India against Corruption - are we moving from democracy to oligarchy?

The  level of corruption in India has reached unimaginable level. So, it is quite natural that the youth has rallied behind Mr. Anna Hazare and team in their drive against corruption.

But, the rhetoric that I hear in the video clips makes me to think about a few things, first, yes the politicians in our nation is really corrupt everyone knows that, but you think that the bug stops there? Aren't others equally corrupt?

Former CJI Justice (?) Balakrishnan is not a politician, ex-CVC Thomas is not a politician, Shaid Balwa is not a politician, all the IAS / IPS officers who are being arrested for having crores of rupees are not politicians.  Your Thalisdar who will not give you your certificate without a cutting or the doctor who gets the salary from the government hospital but visits you only on his clinic is not a politician.

So isn't it a bit scary that we are proposing to set up an all powerful authority who can dictate as to how things should be run in this country?  what is the guaranty that corruption will not reach that small group? Remember it has reached the CVC and CJI. Yes, there is a provision that cases against the officers of Lok Pal will also be tried by the lok pal and action will be taken within 2 months, but will that actually work? I am more skeptical because of what we see in real life. One of friend who is a practicing advocate told me once, that it is tough to prove medical negligence in many case as not many doctors, if not none, will be ready to depose against another doctor. What if the same thing happens with the members of Lokpal?

In democracy we at-least have an hope that we can change things in next election, but in an oligarchy we don't have that hope either. So, I think instead of getting emotional about the whole issue, we should actually be debating on what should be there in the proposed law, the debate should be a nationwide one.

Yes, it will delay the passing of the bill, but its better than having a wrong bill.

Fast justice is good in Rajinikanth movie, but in real life, I guess slow and steady wins the race.

Why Facebook is over valued

Recently there was a discussion in a forum on the valuation of FB. At 33 Bil and around 165 PE, I strongly believe, FB is over valued, especially given the fact that they have very little room to grow in terms of number of users, I think FB has passed its best.

But there was an interesting point that came up, FB is not just an SNS, its more of a platform now. I would like to agree to that point, but still there are some limitations that are inherent in FB's design.

1. CTR for their text ad is so bad, around 0.1% is what I hear and I have personally seen 0.15%. This is mainly because of one reason. when i am using a search engine for info, I am more likely to click on an ad that is relevant to me search, as I am looking for info. In an SNS, I dont go to get info, instead I go to check on what my friends are doing. So I have enough things that are attractive to me in that page rather than a small text ad in a corner of my screen.

2. Though it is true that FB is now more of a platform, not sure how much they earn from being a platform and does that revenue actually justifies 33 Bil valuation.

3. Last year, in its main market, US, FB has grown by around 32%, but they have grown by over 100% in non US market, this means that their net marketable user base has come down by 39%. This is not good news for FB as they will not be able to find enough inventory to deliver to the non US users.

4. The search capabilities of FB again is not up to the mark. I am sure they are trying to perfect their search algorithms, but they have a long way to go in that.

So, as per my opinion, its not going to be the privacy by the CTR that is going to be the Waterloo for FB. Lets wait and see...

Color Color what color...

People who use Facebook should have noticed recently that many of the ladies were updating their status with one word color. Thankfully my job was keeping me busy the whole of last week, so I didn't actually knew what that was?

This weekend I was talking to a friend of mine who said explained me the concept behind it. I went back to FB and saw few of the updates and the protest for those updates.

First I should I agree that there is a noble intention behind this, creating awareness about breast cancer. But the problem with such en mass adoption of these campaigns is that they tend to actually lose the cause for which it was started and gets hijacked by personal preferences.

I happened to see a few update "Sexy Pink" - I know Pink is a color, but not sure if this is a variant of it, "Laced" - I have not heard of any such color, did any of you?

Having said that, when you look at the bigger picture, we should actually thank for that someone who actually started this viral, and actually made many people to start thinking about, breast cancer.

This blog is dedicated to Breast Cancer Awareness.

M K Gandhi

Of all the people who have people who have inspired me I would rate Gandhi at number two, next only Lord Krishna. He is a man lived what he preached. However, this blog is not about the greatness of Gandhi, enough is already written about it. I wanted to share my views on the way we treat Gandhi Jayanthi.

Gandhi lived a life of a karma yogi and declared work as the best form of worship, so I feel odd to see that we are celebrating his birth anniversary as a lazy holiday, not to mention the liquor that we stock on Oct 1st as Gandhi Jayanthi is a dry day.

Shouldn't we come out of these hypocrisy and start commemorating Gandhi in a more meaningful way? Shouldn't we stop our political correctness about Gandhi as to who should own his legacy and who should not?

In my view the answer is "YES".

Marriage of the New age

Last weekend, I got the shock of my lifetime. I was talking to my friend he said "... I got my divorce awarded last month..". What .... Divorce.... you mean Divorce? I thought that this guy is joking, as he is capable of it... It actually took me a week to digest the fact that he actually got divorced.

The D word is of course not a bad word, we do see all the stats that says number of divorces are in the raise in India. But this is the first time that it has happened to someone who is so close to me and the way I reacted remained me that I am still a typical Indian middle class man by heart.

The worst thing in this case is that this guy has filed for his divorce within 3 months of his marriage. Which literally means that the marriage should actually be declared null and void. This irritates me more. All I wanted to know if you don't want marriage, then why in the gods name should you agree for one. I understand the amount of pressure that our parents put us under. I have personally undergone that. But in what way dose that justifies your decision to destroy another person's life.

I don't say that we should be compromising for everything, I too subscribe to the view " Zid karo... Duniya badalo...." but does that means you breakaway from the core of our culture? The success of the institution of marriage is what Indian culture is known for, if we start breaking that away, then we are left with nothing. I understand divorce if it happens after a period, when both of the parties understand each other and decide that it is better to call it off, but a divorce application in 3 months... I just cant understand.

These new age marriages are just another reflection of the fact that we are yet to appreciate the difference between "Modernization" and "Westernization".

The Colonial fixation

Being here in US for a couple of years, has given me this opportunity to observe the US working Indians from a close quarter. What surprised me is that how a few of them, should I say many of them?, actually think that they belong here even if they are here only for a few months (in some cases days).

They way they dress, their accent, their attitude everything changes from east to west (literally). Recently I had a chance to talk to Mirza about this. Mirza, who in spite of being in US for 15 years still speaks like a typical Hyderabadi, did his higher education here and he was sharing his college experience, how guys who land in hawai slippers not just change to sport shoes within months but also start looking down on other desi from India.

I started thinking a bit more into it, what could be the psyche behind such behaviour from some our compatriots ? In what way the culture of west is better than that of India ?

Is an extension of colonial fixation? Are we still not out of it?

Buying farmland abroad: Outsourcing's third wave

I belive India should also start outsourcing the farm land to secure our future..
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13692889