Worst Lyrics in Tamil Romantic songs

Me and Mr.Alla here were discussing movie lyrics and he wrote an excellent blog on Telugu Movie Song "Sahitya" (in Telugu everything sounds literary - I thought he was referring to Thyagaraja when he mentioned Sahitya). This is the Tamil counterpart.
Some of the worst lyrics in Tamil movies have been written in the last 10-15 year period. Earlier, there was Kannadasan and then initially Vairamithu wrote some excellent lyrics. Around the 80s, they started substituting random words in romantic songs, but it still sounded good.
Now, I am referring to romantic songs specifically here - Kuthu song lyrics have become better and better. For example the recently released Nathamukka song has the following lyrics:

பொண்ணுங்கல்லாம் பொறக்க வச்சான்
பொண்ணுக்குள்ள கருவ வச்சான்
கருவ வச்சான் கற்ப வச்சான்
கற்புக்குள்ள தீய வச்சான்
தீய வச்சு எரிய வச்சான்
எரிய வச்சான் எரிய வச்சான்
மதுரை எரியுது அணைங்கடா அணைங்கடா

Translation:

He created women and he put the womb inside them
He put the womb and he put chastity inside them
Inside chastity he put fire
He put the fire and he caused it to burn
he caused it to burn, he caused it to burn
And Madurai burns, let us put out the fire..

This is a reference to Kannagi burning Madurai, and it is woven in nicely into the breathless style of the song. (Lyricist P.V.Prasath)
Another really nice "Gaana" song was Vaala Meenukkum in the movie Chithiram Pesudhadi. It described a marriage ceremony celebrated by the different kinds of fish in the sea. Lyricist and performer was "Gaana" Ulaganathan.
(Gaana is a special Chennai inner city folk music that has lots of potential)

So, the Kuthu songs are fine and they satisfy their audience. It is the romantic songs that had really bad lyrics. The situation is changing with Thamarai, Naa>Muthikumar and others but check out some choice romantic lyrics from the last 10 years - just the ones that REALLY make you want to tear your hair.

Movie: Kaadhalan (Lover)
Lyricist: Vairamuthu (DiamondPearl)
Song: Yennavale Adi Yennavale
The hero Prabhu Deva is really taken with Nagma (she being the governor's daughter and him being jobless, sigh). He starts singing to her in his dreams. He really loves her and here is how some of the lyrics go:

காதல் என்றால் பெரும் அவஸ்தை என்று
உன்னை கண்டதும் கண்டு கொண்டேன்
எந்தன் கழுத்து வரை உந்தன் காதல் வந்து
(wait for it)
இரு கண் விழி பிதுங்கி நின்றேன்

Translation:

I saw you and I realized Love is a great pain
Your love has filled me till the neck and
I am standing with my eyeballs squeezed out

Now, right when I heard that I had an uncomfortable feeling in my eyes and it continues everytime because Unnikrishnan, the singer, insists on singing this in every concert.
But hold on, DiamondPearl goes on:

வாய்மொழியும் எந்தன் தாய் மொழியும் இன்று
வசப்பட இல்லையடி
வயிற்றுக்கும் தொண்டைக்கும் உருவமில்லா ஒரு
உருண்டையும் உருளுதடி

Translation:

Neither speech nor my language are under my control now
In between my stomach and my throat a formless sphere is rolling

Now, I don't know what is this formless sphere, but come on. The words Urundai (sphere) and Pidhungudhadi (squeezed out) in Tamil are really really not meant for romantic songs.
Whoever wants to have an image of eye baslls squeezing out while hearing a song?


Movie: Love Today (that is really the name of the movie; it was before the Tamil Nadu government started paying movie makers to name their movies in Tamil)
Lyricist: Vairamuthu
Song: Yen Pen Endru

Vijay is roaming around in despair because Suvalakshmi has not been reciprocating his love. He starts singing in a classic melody. This song is tuned beautifully and is a pleasure to hear until you reach this:

தூக்கத்தை தொலைத்தேனே துடிக்குது நெஞ்சம்
தலை போன சேவல் போல் தவிக்குது அங்கம்

Translation:

I lost my sleep and my heart is hurt
My body is twitching like a chicken whose head has been cut off

Seriously, this man...there is that image of a chicken running around with its head cut off.
Have pity on us.

Movie: Kannedhire Thondrinaal (She appeared before my eyes)
Lyricist: I don't know
Song: Kanave Kalayadhe

Great song, Prasanth and Simran are singing a duet. And here is the offending line:

இது வரை இதயத்தில் யாருமில்லை
சந்து கிடைத்தால் நுழைவாயா?

Translation:

There is no one in my heart till now
If you find a gap would you enter?

?? Enter what? Where? Plus the word Chandhu (gap) in Tamil literally means an alley. I can understand writing:
பாதை கிடைத்தால் வருவாயா?
or something like that..but chandhu? Nuzhaivaaya? Is that an appropriate word in a romantic song.

Movie: Alai Paayudhe (Waves are breaking)
Lyricist: Vairamuthu
Song: Evano Oruvan

Shalini is despairing because of the tugs of love in her heart and family pressure. This song goes on in the background:

எவனோ ஒருவன் வாசிக்கிறான் இருட்டில் இருந்து நான் யாசிக்கிறேன்
தவம் போல் இருந்து யோசிக்கிறேன் அதைத் தவணை முறையில் நேசிக்கிறேன்

Translation:

Someone is playing a (flute) and in the dark I am begging him
I sit in meditation and think and I love it in installments

I can understand the first line and even the second half. But, installments? That is "Thavanai Murai" in advertisements for buying cars or cots. It is not a term you associate with love, unless you are paying someone for it. And I don't think they accept installments...or credit cards.

I will leave you with one of the old classics, so that you forget about Prabhu Deva's eyeballs:

நாடாளும் வண்ண மயில் காவியத்தில் நான் தலைவன்
நாட்டிலுள்ள அடிமைகளில் ஆயிரத்தில் நான் ஒருவன்
மாளிகையில் அவள் வீடு
மரக்கிளையில் என் கூடு

Translation:

For this princess who is ruling the nation, in her epic story I am the hero
But among this nation's slaves, I am one in a thousand
Her home is in a palace
while I nest in a tree branch

And it all rhymes and fits the context!!

The White Tiger, Slumdog Millionaire - Insights of the Colonized

I have not yet watched Slumdog Millionaire - but I am going to and think I will enjoy it.
But the movie has ignited a very lively debate that has gone on in the internet, print and in television - does the movie reflect a real India? Does the movie deserve an Oscar? One of the most vexing questions has been this - do movies that portray India poorly get noticed more in the West and corner awards? Amitabh Bachan wrote a blog about it, then retracted it - whatever.
If you read the internet forums, people are split right down the middle on this one - people point out that such movies are made with the idea of getting awards. I am not sure that Danny Boyle had the Oscars in mind. Lots of people are outraged by the stark shots of Dharavi. Meanwhile an equal number say that India's poor suffer from underexposure - not over exposure. This argument quickly becomes political - is India developing or not? Why do western filmmakers always show an India that is underdeveloped?

Shyam Benegal perhaps gave the best explanation - he said that Danny Boyle was not Indian and the movie is his creative expression. Thus his creative expressions can only show India as he sees it (along with his crew). Nothing wrong with that - same thing happens if an Indian makes a movie about Italy.

The Colonized

But I think there is an underlying issue here - it is obvious that we, Indians care a lot about how our country and culture APPEARS abroad. Particularly in the West. The most important reason why this happens is because we were a former colony of Britain. Colonized and Oppressed races do have a tendency to prove themselves before thir former "masters". I have seen a very similar tendency among African-Americans in the USA.
Our textbooks and education is full of the point of view of an outsider looking in. Subash Ghai said the most happiest he felt was when "700 white people applauded Taal in Chicago". Note that he specifically said white people, not Americans or even non-Indians. Our nation's elite, in particular, are highly self-conscious. Amitabh Bachan has been attacking Satyajit Ray for a long time "for showing India under a bad light". This is why the most minor reference to India by Obama or Bush or Clinton transports our media to orgasm.
Media stars refer to "India arriving on the world stage" again and again. We want to be a super-power, not because the word has any meaning; but because then we will get equal respect. Get noticed somehow. We will model our award shows on their award shows; we will model our economy on theirs; we will show - somehow - that we are no different.
It is this high value we place on Western opinion - while simultaneously ignoring native wisdom, that makes us angry when "India is shown in a poor light". We think the POINT of the movie is to show a fallen India. But, of course, that is not the point of the movie. The story, the plot, is the pont of the movie - let us not invent any further.
I think this is a very natural reaction of colonized peoples - but it has to be overcome. A little self-esteem is what we need.

