It is the belief of millions of devout Hindus around the world that Lord Rama ( Avatara Purushottama ) built the 30 miles long Rama Sethu ( also called as Adam's Bridge by the British ) to rescue his spouse Sita from the hands of demon Ravana. Ramayana is an epic which epitomizes righteousness, devotion, duty and love. It tries to answer many questions and conflicts arising in one's life, in other words Ramayana is not simply a religious text but also a philosophical treatise which is relevant even today. More importantly it tries to throw light on the 4 Purusharthas of life according to Hinduism i.e Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha and describes how one should take precedence over the other in different difficult and conflicting situations. Describing Ramayana and the message it conveys is beyond the scope of this blog entry.

Lord Rama, the hero of Ramayana, is worshiped as a God ( 7th incarnation of Lord Vishnu ) by believers. For people who are supposed to be neutral or indifferent towards religion and religious beliefs Lord Rama can be understood as a fictitious character created by very knowledgeable people of the past, who is an embodiment of an ideal human being:- a dutiful son, a loving brother, faithful husband, responsible and benevolent king. The atheists should be sensible enough to view Rama not as religious icon but as an icon of good prevailing over the evil. Lord Rama and his principles have inspired many greats like Mahatma Gandhi, Vivekananda and others in their decision making. Rama and Ramayana also exist in our everyday lives in the form of various tales narrated by our elders from our childhood days. So Rama, whether he existed or not, is a character many try to emulate in their lives.

In the wake of such a background of Ramayana and Lord Rama, people at the helm of the affairs concerning the governance of a country / state should not take extreme stands on the religious aspects of the citizens. Clearly there are sentiments involved with the issue of Rama and the bridge he is believed to have built many thousand years ago.

The original issue was the feasibility of the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal, a pet project of the DMK. Once the project is completed the traveling time between the east and west coasts of the country would be cut down substantially. The critics of the project were asking for the restructuring of the canal in a way that would prevent the Rama Sethu from being destroyed. But the protagonists of the Sethusamudram project were not even willing to consider and they resorted to frivolous arguments on the existence of Rama and others to drive home their point. Asking for doing away or restructuring of the project was well within reason:

• Hindus constitute nearly 80% of the population. Majority of them have their sentiments fixed on the Rama Sethu.
• The Canal project, once completed, is likely to displace nearly 3.5 lakhs fishermen and snatch away their livelihood.
• There are several proofs to suggest that the structure is man made and the Rama Sethu bridge, dated by a NASA digital image, is considered to be to be 1.7million years old, which matches the ancient age of human settlement in Sri Lanka.
• The project will without a doubt destroy South Asia and South East Asia's first marine biosphere in the Gulf of Mannar. It is safe to conclude that the Rama Bridge, acting as a breakwater, induces a certain stillness and calm in the Gulf of Mannar. Over the centuries, this calm has flourished over three thousand six hundred species of plants and animals. It has five species of endangered marine turtles, innumerable fish, mollusks and crustaceans. As opposed to Palk Bay, Gulf of Mannar is deep, being over three hundred meters deep in most places. Because of the unique circulation of ocean currents, the nutrients to be found here are exceptional. In case the Rama Bridge is breached, the shallow silted waters of the Palk Bay will flow into the Gulf of Mannar, destroying its fragile ecosystem. On the other hand, breaching the Bridge would also impact on the meadows of sea grass in the Palk Bay, which are home to a large number of fish species and the rare dugong or sea cow.
• The Canal is financially unviable.
• It is widely believed that the bridge played a major role in averting catastrophic damages to the coast of Tamil Nadu during the Tsunami disaster. So, destroying the bridge will only multiply the damages that may possibly occur in the wake of another Tsunami.
• The Ram Setu, besides its heritage value has embedded thorium deposits in its vicinity. Clearly the Canal project will destroy India's thorium deposits.

So, not touching the Rama Sethu is a small price we are paying as a nation for preserving a cultural heritage which is revered by millions besides the scientific and strategic importance of the bridge to India.

I invite the readers to share their views on this issue as also on the reasons mentioned in the blog for doing away / restructuring of the project. I was extremely tempted to write on the politics surrounding the Sethusamdram project, Rama Sethu and Lord Rama himself. Time permitting i would do so within this week.

Away from the feverish pace of the city life, away from the early morning outcries of fellow citizens, away from the clutches of peak hour traffic jams, away from the prehension of felonies and frauds, away from the infringement of the social, ethical and moral values, away from the foreboding of a crumbling infrastructure of a grand city lies my divine abode, yes you guessed it right, its Chamrajpet indeed. The area is small yet spacious, centrally located yet tranquil, populous yet very friendly, brisk yet serene, plain yet mystical.

The cardinalship of Chamrajpet can be known from the fact that it forms the artery carrying the blood ( a simile for traffic ) from the Heart of Bangalore City ( read City Market and Majestic ) to vital body parts ( read Mysore and Magadi roads ). Being just 2kms from City Market, less than 4kms from Majestic, about 4kms from Jayanagar 4th block and a little more than 1km from Mysore road is a testimonial to Chamrajpet's centrality in Bangalore city. 

The area has well laid out residential colonies though it can boast of bustling commercial activities. The markets near 5th main road and TR Mill road stand as living evidences to the above statement. Needless to say the esteemed citizens living here are extremely well-mannered, friendly and helpful, a quality i have inherited due to their sustained company. Not many disagree with this.

The area is not short of religious sanctum with 5 Hindu temples, 2 Jain temples, one church and one mosque to its credit. The area, actually, has the right mix of local Kannada speaking population, Tamil speaking population and slightly fairer Marwadi population. So the various places of worship are worth visiting at least once in a week and the "Goddesses" over here are always a treat to the eyes. The local population also have an opportunity to get immersed in the highly spiritual environments of RamaKrishna Ashram and Shankar Mutt both of which are located not too far from Chamrajpet.

Health Care is one of the USPs of this area. Venlakh Hospital, Retina Eye Care and Jubilee Nursing Home, although cannot be termed as super speciality hospitals by today's standards, offer cheap and good treatments for its inpatients and outpatients alike. Brindavan Nursing Home, Amar Nursing Home and Kalasa Nursing Home have always been there catering to the maternity needs of the female population. This coupled by the presence of so many good and reputed medical stores and clinics manned by qualified doctors have formed a formidable combination which have been preventing the people living here from looking beyond the boundaries of Chamrajpet to get their small problems diagnosed.

A few narrow bylanes of this area with dim street lights also throws up fabulous opportunity for love-birds to meet, discuss, strategise and decide on their future plans, the residents living nearby don't really mind the constant and sweet mutterings in their neighborhood. If their future plans involves tying the nupital knots then there is help too:- Choultaries like Nallapete Charities, GuruNarsimha, Parvatamma, Dharmastala, Rameshwara and Shrinivasa Kalyana Mantapas are all very spacious with big dining halls capable of housing substantial number of invited and uninvited guests.

