Aug

28

Did Buddha smile or did he just smirk?

August 28, 2009 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

There’s a feud going on amongst those who coordinated and participated in the 1998 Pokhran nuclear explosions. The principal scientists and the politicians involved have been maintaining that India’s claims about the May 1998 nuclear tests are not to be doubted. K. Santhanam, the test site director and one of the main participants representing the Defense Research establishment (DRDO), has been claiming that India exaggerated its claims about the kiloton yields almost by triple.

The then national security advisor Brajesh Mishra is disputing Santhanam’s argument, contending that Santhanam himself had earlier verified the higher yield figures. “Was Santhanam speaking the truth then or is he lying now?”, asks Mishra. Santhanam’s then boss Dr. Kalam himself is disputing his test director’s assertions as well. Kalam is basing his own assertions on the post-explosion seismic and drilling measurements.

If India’s nuclear tests weren’t successful back in 1998, it would mean a boatload of trouble for India’s national security. Only 2 weeks after India’s tests, Pakistan had conducted similar tests, claiming an almost equivalent yield from its own results. Assuming for a moment that Santhanam’s claims are true, and assuming for a moment that Pakistan’s claims are true as well, puts India in a position it just doesn’t want to be in. First of all, it negates the assurances from India’s politicians and defense chiefs about India being ready to take on its enemies. Secondly, India’s signing of the comprehensive nuclear test ban will halt any further testing, arresting India’s nuclear program to a level much below Pakistan’s program. If that proves to be true, that would be a gigaton yield explosion for some political parties, forever eroding the credibility of some big name individuals who have so far been considered above the fray.

One one hand, Santhanam’s whistleblowing on this issue, can appear immature, untimely and unnecessary. So what if the nuclear tests weren’t as huge as we made them out to be? After all, as long as the idea is to use the tests as a deterrent, does it really matter what the real yield was? Because in such a deterrence scenario, a claim is as good as a yield and perception as good as reality. Right? And isn’t Santhanam doing a disservice to the nation by bolstering the spirits of the enemy across the border?

But then again, hiding an untruth if that is what it really is, may actually be a much bigger disservice to the nation. No matter what the yield of that 1998 test, it certainly didn’t prevent 10 terrorist murderers from trespassing into India in 2008, and it certainly didn’t deter the then ruling regime of Pakistan from illegally claiming Indian land back in 1999. False pride is just as big a sin as false humility, after all.

Personally, I wish there were a time-bound moratorium on declassifying truths of such nature. Many other countries follow that simple rule of thumb and allow to declassify their secret documents several decades later. Santhanam could have done that on his own accord, but then again, every participant of such major operations is burdened with some balance of personal ego and a duty to the covert cause. It’s hard to say which of the participants have allowed that balance to be skewed.

More often than not, truth has a tendency to lie somewhere in the middle of the two ends of such disputes. “…Hold fast to Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the truth as a refuge…”, said Buddha once. But he too, is said to have smiled mysteriously when the sands of Pokhran exploded first in 1974 and then in 1998.

Aug

19

The origin of the deceptive species

August 19, 2009 posted by indiatime | 7 Comments

A non-resident friend visiting India recently wrote to me about how during his 3-week short trip to his homeland, he felt mugged, stolen from or deceived every step of the way. From the 3-wheeler autos to local vegetable markets to tourist attractions, he said he constantly felt that more money was taken from him, with locals using this or that ruse.

So yesterday I sent my friend this new research on robots where the researchers found their robots learning the art of deception by hiding food from other robots.

Swiss researchers recently programmed robots with some basic thought process and biological communications (artificial neural networks) abilities. They then had these robots compete for food in an enclosed space. The robots had to shine a specific colored light if they were close to a food. The robots went thru several generations (as other species would) where the scientists copied the patterns in the most successful robots to the next generation.

By the 50th generation of these robots, the researchers found that some of the robots were not shining the light when they were close to food (these robots didn’t want the other robots to know where the food was). And after a few hundred generations, most of the robots had completely stopped signalling when they were close to food. Meaning, that they had learnt the art of deception as a survival mechanism when they had to compete with others in a crowded environment.

