I have had some technical issues with my Wordpress blog and had to restore to an old snapshot. So in the rather unlikely scenario you are wondering where a particular post/comment/page went, it’s probably in a MySQL export file. One of these days I get around to write a script to do a diff and import them back in here. Thanks!
The Shashi Tharoor campaign back home in Thiruvananthapuram keeps getting worse! Take a look at the concluding paragraph of the special report by his close buddy and business partner T.P. Srinivasan on Rediff.com
The voters in Thiruvananthapuram, particularly women, are reputed to have a weakness for young and handsome faces. Tharoor has no rivals in this department and his smiling face on the hoardings entices voters from every side. No amount of mudslinging is likely to hurt his fortunes in Thiruvananthapuram, which has already found its way to international attention by his candidature.
It’s yet another example of how the Indian elite looks down derisively on democracy – for them elections is in itself a non-issue or at best, about non-issues. All this “dirty politics” is just a costly diversion for them from the wonderful progress their side of India is experiencing. Yet, time and again, we have seen party after party getting voted out of office mainly on failed economic policies. The person who wrote this Rediff.com piece is a fine example of this disconnect between the masses and the elite circles – he used to be one of India’s representative in the United Nations. Quoting from Srinivasan’s website
Sreenivasan is presently the Director General of the Kerala International Centre in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. He is also the Executive Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 2020 Project. He is an Advisor to Asianet, the largest Malayalam television channel and produces a weekly program on Foreign Affairs called “Videsha Vicharam”. He is also on the Board of Advisors of Dr. Shashi Tharoor’s Afras Academy for Business Communication (AABC) located in Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram. As a freelance writer, he contributes to Asia Wall Street Journal, Times of India, Tribune and Rediff.com.
Packaging grandiose visions of “development”, diverting the attention of voters from the real issues and planting stories is exactly what the Congress campaign for Tharoor is all about. I recently came across a PTI report that quotes Tharoor as saying
Just as the USP of the American city Boston is education facilities, Thiruvananthapuram too can have a world class university, IIT and other campus of higher learning.
Apparently, Shashi Tharoor’s “Unique Selling Proposition” in this phase of campaign is his education – which includes a degree from St. Stephen’s College in Delhi and a Doctoral degree from Tufts University in Boston. As some one coming from Trivandrum and presently living and studying in Boston, I feel almost obligated to respond to his “education pitch”.
So, what is the Boston model? Good ol’ Wikipedia is a good starting point to understand the systemic factors behind Boston’s and Massachusetts’ excellence in education. It’s tough to characterize it in a few words – basically, I see it as as primarily driven by an extremely politically conscious, progressive minded electorate which has pioneered unprecedented investments (by American standards, at least) in a public educational system and promoted meaningful public-private partnerships. Now, let’s go back to Tharoor’s “vision”. As far as I can see, his only contribution to education in India, so far has been to set up a “finishing school for business communication skills” in Technopark in Thiruvanathapuram called Afras Academy for Business Communication (AABC). If this Afras name sounds familiar, that’s only because we saw earlier that our Rediff journalist, Srinivasan sits on their board. I looked around for more details, and found this report in the Financial Express
The standard package designed for employment seekers and new hires, is an eight-week course with flexible timings (…) Each batch will comprise 20 students and the fee for the standard course is Rs 30,000 along with service taxes. AABC is also considering a month-long course for candidates sponsored by companies, says Tharoor.
In plain speak, this is a for-profit organization that trains youngsters looking for call-centre jobs to gain a phony, western accent and “conversational” skills in English. The profiteering at play here is mind boggling. The annual Per Capita Income in Kerala is Rs. 24,000. Tharoor’s “finishing school” extorts an astounding 15 times the average monthly pay of an Indian to give 8 weeks of “language skills” training. In contrast, Tharoor’s own alma mater in Boston – the Tufts University – charges $2,100 for a comparable six week program – 1/2 of the per capita income in the state of Massachusetts! From whatever little I know of the Boston model, I can’t imagine him getting elected to public office even as a School Board Member, with such dubious credentials.