I have always considered Chamrajpet as a eating hot spot. The extremely friendly Pani-Puri vendors, both cart pullers and small shop owners, offer very economical, high quality, yummy variety of chats ( actually one of my friends in my cab prefers the adjective "yummy" for describing the chats available in Chamrajpet ). Each Pani Puri destination here is famous for a specific variety of chats and it will take a newbee no less than a month to explore all of them fully. Shanti Sagar and Balaji Darshan on Bull Temple road are a few better hotels. My recent discovery of a few places serving exceedingly good, tasty, butter Masala Dosas and the arrival of Kadamba hotel have only reinforced the beleif that Chamrajpet is one of the leading eating destinations in the city. If the male population wish to get high occasionally, apparently due to the joy of living in such a wonderful place, then there is support for that too.

The real bonus for the people living here is the Uma Theater, standing tall at the entrance of the area, screening very good Kannada movies. The theater has really stood the test of times when the single screen theaters all over Bangalore are being brought down to raise multiplexes in their place. Besides, the staff are extremely cordial and most of the times you are assured of tickets either at the counter or near the main gates. And it is one of the few theaters i know wherein you are allowed to carry your own food from outside to eat during the intervals.

I can go on about Chamrajpet for a few more pages. Instead i invite the people reading this to seriously consider shifting at least on a temporarily basis to experience the divinity, joy and exhilaration of staying in the God's own Area aka Chamrajpet

Most of the events discussed in Part 1 of this entry were probably too old for us to relate while those discussed here i.e the Part 2, are directly impacting our lives.

Mandal Commission
Under the guise of "Affirmative action" and "Social Justice" to the socially backward classes of India, the controversial recommendations of the Mandal Commission,  which was established way back in 1979 by the Janaty Party government, were implemented by the VP Singh headed coalition government in 1989. Mandal Politics provided new impetus to divisive politics in the country so much so that political parties increasingly started vying with each other to play out their cast cards in elections after elections by raking up the reservation issue with the promise of increasing the existing quotas and also bringing in newer castes and social groups under the purview of reservation. The Hindu community stood deeply divided which allowed our "Secular parties" to consolidate their minority vote bank by promising several soaps. The success of implementing the Mandal Commission recommendations is yet to be known fully and it is in the best interest of Indian politicians not to roll out the actual and accurate figures to their countrymen.

Economic Liberalization
The most dramatic and significant step towards India's economic resurgence i.e Economic Liberalization was incidentally forced on the government of the day in 1991 when India was on the verge of being declared as a "defaulter" by the World Bank. Left with no options the Indian government had begun preparations to mortgage India's gold reserves to the Bank of England to avert an impending embarrassment. The dynamic duo of Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh will always stand credited for breaking the shackles of the old, outdated socialistic mindset in economic matters, actually i prefer calling it a "Nehruvian mindset", paving the way for more foreign investments in India and starting what came to be termed as Competitive Capitalism.

Ironically the same Narasimha Rao, the first Congressman not belonging to the first family to have successfully led a Congress government at the center for full 5 years, is considered as an outcast and disgrace by his own party men even to this day. His regime is regarded as a shameful period by our proud Congressmen. So much for a man who started economic reforms in this country. Much of the IT-BPO boom, Pharmacy revolution, aggressive expansion of Indian corporates both inside and outside the country, the nine point something GDP growth today owe a lot to the steps initiated during Narasimha Rao's tenure as India's Prime Minister.

Babri demolition
I shall not make arguments either in favor or against the demolition of the 16th century mosque. I shall simply try to talk about the political importance of this event. The Babri Mosque was demolished on the 6th of December 1992 when the Ayodhya movement was its pinnacle. This was hailed by many as a victory for the extreme right-wing organizations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad whose leaders led from the front to bring down the structure. Many right-wing Hindu sympathizers said that they were just one step away from building a glorious Ram temple on the disputed site.

Personally speaking Babri mosque demolition was a major strategic setback for the Bharatiya Janata Party and its patron-in-chief Lal Krishna Advani. LK Advani had spearheaded the decade long Ayodhya movement until it culminated in the demolition of the mosque. In the process he had single-handedly changed the fortunes of the BJP from a political pariah to a force that could lead a coalition government consisting of no less than 23 parties with diverse ideas, backgrounds and ideologies. He was the architect of BJP's electoral success and also its success in leading the National Democratic Alliance government to its full term. If Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the moderate mascot of the saffron party then LK Advani was its driving force and the engine who did the real work in the background, away from the public glare and attention. So a shrewd political master that LK Advani is, he would have known better than anyone that it would have been in the supreme interest of BJP and its sister organizations to keep the Ayodhya movement in the potboiler for a few more years that could have translated into a situation where the BJP could have mustered enough seats in the Parliamentary elections to form a government on its own. Unfortunately that was not to happen and the bulldozing of the mosque by a few thousand dull-heads frittered away years of hardwork and poured cold water on the heat and intensity generated by Kamandal politics ( Mandal and Kamandal politics formed a deadly combination in the early 1990s ). No wonder LK Advani still considers 6th December 1992 as "the most unfortunate and saddest day" of his life.

After years of selfless service to his party and its ideologies, LK Advani performed just one selfish act i.e he praised Mohammand Ali Jinnah while on an official tour to Pakistan. Obviously he had an eye on the next general elections in India and he wanted some acceptability from NDA partners, his hardcore Hindutva image notwithstanding, on the issue of his candidature for the post of the Prime Minister. This one "naive" act cost him dearly. A person who was responsible for BJP's meteoric rise in the Indian political space was given the unkindest farewell from the party presidency by his junior colleagues.

Pokhran 2
The Narasimha Rao government tried in 1995 but the preparations were detected by American spy satellites and so the government was diplomatically coerced to abandon its plans, the 13-day Vajpayee government in 1996 tried but its tenure turned out to be too short to make an impact but when the Vajpayee government in 1998 ( that lasted for only 13 months ) gave the orders almost as soon as it came to power, there was no looking back for the army, scientists and the engineers involved with this historic event and they swung into action with full force and enthusiasm. When India finally exploded nuclear devices in Pokhran for the 2nd time the world was stunned. Click here to read the excerpts from the book "How the CIA was fooled". The world was forced to take cognizance of India's legitimate need for a nuclear arsenal to maintain credible nuclear deterrence and nuclear parity with its unreliable and somewhat hostile neighbors.

Kargil War
Both India and Pakistan had gone nuclear in the summer of 1998 and so a full fledged war between the nuclear neighbors was practically ruled out. This didn't stop Pakistani designs to "bleed India through a thousand cuts". The Kargil intrusion was one such low intensity conflict initiated by Pakistan to bleed India. Parvez Musharaff, the architect of the Kargil War, riding high on Pakistan's possession of nuclear weapons had made the tactical mistake of underestimating the response from the Indian side. He had thought that by projecting the intrusion by Pakistani army regulars as "separatists and freedom fighters" he could internationalize the Kashmir issue and he had assumed that the international community would restrain India from escalating the conflict and that India would never recover the lost ground.

He was hopelessly proved wrong by a strong retaliation by the Indian forces. The opposition parties in India were quite uncharacteristic in their open support of the government's move despite the intelligence failure. This coupled by strong anti-Pakistan sentiments of the Indian public and an aggressive electronic media which covered every detail of the war helped India not only to recover every inch of the lost territory and inflict heavy damages to the Pakistani forces but also played a vital role in villainising Pakistan internationally. From a Pakistani perspective the Kargil War nothing but a military and diplomatic fiasco as it lost its face before the international community for its direct involement in the conflict and also for its role in harboring and supporting the terrorists in Kashmir. Click here for chilling details of the Kargil War.

