World of India!

These small entreprenuers need all the help and guidance they can get, but sadly most of our major Mngt. education institutes have largely neglected them, except IIM (B),which has recently announced that it would make special efforts, through its Nadathur S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning, to help small entrepreneurs who run businesses even in the non-tech area.

Microsoft heavy duty Windows Vista OS will debut soon and the company's dirty tricks dept. is fully geared up to meet the challenge. 'Wired' magazines blog has reported that Microsoft has presented selected bloggers with heavy duty Acer laptops loaded with Vista as 'gifts'. Apparently, Microsoft thought that the bloggers would 'take it, shut it and promote it'. But the lid is off and the shit is hitting the fan, across the web and blogosphere, with a few bloggers disclosing Microsoft's largesse. I am yet to read that they have returned the machines, though, after writing about it. Smart : )

Microsoft had also invited a few selected 'A' list loggers to meet Gates, a few weeks ago. Celebrated blogger and geek, Robert Scoble, posted an article on why these bloggers failed to ask Bill a single hard hitting question, during their meeting.

Scoble says- "Truth is that getting access to tech industry leaders is so rare that most people, if they do get access, turn into softies. Why?
Well, let’s assume I paid your round-trip airfare, hotel, bought you nice meals, and gave you some nice swag. Wouldn’t you be feeling just a little more generous toward me? But, now, let’s say I set it up so that every year I’d do the same thing but I’d put little hints out there that you wouldn’t get to come to next year’s shindig if you made any trouble.Or, even better, let’s say I just don’t invite any trouble makers at all."

Shame on you Bill. Looks like Warren Buffets company and friendship has not rubbed off any of his famous integrity on you, yet.

Closer home, U.B group chairman Vijay Mallya, was also in a 'extra-generous mood' recently, to the members of the Royal Western India Turf Club (RWITC). I said 'extra-generous', because Mallya is well known for giving people rides in his private aircraft, hosting lavish parties, for the benefit of people whose 'co-operation' he needs, routinely.The King of Good times, was contesting for the post of the Chairman of this prestigious racing club and pulled all stops to ensure that the voting members had a jolly good time, what with wine (doesn't cost Mallya much, anyway), women and song (Sophia Choudhary 'sang', or at least tried to,while displaying her thoroughbred figure).

Alas! Members of the club had all the fun at Mallya's expense and then voted for Dr. Cyrus Poonawalla to be elected Chairman. Dr. Poonawalla had been smart enough to give presentations on his achievements and future plans, and not just host fancy parties with dumb belles jiggin' wit it.

How the mighty have fallen : )

Update:

Here's a list of 14 bloggers who have received the hardware and what they intend to do with the Microsoft Christmas gift.

Mauricio Freitas - Decides to keep it.

Scott Beale - Will probably give it away.

Ed Bott - Decides to keep it.

Mitch Denny - Gives it to her wife.

Darren Rowse - Will donate to charity after reviewing.

Barb Bowman - Decides to keep it.

Long Zheng - Will probably keep it.

Brandon LeBlanc - May offer it to blog readers or send it back to Microsoft.

Michael Arrington - May give to someone at CrunchGear.

Joey deVilla - Decides to keep it.

Marshall Kirkpatrick - Will probably return it to Microsoft.

Zen Heavengames - Decide to keep it.

Robert McLaws - Decides to keep it.

Today, when the global world view of the educated elite is almost completely being shaped by the western media, which are more often than not biased and self serving, the advent of Al-Jazeera, which has very rapidly become the no.1 news channel in the middle -east and is rapidly expanding in other regions of the world, is a very important event. Al Jazeera claims at least 40-million viewers in the Arab world. In India, Al-Jazeeera news is telecast by India T.V.

Al-Jazeera Editor-in-Chief Ahmed Sheikh was recently interviewed by WorldPoliticsWatch. Read it here. It gives an interesting peek into the editorial policies of Al-Jazeera and the man behind the news.

Remember Adobe CEO Naresh Gupta and his son Ananth's kidnapping, which caught the national headlines a few months ago? Well, Mr. Gupta got his son back but is now facing the music for paying up Rs.50-60 lakhs to his sons kidnappers (the money was used as bait to trap the kidnappers and was later recovered by Police). The Income Tax Dept. has slapped a notice on Mr. Gupta to determine whether this money was hidden from his declared income or not.

