February 2012
9 posts
2 tags
Surfing at Ramchandi, Puri →
Surfing took a baby step or the first dip at the first India Surf Festival in Puri this month. Indian surfers, from states along India’s long coastline, came together for the first time, in one place. From fishermen’s sons to professional surfing instructors, they do not fit the classic, global image of surfers we have. They are uniquely Indian. Meet the first generation of Indian...
4 tags
Watch(via Mother India Father Surf)
21 Tips On Surviving Life in Modern India →
1. Be rich. Very rich. Money may not buy happiness, but a Crore or two lying around doesn’t hurt.
2. Don’t buy anything without bargaining. Nothing. It is just against the Indian spirit. If your kid asks for a school trip to Egypt, propose Jaipur. If he turns out to be a bargainer, raise the offer to Aurangabad.
3. Have lots of kids. You must have a doctor, a lawyer, an police officer, and a...
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Step by Step to Assembling Indian Fast Food →
Tucked between a strip mall Starbucks and a Jamba Juice, at the back door of a Chipotle Grill, Bombay Bowl is one of a number of Indian restaurants whose owners are thinking big no matter how small they are. Borrowing the assembly-line format, customized service and chipper style of national chains like Subway, they plan to make dals, curries, chutneys and flatbreads into fast-food choices from...
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Story of Parliamentary Reporting →
A familiar scene in the two Houses of Parliament is that of quietly dressed persons heading for the central table at a brisk pace—but with a careful and correct bearing—taking their seats, scribbling in their note-books for a while and then making an exit as quick and unobtrusive as their entry. But not many people know who are these men and women apparently always in a hurry and what is the...
And the Award For The Most Surreal Experience Goes... →
The past few weeks have been pretty ordinary for me. You know how it is. Sometimes you hit that humdrum phase in life, when all you do is wake up, go to work and hang out with Shah Rukh Khan at Mannat.
Alright, I’m kidding. I meant Shah Rukh Khan and Ranbir Kapoor.
This happened because I was part of the writing team that scripted a recent Bollywood award function, hosted by the two stars. I...
Why Aren’t More Indians Using Twitter? →
The reality is just very different on the ground. People will get their nationalistic backs up about this post, but the stats don’t lie. It’s not a matter of national pride, it’s a matter of business reality right now. Pretending a country is something it isn’t yet, doesn’t help any entrepreneurs trying to build companies there. In fact, it’s hurt India in the past because investors and Web...
January 2012
26 posts
Rushdie Non Grata →
Rushdie’s video image was not allowed at the Festival, but he was on television tonight in India, being interviewed on NDTV, and he spoke out angrily about the “unscrupulous” Muslim groups that threatened him, and an Indian government that failed to act. Speaking from London, Rushdie called the whole affair “fantastically fishy” and blamed the ruling Congress Party and other officials for bowing...
Conversations in the Nude →
Open’s staff writer Mihir Srivastava likes to sketch nude portraits of regular people—men and women, strangers and friends, thin and fat. Some are disgusted when he asks them if they would pose for him. But, surprisingly, many agree. Why?
Would you?
“just rename it to Islamic republic of India already”
– Twitter / @cgawker
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Big courage on little shoulders →
The boy, a Class VII student and the son of a Uttar Pradesh farmer, pulled out several of his friends alive out of a burning van, caring little about his own safety. On September 4, 2010, Om Prakash was going to school along with other students in a Maruti van. But all of a sudden, the van caught fire because of a short circuit in the gas kit. The driver immediately opened his door and fled. But...
What have clothes got to do with sexual attacks? →
My colony has a fancy western-sounding name and, while constructing the illusion that we were buying into something exotic, the builder has installed statues vaguely modeled on Venus de Milo — nearly nude white female forms, arms missing. Then one day, our statue was found dressed in a nightgown. But perhaps some poor person needed that nightgown, so the statue was bare again. Soon enough,...
An excuse called Rushdie →
Politicians and clerics offer illusory benefits to Muslims, who want education and jobs. Instead they get quotas, and not skills.
More often than not, we’re focused on the temporary issues affecting minorities instead of focusing on empowering them to succeed.
Indian Copyright: A Brief Compilation of Indian... →
Content law is a field of law unto itself, and the Indian corpus juris contains over twenty statutes governing content. In addition to statutory law, case law and tort law also govern content – for example, the right to privacy (and the corresponding prohibition on the publication of content invasive of privacy) finds its roots not only in constitutional law but also in tort law.