Meanwhile, The Colonizers are not free of problems of their own. Let me explain with an issue I have been facing for some time.
I have tried reading English novels by Indian authors in the recent past. I read Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" when I was much younger, and I liked it. In the last five years, I buy English novels by Indian authors from time to time and always abandon them in the middle.
What bothers me about them? Why can't I read and enjoy novels by Indian English authors? I have tried repeatedly - The Inheritance of Loss, White Tiger, The Namesake - all of them. I am not able to even complete them - why is that?
Then I read Tamil writer Jayamohan's interview to A.Muthulingam in the Tamil literary magazine, Kalachuvadu and it made sense. The question to Jayamohan was about marketing his books to an international audience. Jayamohan said (I am paraphrasing here) that a Western audience (which is where the money is) is not interested in most Indian literature. They look to Indian books and movies for "knowledge" - that is, for learning about an alien culture. They are not really interested in the philosphical or literary beauty of the work - because they think they get enough of that from their literature.
This is a key idea and I agree. Most discussions about Slumdog or White Tiger with Americans (that I have had) revolve around whether the incidents narrated happen or can happen. But that is NOT the question they would ask when watching an American movie. While a movie like "The Dark Knight" is watched assuming its internal coherence, an Indian book or movie is automatically associated with reality - it is not read as a literary work but as a tour guide.
That tour-guidishness is, of course, a need that many Indian authors in English satisfy. Mind you, I think they are pretty good literary writers, but subconsciously they are not addressing "Us".
For example, Arvind Adiga's White Tiger narrative is in first person, as a letter written to the Chinese leader. By adopting this narrative, Mr.Adiga has conveniently taken the point of view of an Indian explaining his country to a foreigner - which is, of course, exactly what he is assuming his audience are. The little explanations the narrator offers about India to the visting leader, are, thus, directed from the writer to his Western reader.
That puts me off, because Arvind Adiga did not intend me as the reader. Again, I am not saying the book is bad - it is just not intended for me to read. It is a tour guide for British and American reading public.
This is why I am not able to complete the Namesake, and the Inheritance of Loss. I am bewildered by their tone and subject matter. There are also other reasons - Anita Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri and Arvind Adiga are themselves cross-cultural children. They are dealing internally with the immigrant experience and a need to explore their home country. They end up writing something that fails to connect with me.
I do not see the same tone in other foreign works - Orhan Pamuk writes from Turkey; Jose Saramago from Portugal. Their works are translated into English and they read well. It must be the peculiarity of colonization and the unique cross-cultural situation of Indian elite writers that causes this disconnect with their own countrymen (I think Arundhati Roy has escaped this. Her writing is still interesting).
As a result, the Colonizers read a version that is tailor made for them. Authentic and rich literary work in Indian regional languages rarely make it outside and never make it popular. Their loss - I think we gain more by cultural osmosis.

This blog post was based on a internet chat I had with my American friend, John (name changed). I have the actual chat text below, if it helps clarify what my thinking is.

Ramiah says:
hey u busy?
John says:
what's up
Ramiah says:
well I thought about what u said about the movie - here is the core problem
I think when you talk about this movie and others and when I discuss them with you
the basic question is always about if these things happen or not
but that is not a question that you ask of all movies
which means that writer was right
when you watch Indian movies or read Indian lit
you think about what you can learn about the country from that movie or book
but of course literature and movies are not always about learning geography or economics
they are about actual people and their emotions and their philosphies
and the problem is the movies you watch and observe about India caricature all of that
so that they can bring you snippets of an alien life successfully
these movies and books are fine
don't get me wrong
but they are very miniscule part of what life in India and literature in India comprises
my specific point is that u don't watch an Indian movie the same way u watch an American movie
and these movies are tailor made for u
and so are the books
John says:
I disagree - it depends on the subject matter
Ramiah says:
this is why I find it very difficul to read english books by Indian authors
because they are not "indian" literature
they are tailor made for ur consumption
John says:
if the movie is about a poor kid growing up in Harlem then the environment is going to be a big part of the movie's focus
Ramiah says:
yes but the way you watch it is different - because you culturally "get" Harlem
John says:
the more 'foreign' the context the more focus it gets
Ramiah says:
and not India
John says:
dude - you think white people 'get' harlem?
Ramiah says:
yes
John says:
try to get them to go there
Ramiah says:
u get Harlem the same way I get the Dharavi slum in Mumbai
it is a part of our cultural consiousness
we may not go there
but we most defintely "get" it

Pedestrian Rights - It Is My Road Too

I read a recent article in The Hindu titled thus: Poor Patronage for Subways, Foot Overbridges. Please read it for a better perspective on this blog.

The overall attitude of our police officers and citizens with vehicles is that in Chennai (and in India) pedestrian "discipline" is the major cause of accidents involving pedestrians. I was travelling in a car near Thiruvanmiyur. We entered a narrow lane with teashops and houses on either side. A person crossed the street to a teashop, in front of our car. One of the guys with me said , "walks as if it is his father's road". You hear this kind of comments from educated people all the time.
The other day I saw a person crossing a junction talking on the cellphone. A lady stopped her scooter just before her and yelled at her for using the cellphone.
During the rains, the road near my home is flooded on one side. Pedestrians have to walk in the middle of the road to avoid stepping in the putrid water. Car drivers lunge at them, honk at them and generally try to make the pedestrians run for cover.
We know all of this, it happens before us, and there is no reasonable framework to address this.
The reason is that police officers and the general public have completely bought into the view that a road belongs to cars and motorcyclists. Wherever that road may be, whatever the circumstance.
I have written in detail about the plight of pedestrians in Rajiv Gandhi road (OMR) : one of the complaints of the guy in the car (in above article) is that he has to "apply sudden breaks in his car in the OMR". The OMR is a straight road, and the speed limit is 40km/h. If you had to apply sudden brakes, it means a suicidal maniac ran in front of your car.
But that is the picture they present - that pedestrians are somehow leisurely strolling across "their" roads. Anyone who walks in any of these roads would know that the opposite is true.
I think the core problem is that there is no awareness of what rights a pedestrian has - and hence the whatever pedestrians do, they are blamed for accidents.

List of Pedestrian Rights
I will suggest below the following set of Pedestrian Rights - I know these may not be followed, but we have to make an effort:
1. In a traffic signal with no "walk" signals (for pedestrians), walkers have right of way to cross the road on a green signal. Turning vehicles have to stop for pedestrians.

2. In a road or alley or street, if there is no pedestrian sidewalks, (or if there IS a pedestrian sidewalk and it is unpassable), then 15% of the road width on either side belongs to pedestrians. Cars should NOT park on this zone.

3. If a pedestrian set foot on a pedestrian crossing, traffic SHOULD stop until they cross. Pedestrian crossings are meant to be that way - in practice noone respects them.

4. In a school zone or in residential roads, pedestrians have right of way across at any point.

5. In roads that pass through suburban districts or office districts, medians should be low and pelican signals (where a pedestrian can press a button for a signal) should be available in frequent intervals.

Implementation

Why are such rules very difficult to enforce in our roads? There are practical reasons why people find it difficult to call shots or fight for their rights in plenty of other situations.
But, after observing traffic violators for some time, I have noticed this - most people are not rogues. Most people violate laws because noone teaches them the laws.
This is, of course, not conventional wisdom - I have heard people blame Regional Transport Offices (RTOs) for issuing licenses indiscriminately. But the core problem is NOT that people do not follow know how to drive. I have been through the driving license classes and here is the core problem - there is NO Training or Education in RTOs.
That is, RTOs reserve the right to issue licenses - but there is no information supplied by them about a list of traffic rules to follow. In the United States and in most developed countries, getting a driving license is a two-step process. First, you have to get a book, read it, and then clear a written test. Only after the written test do you get the Learner's License. After that you take driving lessons.

The FIRST step is learning traffic rules and learning (fundamentally) that driving is a social act and it has certain responsibilities.
By focussing instead on driving as simple as learning to turn the steering and manage the gears, RTOs have failed their purpose.

If, such a educational system exists, then it is easy to take the list of pedestrian rights and push them as part of the syllabus.
Pedestrian discipline is NOT the problem; Jaywalking is NOT the problem - the problem is driver attitudes and our torturous roads.

If you are an NRI and planning to return

I have a few thoughts on what you can prepare for. The following is purely based on my personal experience and I don't intend to generalize. Some of what I am saying may apply only to people in my industry (computer software).


The Reasons to Move Back

1. Family Parties
One reason we moved back was so that we could be with close relatives. We had very few relatives in the USA, and those who were there wanted nothing to do with us.
Now, people will tell you that relatives are a good reason to actually stay away. In my case that was not true.
But the problem for some is that even if you come back, your relatives may be all over India - it is not like the olden days. Families are highly distributed and so your hopes of family parties every week may be dashed.
In my case, we did have fun.

Another reason is the weather - wait, I am joking.

2. Career
One good reason is for career growth - there are people who believe that in the USA it is hard to grow for an Indian. I won't get into controversy, but in India, it is true that if you have enough years of experience, and you are from the USA you can land a good position.
BUT, increasingly, I have seen that NRIs are being recruited more by startups and smaller, medium-sized companies than by large IT companies. The large IT companies sometimes go out of the way to prove that you are not "special" because you are from the USA.
Now, about the work culture and how much "cushy" your job is - I will have more to say about that later.

Will you earn (realtively) more than you did in the USA? A couple of years back, the answer would be yes - although it depends a lot on your years of experience. Now, with the current market, I am not so sure. For senior positions, in technology or management, you could command from 16L per year (10-12 years of experience, Chennai) to 25L per year (in Bangalore). These are very word-of-mouth, but as an average, I believe you could command double the avreage pay for a given experience range in a given city. This may not be possible now, in this market.
Check out this link for some information on average payscale in Chennai.
Why are NRIs so valuable? Are they really worth much more than an Indian employee? We will discuss that later.