Toxic stuff getting washed ashore - does India always have to suck it up?
The cynic may ask – so what’s new, it’s not the first time “toxic assets” are being sent to Indian shores for recycling, right? The more I learn about Tharoor’s track record, even MP Gangadharan or Neelan look like angels! Then again, what’s pothujanam’s response gonna be on April 16 – I can’t bear to wait any longer.
Shashi Tharoor wants to be my Member of Parliament – he is contesting the Lok Sabha elections in the constituency of Thiruvananthapuram in India.
Here’s what I think his PR machine forgets to tell the voters:
His lobbying for corporate polluters
He serves on the advisory board of the Corporate Social Responsibility effort of Coca-Cola India who incidentally has the ignominy of being one of the worst corporate polluters in India – especially in the notorious case of Plachimada in Palakkad district. Follow the debate here, where Mr. Tharoor has yet to respond truthfully to any of the questions posed. In fact, he had accused the criticism as “politically motivated” – barely weeks before he announced his Congress ticket in Thiruvananthapuram. His move to the Trivandrum from the rural, agrarian and economically backward Palakkad (which at least his grandparents call home) makes total sense.
His sexist outlook
Surprising for his otherwise well-crafted liberal packaging, he maintains a surprisingly sexist outlook. He has written and talked repeatedly about saving the fate of the Indian cloth of “sari” because “unlike every other female dress on the planet, the sari could be worn with elegance by women of any age, size or shape”. He doesn’t stop there – he actually wants to sound like a New England educated version of the more Talibanesque Sri Ram Sena.
Indeed, if you were stout, or bowlegged, or thick-waisted, nothing concealed those handicaps of nature better than the sari. Women looked good in a sari who could never have got away with appearing in public in a skirt
His superficial cosmopolitanism
Just when you were thinking, he’s getting dinged unfairly for a slip of the tongue, there he goes again on “Punjabi-ised folks”. Whoa, what an insightful observation on gender rights and equity.
And this is not just a northern phenomenon, the result of the increasing dominance of our culture by Punjabi-ised folk who think nothing of giving masculine names to their daughters.
Ahem, right man for Delhi.
His belief in god-men and milk drinking Ganeshas
After witnessing a Ganesha drinking milk in the home of an Indian Businessman in Houston, he writes
I did not know how to react to what I had just seen. I had come out of curiosity, not to explore or affirm belief. The milk-drinking was essentially irrelevant to “my” Hinduism; my faith was neither strengthened nor exalted by the sight of a statue drinking milk, nor would it have been shaken or diluted if Ganesh had refused to imbibe. I was prepared to believe that there might be a fully rational explanation for the event, but I was equally willing to accept that something might have occurred that was not readily susceptible to the demystification of scientists. I believe the world has more questions to pose than science has yet found answers for, and so have no intellectual difficulty with the notion of the supernatural.
That much for the liberal educated visionary, who can propel Trivandrum into the 21st century. More Milma counters near temples, perhaps? Saner Indians had protested in the past on account of such “Tharoorisms” even when he was announced as the Indian government’s nominee for the UN job.
His incompetence in “hands-on” diplomacy
Lets face it – he didn’t come down to Trivandrum to build “bijli, sadak or pani” for aam aadmi. No sir, that’s apparently being too little minded for an “MP”. What’s in fashion in Washington style politics of lobbying, caucuses and special interest groups. Even as America is struggling to change Washington, here we are moving step by step to exactly that. Mr. Tharoor clearly has his sights set on being India’s Foreign Affairs minister. That brings up more questions. I don’t give much credence to some of the criticisms of him being a aggressive political Zionist, however I am really worried by his loose comments about an Israeli-model Indian response to terrorism. What sort of a diplomat, let alone a statesman, would talk about matters of world peace with such callousness? If this writing is representative of his prowess of a future Indian Foreign Affairs minister – we might as well brace for an all-out conflict in the sub-continent. A career diplomat in the UN probably does not mean anything more than, well whatever that means – being in Manhattan, perhaps?
