Drama galore!

Indian politics and the electoral procedure are fun galore. From the tickling to outrightly funny, from bizarre to most innovative, we have it all. A candidate from Madhya Pradesh, for instance uses banners and thelas carrying boxes with posters to campaign, nothing unusual in this except that he urges the voters not to vote for him. Balram Jakhar, erstwhile Loksabha speaker takes a clue from the Indian telly dramas and ensures that his speeches are all tear-jerkers. The veteran politician spares no chances to shed his (crocodile?) tears during almost all his public addresses in Rajasthan (which even irrates women among the audience). Television, btw is an area where the Indian politicians shines a lot, India shines or not. So you have these trained puppet actors performing mime with open palms for the Congress while BJP seems restrained in its own melodramatic ads perhaps owing to the fact that 5 years in power gave them enough time to perfect their act(ing). Advertisement apart perhaps for the first time ever major political parties are now sponsoring TV programmes ("this part of the movie is brought to you by Congress", bet you can't prevent yourself from smiling on this).

The idiot-box meanwhile proves its idiocy on almost all News channels. People today want entertainment even in news, believe the policy makers. So in the name of political satire you have Kadar Khan (hitherto known for his double-meaning dialogues) providence as Narad muni on Sahara, now-who-is-Shekhar-Suman doing a "Poll-khol" on Star to the unknown actor Sanjay Mishra playing Harry Voter on Aaj Tak. With watch-dogs like these who can prevent elections from becoming a mockery. A country where the janata is showing appetite for entertainment even during election times it's not ironical that while you can easily convince gullible people that the EVMs can give an electrical shock unless you vote by pressing a particular button, you can not convince them to vote for a seemingly devoted political novice like Shiv Khera.

Resonating Jibes - 3

Sushmita Bose noticed that in the quick-shift world of Indian advertising, the Big Idea these days is going back in time. Offcourse Null Pointer was the first to point this out.

Can I say something about Gmail too?

Though I am a man with strong prejudices and the 1 GB thing might have blinded me but still here is my 2 paise on the features I liked about GMail:

• The scripting that lets the Reply/Forward text areas open almost instantly with an option to open them as new windows.


• If you liked the MS-Word spell checker Gmail has got it better, and remember this is not a desktop application.
  
• Email addresses being automatically added to address book (offcourse this may lead you to delete the unwanted ones later-on as the list swells) and the choice to get the ones you send mails frequently


• The external image concealment feature making emails work-safe (offcourse rediffmail had implemented it much earlier)


• Adding attachment works like magic and you don't even get to notice the time it takes to attach and send the mail

Now for the annoyances:

• Wonder if this is only me who mentions this, but the initial loading time (once you press the login button) is way too high. I see atleast two sets of loading screens occurring first at left hand corner of screen and then then on the other.


• Detecting a new mail (though its in bold fonts) out of the chained list of "Rahul,me,Sneha,me" would sure be tedious once it expands.

Mix Masala

• Though I have never been able to decipher an iota of the concepts of business blogging (and most of the posts at her blog), I wonder how people like her are still making money selling the same old image of India in the name of ethnography, as a country of snake-charmers and cows walking on streets. I wish Munnabhai MBBS asks Circuit for another body for doing his practicals ;)


• Got yesterday a Gmail account (debashish ([aaat)] gmail {antidote} kaum), courtesy: Blogger.com. Though 1 GB storage sounds great I see the real problem in using the account. I remember that when I created my Rediffmail account (yes its is snail slow now but once it used to be lightening fast, literally) to get rid of the spam at my Yahoo one (and the spam filters weren't there yet) most of my friends did not update their address books and so most of my mails still arrive at yahoo and rest at Rediffmail. All in all, I cannot do without checking both the accounts at least once a week. But Gmail is prompting me to repeat the exercise!


• Shanty has (burp!) made a choice for his election symbol. You can't find a better one with so many virtues.


• Lot many Indian bloggers (prominent personalities too) are flocking at mBlog prompted by Sanjay. Lot from the Microsoft camp. BTW if you are facing any problem with your current blog hosting here are some reasons why you would like to consider mBlog.

