheer numerical superiority. It is not surprising to find the upwardly mobile middle class outraged by Rakhi ka Swayamvar or Mallika visiting Twitter headquarters. Rakhi at least, doesn't represent us (yes,i count myself too) in anyway! It takes a lot of hard-work and diligence to develop intellectually, so it is but natural that somebody so uncouth and crass gaining such fame and wealth be considered outrageous!

Which brings us back to the question, would the ant's retribution be complete if the grasshopper does not suffer?

Posted By Danish 3:08 AM

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A tiny moment of truth of our failings

I seem to attract a certain segment of people, street-kids, destitutes, invalids, people without food,shelter and the very basic amenities every human is entitled to. On my part, I am very comfortable with them and it must be very apparent since I get approached all too often. By the way, I am not talking about "beggars" one comes across traffic signals, these professionals are the easiest to please. As my very good friend says, anything that can be bought at a price however high is cheaper than that which requires your feelings and gestures.

But that is not the case with the people i am now talking about ,its not just money, they demand something more. For instance, there is this resident of our corner of the city, who would sometimes want soft-drink or ice-cream- not the sort of request a mentally-handicapped destitute should be making but the fact is that he gets it every time and its just not me or my friends. Most of the guys hanging around that area usually give in to his demand.

But I seem to attract far more people in need. Just a couple of hours back, 10-10:30 PM, these two kids stopped my bike, they wanted a lift home. Now, thats something I do nearly everyday but the problem in this case was the fact that I would have to go back quite some distance to drop them. However, i did give in to their insistence, and on the way learnt much about them. They were brothers, the elder one was 12 year old but was being guardian to his 10 year old sibling. Both of them worked at a food stall, couldn't be earning more than Rs. 30 combined but there was an air of confidence in them that made me think that these kids should be in school! I did tell them that I would make arrangements for schooling but don't have a clue on how to go about!

And yes,while returning I realized how uncanny the resemblance between these kids and the Slumdog Millionaire kids was. But unlike the characters in the movie, lady luck is not going to rescue them from poverty, it us who have to give them back their basic rights.

Posted By Danish 11:13 AM

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R.I.P Michael Jackson

Just finished watching Michael Jackson's memorial, it was once in a life-time event. The glamor and grandeur sorrounding the event seemed to commoditize death and grief but the memorial of the King of Pop could not have been a sombre affair!

Lets not forget that he was under constant pressure to perform,even until the day he died. From the time when the 5 year old wonder-kid MJ was thrushed into the entertainment industy to this date , he was always seen as an object of entertainment even if a very celebrated one. No wonder then, he was a bit strange, the world never considered or wanted him to be a normal person!

Michael Jackson's memorial will go down in history as the biggest televised event. Ordinarily i wouldn't participate in an event of this nature watching its live telecast but MJ's memorial was an exception as it reflected his greatest contribution. For the first time, millions of people from all across the globe were in unison doing the same thing. It is indeed a mighty acheivement.

Thank you Michael Jackson and Rest In Peace !

Posted By Danish 2:39 AM

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A Tribute To The Boy King

Waking up in the morning to hear the news of legend passing away is never an easy thing to handle but it was surprising for me to be sulking about it even late in the day when i had some very important decisions to take. What was more surprising for me was the fact that Michael Jackson was not such an important part of my growing up years as it was for others. I never followed Western music, i still don't. But Michael Jackson was different, he had reached every nook and corner of the globe even before the cold war was over and globalization had begun. Much of what i know about him was from reading stuffs and not real-time participation. I did love his music and dance but i still can't claim to have listened to all of his songs. So why then was i was so affected?

Perhaps it was his charisma, his fan following, his life-style and his life-story that had us fascinated us all this time. Despite unimaginable fame and wealth his life seemed one tragic story. He was the first African-American to have reached the pinnacle of glory and that may have something to do with the controversies that dogged his later life. There was something deeply tragical that made him yearn for childhood and his unwillingness to grow up. Half of the controversies seem to have arisen from his reclusiveness, the other half may have something to do with him being sorrounded by greedy gold-diggers. But one cannot deny that the way the media, the authorities and even the people reacted to the controversaries everytime,envy , if not prejudice may have something to do with it.