Most Indian...
India's first Ironman is a woman →
Anuradha Vaidyanathan is India first Ironman athlete. The multi-tasking 30-year-old PhD holder and entrepreneur tells us about the challenges she’s had to face and how she made it.
Very few of us may have even heard of the sporting event she represents. Fewer are probably aware of the extreme physical endurance it demands. Ironman one-day triathlon that involves a 3.8km swim, 180km...
Leading by example →
The study focuses on West Bengal, a state in eastern India, where one-third of the pradhan positions have been randomly reserved for women since 1998. This policy is part of a larger effort in India to put women in local government: In 1993, the country widely adopted gender quotas for village councils. As a result, India’s proportion of local elected leaders who were female rose from less than...
Kitchen Confidential →
Having spent three months snooping around a restaurant, Sohini Chattopadhyay reveals why even great recipes sometimes don’t make it to the menu, the food service industry’s unforgiving hierarchy, and other secrets.
It’s hard out there for a chef.
Don’t make me put it up on eBay →
I’d like to see the Lok Sabha implement a Prime Minister’s Question system akin to the one in the House of Commons. The post of PM is not a ceremonial one but an executive one. The current prime minister has shown a revulsion for saying anything that is not delivered from a pulpit or behind closed doors. This has only compounded the feeling that nobody is in charge. I find this utterly...
A well-deserved and well-earned right for NRIs →
The reputation of a country affects the way citizens are perceived abroad, too. A citizen of a booming, honest and friendly country is treated very differently from a citizen of a graft-ridden, poor nation. NRIs, therefore, care more about the brand value of India than those who are sheltered within their domestic borders. It is the individual NRI out there who is at the front line of what are...
We, the Fools →
The Lokpal has been left in the lurch. Who is to blame? Just about everybody who claimed to be in the Bill’s favour
Everyone got their fifteen minutes of fame and in the end, we’re left with the bill. Or rather no bill.
Escape Artistes →
There is huge money to be made out of this subculture one could call Talent TV. Money that is trading on that most profound resource: the human desire for recognition. The young see reality shows as a way of escaping their small horizons: the shows pick them for precisely that reason. This narrative arc — the desire for escape and the potential for escape — makes for great viewing. It is little...
From Annapalooza to Murdochmania, #outrage was the... →
Appropriately, the last week of 2011 saw the last hurrah of pro-violence Gandhian and ineligible Bachelor of the Year, Anna Hazare. Not only were people in the real world deserting him, even Twitter’s revolutionaries were leaving his sinking ship. First he came for our alcohol, then he came for the women who couldn’t breed. People were suddenly surprised that an old man whose name...
Royal siblings reflect struggle of India's modern... →
“In a centuries-old hunting lodge hidden on the fringes of India’s capital, in a room where pigeons fly among hand-carved pillars and Persian carpets rot in the gloom, a princess dreams of a long-gone kingdom.”
Taking rights seriously →
Economics isn’t about protecting rights. It is about efficient processes that reduce costs, and it encourages competition. While development jargon consists of terms such as social inclusion and sustainable development, these policies assert rights without an enforcement mechanism, and may ensure that the poor remain poor, dependent on someone’s compassion. The poor become objects of pity and...
Beyond Anna →
Fifteen years on, Hazare’s demand for an investigation into Thackeray’s assets, and Thackeray’s use of the word “mad” for Hazare, have, in Thackeray’s mind, morphed into Hazare saying Thackeray “is the only ray of hope and only he can dare crush corruption.” Why? Because nobody, least of all Thackeray, is above using the sudden rise to prominence...
“Should we move there? RT @ibnlive: China promises to provide adequate safety to...”
– Twitter / @sidin
Chennai, through the blogs →
It is an unabashed revolution. In the ten or so years that blogging has been in India, citizens are finding a newer form of expression. Be it audio blogs for the unrepresented from the Maoist heartland or regional language prose that your neighbour could be writing, the technology helps, and so does the urge to be heard.
I was asked to comment and am quoted in this story.
Infrastructure in India: Infrastruggles →
For the past half decade India’s infrastructure industry has enjoyed a Sea Link moment; a blast of growth when one could imagine that the private sector could deliver all the new roads, bridges, power stations and airports that the country needs so badly. The government says the boom will continue. Over the next five years it predicts that infrastructure investment will reach a new high relative...