3. Cultural Reasons
There are NRIs with a family, who feel that bringing up their kids in India may be a better idea for cultural reasons. Some of them get worried about the consumerist culture in the USA; about the way kids become teenagers very fast; about "attitude"; and so on. (Again, no need for controversy here. I myself have different opinions and I am only narrating what I have heard parents express).
Well, I believe that India is getting to be a hundred times more consumerist; and at least the USA has a movement of people pushing back against the media there. In India, media dominates our lives and is so corrupt and incompetent that they rival with politicians for primary villain status. If you are in India and watching television in the comfort of your home, expect to be bombarded in prime time by images of gore, sex and violence beyond anything in the USA. Women are regularly shown as sex objects and television news commonly shows images of drowned bodies and bloody deaths without any warning.
But, the print media is still vibrant and if you want to stay in touch with the rest of India, newspapers are a good beginning. Other than that the education system in India is in dire need of reform. We will discuss more of this later.

In my case, one of the reasons I felt very excited about coming back was, frankly, the food, music and literature. You can wake up in the morning and walk upto a hotel next to you to get pongal and chutney - that was very important. Try doing that in Philadelphia.
And then the music. There are the FM stations, the television music channels and dozens of talent-hunt shows. You could be walking through a slum and suddenly hear a snatch of your favorite song from childhood. I know that many of these channels are available either on the web or through DTH, so that is a compensation in the USA. But I wanted the real thing.
Unfortunately, the neighbors also tend to play music loud so sometimes you could end up hearing "where is the party?" too many times.
I am interested in modern Tamil literature and the books and writers are all in Tamil Nadu. There are many, of course, who enjoy and stay in touch with literature from abroad. But I felt I would have a much better handle on things here in Chennai.

Now from all of the above you could see a common thread: when I came back, I actually returned to the city that speaks my language and shares my childhood culture. That is hard for most people. Many of my friends advised me to go to Bangalore for better pay. But then, we felt we could have stayed in the USA for that matter. If I think that way, it is far tougher if you are from Bhubaneshwar or Calcutta or Guwahati or Jaipur or Patna (if you are in IT, I mean. Nothing wrong with those cities). This is a crucial decision - if you are coming back to be in your "home culture", you may actually end up somewhere else. Please keep that in mind.

When you make the decision
Start interviewing. Decide on the city and start sending your resumes and attending phone interviews - when you are in the USA. Don't wait till you come back.
A few people want to take a long break when they return - relax for 3 months and then start attending interviews. The assumption is that companies would jump to recruit you - that is risky, I believe. I think they will negotiate with you better if you are actually in the USA. You can always ask for a break before joining.

Most companies do not make a decision till you meet them in person in India. When you come to India you HAVE to go through their stupid security frisking, their HR's attitude and all that. It is your initiation rite into the Indian business culture.

Most startups and even medium companies will flat out lie to you about many things - they may have a bond for employees and they won't reveal it to you until you come back. Their work location may be completely different from what they told you. Their attitude is basically focussed on short-term gain (this is true of Indian business in general). They intend to lie to you, get you to join them; and then hope you won't get angry and leave when you find out the real terms.
(This was not my experience, but I have seen others go through this process).
So here are a few things to ask your potential employer:
1. Is there a bond? What are the terms of the bond? Remember, you can actually refuse to sign a bond, make that clear outright, and still get the job.
2. Which location would you be posted in?
3. What is the notice period for quitting? Try to negotiate this - companies keep hiking it and now it stands at 3 months in some places.
4. What is the percentage travel in the job? Some companies will try to get you to go back to the USA or UK for "visits". If you have returned for peace and quiet, that may not help.
5. How much is the actual monthly pay you will get and what is the variable pay?
6. Do you have saturday and sunday off? This was important to me.
7. Who would you actually be reporting to?

I would suggest an idea here that may work for some of you but not all:
If you are working in the USA with an American concern, and you like them, then there is an alternative you can try. Ask them if you can work from India. I am doing this currently and it is lucrative, and lets you work from home. Of course, if your company does not like remote control this may take some convincing. But with modern technology, it is possible pretty cheaply. You have Skype, broadband lines, and VPN software that lets you work very efficiently.
Get all of your contacts in the USA and let them know you are moving back to India and that you would be open to working from India for them. A few may consider it. You will get paid in dollars: there is no service tax on software exports and you need to pay taxes only in India (because of the tax treaty between India and the USA).

File your taxes properly in the USA and make sure that when you leave, your pending taxes still get paid.
Allow yourselves a couple of months to make the move back. I shipped most of my books back by the US Postal service for cheap (a dollar per pound)- it took 2-3 months to arrive but was in good condition.

The Culture Shock
When you come back, there generally WILL be a culture shock. This will happen even if you have been visiting India once an year. Your relatives and friends in India generally will not understand this culture shock. I have heard people making fun of NRIs for "showing off" for as little as complaining about the weather.
Most people's understanding of NRIs is that they are abroad ONLY for the money. They do not seem to understand that there is a quality of life in most countries that is fundamentally different from India. There is more personal freedom in the West(but maybe not in the Persian Gulf countries), a respect for privacy; people behave maturely in public. Dealing with government agencies is not such a pain. Cars don't try to kill you while crossing the road. Your kids's school talks to you nicely. Hospitals are more friendly.
So, there IS a culture shock, even though you were born and brought up in India. You can talk about it among understanding people, but try not to complain about India to people you know casually or at work. It is difficult for them to sympathize.
The schools are the worst, if you have kids. Parents have no leverage and the education system is stunted in the 19th century. It does not change just because you pay more.
In fact that is a lesson to learn - more money does not automatically bring in higher quality in India.
The hospitals have pros and cons - on the one hand, they are good quality, the doctors are obviously qualified. They are cheaper compared to the USA at least. Health Insurance does exist, but generally only for hospitalization. The problem is that the doctors are overworked. They see fifty to seventy patients a day and have no time for a real diagnosis. In fact, diagnosis is horrendous. The doctors yell a lot and do not have bedside manners at all.
On the other hand, my mom had cancer and they cured it. For much lesser cost than anywhere else in the West.
Kids do fall sick more frequently; and weird epidemics sweep the population. But you gain some resistance and you can manage.
I have been negative thus far - but there are areas in which life here is far better. One such is the explosion of the services industry and the use of mobile phones. You can order anything from a personal chauffeur to grocery items by phone - they will be delivered to home. The service level is high and I have always felt that customer service in local stores is much better in India.
And if you fall sick, your family is close by. Neighbors talk to each other and help out.
Travel is much easier - it is easy to hire vans or cars and be driven as far as Kerala. Agents will take care of all your needs, from food to lodging. As I said, the best thing is the services industry.

Work Culture
Forget 9-to-5. You will be working harder and will have less time with family. But companies do allow working from home for senior staff.
There are three main types of IT companies:
1. Sevices company doing business with overseas clients.
2. Product company selling software products
3. Indian branch of Multi-National Corporations

The Indian services companies are known to be the worst in terms of work culture and stress. Product companies are said to be a lot better (but I have not worked in one).

People "interact" with each other a lot at work. Coffee, Lunch sessions are long and relaxing. People do not usually have voice mail. For a person like me, this was heaven - I could talk all day long with friends. It was difficult to get work done sometimes though.
Personally, I like working in India much, much better than in the USA. It is difficult to explain, but I felt happy going to work on Mondays. I could always meet new people, engage in conversations. Work is not sit-in-your-cubicle-and-stare-at-the-monitor type. There are mostly younger people in IT companies and the atmosphere is like a carnival.
But, it is possible that I felt this way because I was higher up (relatively) in the hierarchy.

Why are NRIs valuable to a company?
One reason why you are valuable is because you already are assumed to possess the following:
1. Good expression of the English language
2. Good "soft skills" such as email etiquette and writing documents
3. Experience dealing with foriegn clients and an understanding of cultural differences
4. And lastly, competence at work
For Indian companies the first 3 items are hard to find and train for. They are valued skills. Competence at work is, of course, available in India too.

Will you regret your decision?
I still am not regretting my decision to move back after 3 years. I may go back and forth, but I think I made the right move. The thing is, it is a very personal decision and difficult to explain to others. If you can justify it with your spouse, then go for it. Do not try to convince everyone around you.

For more "analysis" please read one of my previous posts here.

Narendra Modi, Nano, YSR, and Satyam

(Updated below)
Here is a special in rediff.com about the sops offered to Tata's Nano factory by Gujarat CM Modi.
I participated in the forum discussions in that article and found several weird arguments about Modi and capitalism. Many commenters praised Modi for being competitive in business. Modi seems to be the darling of "India Inc" and his aggressive policies are said to be a model for the nation.
Now it has turned out that Andhra Pradesh government has been following similar policies for transferring public lands to Satyam. You can read Praful Bidwai's excellent article in rediff.com here.
There is a talking point here - many defenders of Modi claim that pro-business policies followed by Modi are appropriate and will pay themselves off in the future. For example, while the Gujarat government loses lots of tax revenue from the benefits offered to Tata, this loss will be compensated by the thousands of new jobs created by Tata in Gujarat. This same argument is also used by many state governments in India.
It is obvious that most politicians and policy makers have accepted the idea that you can shower lots of favors to a businessman from public money. While in the past this would have been considered scandalous to offer freebies to businessmen, now everyone seems to think it is a very wise, intelligent policy. Surely Modi has received lots of credit for his wooing of Tata.
Whatever this policy is, it is definitely not capitalism. If anything, such policies can be called "Crony capitalism" and have always been detrimental to growth - not favorable. In the rediff forums, most commenters thought such policies were followed by developed countries. That is just untrue. There is a very strong theoretical, logical reason why the policies promoted by Modi and the AP CM, YSR will not work.

I will describe that reason below.