One of the most distubing things that followed MJ's demise was the number of nasty jokes and criticism doing the rounds on the web. Most likely these people have no clue to what MJ has contributed or are simply sick,envious of him or worse, racially prejudiced. i don't need to enumerate the contributions of Michael Jackson to entertainment industry or the records he holds. It is there for all to see. Neither video albums nor MTV could have been as popular without MJ's mersmerizing steps, artists across the world made careers just by imitating him.

Michael Jackson's final act to silence his critics and naysayers was by his death which created so much furore that it almost took the Internet down. Shortly after the news of his cardiac arrest appeared on the Internet, there such a huge surge of online traffick that Google mistook it for an automated attack and for 25 minutes Google searches on Michael Jackson returned an error page. The official Google blog gives a first-hand account in the following post: Outpouring of searches for the late Michael Jackson.

But Google was not the only one, Twitter saw the number of tweets per second double as news of MJ's death was out and soon the site crashed from overload. The Yahoo News page reporting on MJ being rushed to hospital had a record number of 16.4 million visitors and Yahoo News overall had a record number of 175 million pageviews! Yahoo blog entry "Losing Michael Jackson" shares some insights on how it handled the situation. All popular search engines and services including Facebook, Wikipedia, Flickr, AOL had to deal with an unusual situation and had to allocate all available resources to cover the news.

In his last years Michael Jackson's had lost some of his popularity, the slated comeback tour could have salvaged some but his untimely death and the fact that the major players in web technologies including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft were brought to the knees by the news only reaffirms the belief that Michael Jackson was the greatest entertainer ever.

Posted By Danish 6:10 AM

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Tweeting a revolution or is it a black operation ?

For the past 24 hours #Iranelection and hash tags related to Iranian election has been trending on Twitter . What it essentially means, (for those unfamiliar with Twitter) is that the election in Iran and its fallout are the most talked about topic on Twitter. We have already seen the profound impact ¹ that Twitter has had on socio-political events in the past but this could be the biggest one considering the fact that the mainstream media was late in reporting the protests and has since been lagging behind the micro-blogging service. ( Please check out, Dear CNN, Please Check Twitter For News About Iran )

However, what really intrigues me is the question, whether the protest in Iran truly reflects the aspiration of the nation as a whole or is just a partisan struggle fueled by external powers. Once again the sources of most these news are either almost anonymous twitterers or those belonging to the opposition camp. The truth perhaps lies somewhere in between, the call for probe by Ayotallah Khameini indicates it. Ironically, Ashton Kucher, who has the largest following in Twitter, has likened the issue to the controversy around G.W. Bush's electoral victory in 2000!

Either way it is Iran's internal issue, it is, after all, the only country in the region that has some sort of democracy (that has not been forced on). So why is the global social media so obsessed with Iranian election results ? I guess it has more to do with the fact that the West is not comfortable with the fact that a hardliner like Ahmadinejad came so close to defeat and still survive. Of course, i am just speculating that he survived but anyway, this was an opportunity that a lot of people would have hated to let go of. That would also explain why the opposition is on the street but euphemisms like "tweeting revolution", coming from American and West European "social media activists" seem to me part of propaganda warfare in the lines of black operations. Only this time the agenda has been outsourced to the crowd populating the social web. John Robb has in his earlier blog posts discussed various 4GW strategies and manoeuvres that the US could adopt to bring down Iran, some of the proposed ones have been black operations of these nature.

At this juncture ishould confess that i don't have much love for Ahmadinejad nor for the ruling elite of Iran, but i cannot deny the fact that he has considerable support from the Iranian electorate as the numerous pro-Ahmadinejad demonstrations indicate. So all talks of freedom and democracy by activists on web sound hollow when one considers the fact that there was hardly any murmur of protest when China banned nearly all major web sites and services on the anniversary of the Tianmen massacre. Similarly, the torch-bearers of liberty and democracy were conspicuously silent when just few weeks back the Burmese junta filed fresh case against the famous Burmese pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi just days before her 13 year old detention was about to expire! As i have already mentioned what we are witnessing might well be a crowdsourced black operation, not unlike propaganda warfare except for the fact that in this instance its far too decentralized and viral in nature. The majority of the participants may actually have no clue about the underlying agenda if at all there is one !