Since we in India are definitely in some multiple of some thousandth generation, it suddenly seems obvious why many of us, end up learning to cheat or deceive. Actually, I am amazed that there are many who still haven’t taken to corruption and still do try to do the right thing day in and day out. And I’m sure, in some distant universe or some faraway galaxy, a team of God’s researchers must be wondering why.

Aug

14

Bhuvan what?

August 14, 2009 posted by indiatime | 3 Comments

After hearing and reading about the great hoopla about Indian government’s answer to google earth, I managed to go to the Bhuvan website, register, download the software, and get a glimpse of what looks like some google earth-like app. Overall, the process took a few hours at the end of which my feeling of exasperation turned to frustration and great disappointment.

First off the bat, let me say how proud I feel that someone at the Indian Space Research Organization has figured out how to write software that shows satellite images layered on top of various information systems. And to be held in comparison to Google Earth, obviously one of the the best apps on the web, is rather distracting, intimidating and sucks a lot. That’s why, when someone in the Indian government, last year announced that India was busy making a google-earth killer app, many of us proud Indians hoped and wished for Indian agencies to wait and come out with the app only when it was ready, good enough to be presented, and with all the bandwidth resources at hand. It would be such a big disappointment, many of us thought, if after all the bragging and boasting, we turned up with something that was hardly worthy of a 21st century web user experience.

Well, folks, Bhuvan - the google earth killer is out and on display. And it is not only disappointing, but is a painful user experience from the get go all the way through. It has browser limitations - it asks you to use only IE6 and above (That’s rather strange, because the rest of the world is out to kill and stop using IE6 any minute), utilizes platform-dependent technology, gives you no instructions on what to do and how to go about using the service, and is just a very, very primitive user experience, at least for those who aren’t as web savvy.

I hate to come down harsh on ISRO’s brightest scientists, who we all know, do this only for their love of the country and not for any financial gains. They do this with most meager resources, with little guidance from the government and the universities, and given a proper environment and backing, could probably move planet earth, not just google earth. But I cannot understand how little regard ISRO’s leadership and its backers in the government seem to have for the Bhuvan team and its scientists. It is the government’s attitude and lack of support that clearly makes the Bhuvan app look like poor man’s google earth. That’s a shame, because to take Google on with such audacity and boldness, would by itself qualify these mad scientists for some well-deserved medals. But the immature and ill-timed release release of an ill-prepared app, is pure unnecessary braggadocio that is more politics than science.

Aug

8

North Korean ship caught in Indian waters

August 8, 2009 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

An article in today’s Global Politician discusses an emerging potential threat on India’s border on the east - Myanmar. Several factors are said to have raised alarms about Myanmar’s new and possibly close relationship with North Korea:

1. recent aborted voyage of Kang Nam I, a North Korean ship carrying a cargo of Scud-type missiles and heading towards Myanmar

2. arrests last month ,of North Koreans trying to export a magnetic measuring device to Myanmar

3. recent evidences of secret tunnels being built in Myanmar

And today comes the news about a North Korean ship, dropping anchor in the Indian waters off of Andaman and Nicobar islands. The ship told the Indian navy that it was carrying sugar to Iraq.

Aha! Why is a North Korean ship carrying sugar to Iraq, lurking so tantalizingly close the Burmese border? For now, the Indian navy and the coast guard have the ship surrounded, but the high sea drama is definitely not over yet and promises to get more colorful over next week. And this is one sugar-carrying ship that India needs to take seriously and not let go. And once that investigation is complete, India needs to seal off the Indian ocean on its eastern coast, and sink any suspected nuclear-material carrying ship to the depths of the Indian ocean.

Jul

16

The Associated Press is reporting about a simulation experiment by Russian scientists where six men endured three and a half months cramped inside a small metal box without windows. The experiment was meant to test human endurance for long interplanetary journeys such as a visit to Mars. The 6 participants didn’t have television or any other entertainment, but had limited access to emails with a 20-minute delayed communication to the outside world.

But the conditions inside the small metal box may not have been as bad as they sound. Each man had his own private cabin, with access to a common gym and a common garden. There were specially prepared meals and access to modern toilets as in the latest spacecrafts. And each participant received almost $21,000 (close to Rs 10 lakhs) for completing the ‘difficult’ mission. Coming out of the box, the study’s participants talked about the isolation from loved ones, and isolation from nature as the hardest things they had endured.