RTI Act
The Indian Parliament finally enacted the Right to Information act in 2005 paving the way for more citizen activism in the country and the act was also a significant step towards reducing the bureaucratic hurdles and exposing corruption in the country. Its success depends on the intentions and willingness of the various government agencies which come under the RTI purview. Click here> for more information on the RTI act and its implementations.

Nuclear deal
A lot is discussed about the landmark Indo-US deal in this blog, Click here to see it.
All i would like to say here is that we stand at the crossroads of making history. We have to look at this deal more pragmatically, long term and short term national interest of India should be the only criterion while making arguments either in favor or against the deal. Opposing anything related to the US is not the kind of thing we should be doing at this important juncture. We can't live in denial of the existence of only one Superpower in the world today i.e The United States of America. Non Aligned Movement mindset is outdated and as old as 3 decades. The challenges 3 decades ago were different from those that exist today.

I admit to have missed out many important events. I would be delighted to see the readers list / discuss them through their comments.

As we celebrate the 60th year of Indian Independence i thought it would be nice have a look at some of the defining moments, the moments and events that

• Initiated major policy changes domestically
• Brought certain individuals / issues to the foreground
• Made the international community look at India with a different perspective
• Influenced Indian polity and thinking

There are have been many such moments in 60 years of India's existence as a nation state. So it would be proper for me to mention / discuss only those moments that have occurred in my life time i.e from 1983 onwards.
Note: The events / moments i have discussed below are strictly my choices and they are not listed on the basis of some statistics or surveys by any website or agency.

1983 World Cup
Indian cricket team's fairytale campaign during the 1983 Prudential World Cup marked the beginning of cricket's total dominance in Indian sporting space. Hockey had always been hailed as India's sporting success till that time. Unexpected cricket World Cup victory in 1983 meant the beginning of the end of hockey as a cult sport in India. The advent of turf hockey coupled by messing up of the Hockey Federation by politicians and bureaucrats contributed significantly to hockey's decline and cricket's ascendancy as the numero uno sport in India. The Indian cricket team proved that their World Cup victory was no fluke by winning the 1985 World Championship in Australia which was yet another feather in the World Cup crown.

Assassination of Indira
The end of 1984 saw the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the first Prime Minister of India to be killed while in office. One can accuse of her of pushing politics to newer lows, one can accuse her of promoting dynastic politics, one can accuse her of very high levels of autocracy, one can accuse her of nepotism and corrupting the entire bureaucratic system and one can accuse her of all the misgivings of her era but one cannot accuse her of failure of nerves and one certainly cannot question her patriotism. The decisive victory against Pakistan during the 1971 Bangladesh war was a consequence of a strong Indian leadership with Indira at the helm of the affairs. It would have been too tough for any other Prime Minister during that time to deal with the monstrous, Pakistan-favoring Nixon administration with the Chinese threat always looming large over us.
The presence of USS Enterprise ( aircraft carrier ) in Bay of Bengal, which was primarily stationed there by the Nixon-Kissinger regime in US as an intimidatory tactics against India, did not prevent Indira from ordering her forces to go all out against our rogue neighbor. The Bangladesh War was a military and a diplomatic victory for India.
Click here for more information on the 1971 War.

The death of Indira Gandhi also saw a horrendous backlash against the people of Sikh community. Rajiv Gandhi, Indira's eldest son, rode on a huge sympathy wave and the Congress, under Rajiv's leadership captured a record 424 Parliamentary seats.

Shah Bano case
Shah Bano, a 62 year old woman and mother of five was divorced by her husband in 1978. The Muslim Family laws allows the husband to divorce his wife anytime by simply uttering the word Talaq three times. And any muslim woman is entitled to get maintenance from her husband only during the time of Iddat. Since Shah Bano did not have any means to support herself and her family she approached the courts to help her. Her case reached the Supreme Court in 7 years and the Supreme Court, in a landmark judgment, ordered the husband to pay the alimony under Section 125 of Code of Criminal Procedure.

The orthodox Muslims in India felt threatened by what they perceived as an encroachment of the Muslim Personal Law, and protested loudly at the judgement. Their spokesmen were Muslim community leaders MJ Akbar and Syed Shahabuddin, They formed an organization known as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board and threatened to agitate in large numbers in all major cities. The then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, agreed to their demands and cited the gesture as an example of "secularism".

This case caused the Rajiv Gandhi government, with its absolute majority, to pass the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 which diluted the secular judgment of the Supreme Court and, in reality, denied even utterly destitute Muslim divorcees the right to alimony from their former husbands.
This important development paved the way for more and more political parties to adopt the "Minority Appeasement" policy to garner the minority votes. This also brought together a few right wing political parties and groups who would galvanize their activities in the future.
Click here for more information on the Shah Bano case

IPKF disaster
Rajiv Gandhi signed an accord with the Sri Lankan government in 1987 to send Indian Peace Keeping Force to Sri Lanka. This force was primarily meant to maintain peace and stability in the island country. But they were trapped by circumstances to engage the LTTE in combats so as to maintain peace. According to me India had no military role to play in the ethnic strife between the Sinhaleese and the Tamilians in Sri Lanka. This was a major policy blunder considering that the same Rajiv and Indira governments had provided sanctuaries to LTTE activists and supporters. There was also many sympathizers to the LTTE within India. India had to merely play an observer role to promote peace in our neighborhood. This mistake costed India badly in terms of the casualties suffered by Indian military forces and also in terms of becoming a subject of animosity in the eyes of the Sri Lankan public.
The IPKF disaster also culminated in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 following his defeat in the 1989 General Elections.
Click here for more information.

Bofors scandal
Bofors is a house hold name in India which needs no special mentioning here. The Bofors scandal basically refers to corruption at the higest levels of Indian Power corridor in relation to the defence deals / purchases. Vishwanath Pratap Singh, Rajiv's finance minister, was the first to uncover uncompromising details about this scandalous deal. This lead to VP Singh's shifting to the defense ministry and his subsequent dismissal from the government. VP Singh was able to unite the opposition under his leadership to form a rainbow coalition to fight against the Rajiv Gandhi led Congress. Rajiv Gandhi's Mr. Clean image was severely dented and the Congress lost the General Elections, only second time since Independence. Bofors, till date continues to haunt the first family of the Congress party.


Please comment on the above mentioned events / moments and their importance to the current scenario.
I have covered the events only till 1990 or thereabouts. I shall delve into the important events and happenings from 1990 onwards in the part 2 of this entry that should become public in a couple of days.
Looking forward to your invaluable comments.

Disclaimer
I am no expert on the issue of the much talked about Indo-US deal but i have been following the news items related to this with great interest. The debate on the necessity of such a deal continues to divide public opinion in the country although i am slightly in favor of the deal . We would be doing great service to ourselves if we keep this thread alive by discussing this issue in the comments section, the discussion could be about the intricacies of the deal itself or it could be related to the pros and cons of the deal and its aftereffects.