Update:
1. Twitter one hour maintenance downtime has been postponed as demanded by bloggers/twitterers.

Posted By Danish 4:06 AM

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What is wrong with Mayawati ?

Update : Well, I am not sure if I would still prefer Mayawati over Advani but her recent mis- deeds like spending crores of taxpayer money to build her own statues, the recent attack on Ms Bahuguna's house etc clearly indicate that I was wrong! However, the gist remains the same (minus Mayawati) so i am not deleting it! :p

Check out my friend Meera Sapra's cartoons on Mayawati

I know speaking in favor of Mayawati is considered a blasphemy by the literati (my bro recently asked how an educated person like me could support her ! ) but lets get some facts straight.

India has generated wealth enough to propel an Indian to being the richest man in the world (even if on a very short term) but its also home to a third of the world's poor. Don't you think something is grossly wrong? Aren't economic status, caste distinction and power-share interlinked ?

As The News Week has pointed out, caste-based division in Indian society is far more deeper and larger than the racial divide in the US. Post election we are most likely going to have a very fractured mandate, tribals and other indigenous population in different reagions are up in arms against development plans and Naxalites rule over a large swathe of land extending from Nepalese border to Andhra Pradesh. If you think all is well with the current system, you need to seriously introspect.

Finally, this is a transitory phase in Indian politics, so maybe we should look for ways to redistribute wealth and political power equitably. In fact it is political power that is the key to social equality in India in the present time. Affirmative actions like reservations have helped economic upliftment of Dalits but socio-politically they are still pariah, returning them their share of political power is the only way to achieve social equality. As for many of the apprehensions that Mayawati may make drastic reversals in foreign policies etc, history bears testimony to the fact that once installed on the seat of power, even the most vitriolic leader starts behaving responsibly (Modi is an exception but NDA policies during its term is the most befitting example) (Also its what Peter Parker's dying Uncle says to him "with great power comes great responsibility" :) )

And yes, we do need sort "movers and shakers" that momentarily upset the established class-based social structure. If this sounds preposterous then let me remind you that the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi, Mandal were 2 issues that changed the face of Indian politics forever without hindering the pace of development in any way. It merely shook the foundation of the seats of power of feudal lords-turned-politicians who considered themselves invincible because of their command of primary loyalties of sundry groups, evoked by emotive and often parochial and almost always non-progressive issues. The period was pretty chaotic but so is the case every time a new order is in the making.

If you look at the number at the number of Naxalite attacks on polling centres this election it seems quite ominous. Call them brigands and robbers as P Chidambram does but the simple fact is that farmers, craftsmen, foragers do not take up arms unless there is deep-rooted discontent and rage against the established order, within their bosoms.

P.S.: I have been thinking of writing on this since a long time but couldn't get around to doing it. However, while leaving a comment on fellow blogger/twitterer Aakriti I found that I had enough content to post as a new entry! So here it is :)

Posted By Danish 1:17 PM

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Fake IPL Player Blog: Adding Viral Marketing To Cricket

It seems PC was correct all along, polls and cricket tournament can't go together. They are just too BIG ! No, I am not talking from the security point of view which denied India the opportunity to host IPL (and in the process diluted my zeal to follow live scores), the distraction now comes in the form of a blog posted by someone who could be part of the Kolkota Knight Riders squad. Well, the very URL, http://fakeiplplayer.blogpot.com suggests that the author might not be a "real player", but the posts refer to people, facts, events and even predictions which an outsider would not be able to know. But the most interesting factor for me is the fact that the author doesn't seem very keen to prove his claim, the posts seem impromptu musings of a person who has been around in domestic cricket for some time and now want's to give out the insider view of IPL, especially about dressing room conversations, equations between players, coach, owner etc.