Ha! If this is what it takes to go to Mars, more than half of India’s population would qualify in a heartbeat. They live in conditions worse than and smaller than the Russian experiment’s container. They don’t have toilets, let alone gyms or gardens. They don’t have private cabins and there aren’t ready-made nutritious meals. And most of them will never see Rs 10 lakhs even if they save everything they make throughout their lifetimes.

When it comes to matters of endurance, the rest of the world better take backseat to a majority of our population. And unlike the fake experiment where the participants knew they would get out of their misery after a specific time frame, majority of Indians have endured worse hardships day in day out, for decades. No electricity, dirty water, no sanitation facilities, incredible debt burdens, casteism, racism, sexism, you name it, they’ve faced it.

People say that India’s space scientists are fast catching up with the Europeans and the Russians and the Americans. Long before they were even close, India’s population has always demonstrated the ‘right stuff’, and has always had the extraordinary survival skills necessary for interplanetary journeys and hostile environmental conditions. Most of Mumbai’s population could probably straphang to Mars or go without water or baths for days on long interplanetary journeys. Most farmers’ families could go days without food while on a trip to Jupiter or Saturn. And most Indians would qualify very well for journeys that test togetherness amongst the most diverse group of individuals who come from different ethnicities, languages, cultures, religions, traditions, and still have to live inside a small chambers for a what can seem like a lifetime.

Jul

15

Indian students fly high at the NASA competition

July 15, 2009 posted by indiatime | 5 Comments

NASA has now declared the names of winners in its supersonic airliner concept contest, an international competition that attracts star talent from all around the world. Students of Indian origin dominated the competition in the high school category and did exceedingly well at the college level as well.

This year’s competition focused on conceptualizing a practical and environment-friendly supersonic airliner. In the US high school category, 2 Indian-origin students were part of the team that took the third prize in the team competition with the design of a supersonic viking transport (SVT) equipped with variable swept wings to reduce the sonic boom. In the non-US category, however, all three individual prizes were claimed by Indian-origin students, two from Singapore and one from Hydrerabad. Sidharth Krishnan aced the category with his V-3, which he thinks will be a realistic goal by year 2020. Sainyam Gautam’s Sonicliner with swept-back wings placed second and Hyderabad’s Kulkarni placed third with his innovative ideas on ease of manufacturing.

In the Non-US college category, two students of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel Institute in Gujarat, placed third with their innovative concept named ‘Rastofust’.

Here’s what intrigues me most. With indigenous engineering talent of that caliber hanging around in our schools and families, how is it that the adults amongst us can’t build a 2-bit railway bridge or a design a well-paved street or come up with some direly needed innovations in public sanitation?

The answer may lie in the fact that none of the Indian students were affected or influenced by any governmental entity. There is news that India’s state-run airline is almost bankrupt and wants to defer its loan payments, reduce its employee privileges, and is in the negative by almost a billion dollars. Air India’s best bet may be to let some of our school-going kids manage the enterprize. Their management skills may be just as sharp or even better than their math.

Jun

12

The case of the missing atomic scientist

June 12, 2009 posted by indiatime | 2 Comments

Yesterday, India officially launched a manhunt for Lokanathan Mahalingam, a senior atomic scientist, whose abrupt disappearance 4 days ago, has everyone deeply worried. Mahalingam is a senior training officer who works with simulator training at the Kaiga atomic power plant. He is considered to be a level-G officer, just a grade below the director, and has a 25-year long experience in the field. And before he worked at Kaiga, he worked at another one of India’s nuclear power plants.

The morning of Wednesday, Mahalingam’s wife filed a missing person’s report that he had failed to return from his usual morning walk on Monday. He hadn’t carried his cell phone and has now become untraceable.

The authorities have so far failed to find any clues relating to his disappearance. There hasn’t been any ransom demand, no eye witness reports of abduction, and Mahalingam didn’t seem to have any personal enemies. In fact, the only lead the police have so far is that he had similarly disappeared ten years ago and had supposedly gone to ’seek spiritual solace’. So the police have sent detectives to nearby temples to find out if Mahalingam has disappeared to seek any additional spiritual solace.