His total disconnect with Trivandrum, Kerala or India
He has near-zero understanding of grass roots reality in India, Kerala or Trivandrum. In fact, he is reported to have interrupted a rendition of the Indian national anthem “Jana Gana Mana” – and urged the audience to sing in an American way because it is apparently more “respectful”. For someone who seems to have magically shifted residence from New York and Dubai to Trivandrum, right on time for the Lok Sabha elections, I am not surprised at all. All the boys (“look, he’s got a cool website”) and girls (“oh, he’s sooo cute”) who think he is the Indian Barack Obama, should probably be looking at the real Obama story – he was a darn good community organizer, who worked shoulder to shoulder with real people and worked on real problems.
“I grew up to be a man, right here, in this area. It’s as a consequence of working with this organization and this community that I found my calling. There was something more than making money and getting a fancy degree. The measure of my life would be public service.”
Wearing a mundu for photo ops and jumping on board “big-ticket” development projects or running for-profit “finishing schools” just doesn’t cut it. Knowing how trade treaties obliterate rural Trivandrum’s small-scale agri-industries, knowing how poverty drives inner city youth to crime, knowing how communal interests hijack the “sub-altern”, knowing crowded KSRTC buses and “parallel services”, knowing thattukadas – they surely count a lot even for someone planning to stay in Delhi. The same reasons which made Shashi Tharoor a somewhat successful UN bureaucrat, columnist and author – a western liberal education, middle of the road politics which is marked by avoidance of issues rather than dealing with them, multi-lingualism, subservience to power structures and a total disconnect with grass roots reality – should make his defeat in Thiruvanathapuram desirable. A vote’s a precious thing, it’s a shame to waste it on Mr. Tharoor.
[UPDATE - 04/11]
In the past few days, more signs of protest and resistance have come up online
What a start! It has been one hell of an exciting, exhausting week out here. This is probably one of the handful of opportunities I’ve got to sit down and have a moment for myself and that too right in the midst of the first session in the Design Challenge 1 for the SDM ‘09 cohort.
Apparently this is becoming a DC-1 tradition here – building robots using lego Mindstorm kits.
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| Mr. Roboto from my team |
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| SDM ‘09ers at the Design Challenge 1 |
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| MIT in the full January glory |
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| Boston across the Charles |
The cohort and the environment out here has definitely exceeded my expectations – as for the academic content, I am reserving my judgment just because most of the Spring term courses start off only in February. If it is anywhere near Prof. Crawley’s System Architecture course, this is exactly what I had signed up for. SDM’s positioning and program values are also very strongly influenced by the MIT ethic of “rolling up the sleeves and getting your hands dirty”. Of course, there’s more to this but I’ll save it for some other time. For now, I am just soaking it all up.
I am going to attend the System Design and Management program at MIT starting January 2009. So, why SDM and why now? Unlike yesterday when the immigration officer at SeaTac had asked me the same question, I’ll go for the full disclosure now.
Well, several factors turned green for me in 2008 – 6+ years in TCS had offered a lot more intense, real-world experience than I had planned for, Renu had graduated from CMU last Spring and and I have been having a lot more of India-based plans lately. All that meant it was time to start looking seriously. My ‘09 plans were pretty specific – a full-time graduate program that’s intellectually fulfilling and professionally rewarding – one that is deep enough to learn and research in the area of Information systems and flexible enough to widen my own horizons, in an interdisciplinary way. It meant Ph.D’s were off the list, at least for the time being. The hunt was on, and it yielded the usual suspects and then some more.
Technology MBAs: A Technology MBA is supposed to offer phenomenal professional advancement, even at seemingly outrageous pricepoints. However, in my case they had some serious disadvantages – they took too long (summer interships), were too expensive, not too intellectually fulfilling and believe it or not, actually had a credibility problem in my neck of the woods. For the record, the toppers in this sub-category: MIT Sloan, UCB Haas, CMU Tepper and UCLA Anderson MBAs.