Overall, the blog is quite refreshing and informative as well. This week I intended to update this blog with something related to elections but then as PC said cricket and election have nastier habit of eating into each other's fan base far more than SRK and Aamir Khan do. IPL this year hadn't really captured my attention, I wasn't following each and every match but then I came across this IPL ANONYMOUS's blog and was compelled to defer my post on election :)

Btw, this blog has already turned viral (in terms of marketing!) so I have a hunch that if this blog goes on to become as big a hit some other "insider" blogs have become, it could have some impact on Social Media Optimization and Internet Marketing in general. Lets wait and watch....

Posted By Danish 1:22 AM

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Zardari mistakes Osama for Obama

In a sensational revelation, a Central Asian news agency has claimed that it has irrefutable evidence to prove that Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari may have been taking orders from Osama and not Obama as is widely believed. "That may partly explain", says South-Asia correspondent Floral Poi, "why Zardari has been making contradictory statements on a host of issues ranging from Mumbai terror attack to reinstatement of sacked Chief Justice Iftikar Chaudhary to his equation with Prime Minister Gilani".

Political analysts say that this won't be the first time Zardari has been victim to an evil prankster. He had earlier claimed that after the Mumbai attack, someone claiming to be Indian foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee had called him threatening to attack Pakistan. An inexperienced Zardari panicked and went into denial mode which has now resulted in one of the biggest diplomatic stand-offs between the two countries.

Sources indicate that owing to the close similarity between the names of the Saudi fugitive and the American President, the former has been sending Zardari instructions on various policies. It is not clear if the Al Qaeda leader deliberately misled Pakistani establishment or the latter misunderstood the message as having originated from the Oval Office. It is a mistake that everyone, from CNN to Ted Kennedy, have done. The names Obama and Osama have been used interchangeably (but erroneously) quite a few times, but this is the first time that a nation's policies have been influenced by it.

A Zardari aide said,"the media is blowing it out of proportion, yes he was always weak at spelling, but these sorts of mistakes are not unheard of! Remember just a few years back George W. Bush plunged his nation into the Iraq War after claiming to have heard God's voice?" And didn't it turn out that the voice did not belong to God but to Dick Cheney who was over the intercom? So why is it difficult for Zardari to make a similar mistake by confusing Osama with Obama ?" the official emphatically questions.

However, a large number of political and security experts argue that it might not be as inadvertent a mistake as it is now made out to be. A security expert on condition of anonymity says,"radical militant groups have always had a say in the governance, the instructions from Al Qaeda or Taliban to the President might not be such a rarity, maybe Zardari just didn't know how to handle it. Afterall he is not known to be particularly bright. Pakistan has been running with hares and hunting with hounds all along, this shouldn't surprise anyone."

Osama Bin Laden could not be reached for comment.

Update:
I guess everybody has taken it as it should have been - An April Fool Joke :D
There were 2 clues -

• Floral Poi - is an anagram of April Fool.
• Individual letters in bold starting with "A" spell April Fool.

Posted By Danish 5:00 AM

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Remembering Misty

Misty, a close friend of mine died on this day 2 months back but it was only in the last week that I came to know of it making me wonder if online relationships are too hollow or I was just being too apathetic :(

Well, I knew her on the Internet, we had never met in real but we knew facts about each other that only closest friends could know. She had been introduced to me by a close friend who wanted to prove that the even average Americans can be intelligent and mature and can take part in political and philosophical debates! Well, my friend was correct, Misty turned out intelligent, educated, mature and so affectionate!

She was my main adversary on Yahoo Literati, we were always trying to surpass each other's ratings and I am glad to say that ultimately she won. But she had also been my agony aunt whenever I needed one. Even people close to me would marvel at knowing how much I confided in a friend I had never met but then Misty had the sort of warmth that it was impossible to not open up to. Of All I knew about her, she loved her three kids and her world revolved around them , I hope the world now looks at her kids with the same love and compassion that Misty seemed to have in abundance.

The last time we chatted was on the night of 26/11 as terrorists lay siege on Mumbai. Ironically our last conversation was very much on the same lines as had been the first one but it was not over yet. We were supposed to pick up the thread later on but this time fate had other plans. She passed away on 16th January, 2009. I learn't of her demise after more than one and half months from a another friend and since then I have a nagging guilt that I was so apathetic that I did not realize such an important friend passing away.