The Market and The Invisible Hand
The fundamental idea that almost every economist in the world accepts is the efficiency of the Market. Adam Smith, in his "Wealth of Nations" described how the market works. Purely selfish motives of individuals (economic agents) in an economic system gives raise to the market. Adam Smith said that such a market would meet demand much better than a centrally planned economy.
Consider an imaginary city, Gotham.
Let us say the Gotham city mayor sits in a room and says which individual should produce how much and which individual should consume a certain quantity. This is a centrally planned economy - it does not depend on the market to match supply with demand. Such a economic system would be very inefficient and would soon fail.
This is what happened to communist countries. Communist economic theory depends on a centrally planned economy.
On the contray, let us say the Gotham mayor and city council created a minimal set of laws. One such law will be to make sure businesses do not use violence against each other. Another may be to make sure that the businesses do not employ slave labor. Yet another may be that businesses do not spoil the environment.
After passing these laws, the Gotham city mayor does nothing. he lets the selfish motives of businessmen play out in the market.
Adam Smith proved that such a market will be much more efficient in meeting needs and only such an economy would grow well. In effect, the centrally planned economy would fail while a free market would succeed.
Every reasonable economist in the world accepts Adam Smith's premise. Developed economies are guided by these principles and they have obviously worked very well.

Markets and Regulation
Then what do economists differ on? What are the policy differences between Paul Krugman (Nobel economic prize winner) and Alan Greenspan (former US federal reserve board chairman)?
The difference is usually on the set of laws passed by the government - one set of economists believe that markets should have zero regulation by the government. This is called laissez-faire capitalism. In the above Gotham city example, the law that prohibits environmental damage will be opposed by free market economists. They believe that environmental issues will be ironed out within the market. Similarly, let us say Gotham city mayor passed a law that imposes a minimum wage for laborers (that is, employers should pay at least that amount for any work). This law would be opposed by free market economists.
The other set of economists believe that government should protect society as much as possible - therefore they would welcome a minimum wage.
Thus, the fight is over government's role. There are many who blame the current financial crisis on the lack of government regulation in the United States. These economists believe that businessmen may be motivated by greed and may violate the market in different ways.
In India, one prime example for such greed acting against society was the rise and fall of several finance companies in the 90s. The market was not well-regulated at that point and allowed businessmen to make money by cheating innocents.

Crony Capitalism
Now, even though both these sets of economists disagree on several issues they also agree on something crucial - the market is the judge of businesses. In a just society, the market should never be weighed down in favor of a specific businessman or group. If you do that, you are weighing down the economic system. The growth produced by such favors to a certain family or group will be short-term. The market will automatically create jobs and manage supply with demand - government should NOT influence the success or failure of indvidual businesses. If they do that, they are not being fair to other competitive businesses.
That is, instead of the market rewarding good ideas and rejecting bad ideas, the government tries to take on that task itself. This is always a bad idea - every economist around the world would oppose such policies.
Such acts of favor or bribes cause a skewed form of capitalism called "Crony Capitalism". It is harmful to an economic system.


Modi and Crony capitalism
In the article linked first in this blog, rediff.com lists a number of favors arranged for Tata's benefit by the Gujarat government. Tata is a businessman and he has managed to play the role of a noble soul after the Singur protests. He seems to have the negotiation advantage, if there were any negotiations at all. Thanks to the media, there has been a fevered pitch of excitement on Nano and the media has succcessfully managed to make Tata's travalils our own.
There are people who argue that job creation is primary goal. Some guy even calculated that in 10 years the government of Gujarat would get money back from the Nano plant because of tax payments by employees. But there is a vital flaw in such arguments:
What if the Nano is a failure?
Let us say that some design flaws make Nano a failure. Can the Gujarat government assure that the Nano will be a success? They can't - the factory is not even in their control. They have not studied the market or discussed the quality procedures or the thousand other things that can go wrong with a product. By tying themselves to a single businessman's product, the government has committed taxpayer money for something it has no capability to ensure or manage.
Instead sound economic theory requires that the Gujarat government create conditions for manufacturers in general and then wait for business to flourish.
Let me point out another flaw - when Tata gets such a huge set of benefits, his competitors cannot thrive. They are contributing their money while Tata is getting taxpayer money from Gujarat. Thus the market is skewed by the government in favor of Tata.
This is the very definition of Crony capitalism.
What Modi has done is worse than funding public sector companies - he has funded something he has no control over. Atleast with public sector companies the government has the management in its control. Modi, instead, has handed over money for no control.
I have to point out - the slogan of "India Inc" and a purposeful, noble business class has been created and sustained by the media. If Tata was so noble, he would have rejected these crony capitalist sops. Instead, the media has made it somehow the Indian people's task to fund the Nano.

YSR and Satyam
Now, it has turned out that the AP CM has been doing the same thing for Satyam. The same media which was cheering on Modi are now pretending that YSR is corrupt. If YSR is corrupt, so is Modi. Just an year back, everyone was celebrating Satyam and people were applying the same wrong arguments of job creation when YSR was handing over public land to Ramalinga Raju.
In the case of Satyam, the communists have been the smartest in bringing public attention to the government sponsored bailout (read Sitaram Yechury's opinions here) . It seems Manomohan Singh, the renowned free-market economist is now trying to pour public money to Satyam. People are still talking about "job creation" by Raju - if the economy adds ten thousand jobs and then loses double that every few years, it is not growth. If we could grow by cooking numbers all the time, every country would be prosperous.


Update I:
1. At any other period in modern history, if a politician poured public money into private hands, people would suspect bribes. Instead, the politician is hailed as a hero now. This sea change in attitudes (without any matching change in the quality of politicians) is purely a result of brainwashing and propaganda.
For example, the media has successfully created the myth of "India Inc" as a set of patriotic businessmen, focussed on India's growth. People have tended to identify themselves with Tata or Ambani than with other middle class labor. The truth is in a country like India, the rule of law pretty much does not exist, and a feudal system is persistent. In such a scenario, businessmen act as predators - not benign patriots. This is not to blame them - they have incentives to circumvent the law.

For the last twenty years the residents of the Chennai suburbs of Chromepet and Pallavaram have been fighting a battle against the tanning factories in that area. These factories have polluted the air and water bodies of that region and made it almost uninhabitable. Well, the citizens who organized and fought had to face threats of violence and intimidation by the "patriotic" businessmen.
The truth is, the Indian system encourages systematic lawbreakers - just as our politicians have grown to be lawless, so have our businessmen.

2. Let me explain the economic theory a little bit better:
As I said, the main differences between economists is on government's role in passing laws. Why is that? Because every sensible economist believes in the market. More importantly, they believe in a fair market. But how the market maintains neutrality, fairness and encourages growth is not determinable all the time. The market responds to incentives in different directions; sometimes these responses may be complex to measure.

For example, the software industry in India is treated as a sunrise industry and there are many subsidies offered to that industry. By classical economics, such subsidies are wrong and should not be applied - because they lead to "protectionism". Adam Smith and most famous economists after him (such as Ricardo and Marshall) have been against protectionism. Ultimately, they believe that a protected market offers fewer choices and innovations to the consumer.
Yet, the subsidies do seem to be working very well.

As yet another example, the American laws that abolished the differences between commercial and investment banks in 1999 and enabled unregulated derivatives trading may have caused the current financial crisis, 10 years later.

Therefore, the effects of the laws are open to speculation. Mathematical models of great complexity are required for analyzing the direction of the markets from incentives.
But, what is NOT open to speculation is this - every economist desires a fair market.
The key motivator in economics is the fairness of the market. Every economist agrees with THAT, even though they may not agree on how to reach there.

Handing off public land to Tata or Satyam skews the fairness of the market. That is why it is called crony capitalism.

This is why Modi's actions and YSR's actions are wrong - because they go against every economic basics. They may claim they are brave souls experimenting with the economy, but they should experiment with their own money, not our money. I suspect that the truth is not that they are clairvoyant or brave - I think Modi's actions and YSR's actions come from base ignorance and greed. That is a potent combination.

Talking Point - Leave Muslims Alone

This blog is becoming more and more political; that is how I would like it to be. I initially planned a mix of humor and politics. But I am staying at home now and nothing humorous comes to mind.
One of the original intentions of this blog was to handle intellectual talking points. I used to participate in online debates on society, economics, culture and politics in message boards and forums. At that point I realized that most people around me in the real world had no interest in such debates. Online, on the other hand, was useful - it is anonymous, easy to use and people around the world participate.

Cultural Memes

There has been lots of research done on cultural "memes" - ideas that spread around society and influence people's thinking. Let me explain with an example - when Indira Gandhi died, 2000 Sikhs were massacred in Delhi in cold blood. Prime Minister Mr.Rajiv Gandhi explained it thus: "when a big tree falls, the earth shakes".
This was an easy-to-remember, but meaningless and dangerous phrase. But it comforts people and lets them know that they could not have done anything different. It tells them to go on with life as usual.
Another talking point that Sridhar has raised in a comment to my blog is this - that as a democracy, we, the people, are to blame for all our problems (Sridhar also explained his reasoning; I am paraphrasing here). At its core, as he elaborates, the idea is that we do not have a healthy society. And the reason is not politicians as we reflexively blame, but ourselves. It is our own corruption that is the root cause. I have heard of other people say this, but I think this point of view is wrong. I will explain in a later post.
These are ideas - the idea that blacks are to blame for the credit crisis in the USA is a rightwing idea. That climate crisis (global warming) is bogus is a talking point.
What is common to these? They take a simple idea and repeat it over and over again, rarely substantiated with anything more than hysteria. But these talking points have lots of power. Most people in a society are not "engaged" in politics or history - and such talking points embed themselves in cultural memory and refuse to be dislodged. Some are mere differences of opinion, while others cause genocide.