Some details about the deal
The Indo-US nuclear deal allows US companies and government agencies to share nuclear technology( nuclear fuel and reactor technology ) with India. After inking this deal with the US, India can then approach for similar technology transfer with the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) since US enjoys great influence with the NSG. The deal requires India to place 65% of its existing nuclear reactors and all its future civilian nuclear reactors under International Atomic Energy Agency ( IAEA ) safeguards. This obviously has strategic implications for India since the threat over India's nuclear program looms large. But India has the freedom of declaring which of its nuclear reactors becomes civilian or military.
The deal involves 4 tough stages

• Both sides need to arrive at an agreement on the separation plan.

• US government has to amend the section 123 of its Atomic Energy Act(AEA) and the sell the deal to the US Congress, hence the name 123 agreement. Indian Parliament has to approve the deal.

• India has to negotiate the safeguard standards with the IAEA.

• Additional safeguards have to be negotiated on a country specific basis.

Need for a deal
India needs lot of energy to sustain the economic growth. Dwindling water resources and substandard coal reserves cannot alone meet the ever increasing energy demands of a country like India. Accordingly the government plans to have 35% of its power needs by nuclear energy by 2050. So India needs sophisticated nuclear reactors to achieve this as also nuclear fuel to keep such reactors operational. Indian insufficient and low quality uranium reserves cannot bear this burden alone.

The deal also presents fabulous business opportunity for India. India is likely to get $40 billion investment from US companies alone. Other NSG members will be all too happy to sell their technology to a rising India after the deal.

Some catches
There are accusations in some corners that the media build-up over the civilian nuclear cooperation between the US and India has been systematically favoring the deal and that media is doing very little to reflect the opinion of people on the other side.

The bitter experiences with the Tarapur Atomic Power plant is still fresh in the minds of Indian nuclear establishment. USA, in the 70s, had chosen to ignore the agreement with India to provide nuclear fuel to the plant which made India go to several countries with a begging bowl for fuel.

By becoming recipients of fuel and technology from abroad we run the risk of losing the "independence" in our foreign policy and our foreign policy may become hostage to our energy needs from the suppliers.

India may become a prisoner of the hegemonic Hyde Act(US). Hyde Act(US) is to govern the US cooperation with those countries which have gone nuclear without US help. Section 103 of this Hyde act requires India to halt its fissile material production. This may dent India's nuclear program and may severely alter the strategic balance in South Asia.

Cost benefit analysis in Indian context does not show justification for building more nuclear power plants. They are expensive to run and build, and the decommissioning is also an expensive business.

Political ramifications
The political parties in India, mainly those occupying the oppositon benches were very muted until India and US unveiled the text of the 123 agreement. The Left furore started only after this happened. The obvious trigger point was the open challenge thrown by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the Left leaders "to do what they want" and that he would go ahead with the deal. What should have been a meaningful debate on the technicalities of the deal got transformed into a battle of egos between the government and the Left. The Prime Minister himself has invested a lot of time, energy and personal interest in getting this deal into the current shape and his ravings in this case is fully understandable but what is not understandable is Left's attitude of vehemently opposing any thing that has US angle to it. Besides they don't have any clear cut suggestions to the UPA government either, they simply want the government to slow down the process so that the deal eventually falls through.

The opposition to the Nuclear deal by the BJP is even more baffling considering that most of the ground work for the deal and the much hyped "Next steps to Strategic Partnership" was laid by the NDA government under the astute leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The BJP fears that much of the credit for inking this historic deal will be siezed by the incumbent UPA government.

The United National Progressive Alliance has already termed the deal as "a total sellout to the US" and with its constituent members like the the Samajwadi Party and the Telugu Desam Party already vowing to do everything possible within their capacity to create ruckus on the floor of the Parliament to prevent the deal from getting the nod of the Parliament, the UPA government has its task cut out in the next few months.


So far i have presented only facts and figures on the Nuclear deal. I will put forth my arguments in favor of the deal in the comments section subjected to the interest and response this blog entry invokes from the readers. Please feel free to air your views on the following question:-

According to you, what should the government of India do with the Indo-US Nuclear deal ?

1. Scrap the deal completely
2. Go ahead with the deal
3. Renegotiate the deal
4. Slow down the process
5. Other suggestions
6. Don't have any say on this

Within a few weeks of joining Nokia i received a free, brand new Nokia 6600 phone from the company as if it was a souvenir for employees working here. Carrying a big, fat and bulky 6600 model was, i thought, not very befitting for a Nokia employee in view of many new and high-end Nokia phone models in the pipeline, waiting to flood the markets. All those who joined the company along with me also shared my opinion but we didn't complain since a free phone was a free phone.

The first few months of our stay in Nokia saw us, the freshers, stick our tongues out at every new phone model entering the Bangalore site. The fact that none of us could lay our hands on phones like N95, N73 and etc during the initial days was even more frustrating. Only exception to this "one person one phone" rule was Varun, a close friend and a teammate. This bugger somehow had mastered the art of ravaging every virgin phone entering our team. 6600, N73 and 6290 to name a few. In recognition of this rare talent of his, he was rightly baptized with the name Ghazni Jr, The Plunderer. Well, the identity of Ghazni Sr is known to only a select few people in my group.

My friends in other teams were not so lucky for they were still brandishing their black colored ugly possession within the deep and warm areas of their trouser pockets. These people were always very vocal about the kind of humiliation they had to bear whenever they were forced to put on display their 6600s to make / receive calls in front of their friends. Although such narrations amused me a great deal i fully empathized with their feelings. Prajwal, Pushkar and Aurindam Jana ( my good friends at Nokia, all the three belonging to the same team ) beamed with pride when they became the gallant recipients of E70 phones, one for each. But Jana can explain vividly to the readers that possessing an E70 is nowhere comparable to becoming an owner of an N-Series phone.

There is also a certain elevation in my status within various circles although it might seem mythical to many readers:-

• During my B.E days not a single day passed by without my friends discussing about the latest gadgets in town including the all important mobile phones :- how many MegaPixel camera a particular model of phone has, audio quality, the looks of various models and such things!!! For a person like me who didn't know the ABC of mobile phones, such conversations seemed intellectually more challenging rather than intriguing. Now the same friends hardly talk about phones, at least in my presence, or even if they do so they make it a point to ask my "expert opinion". On my part i promptly give them all the gyan on various Nokia models as also the information about phones from other companies staking my claim as the point person for activities related to mobile phones, what a misnomer!!!

• Although i have no dislike lost for mobile phones, my relatives and neighbors have started contacting me seeking my suggestions on the possible phones they should buy. Like a seasoned mobile phone dealer who has spent his entire life selling mobile phones i ask them about the kind of features they are looking for from their mobile phones and give them my "advise" accordingly. Probably it is the curses of such people, after their bitter experiences with the mobile phones i had suggested them to buy, that is stalling the progressing of my bonus and increment figures within the company.

There have also been a few humorous incidents:-

• A very close friend of mine from college who was so enthusiastic about mobile phones not so long ago is conspicuous by his open disregard for the very same gadget. "What's there in the phone?" he questions with a taste of disillusionment. His sudden change of heart has only convulsed me with laughter.