I apologize and pray that her soul rests in peace.

Posted By Danish 5:29 AM

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Now, Goons Come Out In Support Of NCW Probe Team

A very peculiar situation is unfolding in the aftermath of the Manglore pub attack as the Shri Ram Sene comes out in support of the member of the National Commission for Women, Ms.Nirmala Venkatesh, who was heading the probe into the highly publicised Manglore pub attack, and whose report has already been rejected by the head of the Commission, Ms.Girija Vyas. The probe team had in its report held the pub authority responsible for the incident. After a public outcry NCW has rejected the report and the ministry has in fact issued a show-cause notice to Ms. Venkatesh. Both the NCW chief and Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Choudhury are justified in taking steps but it needs to be borne in mind the swung into action only after the media had exposed the sham that was being conducted in the name of investigation.

It is really strange why Ms.Venkatesh did not think it proper to meet the victims! Instead, she chose to meet the perpetrators in jail and actually claims to understand them. One of the first things she did was investigate if the pub had license to serve alcohol and the last thing she did is recommend NCW to cancel the license. It is really strange that it never occurred to her that she was neither an excise officer nor a law enforcement officer to question the legality of the pub.

But that's not all. Going by her statements it seems that Ms.Venkatesh may in fact, have more than a wee bit of sympathy for the perpetrators. After all, she does say that she understood the attackers and that their motive was not to beat up women. This fact and her inquiry into the legality of the pub clearly indicates that Ms.Venkatesh had no clue as to what her duties and responsibilities entailed. As a member of the NCW she should be the last person to "understand" the culprits and as member of an advisory body she should refrain from treading into territories which belong to the executive.

However, Ms.Venkatesh is not alone, not long back Orissa's State Commission for Women chief had displayed similar apathy and lack of understanding of her job profile when she carried out raids on parks in Bhubaneswar haunted by young, unmarried couples. Moral policing is usually aimed at protecting/subjugating women, so when functionaries of bodies set up to fight for women's rights themselves become the moral police, the civil society needs to introspect seriously. One of the reasons that the situation has reached this stage is the practice of using the offices of these constitutional and/or statutory bodies as rewards to party loyalists. This trend can be seen in almost every government founded body from those dealing with sports to wakf and national and state commissions. An undesirable consequence of this practice is that being politicians these functionaries are found unwilling to risk annoying their constituents. Shouldn't the process of appointing office-bearers of these bodies be more transparent and competitive to ensure that the posts go to people who deserve it and are ideologically inclined towards the cause they are supposed to further.

The slothful pace at which the campaign for female emancipation and gender equality is being carried out in India and the opposition it faces from different quarters, including the self-appointed guardians of Indian culture, offices in the National and State Women Commissions should not be doled out as political rewards and should instead be entrusted with notable feminists who have shown grit and determination to take on established misogynistic traditions and dogmas.

While Medha Patkar, Kiran Bedi, Sarojini Sahoo and even Shabana Azmi may fit the bill, to me, someone like Rakhi Sawant would be more acceptable as a member of the NCW rather than a more respectable lady politician who ends up sympathizing with male chauvinists and herself assumes the role of moral brigade.

Posted By Danish 12:29 AM

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Slumdog Millionaire : Joning The Debate

In my last post,i have appreciated the movie Slumdog Millionaire quite unabashedly but that does not mean that i agree with everything that is being said about this movie.

Slumdog Millionaire comes across as a great work of art, an insightful journey through the life of a slum dweller as he passes through different worlds which transition in the background seamlessly. In many ways it is more like Herman Hesse's "Siddhartha" and Paulo Coelho's "the Alchemist" rather than a realistic "bandit queen". I think what has appealed to the audiences world-wide is the protagonist's upbeat spirit rather than realism. In fact, the so-called "ugly India" serves only as the backdrop which constantly transforms providing only fleeting glimpses.

Boyle doesn't even scratch the surface and rightly so, the script revolves around the protagonist, not the background. It is therefore intriguing that the movie is being seen as a portrayal of the real India. The criticism started well before the movie was officially released in India making me wonder if the critics had actually seen the movie or were just being apprehensive because of past experiences.