Talking Points can only be fought with vigorous challenging and debunking at a public level. The Tamil writer Gnani writes a weekly column in Kumudham (he used to write in Vikatan). This column very effectively challenges different talking points. His article on the Indo-US nuclear deal was a classic - he pointed out that shifting to nuclear energy does nothing to reduce global warming (a talking point) because most global warming gases are caused by transportation such as cars and trucks.

There is actually a website called talkingpointsmemo.com run by Josh Marshall that articulates liberal points of view and debunks right wing talking points in the United States.

My goal in this blog (with all humility) is to address a few talking points that bother me. Debunking them here, hopefully spreads a message across. Even if I reach a few people, the idea is in the internet and also helps to me as a future reference.

Having said that, let me discuss a prime talking point here - the question of "Islamic" fundamentalism.

*************************************************

Here are a few ideas I find floating around online and even find expression by educated people:

Item 1: Muslims should explain why terrorism happens. Muslim leaders should condemn terrorism and they don't.
Answer: Terrorism is a tactic of achieving political goals with the threat of violence against citizens. That tactic is practiced throughout the world by different groups. For example, Israel's current bombing of Gaza is a clear act of terrorism - it tries to achieve political goals with collective punishment of Palestinian civilians.
Now, states practice terrorism, and so do non-state actors. Such non-state actors happen to be prominent in formerly colonized countries of the globe, because developing countries have not ironed out issues of sovereignty and self-determination of ethnic minorities. Many of these formerly colonised countries of the world happen to be Muslim. There are also Christian terriorist groups in Africa and of course, LTTE in Sri Lanka.
As an example, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is a "Christian" terrorist group operating in Uganda and Sudan. Some estimates say that the LRA has killed more people than all other such groups put together.
Thus, terrorism as a tactic is practiced by many non-state actors and state actors throughout the world and the phenomenon was neither "started" by Muslims nor do they have to defend their community. We have to note that the word terrorism is heavily abused - for example, the USA designates Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, although they are seen as legitimate freedom fighters by people of the Palestine and Arab countries.
Thus, the demand, that Muslim leaders condemn terrorist acts performed by a few extremists, is absurd. Muslims suffer as much from terrorism as Hindus.

Item 2: Muslims have their own civil law and do not respect the Indian constitution.
Answer: The Indian constitution makes a uniform civil code optional. The directive principles of state policy, article 44 states the following:

The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India.

But, the directive principles are aspirational and are not enforceable by courts (Article 37).
The BJP and RSS drum this again and again - that Muslims should not have their own civil code. But minority rights are guaranteed by our constitution - the party that introduced POTA has no right to talk about the constitution.

Item 3: Muslims are not patriotic enough. They are not proud of India
Answer: No group can demand patriotic proofs from any other citizens - Muslims are under no obligation to prove their patriotism to anyone. Further, these same guys who call Muslims unpatriotic have called everyone who opposes them as unpatriotic. People tend to forget this, but the Shive Sena's origins were in anti-South Indian movements in Mumbai. The Sangh Parivar would call anyone who does not want to speak Hindi unpatriotic.
Note that I am not talking about sacrifices that Muslims have made for India or their contribution. There is no point in emphasizing "contribution". Even if I have not contributed anything to my country, no one has any right to question my patriotism, period.
I would ask members of the Sangh Parivar if they have ever felt proud about India's Muslim heritage - they seem to pretend that Indian history stops after Mohammed Ghazni. Why are they not proud of the Mughals or Lodi dynasty? These are the people who demolished the Babri Masjid - yet they talk about pride in heritage.

Item 4: Islam and the Koran encourage violence
Answer: Every religion does. The Old Testament Bible is full of violence. So are Hindu scriptures. You could literally interpret the Gita as encouraging violence and killing relatives in pursuit of wealth. That interpretation would be absurd, but you can do the same thing with any religious text. Most mature adults can distinguish between a literal interpretation of religion and what is practical. I am always amazed by the capacity of the people who celebrate 3000 years of the caste system to then turn around and accuse other religions of intolerance.
The India Policy Institute has published statistics on the communal riots in India since independence.
Casualties in communal clashes during the period 1968-80 were as follows :-

Year No. of incidents Hindus Muslims Others/Police Total
1968 346 24 99 10 133
1969 519 66 558 49 674
1970 521 68 176 54 298
1971 321 38 65 - 103
1972 210 21 45 3 70
1973 242 26 45 1 72
1974 248 26 61 - 87
1975 205 11 22 - 33
1976 169 20 19 - 39
1977 188 12 24 -- 36
1978 219 51 56 1 108
1979 304 80 150 31 261
1980 427 87 278 10 375
Total 3949 530 1598 159 2289

There are more such statistics and coverage in the pdf here.
As any reasonable person can see from these statistics, Muslims have suffered heavily in communal riots. The data also shows that police firings targeted and killed more Muslims than Hindus.
How can we claim, in such a communally charged country, that only one community is to blame for everything from terrorism to rioting?

Item 5: Muslims will overwhelm Inida with their population growth
Answer: This hysteria reached its peak with a report released a couple of years back that showed Muslim population growth to be slightly higher. Some magazines headlined this thus: "Muslims will be majority in India in another 250 years".
But that result does not make sense. Even if the population growth is 0.1% high, you could do the same extrapolation and conclude that in a thousand years India would be a Muslim majority state. This is just fear-mongering. In relative terms, Muslim population growth is declining. Further I think with a billion people, the last thing Hindus should worry about is population decline.

Many of these ideas are actually caused by common xenophobia - a feeling that the "other" person would eliminate us. It has parallels in every culture - the Germans treated Jews and gypsies as the other. USA treated black people as the other.
There is a strong desire among a few among majority cultures to completely eliminate any diversity. Today it is Muslims, tomorrow it will be Tamils.
The Sangh Parivar and its supporters will call all of their enemies as unpatriotic and owing allegiance elsewhere. They suffer from xenophobia and a good psychiatruc therapy session would cure them of their fears.

Internet Archiving - who owns my data?

(Update below)

Something has been bothering me about the internet (or more precisely, the collection of websites I use in the internet).
As an user, I have a broad range of options available now for publishing my content (such as blogs, images, video). But I do feel paranoid about certain qualities in the current internet.

Let me describe my situation - I write comments in several online discussion forums (such as rediff.com). I write blogs in DailyKos.com and blogspot.com. I upload videos to youtube.com. I also write comments in other people's blogs, whichever platform they may be. I save my bookmarks in del.icio.us.
Now, I value all this content I put in the web. For example, in several debates you come up with a new way of looking at something, an effective reply to a "talking point", a key piece of data that shuts up everybody. I am not talking about other people's content - I am specifically talking about content I myself put on the web in different websites. This is the age of User Generated Content and my content is distributed across different websites.
There are a couple of problems that I face with this distributed content:
1. How can I aggregate all my content and get updates when someone replies to me or links to me? This is a problem that RSS solves. I will not elaborate on this here.
2. How can I collect and provide a kind of catalog of my opinions in all these different websites? Let us say that in the near future I seek admission to Harvard. Is there someway that I can provide a collection of all my valuable content to Harvard so that I can be credentialized? Looking into the future, we can expect a new generation to start creating their identity online by teenage and thus leave a trail of their work and impressions (in whatever format) across the interner as they grow older. How can someone maintain this digital trail and leverage it?
The point is this problem has always existed even before the age of the internet. For example, if you wanted to collect the complete works of Einstein you went to every university he ever went to and searched libraries and archives. Some of these archives are digitized now, but nobody came up with a solution for an easy mechanism to package up your life's work. It was close to impossible in the pre-internet world to have a centralized collection of all of one's life's work.
But, this problem is solvable in the digital age - the facebook, orkut, myspace generation is going to have access to internet most of the time. Fifty years from now, it is possible to expect that a person's life's work can be determined by a biographer or an anthologist merely from the digital world.

So, what prevents me from getting a digital collection of my own work distributed across the internet, right now?
I can, of course, prepare a set of links with my rediff.com comments, my dailykos blogs, my blogspot blogs and my youtube videos. But that is all I can do - the websites reserve the right to invalidate these links at any point of time. In fact, twenty years from now, many of these may have switched off their servers and gone home.
As an internet contributor, the core problem I face is this - the rich data that is part of "my" internet, is not owned by me. It is owned by at least fifteen different websites. The same problem goes for everyone using the internet.
When I write an article in DailyKos, I want my article, along with the comments (which provide context) to be available for posterity. But I have no control over when they may "retire" the article or when Markos closes it down.
In theory, this is no different from the problems faced by preceding generations - if you are a newspaper columnist, you took paper cuttings of your column; probably photocopied it and kept it at home. That is all you could do.
I think we, in the internet age should demand more though - because more is possible now. For example, taking a printout of a webpage with my article is not good enough - because someone could be commenting on that article this minute; and I don't want to lose that context.
With their myriad ways of annotating, commenting and extending our content, the websites of the internet have made my content richer, more contextual, more centralized than in the pre-internet world. Youtube, blogspot, rediff have all made my contributions richer, but because of that it is more important that I be able to catalog and archive that content.

The tension here is between two poles - the websites have enabled me to contribute and reach a broad audience. For the survival of their business, they want me to keep coming back to their pages. So the data stays in different forms in different websites. I, on the other hand, would like to extract my data (in some format) and keep it in a set of archives so that the data is available for posterity. I am worried that all my valuable contributions will be gone some twenty years later.