Only a few days ago, Ravi Mule, another employee at the same plant was found murdered around the jungle surrounding the atomic plant. But his murder is yet unsolved and nobody has any idea if Mule’s murder is related to Mahalingam’s disappearance. Nobody knows why the scientist’s wife waited two long days to report him missing, nobody knows if his wife knows more than what she is saying she does, and nobody knows if indeed this is another one of Mahalingam’s spiritual solace acts. Nobody has a clue yet.

Atomic scientists vanishing into the unknown isn’t something that hasn’t happened however. In the 1940s and 50s, this was commonplace, and many of the atomic scientists including some with top secret clearance, vanished into the oblivion. Bruno Pontecorvo, a British atomic scientist, vanished in 1950 but emerged in the Soviet Union 5 years later in 1955, saying he was seeking political solace behind the iron curtain.

Twenty years ago, Ronald Stump, an American nuclear chemist missing from Lawrence Livermore lab, was found living in a motor home. Stump too, had top clearance, but his disappearance had more to do with him being pursued for fraud charges, rather than anyone abducting him or him seeking spiritual solace.

For now however, Mahalingam’s missing remains a mystery deeply shrouded in the jungles of Kaiga. Did the simulator specialist pull off a perfect missing act after simulating and practising his disappearance? Or was he plucked by the naxalites or some radical terrorists or the LTTE separatists?

Apr

7

Mobile etiquettes

April 7, 2009 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

The committee on petitions, an influential parliamentary group that discusses public grievance petitions and suggests remedial measures, is currently discussing a petition by a Punjab resident, one Mr. Gurjit Singh, about putting some discipline into the exploding cell phone usage in India. The issues being discussed are:

1. restricting mobile phone use in schools, colleges and universities

2. restricting mobile phone use in traffic

3. restricting mobile phone use in temples and during funerals

4. banning camera phones to protect women’s privacy

5. earmarking special mobile phone usage areas on highways

6. sending civil servants to jail if they make personal cell phone calls during office hours

So far, the panel has concluded that

India’s cell phone users

1. lack basic cell phone etiquette,

2. yell while speaking on their cell phones,

3. create public nuisance,

4. and need to be educated on how to use cell phones without annoying others.

Some might argue that the panel’s findings could pretty much stick to much of what most Indians do, i. e.

1. lack basic etiquette

2. yell while speaking

3. create public nuisance

4. need to be educated

Still, the panel ruled out completely banning cell phones from India. But it did advise such bans on the premises of educational institutes, recommending that teachers, students and the staff could use a common land line at schools, colleges and universities.

Mr. Gurjit Singh’s petition is said to have received support from the media, but has failed to rouse any interest from industry experts who blame the lack of cellphone etiquette on the overall lack of civic responsibility in India, pointing out similar rude behaviors such as public spitting etc. There has also been little public show of support from women’s groups so far, even though the suggested restrictions include a ban on camera phones.

Mar

23

Fordability and affordability

March 23, 2009 posted by indiatime | 11 Comments

In another hour or so, the Nano, Tata’s people’s car, the $2000 automotive wonder, opens for sale at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai. For the Tatas to pull this off is a remarkable testament to the Indian auto giant and its owner’s drive to make yet another mark on the industry that Tatas have virtually owned in India for a good part of the last hundred years. In achieving that mark, Tatas had to clear two major hurdles - Fordability and affordability.

Fordability, if one were to define it, is the ability of an industry to bring the right people to the table, use the right tols and materials, innovate and revolutionize the past ways of working, and forge new methods of producing quality goods in mass quantities. Henry Ford did just that exactly a hundred years ago, revolutionizing the modern world with his Tin Lizzie.

Affordability, if one were to define it in Nanospeak, would be the car’s Rs. 1 Lakh price tag. With the ongoing global economic meltdown, amidst the job losses and the stock market woes, for a company to manage to introduce an inexpensive new car to the first time buyers, brings hope not just to those first time buyers, but to the suppliers and vendors and all the related industries who will be hoping for a turnaround in their fortunes, pinning their big fortunes on the little Nano.