• The kind of team i work in allows me to get my hands on just about every Nokia model as we are expected to get our code working on each one of them. Ignorant of this fact my good friend Jana once innocently offered me a Nokia 5700 XpressMusic phone for a few days if i so desired. I had a tough time controlling my guffaw but i told him innocuously that i had locked up 2 N95s, 1 N93i, 1 N81 and 1 N76 in my cupboard. Jana stood there aghast, stupefied and dumbfound. Sorry Jana, i could find no more adjectives to describe the look on your face which more or less resembled the face of a share broker after the stock markets plummeted by over 1000 points.

Working in a mobile phone company is not without some disadvantages as i am finding out:-

• There were some noticeable changes in the attitude of a few of my friends who started aggressively swearing by Nokia's competitors after i joined Nokia. "Nokia phones are boring", "Nokia phones hang too much", "The look of Nokia phones is boring and outdated" were some their genuine concerns. Such a leg-pulling was not confined to my friends circle alone. My cousins and a few naughty uncles never forget to bring it to my notice the shortcomings of Nokia mobile phones. To all my baiters i have a few things to say:- i have been employed in this company for barely an year and i don't really know if i am staying here for another year. Holding me responsible for all the defects and shortcomings of Nokia mobile phones is against humanity and accepted social and moral norms. Please note that Nokia entered mobile phone market way back in 1992 when i was still crying to go to school.

• Some people have mistaken me to be working in a Nokia factory. Otherwise they wouldn't commit the mistake of asking me to fix their faulty mobiles or even ask me to buy mobile spare parts like batteries, keyboard panels and others for them at subsidised rates. I would like to use this forum to tell all my ignorant tormenters that i work in a software domain where most often than not we, poor software coders, don't even know if the insignificant piece of code we write or pretend to write is really getting used or not. So, the mobile accessories that they wish to buy are available with Priority Dealers spread all over Bangalore. If the buyers are not too worried about the genuineness of such accessories then they can seek the help of vendors in SP Road and Majestic.

• One last thing: We as Nokia employees don't enjoy any luxury of buying Nokia phones at nominal rates. On behalf of all my colleagues i would like to declare that we are as good as any ordinary person when it comes to buying mobile phones except that we get to play with a few new phones of course on a temporary basis.

I deeply apologize to all the people at whom i have taken a dig here. This blog entry was my sincere attempt to bring out the humor side of working in a mobile phone company and all the realities and myths that is associated with it.
The reality is we get to see and play with the latest mobile phones and the myth is we are paid heavily to do it. 

I really don't mind people taking out their anger and frustration at me through their invaluable comments.

The sight of fresh B.E students carrying mobile phones to college always irritated me. As a student i felt this marvel piece of invention was superfluous. All the arguments about how this device was helpful for students to remain in touch with their friends didn't convince me one bit considering that the concerned people used to see each other day in and day out. Besides, the good old land line phones, to the best of my knowledge, are/were still fully operational.

The "necessity" angle also had failed to persuade me since most of the B.E students i knew, myself included, simply resorted to nth hour preparation to crawl through those semester exams and the remaining [n-1] hours would be dedicated to loafing around the campus, befriending the movie theater staff, examining the cleanliness of the plates and spoons in many restaurants and of course attending those boring and sleep inducing lectures and practical classes. "So, where do mobile phones fit into the scheme of things?", i had thought. And i was not any less vociferous and animated whenever there was a discussion on this topic.

In my class, this distasteful trend of carrying mobile phones was started by Vinay CP, a friend of mine, who had bought a Nokia high-end phone when he was on a vacation to some foreign country with his parents. This was way back in 4th semester if i recall correctly. The way in which people in our gang flocked to see the gizmo and get the prized possession in their hands reminded me of a certain number of devotees trying desperately to touch the feet of a holy godman. Later on, many followed in the footsteps of CP.

Vishweshwariah Tehchnological University ( VTU in short ) the university to which almost 90% of the engineering colleges in Karnataka are affiliated finally decided to act against this "disturbing trend". VTU banned the use of mobile phones within the campuses and barred students to even carry them. The enraged students became rebellious but we were missing a Mahatma Gandhi among ourselves to declare a "Non-Cooperation Movement" against the diktats of the evil VTU regime headed by a monstrous Dr.Balaveer Reddy. Nonetheless i was a secret supporter of this order from the VTU.

The rumors of some or the other engineering college being visited by surprise squads to seize the mobile phones from noncomplying students always did the rounds. The students of my class always lived with this fear and as soon as the rumor bells started ringing loudly these people employed every novel method to protect their hand-sets from the raiding party. Santhosh, my good friend, used to wrap his cell phone with a tissue paper and hide it beneath the contents of his lunch box. Sumanth Anand, a close friend who was slightly more creative had carved out an entire book from the inside. The book, although would look normal from the outside, would actually act as a container for his mobile phone. And the remaining less creative friends of mine would submit their hand-sets to a guy( normally Chaitanya played this role ) who would run to the parking area to lock them up in a car before the raiders arrived.

Knowing my sentiments on the usage of mobile phones by students the last thing that could have happened to me was getting a  job offer from a mobile phone company. Ironically i got placed in Nokia India Private Limited during the course of the 8th semester stunning myself as also a few friends who found it hard to imagine me working with a device i disliked the most. I also found myself in an unusual predicament. A few months away from starting work i didn't know to operate a mobile phone, i didn't even know to make a call. My sincere thanks to Vishnu V, a good friend, who patiently taught me the basics of a mobile phone. My ingenuous thanks and regards to Chethan, a close friend, on whose relentless insistence i bought an overpriced Nokia 3220, my first phone, shelling out a whopping Rs 5200 ( my second highest investment after buying a desktop computer ) and an additional Rs 300 for the SIM. Chethan simply wanted to be credited for making the most unwilling person buy a mobile phone and the grin on his face after rendering this "service" to me was there for everyone to see. Not to forget he brought along two more people, Rohan and VJ, who would together assist me in choosing the "best model". After making me poorer by Rs 5500 ( i would like to call it a dead investment ) the three gentlemen insisted on me to buy them a treat almost immediately. Although i was furious i forced them to settle for simple cone ice-creams.

I request the readers of this blog entry to share their experiences with the most happening gadget in town i.e mobile phones while i try to pen down my experiences with mobile phones after i joined Nokia.

Part 2 should be coming soon.

Past blunder = Present horror
"When Munnabhai meets Mahatma Gandhi" was supposed to be the title of the sequel to the highly successful film Munnabhai MBBS which had, of course, Sanjay Dutt in the lead role. The shifting of the actor from the Arthur road jail in Mumbai to Yerwada jail near Pune due to technical reasons in the wake of the 6 years of Rigerous Imprisonment( RI ) sentence that he received from Judge P D Kode may just provide the former an opportunity to meet the soul of the Mahatma himself in real life. Incidentally Mahatma Gandhi was also lodged in this second largest jail in the country for full 6 years during India's freedom movement. Our beloved Munnabhai will never be short of audience in the form of inmates of the prison to preach his highly effective "Gandhigiri" which had become a talk of the town following the run away success of his film "Lage Raho Munnabhai".