Electronic problems

Two interesting aspects were brought forward related to making the forthcoming polls completely electronic with sole usage of the EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines). The first is off course the public interest litigation which demands the Elections Commission to add a last option "None suitable" on the EVM panel, similar to the "None of the above" or "Insufficient data to predict" option to an objective type questions in an exam . Though it may seem an overly reaction to the quality of the current Indian polity, I welcome the suggestion. For an educated voter who doesn't like any of the choices he has, it is always better to vote for none - rather than fume sitting at home and not vote at all. This will obviously reduce the instances of rigging.

The other point was raised in Kanishka Singh's article which raises pertinent questions on how much free and fair elections can EVMs lead to given the low public awareness and scope for manipulations. If it's about fooling the gullible I don't think the story would be any different, people would still be told to press a particular button as they were in the past to stamp at a particular place, if it is about convincing them that the EVM would give an electrical shock it would be no different than the threat of the voting-ink they were told earlier and off course the people with masters in booth-capturing can still bolt with the EVM or threaten the electoral staff to do what they want. Ultimately the backlashes I see would be more technology related rather than process related.

Of these two issue I can certainly think of some ways the EC can go in future:

• Giving a receipt to the voter to acknowledge that he has voted (and perhaps include identification of the candidate for whom he voted). Very valid point raised in the HT article.


• EVMs be hooked on to a hacker-proof network enabling taking a back-up of the votes at regular intervals at any nodal centre. This would ensure that votes don't get lost at any time and certainly speedily the counting process.


• Make the EVM speak up the name of the candidates for illiterate, handicapped people. Undubtedly, this would demand additional investments on sound-proof cabins.


• Additional investments for interactive awareness programs telling about EVMs at least a month before the polls.

What do you think?

The Lost Emperor

Zee News featured an interview of Atalji with veteran journalist Rahul Dev on 16 April. It was supposed to be a short routine interview, but instead came out saying a lot of unsaid things about the contender to the post of next PM. I had only read about Bahadur Shah Zafar's last days and perhaps he wouldn't have been much different from what Atalji looked. The grand old man of India was truly in bad form, staring hard at Rahul most of the times, wary of the questions about his own constituency from where he filed his nominations on the day. The answers were crisp and canny on Foreign affairs and Indo-Pak relationships but lack-luster on the fate of the country, its economy and the future 5-years that BJP promises to present. It was as if the Foreign Minister concealed in his inner layers had unraveled himself.

Atalji has exiled himself much earlier than the elections it seems. the erudite politician in him was bitter on Vainkaiya Naidu's remark about him having no contender at all. "It's all rubbish", he said, clearly annoyed the over-the-top way party is projecting and depending on him. Dev was very candid to ask him whether the "moderate and liberal" face of the BJP and the Sangh parivar were only temporary during his stay or they would ever be institutionalized. "We have to do it and we are working on it, who would have thought the Sangh people would behave the way like they are doing," said the mask with a false glimmer on his face but a visible apprehension in his eyes.

Ethnic blogging and Bangla

If any award were to be given for regional language blogs in India, I have little doubt that the Tamil Blogs would emerge as the deserving winners. Just look at their magnitude. I am not aware exactly how many of them are in Unicode but I believe that majority of them are. Apart from opening-up for universal readership, Unicode encoding also paves the way for these blogs to surface on Search Engines. Happily the Hindi blogging scenario has matured too, there are almost half a dozen Hindi blogs now apart from a Community blog "Akshargram" started by Pankaj. While I Googled for regional blogs I could not find a single one in my mother-tongue Bangla (or Bengali). Thankfully Sukanya di was keen enough to start one and thus began the first Bangla Blog. this blog is actually a "Baby-step guide" on how to start a Bangla blog of your own. Meanwhile, Sukanya di has started a blog of her own and with two of a tribe it was probably reason enough to go for a Bangla Blog directory. Hope other Bangalis follow suit.