For India’s Poor, Private Schools Help Fill a... →
In India, the choice to live outside the faltering grid of government services is usually reserved for the rich or middle class, who can afford private housing compounds, private hospitals and private schools. But as India’s economy has expanded during the past two decades, an increasing number of India’s poor parents are now scraping together money to send their children to low-cost private...
Public reason, Indian style →
Public Opinion can make the horse come to the water, it cannot make it drink.
The most valuable trait in politics is not rhetorical power. It is silence. Those who speak the least shall be prime minister the longest.
So long as the Anna movement used the power of music and maun vrat, they had a chance. The minute they took to the megaphone they blew it.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta wonders if we will...
December 2011
19 posts
In Indian Slum, Misery, Work, Politics and Hope →
In the labyrinthine slum known as Dharavi are 60,000 structures, many of them shanties, and as many as one million people living and working on a triangle of land barely two-thirds the size of Central Park in Manhattan. Dharavi is one of the world’s most infamous slums, a cliché of Indian misery. It is also a churning hive of workshops with an annual economic output estimated to be $600 million...
Pause For Reflection →
You know those National Geographic documentaries with the 3D animation of how neurons behave, with the whooshing of electrical impulses across the central nervous system? Something like that ensued and suddenly I had a vision. No, not of me cradling a brood of babies (it’s surprising how many babies one can cradle at the same time in ones imagination), but of my mother saying - “See,...
An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry →
When Arunachalam Muruganantham decided he was going to do something about the fact that women in India can’t afford sanitary napkins, he went the extra mile: He wore his own for a week to figure out the best design [via @supremus].
“Always the Tenzing Norgay, never the Edmund Hillary. #DesiProverbs”
– Twitter / @bhalomanush
Hastinapur, the city of wisdom, in Argentina →
Hastinapur has a total area of twelve acres. Its population consists of a dozen Indian gods and an equal number of Argentine human beings. Some of the Indian gods reside in authentic temples filled with the scent of Indian agarbatties while others stay outdoor enjoying the fragrance of the flowers from the garden. Some are sitting or standing on the pedestals and others hang on the sides of...
The Ugly Indian →
Choose wisely.
The Face of Lakshmi →
Merill Lynch says that there are over 126,000 Indians with investable assets of over 1 million dollars. Based on people I’ve met in the last 1.5 years, I believe that even with the most conservative estimate, they are off target by a factor of 5. There are hundreds of thousands of dollar-millionaires in India who would never catch the eye of a white-collar professional.
No survey can...
Virender Sehwag and what we don’t know →
Those of us who are lucky to watch him bat know he’s great. But those who come after may be lucky enough to understand his greatness, to put his mighty body of work in perspective and to celebrate how one man changed the course of cricketing history.
As usual, Sidvee is excellent on Sehwag after his ODI double-ton. I loved the first comment by Sagar too.
Tomorrow’s battles →
In 2009, the Congress got as propitious a mandate as any party could have expected. There was hope and expectation. The opposition, both on the left and right, was decimated. But what did India gain? It frittered away the good times. Instead of using growth to lay a secure foundation for the future, and create conditions where the scourge of poverty can be removed, we undermined the prospects...
Wal-Mart Hears a Familiar Complaint in India →
Late last month, as part of a push to modernize his nation’s notoriously inefficient retail economy, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced that for the first time big foreign companies like Wal-Mart and the British company Tesco could open retail stores in India. Until now, foreign companies have been restricted to serving only as wholesalers in India. That has already helped create more...
WatchWASTE - FINISH Project - India (by Beyond Borders Media)
Oye Kapil Kapil Oye →
You know why that fan fell on Sharad Pawar’s head? Because your government hit it with so much shit that it couldn’t take it anymore. You should know there’s a problem when your own fucking furniture starts rebelling against you. The Internet is not the Congress where everything needs to get approval from high command before it can be said. It has its own checks and balances – something you...
The Rotten State of India’s Media →
What is broken about the news media in India is self evident on the front pages of the dailies in the mornings and on the nightly news on television in the evenings.
Fragments of news, a significant portion lazily strung together from press agency clippings, are what a careful newspaper reader can sift out between a series of full-page advertisements peddling products, and images of women...