The allegation that film-makers exploit India's poverty is not without a basis. Film-makers of Indian origin such as Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta are especially adept at seeking out tales of exploitation, brutalization and misery from the nooks and corners of India and take them to the Western audience as work of art. I do not blame the Western audience either, India to them has always been synonymous with two clichés-poverty and spiritualism. Films portraying poverty and deprivation in India are thus more acceptable to Western audience.

However, these movies do not get good reception in India. Why? Is the Indian audience unwilling to look at its ugly face even when it is shown to them? A lot of non-Indians seem to harbour a feeling that all Bollywood movies are unrealistic and fantasy-based and that the Indian audience's perception of reality is influenced majorly by these movies. To them movies portraying the poverty-sticken and brutal face of India are ignored by Indian audiences because they don't want to see them. That may be true in some cases but not in all and certainly not in my case.
Why i never liked such movies is because i myself never found them authentic enough. They depict India from an outsider's eyes, not India as it is. Poverty, injustice, exploitation are far more painful than these movies portray. Something like Slumdog Millionaire never happens with India's slum dwellers, and neither are the teenaged chai-wallahs of Mumbai as polished and sophisticated as Dev Patel. The actor deserves the applause for the performance but the fact remains that he does not look a Mumbai slum-dweller in any way.

There are many other instances where reality and its portrayal in the movie don't see eye to eye.
The theme of the movie mocks at the most tragic aspect of the India's poor and underprivileged. The aspiration to escape dreadful living conditions by winning a fortune in a game show is not something that India's under-privileged can dream. Their aspirations always seem to be for better condition within the boundaries of their immediate realties. The day these deprived classes begin to dream of getting to the top,social injustice in India would start losing ground.

Contrary to popular perception, realism has always been there in Indian Cinema, its just that these movies never got the visibility that they deserved. Just a couple of years back, Madhur Bhandarkar's Traffic Signal based on the lives of Mumbai's underbelly did a better job portraying the reality. Realism has always been a part of Indian cinema, be it Satyajit Ray's social commentary or Hrishikesh Mukherjee's light hearted comedies. The 80's in particular,spawned a generation of serious actors whose talent has been recognized world over. Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi, Shekhar Kapoor are some of the names that have been synonymous with serious cinema.

However, it does not mean that popular Bollywood movies and stars did not contribute to serious cinema. Lets not forget that even Amitabh Bachchan has acted in movies like Aalaap, Abhimaan and Saudagar and SRK started his film career with movies like Maya Memsaab and Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naan. For a long time the difference between parallel and popular cinema remained stark but lately it is disappearing. Madhur Bhandarkar is just another member of the pack of film-makers whose movies have been successful because of realistic representation.

Looking back, some of my recent favourite movies like Parzania, Black Friday, Omkara, Page 3 and even Black seem more realistic the Slumdog Millionaire. So if Slumdog Millionaire has been nominated for realism then Parzania and Traffic Signal should have already won Academy awards. Unless, of course the Bollywood movies are considered eligible only if the film-makers do not belong to it.

Posted By Danish 6:54 PM

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Slumdog Millionaire : A Review

Suddenly, the impoverished, brutalized face of India is everywhere thanks to the Oscar nominated Slumdog Millionaire. Quite a few people including the legendary Amitabh Bachchan have spoken out against Danny Boyle's use of India's ugly face for his film! Tragedy sells and film-makers know how to make money by glamorizing grief. This movie has earned more criticism than expected mainly because the depiction of Mumbai's underbelly is being seen as a major threat to the image India has earned for its stupendous economic success in last two decades. The controversy continues, but, before i jump into it let me give you an honest review of the movie.

My spontaneous reaction after watching the film was one of delight. The script is ruthlessly upbeat The plot revolves around the life of Jamal an orphaned Mumbai slum kid, as he fights to survive in the dog-eat-dog world and overcomes various trials and tribulations of street life to emerge in the hot seat of the popular game show "Who Wants To Become A Millionaire?".