I may sound paranoid, but I do care about the longevity of my thoughts - I think everyone who contributes in the internet does.

We should not allow what happened in the past centuries - there was no centralized publishing, so much work of enormous value was gone in a short time because the medium (like parchment or paper) perished. In this age almost everyone with access to the internet can publish their opinions and share their knowledge. It is all searchable. We should leverage the advantage of the digital medium and come up with a solution for extracting our data (even for a fee) and create some standards for extracting User Generated Content.
We also need a standard archiving solution that is not tied to any particular website. For a fee I should be able to store my data in different servers that are part of the meta-internet.
By the way, check out this browser add-in - http://www.iterasi.com. It provides a way for extracting any webpage for your personal storage. But the storage is still owned by iterasi.com - I think we need an internet archiving project that is more community-driven.


Update I
Refer to what happened to Soapblox in this article.
The content of several blogs running on the Soapblox platform was almost wiped out by hackers. Several years work could have been lost. This is why we need an open source extraction and archiving system.

Mumbai Attacks and Rahul Gandhi

Rediff had a link on Rahul Gandhi's statements after the Mumbai Attacks here.
As I said in the post below, I am very very suspicious of people who call terrorist acts as war.

"We will fight this war against terror and win this war," he said lauding the unity shown by Parliament in response to the Mumbai attacks.

As I explained, he is trying to act like Bush did after 9/11. 7 years after Bush declared "war on terror" the USA is mired in two bloody, brutal wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan and has not achieved any strategic goals.
Our leaders now want to act statesmanly and try to use flourishes of rhetoric - but I have a more important quote here:

"It is not enough for us to protect the people. We should go one step beyond. People who have done this should understand very clearly that not only do we hold lives of our people highly, but there is also a cost to killing innocent Indians," Gandhi said.

Is Rahul Gandhi joking? What country is he living in? Innocent Indians are killed all the time in totally avoidable accidents and poverty and hunger because our government has abndoned its role of regulatory authority for the last so many years. Indians are killed and maimed by other Indians all time in our roads - from pedestrians crossing ill-designed roads to speed limits that are never enforced.
I am curious - why wouldn't we declare a war on traffic violations?

1. Why are our leaders not angry when a tragedy like the Kumbakonam fire accident happens and a hundred children burn to death in a school that should NEVER have been functioning or granted a license?
2. Why are our leaders not angry when lung diseases and cancer incidence increases throughout India and people die prematurely because of the massive pollution caused by zero regulation or action by the Indian government?
3. Why are our leaders not angry when tens of thousands are killed by reckless driving and unregulated traffic in our cities and highways?
4. Why didn't we declare a war against incompetence in Chennai when a stampede caused by inappropriate organization of crowds killed hundreds of poor people during last year's rains?
5. Why didn't we declare a war against callousness when building after building collapses in Mumbai and regulators who certify them sit by without punishment?

Bush could declare a war on terror because atleast the US government does take care of its own citizens in that country. They could truly state that they were shocked by the deaths of innocents. I am amazed that Indian politicians pretend to be outraged by innocent Indian deaths. Innocent Indian deaths have been happening for a long time because the value of our lives is zero in front of the massive greed of our rulers.
Let us first declare a war against incompetence, against brutality, against callousness. Then we can declare war on terror.

As a practical matter, the Indian state can never get its act together regarding terrorism unless our regulatory and enforcement wings actually work - our coastal areas will not be protected; our cities won't be protected either unless the government can actually ensure compliance with law and regulation at every level. The idea seems to be that every police department would continue to function as badly while dealing with local laws - but somehow we will be protected against foreign terrorists just by forming central agencies. Unlikely.

By the way, Salman Khan is still running around attending movie shows and television shows - even though he was charged with running over innocent pavement dwellers several years back. No justice has been served. The case keeps dragging in court.
Sanjay Dutt is still making movies though he was actually convicted and sentenced.
So much for protecting innocent Indians.

Mumbai Terror Attacks

(Updated Below)
1. First of all, stop calling the attacks India's 9/11 - we have endured lots of attacks; Kashmir alone has seen somewhere around 50000 deaths in the last decade. "Terror" attacks or bomb blasts are common in India these days. No need to tie ourselves with unique American tragedies.
2. By the same token, stop calling locations as "Ground Zero" and so on. For a change let us come up with our own terminology.
Having yelled that at the media, I want to point out a couple of things:
1. Now that the attackers seem to be Pakistanis, all our focus seems to have shifted to Pakistan. Here is the thing - Pakistan is a profoundly troubled country (like our own). Its populace has radical elements (just as ours does). In fact, this is the age of radicalism (more about that later). Our public officials seem to be affecting tones of righteous indignation and submitting lists.
This last 10 years we have heard repeatedly that Pakistan is a "failed state". And that anyday it will collapse thus bringing peace to the subcontinet. Well, it IS collapsing and what we see is not peace reigning.
The truth is that there are no failed states - and we should never have wished failure on Pakistan and its people. There are many, many innocent citizens going about their business in that country and they are being harassed by increasingly radical movements. Peace in the subcontinent depends on Pakistan's success over radicals (and our own success over native radicalism).
Every time a terror attack happens, media stars pose the question "should we go after training camps in Pakistan?". Barack Obama said that India has the right to defend itself - and this seems like code to a cross-border raid. Our own hawks are itching for just such a raid. But the truth is that Pakistan cannot "close" its training camps that easily - it is not as if they get government approval for such activities. Terrorism is called as the single most important threat to the Pakistani state - by Pakistan's own leaders. Pakistan has nukes and a conventional war is out of the question. We have NO options of engaging Pakistan militarily and those advocating such action are irresponsible.
It is obvious that the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI is out of control. Our spy agencies seem clueless and have not prevented any of the attacks in the last three years. This is going to be a long drawn process - but we have to work with the Pakistani government and people. I think this is the right opportunity, because they are on the defensive. The more we cooperate the better.

2. Again, one of the frequent media questions is if we are "soft on terror". Our own government follows up with tougher and tougher laws. I am quoting Glenn Greenwald's sane words here:

Any decent, civilized person watching scenes in Mumbai of extremists shooting indiscriminate machine gun fire and launching grenades into civilian crowds -- deliberately slaughtering innocent people by the dozens -- is going to feel disgust, fury, and a desire for vengeance against the perpetrators, regardless of what precipitated it. The temptation is great even among the most rational to empower authority to do anything and everything -- without limits -- to punish those responsible and prevent repeat occurrences. That's a natural, even understandable, response. And it's the response that the attackers hope to provoke.

It's that temptation to which most Americans -- and our leading media institutions -- succumbed in the wake of 9/11, and it's exactly the reaction that's most self-destructive. As documented by this superb Washington Post Op-Ed today from Dileep Padgaonkar, former editor of the Times of India, the Indian Government -- in response to prior terrorist attacks -- has been employing tactics all-too-familiar to Americans: "terrorism suspects have been picked up at random and denied legal rights"; "allegations of torture by police are routine"; "suspects have been held for years as their court cases have dragged on. Convictions have been few and far between"; Muslims and Hindus are subjected to vastly disparate treatment; and much of the most consequential actions take place in secrecy, shielded from public view, debate or accountability.

As Padgaonkar details, many of these measures, particularly in the wake of new terrorist attacks, are emotionally satisfying, yet they do little other than exacerbate the problem, spawn further extremism and resentment, and massively increase the likelihood of further and more reckless attacks -- thereby fueling this cycle endlessly -- all while degrading the very institutions and values that are ostensibly being defended. The greater one's physical or emotional proximity to the attacks, the greater is the danger that one will seek excessively to empower and submit to government authority and cheer for destructive counter-measures which allow few, if any, limits.

I think competence in intelligence gathering is required; we need the support of local communities; we need capable anti-terrorist forces that are part of metropolitan police departments. We definitely do not need laws like POTA which have no effect on terrorism but do manage to take away basic rights.
Most experts suggest treating terrorism as a criminal act and thus use existing criminal laws to pursue terrorists.

3. This is the age of radicalism - apparently terrorists who committed these acts are motivated by riots in India. Those riots are in turn motivated by other acts of violence. The truth is that many segments of Pakistani and Indian populations have become more and more radicalized; they demand and justify violence for any purpose. We saw that Raj Thackeray could attain notoriety and a following within a period of two months. The Sangh Parivar's own radicalism is well-known. Meanwhile Muslim and Christian populations around the world also suffer from the radicals amongst them - the entire American neo-conservative movement and its intellectual defenders such as Norman Podhoretz are radical. The global economy is getting worse and it will result in more extremism.
I think we should look at preventive measures for this trend - it does not involve stricter laws - radicals consider themselves martyrs. It does not involve blaming particular communities - every community has its set of whackos.
What we need in the long haul is to promote a kind of self-awareness through education; to promote more equitable distribution of wealth and opportunity. To promote the rule of law so that disputes can be resolved within the civil framework. Sadly this is going to be very hard in India(and in Pakistan). Our governments lack the will and resources to push through changes in social structure.
It is hard to see the connection between global inequality and terrorism, if the argument is emotional - but terrorism does have political and economic reasons for thriving.

So, what do I suggest? I suggest we sit with Pakistan and work out a way to treat the attacks as criminal acts (and not as acts of warfare). I suggest we improve efficiency in intelligence without passing knee-jerk detention laws. And I suggest we try to have a debate about radicalism in our societies.