There’s no question that the little Nano has miles to go before Tatas and everyone around them can rest and sleep. There are questions that won’t be answered until the first batch of consumer feedback hits the tarmac. For Nano’s most affordable non-AC version to hit the market right at the beginning of the hot Indian summer can cool some consumers’ enthusiasm. On the other hand, many consumers might be looking at it as not their first but their second family car, still an uncommon phenomenon in India. Then there are questions of burden on India’s already inadequate infrastructure, worsening environmental consequences in the already polluted metros, and fear of additional accidents to the already incredibly rising numbers on India’s crowded roads and highways.

Still, all those things notwithstanding, today is a special day for the Tatas. Like its founder Jamsetji Tata, the pioneer of the Tata group, who was born in Navsari, Gujarat and died in Bauheim, Germany; the little Nano is now expected to travel globally, cheerlead India’s industrial prowess, and jumpstart the new century’s joyride for India’s erstwhile profit corporation. For India Inc, that nanoramic transformation from Navsari to Nanover is a justifiably proud moment, no matter what the little devil has in store for us.

Mar

13

Kakodkar dares IITs to innovate

March 13, 2009 posted by indiatime | 2 Comments

Holi, the fantastic festival of colors, passed us by the day before, amidst all the so-called dark clouds of economic crisis and the security concerns and the political opportunism. I remember how life was once a happy hopping memory, from one festival to the next, a never-ending fun-filled gathering of friends and family, so vividly colorful & noisy.

Yesterday, speaking at the 50th anniversary of the Mumbai IIT campus, Anil Kakodkar, India’s eminent nuclear scientist, asked the country’s foremost learning place to provide a holistic learning experience. “…Can this be the institute where ideas germinate and take shape? Can you play a crucial role in the country’s decision-making process….”, he asked.

Kakodkar’s words about holistic learning, make one think of learning as a fun-filled gathering of ideas and experiments and thoughts and debates. The reason Kakodkar is throwing a challenge at and daring India’s most famous technical school to innovate is because IIT, the powerhouse and the showcase of India’s technical prowess has underdelivered. Majority of its alumni have done great for themselves and some have done way better than those that have done merely well. But IIT isn’t MIT yet and after almost 50 years, isn’t anywhere close to being the leading innovation factory that many once thought it would be.

IITians probably need to come out of their campuses and start building and innovating for the rest of us, who weren’t born as bright. On the 50th anniversary of the Mumbai IIT campus, Kakodkar’s message is a reminder that India once used to be the place of open universities and brilliant gatherings of Gurukuls, when most of the outside world was in the stone age. But that holier-than-others position has long been relinquished, and the reality check is long overdue. Still, innovators-at-heart can definitely find it within themselves the good old festive spirit of learning and education, something that would jumpstart the innovation movement, an inventive fire in student’s bellies.

In the area of innovation and inventions, some of the rest and much of the west is now light years ahead, but India is still in the stone age. Hopefully, Kakodkar’s words will help spark the fires. He isn’t Shah Rukh Khan, he isn’t Shilpa Shetty and he isn’t Sachin Tendulkar. So what he says may not mean much to most. But what he said were the most important words anyone spoke in the country yesterday. And the picture of the future he painted on the colorful day of the holi, is the kind of India that will one day bring sunshine, taking away all those dark clouds of economic gloom and doom.

Mar

4

A nuclear monkey on the world’s back

March 4, 2009 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

Yesterday’s terrorists attack on foreign athletes visiting Pakistan are now the nth reminder and the gazillionth alert about the real dangers that Pakistan poses - not just to its neighbors but to the rest of the world as well.

One of the ways Pakistan has managed to get itself into this much mess, is by being two-faced about its approach to the recent wave of Islamic terrorism. So while its handsome diplomats in western garb sell sweets of diplomacy to the international community, Pakistani pols had so far been content to waste the American aid towards funding their anti-India campaign. While its Oxford and Cambridge-accented top class denied that their country ever catered or pandered to villans and rogue regimes, its scientists collaborated with the worst kind on the planet and its US-educated West-point-trained military brass abused the generous training imparted by the Americans.

Very soon, the world community will have to make a final decision on what to do with this monkey on their back. The problem is a little difficult, because some in the international community have been stupid and selfish enough to allow this monkey to become a nuclear monkey. A monkey, that has in the last 30+ years, amassed hundreds of nuclear weapons, all a stone’s throw away from the rest of the world’s population.