Call it a cruel coincidence or selective justice, i personally feel the law has certainly taken its course in this high profile case. Illegal purchasing of 3 AK-56 rifles and possession of one of them, allegedly for self protection, is not any less heinous crime to be considered under the Probation Act. Rightfully the provisions of the Arms Act were liberally utilized and the sentence awarded is consistent with the rule of the land. Given the kind of image the actor has built around himself in the recent times a lot of things are being said about the punishment being too harsh but little do people know that the provisions of the Arms Act under which the actor has been convicted has 5 years and 10 years as the minimum and maximum terms respectively. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that the actor was a spoilt brat and his very intimate associations with the underworld was too open to be called a secret. Sanjay Dutt should thank his stars for getting acquitted of the more serious charges of terrorism and conspiracy under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities(Prevention) Act (TADA) in the Mumbai blast case primarily due to the lack / tampering of the evidences notwithstanding the confessions of Abu Salem ( extradited gangster ) before the CBI on his role of supplying Sanjay Dutt and his two associates with three rifles, cartridges, magazines and hand grenades which surely comes under the purview of TADA.

So the news channels interviewing 16 and 17 year olds, who probably were in their diapers at the time of the blasts in Mumbai, about the harshness / correctness of the statement awarded to their favorite actor is not such a great thing to be done by any mature media of a democratic country. These news channels are well advised to present the news in perspective rather than resort to igniting the passions of ignorant sections of the public. The culpability of the crime cannot be simply denied. In an era where a lot of rot has entered our political system, so much corruption and nepotism has crept into our bureaucratic and police system, so much bias is present in our mainstream electronic media, the Election Commission and the Judiciary stand like the only success stories of our democracy. Now that the Mumbai blast verdicts are out it makes more sense to give a re-look at the investigations of the Mumbai riots ( which preluded the blasts ) cases and bring the guilty to book to further strengthen the faith in Judiciary.

Hero's homecoming
The homecoming of Mohamed Haneef, the first person to be detained under the new and stringer Anti-Terror laws of Australia, caused the human rights activists and pseudo-secular politicians and their media friends in India to heave a sigh of relief for their own respective reasons. What we must understand is that national security and sovereignty is paramount for any nation and there can be no compromises on this issue as Australia has rightly demonstrated in Haneef's case. Haneef should consider himself lucky as his mental torture at the hands of the Australian authorities lasted for less than a month while many people around the world are languishing in various jails under the same charges without even a trial. The highly suspicious chat transcripts involving Khafeel Ahmed ( Glasgow bomber and first Indian to have been involved in international terrorism ) did not help matters for Haneef either. Now it is imperative that people here in India don't play out the the familiar minority card which could hamper further investigations into Haneef's alleged role in IISc attack case and others.

The minority appeasement has reached alarming proportions in our country so much so that almost 90% of the political parties in India are active practitioners of this policy for garnering votes which has led to obvious alienation of the majority community. Such legitimate apprehensive feelings of the majority community are misused by a few groups / parties to push their own selfish agenda which is further dividing the country.
One incident is worthy of recall here :- A prominent news reporter on CNN-IBN channel during "News at 9" programme preferred to address Khafeel Ahmed, the second cousin of Mohamed Haneef, as a  "key witness" in the Glasgow bombing case. It sounded so outrageous to me since Khafeel Ahmed was very much in the vehicle that tried to ram into the airport which makes him prima-facie suspect and a terrorist. The media should be very careful not to make martyrs out of murderers.

Neighbour's envy
Parvez Musharraf's power game in Pakistan ever since he ousted democracy from his country seems to be finally getting the better of him. Firstly Iftikhar Mohammad Choudhary whom Musharaff had sacked as the Chief Justice of Pakistan on the charges of corruption and misuse of his high office was absolved of all the charges and was reinstated by the 13-member bench of the Supreme Court. The bigger blow to Musharaff's authority came this week when Makhdoom Javed Hashmi, a trusted lieutenant of Nawaz Sharif and acting president of Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) party, was given bail and his 23-year sentence on corruption charges was suspended by a 3-member bench of the Supreme Court which ironically included the newly reinstated Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Choudhary. Musharaff's desperation is evident with his attempts to reach out to persona non grata Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif inviting the ex-premiers to be participants in the puppet democracy in Pakistan.

Bonus time
One more reason for me to call this week a "Week of Justice" is the announcement of 4% bonus to all the employees of our company by the management which was unfortunately denied to us the last time on the grounds that were hard for any normal brain to comprehend.


Please leave your comments on the three high profile cases covered above. Also leave behind your suggestions on the items that should find mention in my shopping list owing to the "modest-extra" money that i may get this month.

Almost all the employees belonging to a sub-unit called MRT, which is a part of another main business unit of our organization, were distributed among 9 different teams, comprising of 6 to 8 employees per team, to conduct a technical event which came to be christained as "MRT Innovation Week" or simply "Inno Week". I was one such infelicitously chosen employee of the now "center of the attention" sub-unit MRT.

Now for some irksome details of the event. Please bear with me for a paragraph :-
The main event required each team to come up with a maximum of 5 practical and feasible ideas / applications for mobile phones which they think would make a mark and change the way people would look at mobile phones. These ideas / applications would be presented before the audience and the judges. The judges then would narrow down on one of the applications for each team to prototype over the next one week. The Inno Week itself was supposed to last for a week or two. But there were many events / activities that would act as lead up to the main event. The lead up events were called Trendz 2015 and Shoot a Video. The main event that is the idea presentation and prototyping carried the maximum points while the other two lead up activities also carried some points. So, effectively the Inno Week got stretched to a little less than a month.

At the beginning i had not bothered to read the mail dispatched by the main organizers of the event with regards to the details of the various activities and also about the team each of the employees would be part of. A hesitant and reluctant participant in cultural and technical events that i am, right from my school days, i thought this event, just like many others i had seen in the past, was also largely a voluntary affair wherein brighter people in my office would showcase their lustrous ideas which they used to discuss with so much enthusiasm on the stairs, lobby areas and the cabs on a regular basis. Needless to say, i was only a mute spectator in such discussions. Everyone was talking about Inno Week and had become busy in hunting their team mates to decide on the team name, logo and the theme name. Some curious questions from my neighbors prompted me to go through the mail only to find that the participation was compulsory.

It was more shocking to find my manager's name in the same team as mine. My tryst with bad luck continued even here. So any transgression on my part could have been detrimental to the already shrinking bonus and increment figures against my name on the company's intranet page. Moreover i had point or two to prove to my manager who always thought of me as a quiet person who was unwilling to share his "knowledge" with other team members. Yes, i know many readers will jump from their seats on seeing the word "quiet" getting associated with me. Perceptions do vary you know.
Another bright teammate of mine who was shortly shifting out of MRT thought he had no business in indulging in such activities since he would not be part of the sub-unit anymore. So he ruled himself out of the event owing to lack of time. We, the poor and jobless participants had all the time in the world it seems. Well, the same bright teammate becoming a
judge for a couple of events is a different story altogether.