Update I
As I expected some people have been talking about a "war on terrorism". This is the dumbest little term. Terrorism is a tactic and you cannot wage war on a tactic. It has become fashionable to repeat the exact same terms that people have heard in the United States press. These terms have no relevance in the situation in our sub-continent. We are neither a "world power" (whatever that means) and our neighbor is not a push over.
Several commentators in the United States have themselves criticised this war on terror terminology - please note that since the "war on terror" was declared every National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released in the USA have said the threat of world terrorism has gone up, not down. We now live in a more dangerous world than before that "war on terror" was declared.
Our leaders (as I expected) have already put the blame on Pakistan and are pretending that the onus is on that country to prevent further attacks - meanwhile, it is obvious that our intelligence agencies failed; our own citizens were acting in collusion with the terrorists; and that the government simply lacks the ideas for any prevention program. Let us not be in a hurry to declare imaginary war on a verb.

Stress Relief for the modern worker

I worked in a public sector company in Chennai for a couple of years after college. I was assigned to the R&D division but ended up working in the shop floor. I did some assembly and C programming at that time and spent a lot of time at home.
One of the useful things I figured out while at that company was this - mechanical work, as in repeating something over and over, is a GREAT stress reliever.
It all started like this - I was asked to slightly modify and add additional functionality to a STD (phone billing) machine. The programming was in assembly language and the first day work started, I got a foot thick printout at my desk - the whole source code was in that stack. The chip with this embedded code was sitting innocently in front of me.
I had to read the stack, understand what was going on, and modify the code in appropriate places.
To slightly complicate things, the chip can be "burnt" only at a different building. So I had to make modifications to the code, take the chip over to the other building, burn it, come back and test it. Repeat.
Needless to say, I was greatly stressed by this line of work. All my classmates were leaving for the USA (this was around 1997). They were talking about this brand new problem called "Y2K" and they were going to save the world from the Y2K monster. They had to be in the USA to do that. It all fit in, and I was terribly upset that I was sitting with pipes over my head in a shop floor. I wanted to fight Y2K.
(Little did I know that my classmates were having printed stacks of COBOL to pore over and change dates in)
Production companies have a very strict hierarchy - the workers are all treated with suspicion. Security used to pat them down to see if they were taking something home. The officers were treated with reverence - and at 23, with an engineering degree, I was an officer. The security would even salute me, sometimes (if I wore shoes). When I walk upto a worker, they would stand up. As an engineer I would stand up for senior engineers, and so on.
It all sounds ideal, except that the workers get to kick the crap out of you, literally, during a strike. The company was pretty unionized. Unlike other public sector companies, they actually got work done. I thought they were well run.

Anyway,one day I am sitting next to the senior engineer when the shop floor got a big consignment of telephone jacks. This company was the only manufacturer of the tiny telephone jacks that are installed in your home by the pre-BSNL DoT. So, we got a big shipment of them to deliver. They were almost ready except that you have to tighten some pin at a single place.
They distributed the work and all the workers started picking up the connectors and tightening the pins. I watched them with fascination - they had a big pile of telephone jacks in front of them. They would pick up each one, bend a pin and then move it to another pile. It was like watching Charlie Chaplin in "City Lights".
I had a tough assembly algorithm to crack that day. I postponed that. I got the unfinished jacks, a big pile in front of me and proceeded to tighten the pin.
I spent the whole day on it and it was my happiest day in that company. I could completely forget about life outside, its problems, even Y2K.
It was better than being idle. Or sleep. I felt I was actually accomplishing something - my STD machine work was meant for Ethiopia (We were selling those machines to Ethiopia). But this telephone-jack-tightening was meant for the people around me - patriotic Indians. I felt I was making a difference by tightening the pin.
I tried doing it the next day but the senior engineer chased me away.

Since then, whenever I get into stressful situations, I try to do mechanical work that still accomplishes something. Let me list such activities here. Try them at home and work:

1. Potato peeling - my wife heats up the potatoes. Once they are cooked, I have to peel the potato skin. You require a bowl with the hot potatoes and a plate to drop the peeled potatoes. Patiently waiting for the potatoes to cool is fun.

2. Phone Contacts - transferring contacts from one cellphone to another, when you get a new phone. I am sure there are easier ways of doing this, but do not try them. Do it manually, one by one. Type each contact's name in the new phone. It is more fun if the cellphone has a really small keyboard. You will make mistakes and then you can correct the mistakes and feel good.

3. Photo Album - transfer print photos into an album. Sort the photos, then insert each one into the album cover. If you want more fun, create small labels and stick them on the album about where the photos were taken and more.

4. Data Transfer - at work, you will have excel sheets with some data that needs to be transferred to some other form. Do NOT write a program to do it. Transfer manually. Have both excel files open and move data from one to another by copying and pasting. With around a hundred rows of data, this can be very fulfilling. Do not attempt for more than hundred rows.

The key idea here is that you should not have to think too much about the work other than placement. "Where do I place this?" is a good stress relieving question. "Should I place this?" is not. "How should I place this?" is a very stressful place to be. This is why cooking is not a stress reliever (for me). It requires a little bit more thinking and thus causes my head to explode and ruin the food.

Land of the Free

Woman to American Republican presidential candidate John McCain during a campaign rally:"I don't trust Barack Obama; he is an Arab"

McCain's answer:
"No, ma'am. He's a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues"
Apparently Arabs cannot be American citizens or decent family men. To call someone an Arab or a Muslim has become an acceptable racial slur in the United States. I bet McCain would be surprised if it is pointed out that Arabs are actually human.
Must be great, being the leader of the free world. I am sure we will hear a lot of preaching to other countries about tolerance, once a president is elected.
Did I mention they have nuclear weapons and a much celebrated "button" that can wipe out the planet?

Quick Note on Economic Downturn

If you are in the IT Services industry in India and your clients are international, you may be familiar with the downturn and impending job cuts. Many of you may be facing a recession for the first time. I have a few suggestions from my experience. Think about them:
1. Your company maybe churning and you may be assigned to different projects. You may be asked to take paycuts. Your location preferences may not be respected. Companies usually crack the whip during a downturn. You may be outside your comfort zone - working with managers unknown to you, and you may have to re-establish your credentials.
All this causes much anxiety and sometimes prompts irrational decisions such as lashing out at the work place; taking a break from work; going on long leave; or even trying to switch jobs.
My advice is do not make emotional decisions based on fear or anger - particularly at this juncture. It is hard to think rationally and it is possible that you may feel ill-used or neglected. It is also possible that these feelings are purely psychological. You will not be able to judge this by yourself. Therefore do NOT make life-changing decisions, such as leaving your job; taking a break; plan a career switch; plan an academic sojourn; or anything like that. Think carefully about your decisions for a few days. Discuss with friends and family. As far as possible do not plan a change.
2. Save, save and save money. Do not take long vacations; defer decisions to buy costly items.
3. If you are laid off - remember, whatever society or your former employer tells you, you know your true value. These are bad times and people may lose their jobs for being in the wrong department at the wrong time. There are forces much beyond our control at work - do NOT blame yourself or fall into self-pity.
4. Have a strong support structure at work and at home. In tough times, friends need to support each other. Have atleast a few friends with whom you can share your fears and inner-most thoughts. That will be more helpful than sitting and brooding.
5. Do not antagonize anybody at work for perceived insults. This is not the time to be touchy about not responding to emails etc. Everybody has their own problems and you never know when a contact will be useful.

How To Blog

This is my 51st post in this blog. I thought it should be about what I have learnt about blogging.
I will cover the following in this entry:
- How to start a Blog and some technical tips
- Why would you blog? What is the purpose of a blog? Is it necessary to start one? Is it a fad? What do we write about? How often?
The opinions are strictly based on my experiences.
I am not going to define a blog and all that. Please read Wikipedia's excellent entries on that here.

How To Start a Blog

What you need is a personal blog that you can use. This personal blog will
- allow you to manage all your "posts" or entries
- allow you to create new posts
- allow you to manage "templates" for your blog - that is your background color, layout, top banner and such things.
- allow you to manage comments in your own blog, so that you can delete them if offensive.
- manage history in your blog by archiving old blogs

Wordpress.com, LiveJournal.com, Blogger.com and many other sites allow you to do most of the above. The assumption here is that you want a public blog. Some blogging sites also allow you to create members only blogs. You can create a blog and invite a set of people to view it. Noone else will have access. Corporations also have blogs in their local network for knowledge management.
There are also several blogging sites that are domain specific - for example, DailyKos.com is an American political blogging site. Your audience are mostly looking for political commentary in such a site - they may not be interested in your love poetry.
The choice of a blogging site is, thus, guided by your interests. If all you are interested is in writing about Microsoft technologies, then there are several sites specific to that purpose. Some bloggers (like me) maintain several blogs at different sites. That makes it slightly difficult to manage your posts but targeted audience reach may be better.
One important consideration is multi-language support. There are several sites (including blogger.com) that provide support for Unicode - thus if you want to write in Tamil, you need not create your own site from scratch.
Most blogging sites allow you to embed images and videos. You can effectively build a corporate style article using a blogging site. Check for such features.
Most sites provide steps to create a blog that are really simple. Generally,
- create a username, password and a profile. Depending upon your nature, you may want more or less detail in your blog profile. Be aware that people across the internet, who do not know you, may like/dislike your opinions and may come after you. On the other hand, in case of a technical/professional blog particularly, you may want people to know you for your skills. Choose carefully what information you reveal.
- choose a template. In my blog, the orange color top banner was picked up by me, along with the layout. I have a different color in my technical blog. When you choose a template, I beg you, please do not pick white text on a dark background. It is tempting, but the way computer monitors work, your site will hurt people's eyes.