Masters in Information Systems: Several promising programs – even though some of them looked like a serious step down in terms of professional growth. Then again, a master’s program in a major US university offered plenty of opportunity to do some serious reading and research. Top of the charts: ISchool’s Masters at UC Berkeley and UW, CMU’s MISM and LSE’s M.Sc. programs.
Other Masters programs : Some real jewels in this category – like CMU’s MSE (both the Pittsburgh and CMU-Portugal options) and UC Irvine’s MS in Informatics. The ones I had looked at had a lot of academic character, but not exactly the flavor I was looking for.
Masters in Systems Engineering: Even though at first SE sounds like a US DoD project for world domination, this sort of an integrative approach has always had a wonderful therapeutic appeal for me. This list was shorter – MIT’s System Design and Management, USC Epstein’s Masters in Systems Architecture and Engineering and Cornell’s M. Eng. programs.
Hundreds of hours of research, email threads and visits later, by late September the ranked list got real short:
By October, I had also managed to get all those pesky test scores (GMAT, GRE and TOEFL) . USC SAE’s Spring deadline was already over and I applied to the one with earliest deadline – the MIT SDM. They sent me an offer of admission by mid-November.
Well, what can I say? It was too good an opportunity to let go – no other program had met all of my program structure requirements, had such an accomplished cohort and offered an environment such as MIT’s. In spite of all the disadvantages (MBA-grade tuition, Renu’s relocation, Boston weather) I ended up accepting the offer in late October. I had to rush like crazy – but all of them in that long list – sabbatical leave from TCS, Renu’s transfer, my student visa, educational loans and even my flight tickets came through in less than 3 weeks flat. Amazing.
I am going to Boston in another couple of days, and Renu’s moving in later next month. January is traditionally the Independent Activities Period at MIT and going by the looks of it, promises to be one exciting and hectic period, to say the least. Good to be back in the future!
The Memorial day weekend was quite eventful for us – we were in Buffalo, NY at the Association of India Development (AID) 2008 Conference. It was a very hectic conference schedule that the hosts in AID Buffalo chapter had laid out for us – full of presentations, talks, discussions, plays and much more.
As for me, the key highlight of the conference was Dr. Ilina Sen’s talk on Dr. Binayak Sen’s activism and his continued incarceration by the Chattisgarh State Government. For a background on the Binayak Sen issue, do read Praful Bidwai’s recent article . True to AID’s roving focus, there were so many sessions on a host of other topics ranging from Knowledge Society to Gender sensitization strategies and Jeevanstahi sesions packed in to the 2 and half days of conference. Pictures from the conference on Picasa.
While transiting through Singapore’s Changi, this time around I thought of heading out to the city on my own. Well, not quite so – there was this free City shuttle service from Singapore tourism to a place called Bugis. From what I’d heard at the Tourism info desk, this seemed to be this busy, down-to-earth shopping district teeming with vendors and in general lots of street life.
I was not at all disappointed! Spent the whole afternoon walking around in the city – Bugis, Littlte India, Victoria St. People, bicycles and even motorcycles jostling for their space on the streets and footpaths. It is still probably generations ahead of any other typical chaotic big-city street, nevertheless I felt really good that I got a more authentic Singaporean experience instead of a sanitized touristy guided tour of the city. Now that I am back in this rather nice airport lounge, Wikipedia tells me that Bugis was in fact the old red-light/tavern district of Singapore. In fact, right until mid 1980’s it was notorious for its transgender sex workers and the largely caucasian customers. I saw at least 2 such individuals today, which kind of surprised me since they looked so out of place in a largely clock-work like Singaporean ethos. More on this probably later, right now I am just focussed on getting to Trivandrum 
The Hindu reports that The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Asma Jahangir described her recent visit to the state of Gujarat in India as a “pleasant one”.