The irony of the situation! The State can't protect ordinary citizens from getting kidnapped, so much so that U.P and Bihar almost have a flourishing cottage industry in the trade. And when some one pays up to free his loved ones, with Police concurrence, the same State uses that to find out whether this was out of undisclosed income or not! Nothing wrong, technically speaking. But surely, the authorities should have understood that the CEO of Adobe, a highly respected MNC, pays its CEO well enough for him to rustle up 50 lakhs in a jiffy?

Death and taxes is one thing...but death, taxes and insensitive harassment?

Muslim Madarsas have received a lot of publicity recently. And although the Sachar panel report blew many myths surrounding the true state of social and economic well being (or rather the opposite) of Muslims, it is a moot point how far it will seep into the conscience of the majority of the populace, given that the government is not doing too much to communicate the conclusions to the people at large. What good is a truth finding report if the results don't reach the people? So the Hindus would continue to see Muslims as bearing dozens of children, marrying multitude of women, all of them getting educated in madarsas, whereas the truth somewhat more prosaic.

If the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh- an extreme right organisation in India) and its tentacle organisations are to be believed, all madarsas are hotbeds of sedition (Sonia Faleiro has written an excellent post on theMadarsas in Mumbai). But nobody focuses on a similar set up in the RSS, which goes all out to indoctrinate the young Hindu minds into their own philosophy of hate. It is no secret that the RSS runs shakhas where children, younger than 10 years old, are systematically brought in the RSS fold.

My wife tells me of incidences in her childhood, where RSS trainers would move from house to house to ask parents to send their children to the RSS shakha. The parents are told that the shakha teaches the children about our glorious heritage, sanskrit shlokas and such like, besides the usual fun and games. Once the parent agrees to this noble objective (chances multiply if the parent is a conservative/right winger), the indoctrination of the child begins.

Everyday, during the course of my evening jog, I see the place where these children are 'trained', since its right next to the park where I jog. By that evening time, you will see a few children standing neatly in a row, giving the typical RSS salute and singing the RSS anthem (whatever that is). Whenever I see the spectacle, I shudder at the guile with which young minds are being brainwashed for life. Sudhanva Despande has written a fine review on the movie made by Lalit Vachani, which exposes these classrooms of hate and the dastardly methods they employ.

At least the majority of Muslims are forced to send their children to madarsas out of sheer helplessness for lack of proper educational facilities. But how can you defend these RSS madarsas, where middle to lower middle class young Hindu children's perceptions about life, society, heritage are being changed forever? These impressionable children don't stand a chance and will become 'volunteers' in the cadre for the rest of their life.

And every once in a while, they will create people of the category of 'X', who was my classmate in engineering. A member of RSS since childhood, he is a model member of the tribe- supremely enthusiastic & non-questioning about the 'cause'. Once I grilled him on RSS philosophy and tried to show him ' the other side'. But as he started to feel that some thing of what I was trying to tell him was reasonable, he became too disturbed, refused to listen more and threw a big tantrum warning me to lay off him because RSS was "in his blood".

Not a big surprise. One could almost see him as a young child being fed the messages he was taught not to question and was just reverting to that child state.

Some time early next year Pune will be having elections to its local government council. I am ecstatic. No, not just because I am a die hard fan of democracy the Indian way, but mainly because councillors have now suddenly sprung to action, and there is a mad race on to show voters what they have achieved.

Take for instance the piteous condition of roads in Pune everywhere. Suddenly most of them have been covered and tarred. Commuters who used to get a good feel of lunar surfaces are now able to zip along nicely, at least in the main areas of town. The roads near my residential colony were the epitome of how roads should NOT be. But in two days flat the council has managed to make that road look like a block in New York.

So citizens whose anger had come to a point where they were all but ready to burn down the council building and beat the hell out of their elected reps., seem to have been nicely assuaged-just in time. I dont expect voters to be mad till the elections either. They are more likely to make their peace by asking themselves a valid question- what difference would it make if the current ruling party is sent back home and another is brought in? People are all too aware that the politics of self interest is the same across all parties and things won't be any different under some one else.

By the time the elections are over in Feb/March, the first whiff of the monsoon would come in. Come June-July and the hurriedly patched roads would start giving way and fall back to their old lunar appearances. Our Cuncillors would revert back to type and start following that famous Zen saying : Sit quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

Ah electionss! I wish it came and grew like grass, every spring.