All the teams had submitted the relevant details like their team name, theme and the logo to the organizers well before the deadline. The deadline meant little to us. We hurriedly convened a meeting a day after the deadline and decided our team name to be "Udbhava". That was the last team meeting my manager attended and the ear to ear smile was back on my face. On the next day we submitted our team's logo. It was only at a later date that we came to some conclusion on the theme. Our theme was to be called MobiSense ( Mobile phone + Sensors ) as we thought sensors in mobile phones would play a major role in the future. Incidentally our theme name "MobiSense" was rhymic with "nonsense". Sunil Slathia, a Udbhava teammate, had absented himself for the first meeting and the rest of us took this opportunity to collectively nominate him as our moderator. With my manager and another bright teammate out of contention, Udbhava team was effectively left with only 5 members namely Darpan, Pushkar, Ragesh, Sunil and of course myself.

Trendz 2015
"Let your imaginations loose and go crazy" was the slogan of this event. This event required each of the teams to decorate one of the cubicles displaying the trends that would be prevalent by the year 2015. This was meant to be a semi-technical event. We, Udbhava teammates, met just once before this event and decided to flick a few pictures from the internet which we would display on the D-day while the people from other teams were busy strategizing for hours together in the meeting rooms and lobby areas. It was only on the morning of the D-day that i came to know the motivation behind so much enthusiasm :- "A trip to exotic location" with the usual "***Conditions apply" was the prize the winners of Inno Week would get and there were very strong rumors indicating that the "exotic location" could very well be a place outside India. My eyes lit up just a little bit. The glaring reality that was hitting hard on our face was the lack of any female member to drive a bunch of indifferent and disinterested men like us. This was evident even on the morning of the D-day. Darpan and Ragesh set out on a bike to purchase some card board sheets and painting materials while Sunil and myself were busy taking colour print outs of the stuff we had flicked from the internet.

Pushkar and myself ( same IQ level ) insisted on getting even the headings printed out but it was Darpan who was very adamant on doing some "handicraft". Accordingly he started painting on one of the boards and i was asked to try my hand on another. No sooner i started my painting work than Darpan asked me to stop and get back to pasting job owing to my very high quality work. "Haven't you done any painting in your school days"  was his question. This was some humiliation considering that i had never for once claimed that i was the 5th generation surrogate family member of Raja Ravi Varma.

In adherence to the slogan each team did go crazy and was very creative in their presentation of the trends. Skits, dramas, video presentations - we saw it all. In contrast, Udbhava team's Trendz 2015 presentation was shared between Darpan, Pushkar and myself. Surprisingly we ended up at the 3rd place, from the last though. Nevertheless we congratulated each other on this accomplishment of bettering at least two teams.

Shoot a Video
In this event each team was required to shoot a video lasting for a maximum of 3 minutes and a minimum of 1 minute. The video could be based on any theme. This event was purely non-technical in nature. Again the Udbhava team members ( myself included ) had to be dragged to the meeting room although the meeting was inconclusive. We decided on the theme through mails. The theme would be "a conversation between two drunkards in a bar about a new mobile phone which is equipped with an alcohol breath analyzer" . This was supposed to be a "killer idea" ( the one that would kill each person viewing the video in the auditorium ). We booked a meeting room on the evening before the D-day for this event and i was the chosen one to shoot the conversation ( using a borrowed N95 ) between the two drunkards ( Darpan and Ragesh ), Pushkar was in charge of the music that would be running in the background and Sunil was overseeing the entire operation. Darpan took up the responsibility of painstakingly putting the different scenes together and edition the video and came up with something that could be called as a continuous video.

On the D-day of this event some 70 distinguished people had gathered in the spacious 3rd floor auditorium to witness the 9 spectacles, one from each of the 9 teams. Our team's video was to be played 3rd from the last, some coincidence to our standings in the previous event. Frankly speaking each team's video ( except ours ) was of very high quality, a result of their hard and smart work. The audience enjoyed this event to the core. I personally felt our team's video was a major let down although not many people made a big issue out of this. On my way out of the auditorium after the event i was so embarrassed that i was hiding my face from a few of my cab friends who had come to the auditorium in anticipation of seeing some of my acting skills in the video. And do i need to mention the overall standing of our team after this event. We were simply happy that we did not receive any negative points from the judges for the shoddy video we had presented before them.


Idea Presentation
This was the main event where each team had to present their ideas to the judges. The judges would then decide on one of the ideas which would have to be prototyped by the respective team. Each team would be given a maximum of 15 minutes to present their ideas including the Q&A session ( with the judges and the audience ) that would proceed the presentation. This was a hardcore technical event which would be witnessed by all the brains in MRT. Darpan kept out of our preparations for this event since he had done most of the work for the earlier events. The remaining 4 of us gathered in a meeting room twice and prepared some 12 power point slides for the 4 ideas we were presenting before the judges. The presentation, as per the original plan, had to be shared between Sunil, Pushkar and myself. Somehow Pushkar, at the nth moment, convinced me that i had to go it alone with the presentation citing reasons like "other teams had only one presenter" and "switching between people for a 15 minute presentation wouldn't look good". I fell into the trap and agreed to give the entire Udbhava team's idea presentation.

Again the venue was the 3rd floor spacious auditorium where all the illustrious people had gathered. Udbhava team's presentation was given the number 5 which means i had to patiently sit through the presentations from 4 teams. The way in which the audience and the judges were firing salvos at the presenters during the Q&A session questioning the technical details, feasibility and practicality of the ideas sent shivers down my spine. Pushkar and Prajwal ( a friend and a colleague ) who were seated next to me in the auditorium were giving me those foxy looks as if to say "Man, you are dead!!!" . I cursed Pushkar like never before. My frequent visits to the toilet during the coarse of the 4 presentations was a testimonial to the jittery feelings in my heart. Finally when my turn came, i went to the dais and zoomed past the 12 slides within 12 minutes and stood there to receive any questions from the audience and the judges. During the course of my presentation i did try to spicen up the environment by cracking a few "intelligent" jokes. Sadly there were not many takers given the fact that all my predecessors had given very serious and to the point presentations. I had also struck a deal with a few friendly teams according to which no member of their team would ask any questions to me and our team members would abide by the same rules during the former team's presentation. This deal worked and i was asked only a few questions which i was able to answer reasonably well. No sooner it got over than i rushed back to my cubicle as i had a deadline to meet before the next couple of days.


Prototyping
Given the abstract nature of ideas we had presented, the judges were forced to reject each one of them from the perspective of prototyping. Still we, Udbhava team members, were suffering from paranoia for a few days when one of our ideas was strongly rumored to have been kept in the pipeline by the judges for prototyping. Thank heavens it didn't happen and i am all too happy to get back to my other works at office while the members of other teams are scratching their heads to finish their prototyping work by Monday that is 30th July 2007 when the Inno Week will come to an end.

The following are 3 of my favorite videos from the Shoot a Video event

My vote goes to this video from the team ConnectAll for sheer entertainment value although they didn't have any strong theme





This video from the team E-Arth, according to me, was the best theme based video in the event





This video from the team Mobile Maniacs touched me the most for it tried to highlight the contemporary problems one section of our country faces






Finally i am very glad that this event has ended just as the readers are feeling very glad about this lengthy blog entry coming to end.