One way to tackle a nuclear-weapon-bragging-monkey is for everyone to jump off of the world’s edge and let things go from there. It will at least save the planet, though it may destroy humanity. Or else, the world can wake up about Pakistan and save itself from doom by taking some smart steps. The problem so far, has been is that the world has been consulting the monkey on how it will not cross the line.

Only a few days ago, a woman in Connecticut lost her eyes, nose and jaw to an attack by her neighbor’s pet chimpanzee. The chimp’s owner loved the chimp and had looked after it as her own child and reared it and was horrified to find out that the chimp had never really domesticated the way she thought it would. Her misunderstanding of the animal behavior resulted in the chimp getting shot to death, the neighboring woman losing eyes-nose-jaw, and the owner herself losing face and of course everything else as well.

Pakistani establishment is like the pet owner who keeps reassuring the world that it has managed to cage the nuclear arsenal in the backyard. Those politicians are this close to losing their face. Pakistan’s neighbors are this close to getting fatally hurt. And the nuclear monkey is this close to the explosion that silence just about every living being on the planet. The world can trust the Pakistani establishment at their own peril. I’m pinning my hopes on the space scientists at ISRO. Taking the first space flight off of India.

Feb

27

Ethics alert for India Inc.

February 27, 2009 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

There is growing concern in India about President Obama’s singling out the American corporations that currently outsource to India. That decision has more to do with the current economic crisis and less to do with the havoc wreaked by Indian companies like Satyam. Still, the list of Indian companies showing up on the malpractice radar seems to be growing every month, threatening to malign India’s hard-earned stature as a reliable trade partner.

Early last month, Satyam Computers, one of the biggest names in India’s IT outsourcing world, became synonymous with fraud and falsification when its CEO confessed to cheating on company’s books.

Earlier this month, several Indian-origin owners of American companies were arrested for H-1B visa fraud. The arrests marked but a drop in the bucket in the H-1B visa malpractice routinely being carried out mostly by Indian consulting companies, ranging from falsifying documents to disrespecting labor laws.

In the area of Pharmaceutical outsourcing, Ranbaxy laboratories, the largest Indian drug manufacturer was recently found to have faked lab tests and data to seek approvals for its drugs. This week, the US Food & Drug Administration decided to end drug evaluations at Ranbaxy’s India plant, citing significant questions about the reliability of data.

Another pharmaceutical company called AM2PAT, this one based in North Carolina but owned by one Dushyant Patel, an Indian-American, is also in the news for selling lifesaving medicines mixed with sediment and debris. AM2PAT’s product quality was so screwed up that people had noticed food particles, among other things, in its heparin syringes. It has been revealed that this Indian American company’s chief microbiologist was a teenager who had dropped out of high school. AM2PAT president Dushyant Patel is absconding and has apparently fled to India.

Indian companies will not be booted out as many have feared, watching President Obama speak to the congress the other day. But Indians will need to be ready for thorough scrutiny, detailed diligence and tougher times ahead, thanks to the crooked corporations that have maligned the majority of Indian companies aspiring to expand their horizons. I think it may be comparatively easier to recover from IT and accounting malpractices, but areas such as pharmaceuticals would need to be very, very careful since any fatal negligence in that area can spell prolonged or even permanent doom for the rest of Indian companies in that field.

Feb

17

China invades Indian foreign ministry computers

February 17, 2009 posted by indiatime | 5 Comments

Recent reports indicate that hundreds of computers in India’s external affairs ministry have been breached and hacked into by China. Even more alarming is the fact that most of these computers belong to the Pakistan-section of India’s external affairs ministry.

So every time these foreign ministry computers send an email, an additional copy is now said to be going to China. Some analysts have predicted that there may be more than one kind of ’spyware’ programs that have been wreaking havoc with the external affairs ministry’s systems. This is a repeat of similar incidents that happened last summer when Chinese hackers were said to have breached into the external affairs ministry’s machines. Whatever precautions the ministry and the Indian government took after that, smart hackers from China seem to have found a way to circumvent those firewalls and security measures.