That is it. After this, you can go to your dashboard and start typing a blog any time.

Apart from the blog itself, you may be interested in knowing how many people visit, and also make your blog searchable. My articles on my Coorg trip, Ilayaraja's music and others still attract traffic mainly because people reach them through searches. How do you measure number of people visiting; what is popular; how to get attention? How do you know who links to your articles?
I follow these tips:
1. I downloaded and installed Google Toolbar in my browser. It shows the page rank for my blogs. That kind of gives a rough idea if you are even "seen" by Google.
2. I registered my blogs with Technorati.com. There is a set of steps to do this, including adding some code to your blog template. They give detailed instructions on how to do this. Technorati clearly tells me who else in the blogging world links to my blog. It also shows authority and genuinity.
3. I registered my blogs with Google Analytics. They also have a set of steps and some code to add to your blog template. You can log into Google Analytics at any time and see data about the number of people visiting your site, which pages they are interested in, their geographical spread, the time they spent in an article and if the traffic came from direct hits, referring sites or search engines. It is an amazingly effective tool to gauge your effectiveness as a blogger.


Why Blog - The philosophy of blogging

Should you always blog in this day and age? We see people around us starting blogs all the time. They do it for different purposes. In my case I have some key motivations.
- I have been trying writing since I was 6 years. I have tried my hand at fiction, writing letters to the editor in local newspapers, tried participating in writing competitions. Basically I would rather be a writer and do it for a living. Before blogging I used to send emails to a bunch of people with my thoughts on different subjects even though my audience hated those emails. Thus, when I discovered blogging, I primarily thought of it as another tool for reaching a larger audience with my writing. Thus I did NOT start writing with blogs. I was always "blogging" in some form, even before the internet. If you have never been interested in writing, blogging may not help you. It will only make a person feel guilty about not maintaining a blog frequently.
- Even if you are not too interested in writing, blogging (for a professional) is a great way to build an online presence, and showcase your knowledge. It is one of the best resume formats. A frequently updated blog link makes people want to recruit a person. In my job searches, I send out cover letters with links to my blog articles - it is unusual, but credentializes you before you meet a person.
- Writer or not, a blog is a good way to atleast hone my marketing and presentation skills. You can experiment with a larger audience than you can imagine. Particularly for technical leaders and aspiring technologists, it is a good way to organize your thought process.
- One great reason to blog is its usefulness as a knowledge management tool. One of my earliest posts was about a few recipes for cooking. They were simple recipes, but they are available in the internet wherever I go. I refer to Praveen's blog about how to enable fiddler for Firefox all the time. I do not have to remember these details. You can blog about the little tips and tricks you learn in your professional and home life and then have them available to help you later.

Now, note that in all of these cases, there is a clear self-interest to blogging. There are people who have a different view - they claim that popularity of their blog is not their concern. They claim that the number of comments their blog attracts does not interest them. When someone mentioned such a near nirvana state in the Chennai blogcamp (2006) there were responses in agreement and disagreement. It is hard for me to adopt such an attitude about my blog. I shamelessly pimp my blogs to my friends and contacts. I want my views to be known - that is why I use analytics and technorati to measure my performance. I value feedback and discussion on what I am writing about.


Some tips for interested bloggers

1. What do you write about?
In my experience, when I think of some interesting angle, I brood over it for a day. Then I sit down and write a blog article for an hour. But I have noticed that I am constantly looking for such angles. I select some ideas, I reject others. Other bloggers have talked about a kind of urge (restlessness) you feel if you have not written a post for some time. All of this, of course, depends on time being available (more on that next). I write for my technical blog when I feel it is necessary to store some detail or process some knowledge.
Thus, in general,
- you can write opinion or commentary posts
- or you can write an informative, observation based post
Similarly,
- you can write long article sized posts (such as this one)
- or you can write shorter posts
Opinion or commentary posts attract people's attention. My Ilayaraja vs Rahman post still is one of my top picks. People will feel either for or against and they will comment on it. Of course, your opinion should be authentic, and have some fresh angle. Otherwise, you will not get repeat visitors and a regular readership.
But informative posts are also valuable - they will help you manage knowledge and build expertise. They will also provide more durable value to your readers.
I usually alternate between these. For example, this post you are reading is meant to be informative.
The core idea is to keep looking at any knowledge you acquire as a potential blog post.

2. When do you write?
I do not allocate any special time for writing and I do not stick to a schedule. Bloggers like Glenn Greenwald and Digby blog daily multiple times. But they also make money from blogging. Most of us amateurs cannot blog at that frequency.
The problem is to capture readership and make them come back for more. A frequency of once a month is insufficient for maintaining loyal readers.
There are many of us who start blogging ferociously and then just stop at a certain point. Then we feel guilty about stopping. There is no point in feeling guilty about not blogging - the readership is low, and most of the blogs do not attract traffic at all. It is hard to keep your spirits up under these circumstances. Also, as I said earlier, writing may not be your idea of fun. If so, there is no need to feel guilty.

3. How to attract initial readers?
I read an advice for frequent blogging, with one long article atleast a week and multiple shorter posts during the weekdays. Hard to do, but does attract loyalty (provided the content is good).
Send the blog article link to all your friends, family (when you feel ready about the content). There may be habitual forwarders among them and they will spread the news.
Have your freinds with popular blogs to link your blog.
If you have MSN or Yahoo Messenger, put the blog url in your signature. Put the url in your Facebook or Orkut or LinkedIn profile.
And have good content. There is no substitute for good content. Market yourself, but have good content.

4. Some Do's and Don'ts
Do NOT plagiarize - do not steal someone else's content and dump it in your blog. Do not quote an entire article and then add a link at the end. Write original content. Since you are publicizing your blog, having copied content will lead to people having a lower opinion of you.
Do NOT hope to make money out of blogging. Takes a very long time to be established and very hard to make money out of it.
When you finish writing a post, DO re-read it again for spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. They turn off visitors.
Whenever you quote someone's blog or opinion online, DO add a link to that quote. It is professional to do so.

The selection of the American President

The presidential elections for the United States are due first week of November. The contenders have been finalized by their parties this week - Barack Obama the Democrat, with Joe Biden as the VP candidate; and John McCain, the Republican with Sarah Palin as the VP candidate.
What do the American elections have to do with India? Although the TV news shows cover it, they focus on the outsourcing question. The predominant view is that the Democrats would fix loopholes in tax law and thus work against the money flow to India.
Yet, the American elections are of critical interest (beyond outsourcing) to India and to the rest of the world. We have to remember that the United States has launched two aggressive wars in our neighborhood and currently the US Army is engaged in operations in Pakistan NWFP. It is a country that is the driving force of world economy, and is also seriously in debt. Our government is seeking a nuclear deal with them on the basis of which the ruling party almost caved in.
Certainly, more than ever before, the United States is held in very high regard by Indians (India is one of the very few countries in the world that has favorable opinions of the USA). Our economic model is hinged on free market policies championed there. So much so that the very real fight within the USA against free market fundamentalism is not even visible here. Indians also tend to see the American government, the American public and American corporations as the same entity.
Thus the selection of the American President has an effect on us and the rest of the world. Considering America's military might, and far-flung bases, people have suggested that citizens of the world's nations need to have voting rights in the American elections.

Considering all of these, you would expect that the American election process is a very serious business, and that Americans weigh the candidates throughly and consider all implications before voting for a candidate. You would be wrong.

How Is The Campaigning Going?

The first bad news is this - the 72 year old Republican candidate, John McCain selected his running mate, VP pick last week. Who did he choose as the probable leader of his country (in case something happens to him in term)? Remember, this person has a shot to have their hand on the nuclear button; decides how to "protect" American interests; and basically has the biggest fighting force in history under their thumb.
John McCain chose Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska (Alaska has one-tenth the population of greater Chennai). She has been governor for all of two years. She thinks the theory of evolution got it wrong and wants to introduce teaching in schools about how God created Earth. She also believes that the war in Iraq is a task to America directly from God.
The reason McCain chose Sarah, apparently was because she would energize right-wing religious voters.
Where does that leave the world?

You see where I am going with this? Us, poor people around the world are thinking that the "greatest democracy in history" is going about delivering its four-year lesson in democratic functioning to the rest of us. Meanwhile, "all politics is local" and McCain was obviously thinking about winning - not particularly concerned about putting the nuclear button (and our lives) in the hands of a person who believes in the End Times.

This is why the world order is all wrong.

The American elections are conducted more like a reality show than policy debates. The elections are completely given over to images and "dogwhistles" on race, gender and religion.
In terms of competency in debates and policy positions, Democrats like John Kerry and Barack Obama tower way, way above the Republicans - yet George Bush won the 2004 elections. He won the elections AFTER it was found that Iraq had NO WMD. 51% of the voters voted for him even though they knew he lied and caused misery elsewhere in the world. I was in the United States at the time of the 2004 elections and the explanation for Bush's winning was that "values" voters chose him. Well, obviously those values did not include killing innocents.
Locals vote for local issues. There are low-information voters who have no idea what is going on in politics. The media has a big role in deflecting from issues to keep viewership. All of these are factors in Indian elections and in American elections. But the leaders chosen by American voters control the beast - the military-industrial complex of the USA.

There is no relation between the weight of the responsibility on American voters and their ability. I don't think most American voters even consider the implications of their choice. Definitely John McCain has not - and hence Sarah Palin may very well start new "tasks" from God.