The mid-1990s saw the influx of private news channels on Indian television sets. Since then many such channels have sprung up, blossomed and continued to telecast their version of NEWS. The advent of so many private television channels led to the evolution of an agency called INTAM( Indian Television Audience Measurement ) which publishes what is called as Television Rating Point( TRP ) to determine the most widely watched TV programs in India based on which Ad rates for a program is decided.

Many news channels have vanished from the scene without a trace because of the lack of TRPs for the programs they air and subsequent lack of Ad revenues. But some news channels, supported by big corporations who could sustain the losses in ad revenue for some time, continue to vie with each other for viewership. The grim reality in India is that the entertainment channels continue to enjoy the bulk of the family viewership and the news channels find takers only from a section of the audience and that too only during the prime time, usually between 7:30 pm to 10:30 pm. So we have something like 15 to 20 major news channels ( in Hindi, English and other regional languages) competing for 20% to 30% of the total television viewers for a duration of just 3 hours. This cut-throat competition have compelled the news channels to resort to what is known as Infotainment i.e information ( should not be mistaken for news ) with an entertainment perspective. I have found many ill effects and unhealthy trends because of this infotainment phenomenon which is quite disturbing :-

Sensationalism:
Almost every news item emanating from a news channel has that "breaking news" and "exclusively on our channel" tags attached to it. The obscurity is so much that people no longer heed to such a strategy when they are flipping channels. Abhishek-Aishwarya wedding was more of a media obsession than a personal landmark for the two individuals and their families. The mentioning of the minutest details about the event by over zealous reporters of various news channels during prime time proved to be a major source of irritation. The sensational coverage of "Rakhi-Mika kiss" episode literally took the actress from the streets to the doors of many producers willing to cast her in item numbers. The frivolous discussions and arguments that took place on the sets of various news channels after this event drove away many rational viewers.

Cricket obsession:
This game has single handedly destroyed and devalued many sports in India and the TV media has to take a major share of the blame for putting cricket on the limelight every time there is a highly irrelevant tournament taking place involving India. The news channels these days employ fresh out-of-university graduates with immaculate fluency who speak with so much authority on cricketing matters that people are fooled into believing that these young men and women are the sole custodians of cricketing news in India. The TV media on its part has failed substantially to highlight the poor financial conditions of other sports and sportsmen in the country, in the sense that they have given a free hand to the high profile politicians who continue to occupy top posts of various associations to go scot-free despite high levels of irregularities and corruption prevalent in such associations. Suresh Kalmadi of Indian Olympics Association, Priyaranjan Das Munshi of the Indian Football Association and KPS Gill of the Indian Hockey Federation owe a lot to the Indian media for their continuance in their respective associations. With the ever increasing cricketing channels and programs feeding more shoddy material to the public on the nuances of the game, the future of emerging sportsmen and sportswomen belonging to non-cricketing sports looks bleak. The Indian public is patient enough to wait for 50 more years for those elusive Olympics medals. But i still feel that nothing is lost since sports like football, tennis and F1 are attracting huge number of sports lovers in India.

Sting operations:
Initially these sting operations carried out by various news channels were well received by the public and were thought of as being tirades against corruption and highhandedness of several high profile people. But as more and more operations were aired on TV channels people began to question the rights of the news channels to infringe on the personal rights of people in the name of media activism. The fact remains that these sting operations have not yielded the results at all and such operations have only benefited the news channels in improving their TRPs.

Personality cult:
The TV media is also guilty of promoting personality cult. The Sania-mania is one such example. The hype and hoopla surrounding this girl in the TV media is so much that even the print media seems to have fallen prey. "Sania goes down fighting" - reads one newspaper on one morning though the score read 6-1, 6-3 against Sonia. With all due respect and for all the media attention she has been enjoying ever since that accidental Juniors Wimbledon Doubles title Sania has achieved very little apart from a couple of ATP crowns. People reading this may argue that she has single handedly put Indian women tennis on the world map:- so has Pullela Gopichand, Apparan Popat and Saina Nehwal for badminton, so has Rajyavardhan Singh Rathod for Double Trap shooting, the Indian archers are the only medal hopefuls when it comes to international sporting events. Vishwanathan Anand has been carrying the burden of Indian chess for a long time. Now talents like P. Harikrishna, Koneru Humpy and many others are emerging out of his shadow. Yet these sports personalities don't find mention in the mainstream media despite the laurels they have brought to this country. The hyping of every cricketer who makes decent impression in his first few games, by the TV media cannot be easily forgotten. On the political front too, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi have been projected as people destined to rule Indian one day. "Will she or won't she make it to politics?" :- this question haunts our over enthusiastic media friends time and again.

Trivialisation:
Ever changing demography of north-eastern parts of India due to continued Bangladeshi infiltration poses the biggest security threat to India. Yet, not one news channel has chosen to follow up on the developments on this front. The politicians in south India are almost as notorious as their north Indian counterparts when it comes to corruption and nepotism. Many politicians from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, who had very humble beginnings and who still claim they are humble farmers, own properties worth crores in every corner of their respective states. How many English news channels have come out with a cover story on such politicians whose names are known by every school going child here? The TV media has trivialised the terrorist activities in the country to such an extent that people have started believing that terrorism is very much part of their lives. Immediately after every unfortunate terrorist attack in a city we find one or the other loud-mouthed tv reporter shouting on air "people of this city have braved all efforts and are back on their feet again" :- i can only laugh at such ludicrous emotional statements. People here in India don't enjoy as much social security as their western counterparts. So people are bound to pick up the pieces and get back on their feet for they have to feed themselves and their family - they have no choice. Instead of resorting to such sound bites the TV media is better advised to aggressively get behind those investigating agencies to bring the culprits of such heinous crimes to book.

Indo-Pak unity:
Some channels seem to have championed the cause of Indo-Pak unity while the unity in our own backyard is so fragile. This is quite evident from the soft approach adopted by a few high ranking TV journalists when they are reporting on anti-India activities ( sponsored by Pakistan of course ) or anti-Pak rhetoric. This approach has made impressions with the Pakistani establishment so much so that these high ranking journalists are given easy access to interview high profile Pakistani administrators and politicians. The same high ranking TV journalists are very indifferent when it comes to bridging the gulfs that exist within the Indian society.

Selective amnesia:
The TV media never loses an opportunity to report on the provocative statements made by half-baked people like Pravin Tagodia and other VHP members. But the same TV media shies away from reporting the outrageous statments made by the Shahi Imam of the Jama Masjid against the government during the friday prayers. I shall not delve into the merits of the statements made by people at the extreme ends of the political spectrum. The TV media never forgets to report on the vandalism against the so called art work of M.F. Hussain. But they never even try to reflect the sentiments of the people who are at the receiving end of his art work. They never try to expose the sadist painter's glaring hypocrisy, prejudice and perversion when it comes to painting Hindu gods and goddesses in a questionable manner. The TV media never miss out on reflecting the "legitimate aspirations" of the Kashmiri people for autonomy or independent homeland. But the same TV media ignores the plight of lakhs of Kashmiri pundits who are living the life of refugees in their own homeland.

More can be written on the immature and distrusted Indian news channels. Even the recent research on the Indian news channels seem to substantiate my views above. I have stopped here owing to lack of time and lack of space. I would be very glad if the readers share some of their bitter experiences while viewing Indian news channels.