Ms. Asma, are you sure the Gujarat situation looks pleasant to you? Is it possible that you did not recognize Director-General of Police P.C. Pandey , one of the officials you met, as the notorious police chief of Ahmedabad who had tacitly supported the mobs on a killing spree? Or that Mr. Chief Minster, whose beautiful memento would have surely impressed you, is a person who had claimed that he will burst bombs in Muslim neighbourhoods, had he not been a minister? Did you look the other way when you passed by the charred remains of Gulbarg Housing Society, where innocent civilians who sought refuge in ex-Minister of Parliament’s house were burnt to death? On the other hand, I can see why you may not have met anyone standing in line, before the Collector or District Magistrate, to request permission to change their religion? It is difficult, to put matters of faith before one’s life and property, eh?
Father Cedric Prakash, a Jesuit priest and social activist from Ahmedabad, was in Redmond a couple of days back, to deliver a talk on “India: Balancing Economic Progress and Social Justice“. He is the Director of PRASHANT, a Gujarat based Jesuit Center for Human Rights, Justice and Peace. Fr. Cedric the recipient of several national and international awards, among them “Kabir Puraskar” by the President of India for his work on promotion of Communal Harmony and “PeaceChevalier de le Legion d’Honneur, 2006″ by President of France. The talk was co-hosted by IMRC and Asha Seattle and several of us from AID Seattle were in attendance. It was a deeply moving experience, listening to this erudite, soft spoken gentleman talk about the Gujarat pogrom, and how ruthlessly efficient it has been in eradicating religious tolerance and multiculturalism from the Gujarati psyche.
Fortunately, for millions of victims of communal politics in India, for whom the wounds are far from healed – Fr. Cedric and his friends like Teesta Setelvad from Citizens for Justice and Peace, are carrying on with their principled fight. They are for instance, converting Gulbarg Society into a memorial for the genocide victims. In the very same place as Fr. Cedric recalled, “Mr. Jafri, an ex-Member of Parliament, and good friend of mine, was chopped to pieces and barbecued for having offered refuge to victims feeling the mobs”. Never before, has remembrance been so important to the soul of liberal, secular democratic polity in India.
Organizations like AID and Asha have in the past supported several rehabilitation/relief projects for riot victims. In the Q&A session, when enquired about the biggest pain points that they were facing, Fr. Cedric pointed to support in terms of legal aid to riot victims. The concept of pro-bono legal aid is not quite prevalent in India, as in the west and there is a significant expense involved in all the steps right from filing an affidavit to court appearances. Contributions to the relief, legal aid and rehabilitation effort by can be made by getting in touch with Prashant center online or via email
Kudos to IMRC and Asha Seattle for having hosted the talk!
In support of the campaign for justice for Bhopal disaster victims, AID-Seattle organized a signature campaign in Redmond in front of Mayuri Grocery store today.
Hundreds of people, mostly from the Indian community here in Seattle, have endorsed this campaign and expressed solidarity with the victims. The green cloth on which the signatures were collected is to be integrated into the Indian national flag, which will be borne by the marchers, when they reach Delhi to present their demands to the Indian Prime Minister.
Remember Bhopal?
For more updates on the Bhopal to Delhi march visit the padayatra blog or the ever resourceful Students for bhopal site.
Every now and then, somebody pops the question, do you practice Agile? And I ask them, tell me which one is more funny – the Agile chair, or the Agile coach?
Good software is the result of solid engineering, not some vague, feel-good manifesto. If you say software development is too chaotic to measure, control, plan and deliver – well, here is your chance to clean up the act. By the way, even Agile will work if your team is relatively made up of very disciplined, capable individuals and is working on a relatively small, non-critical application. Very few teams, let alone organizations, are at that level of maturity. At that level, whatever your team will touch will turn into gold. Does that mean everyone can leapfrog into that league by following a less rigorous path? No way! So instead of less rigor – have more of it. More concrete requirements, better design specifications, better quality and quantity of documentation, more reviews and so forth.
Of course, there are a lot of good things that the Agilists have brought to life. Practices like TDD, quick release cycles, daily scrums and hey, even some of these swanky office spaces. Thank you, but lets just move on, shall we?