Jamal wins the game not because he is exceptionally intelligent but because he is lucky to face questions whose answers he already knows. He has known these answers not by reading but through the hard ways of life, each question takes you back to some gruesome episode that has taught the answer to Jamal .Danny Boyle takes the audience through a colorful and fast moving adventure of Jamal through these episodes in the protagonist's life which vary from cruel, horrific, shocking to joyful and ecstatic moments. Despite the circumstances the backdrop remains upbeat and optimistic and that is what carries the film through. My favorite moment is the climax of the movie when Jamal facing the penultimate question of the show (the 20 million rupees question) uses his final life-line to call his lost love knowing fully well that she doesn't know the answer to the question. Its the sort of sentimentality and optimism that only Bollywood movies could portray but Boyle handles it well.

Anil Kapoor as the host of the game show lives up to the expectation, his role may not have required it but his performance makes him the anchor of the film itself. Dev Patel's performance is stunning but for some reason i have confused him with Abhishek Bachchan and i am not talking about appearance! The real stars are the kids who play the roles far more convincingly than the grown ups.

However, it is a director's movie all the way and Danny Boyle has done a great job engaging the audience and taking them on the journey of a slumdog through his various emotional, and mostly tragic phases, which the protagonist overcomes through gritty determination and optimism.

Posted By Danish 11:53 PM

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Munnabhai meets Mangalore Marauders

Culture vultures swooping down on helpless women in Mangalore, Rajasthan CM Gehlot and Karnataka CM Yedurappa vowing to fight "pub culture" and Sunjay Dutt's statement about his sister using their father's surname exhibit the role male chauvinism continues to play in the Indian socio-sphere. What is really alarming is the fact this is strain of thought is not restricted to the far right camp only. While Karnataka CM Yedurappa belongs to the BJP, Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot is a Congressman and Sunjay Dutt has just joined the Samajwadi Party, yet all of them have expressed similar sentiments regarding Indian culture.

As far as Sunjay Dutt is concerned it is really unnerving that the actor has remained so uninfluenced from the role he plays so convincingly in the Munnabhai series. His statement reminds me of a fellow blogger Zaina's post. A lot of people may not take it seriously enough but the fact remains that women adopting their husbands' surname goes contrary to the notion of gender equality.As for the new saffron outfit running amok in Mangalore, it shouldn't surprise us the way it does now. For years now we have allowed rightists and communalists to take control of our society. Extremists of every hue, be they Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs or any religious denomination, often justify their attempts to subjugate women in the name of protecting their honour and dignity.

Primitive human society (as well as animal societies) viewed their females as possessions that defined the individual's stature and represented the honour of the tribe. So when religious radicals talk of protecting woman's honour and dignity, it is their own primitive sense of honour of the tribe, that they are talking about. Further, dignity cannot be forced on anyone, it is a natural condition that exists until attempts, especially belligerent attempts are made by others to deny it. Use of coercive and brutal methods to bestow dignity actually means assaulting the woman's individual dignity and an act to protect the tribe or community's honour.

Since antiquity India has been a heterogeneous society, assimilating not only immigrants but their cultures too. Constant cultural synthesis is what Indian culture has represented throughout history. The marauding hordes of Mangalore are least likely to have any idea on the Indian culture, our heritage is too pluralistic, too composite and too rich to be understood by people with such primitive mentality.

Posted By Danish 12:45 AM

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Is India Inc Ready For Corporate Governance ?

Corporate governance is the new buzzword in the Indian white-collar community coming in the wake of Satyam debacle. Coming from a background that has had nothing to do with commerce, economics or business management, I find it difficult to understand if there is a greater need for corporate governance.

For all I know, more rules, procedures and processes remind me of the good old and inefficient bureaucracy and "the license permit raj" of pre-reforms India. In the Cold War era India's socialistic leanings (more like anti-capitalism) led to rules, processes and governmental control that most Indian corporates were either state controlled or dominated by big business houses. It did not allow the middle-class, traditionally business oriented, to dream big in terms of business.Economic reforms changed all that, private players took over and the result 15 years later is not bad at all. It is not just the big business houses and multinational companies that have been successful, of course they have had an important role but it is the small businesses that have been driving the engine of growth. Lots of energy, determination and innovation are the hallmarks of this epoch. It is also the period when entrepreuners and spirited individuals from rural and small towns of India emerged as key players. Did they know or follow management rules or processes?