While India’s IT brass and its computer geniuses are busy reviving fraudulent IT companies, Chinese hackers keep having a field day with sensitive data on Indian government machines. Before long, the detailed maps of India’s future moon missions and all the details of attack plans and war maps will be saved and seen keystoke-by-keystroke on computers in Beijing. And for all we know, Beijing may already be sending an additional copy of all those emails to Pakistan and the ISI and the Taliban. Don’t think that’s very far-fetched. The closest relative of India’s most wanted terrorist Dawood Ibrahim will soon be visiting China on an official visit. And he will surely be carrying a personal message from the don himself.

Feb

4

The hype, the claims and the hypocrisy

February 4, 2009 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

So yet another claim by an Indian group comes crashing. The $10 laptop that was hyped and talked about for months, has turned out not even to be a computing device and hardly anything that can function like a laptop. To begin with, the much-hyped device (supposedly) built by the Vellore Institute of Technology students, is merely a storage device. Secondly, it is not selling for $10 but is now priced at $30. And the new claim being made by these folks is this storage device can help build a $60 laptop in future.

Anyone with even a little understanding of computes could have seen that this thing was a hoax to begin with. But we Indians are so gullible about stuff that is supposed to make our chests swell with pride, that we will sometimes ignore the obvious and take the bait rather than challenge and analyze things upfront.

A few years ago there was similar hype about some genius in India who had mastered the art of manufacturing oil from plants. Reputable organizations like Kanpur IIT and its professors had supposedly backed the claim, and a demonstration was planned in New Delhi. The hoax artists won several awards and probably some real estate from his state’s chief minister and somehow never managed a single credible public demonstration of his oil manufacturing process.

Most of the rest of the sane world follows accepted processes and protocols of scientific discoveries and inventions. In India, we have mastered the art of invention without actually doing much. Even scientists from ISRO, one of India’s few really reputable institutions, seem to be spending more time talking to the news media and making tall claims about how and when India will land Indians on this or that celestial body. Let’s first master the art of getting people from one end of the town to the other before making silly claims about landing Laloo on moon by 2020.

Feb

1

Slumdog astronaut

February 1, 2009 posted by indiatime | 3 Comments

Scientists at India’s Space Research Organization are obviously ecstatic about their recent success with India’s first moon mission. But they all need to sit down together with a bunch of other policymakers and decide once for all when India will send an Indian on the moon. Yesterday, a director at ISRO told his audience that India ws planning to send the first Indian to the moon in 2025. Just a few days ago, yet another director at the ISRO told his audience that India was planning to send an Indian on the moon in 2020. And just a few months ago, ISRO’s chief told his audience that India’s first manned moon mission was at least 3 years away.

It seems to me that ISRO scientists are still on a high, the likes of which comes after a hard-earned and a well-deserved success. But the minute they build their machines and stand ready to send an Indian on the moon, these scientists are going to be sorely disappointed in what will become a political circus to choose the first Indian who will do us the honor of unfurling the tiranga on the moon.

Will it be an Indian man or an Indian woman (nobody is yet talking about a womanned mission)? Will that person represent India’s majority or will we choose someone from the minorities? Will the first Indian on the moon be someone whose final nod will come from ISRO or from New Delhi? Will that person be a Punjabi, a Bihari, a Madrasi or a Bengali? Will this Indian say any religious prayers once he or she is up on the moon? What will be the first words this person will say and in what language? Will India choose this person from a reality show? Will this person be a slumdog or a celebrity?

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Translations




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Hollywood’s first Indian star
Meeting Raj Kapoor at the barbershop
Madhubala on a postal stamp
Why I’m happier than Mukesh Ambani
An inconvenient truth about India’s intellectual property
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Dr Singh is no Dr King
Lesser Known Indians
The Most ‘Nobel’ Teacher of Them All
The third Indian revered in China
A little Poland in India
The vanishing of Indian languages
The looting of Chandigarh’s treasures
Bharat, Pakistan and Hindustan, Indiana
Welcome to India, Steve!
Top 5 explanations for the president’s gesture
An IIT on every street, an IIM on every block
Pakistan, Jinnah, Wadias and the American anthem
An IAS officer’s nightmare of lustful, lascivious stares comes true