I don't think so! Lets take Lalu Yadav as case-study. Lalu was seen by a lot of literati as the perfect example of illiterate, ignorant political leader who doesn't deserve to be in the legislature. While this impression may have weakened with passage of time, it is a fact that he lacks absolutely the sophistication and finese synonymous with corporate leadership. Yet he tranformed railways in a manner none could have imagined. I guess Lalu didn't go much into the established corporate strategies and plans. What he did instead is, apply his own desi business sense and unorthodoxy. The same goes for dabbawalas, Dhoni and scores of middle-class Indians who now lead India. Most of these people who have gone on to become corporate leaders have shown dictatorial traits. Should that be tolerated?

Before answering that question let us take a look at the fact that despite phenomenal economic growth, India is still the home of every third poverty-stricken person in the world. As things stand, this gulf between poor and others is set to increase unless the overall economy grows at a faster pace. History shows that raapid development has been a reality in autocratic states more than in democratic ones. So, as long as corporate leaders act dictatorial within their own organization,on purely professional issues and have no major or direct role in socio-political aspects of society, they can be seen as necessary evil. Of course, the government should ensure that the interests and basic rights of the employees and customers are safe-guarded and the value generated contribute to the society as a whole.

P.S: As I have said before, this is an area I am not knowledgeable in and I may be wrong. But do leave a comment to correct me :)

Posted By Danish 1:52 AM

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2008: A year of Doublespeak and Doublethought

The year 2008 was a mixed bag but personally i would view it as a bad one considering the increased number of terror attacks, and political upheavels across countries and continents and the uh-so depressing global economy slowdown. In that sense my following post is in many ways different from what i have posted before. Here is a transcript of a conversation that me and my muse in the context of the Mumbai terror attack and its fallout.

Me: Apparently, an FBI team has visited the village of captured terrorist Ajmal Kasab in Pakistan.

Muse : Wait a second! Hasn't Pakistan said that Kasab is not a Pakistani?

Me : Well, all that Pakistan has said is that India has not provided them "credible evidence" to prove that this terrorist, Ajmal Kasab, son of Amir Kasab of village Faridkot, in the Okara district of Punjab, Pakistan, as reported by Pakistani newspaper Dawn, is indeed a Pakistani national!

Muse: But didn't former Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif say that Kasab's village had been cordoned off and his parents were not being allowed to speak to reporters?
Me: Actually, Nawaz Sharif has been misquoted and his statements have been taken out of context. What Sharif had said on the camera that all of us saw was that Kasab's village had been cordoned off and his parents had not been allowed to talk to the media. Sharif never said that Ajmal Kasab was a Pakistani!!! In fact, when he made those statements, being a politician, he was only taking a shot at the current government and his political opponents.But thats ridiculous! haven't many news agencies including Pakistan's own Geo TV and Dawn already proved Kasab's identity ? Even the government of Pakistan has in a manner accepted the fact but technically it lives in denial.

Muse: Isn't that paradoxical and perverted?
Me : It is actually doublespeak or implementation of the Orwellian concept of "doublethink". This concept was popularized by George Orwell in his dystopian novel "1984". Doublethink is described by Orwell as "the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then,when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of the objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies-all this is indispensably necessary". In the current scenario Pakistan is using doublespeak in both disowning Kasab and accepting him at the same time.Pakistan itself is no stranger to terror attack, its very existence is under threat but why is it still unwilling to co-operate?There could be many reasons including the possibility of certain individuals and groups of being unpersons. However, the only thing that is clear is the fact that Pakistan is unwilling to act and despite what the US says, it is not doing enough to make Pakistan see sense. I doubt if Pakistan and the US view anti-India terror group in the same light as they do with their "own terrorists".

Muse : So how does one deal with nation-states that run with the hare and hunt with the hound, especially when the self-appointed global cop extends tacit support to it. Do we go back to our daily lives, sweat and toil for our secure future and wait for the next attack ???


Update
Here is the evidence that Pakistan has been hankering for! and the dossier that India gave to it

Posted By Danish 2:10 AM

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