Lasting Rose

If You Hit Someone On The Indian Cost It Is Better To Switch Off Lights And Run

2012-03-13T06:06:00.000Z

The Italians learned it the hard way and too late that the law does not always work the same way in India. It works in a sneaky speedy way if you are an Italian and not Sonia Gandhi and the usual ‘get no where’ way if you are a true patriotic Indian.

The recent events in the India Ocean on the western coastline of India infested by Somali pirates show that everyone from the pope to the Prime ministers can get caught up in the political net of Indian hypocrisy and the double standards of its people and politicians.

A bizarre incident which took place off the coast of Kerala, fondly called the Gods Own Country in which two Indian fishermen were somehow mistaken for pirates and shot dead by Italian guards of Enrica Lexie has quietly flared up in to a sensitive geopolitical saga, resulting in imprisonment of the Italian guards in a Kerala jail and anti Indian demonstrations in Rome by the far right.

Accusations have been made by the church, political parties in both countries especially the “last” communists of Kerala which have lead up to several visits of Italian ministers to India, direct communication between the Prime ministers Monti of Italy and Singh of India, diplomats of the European union and the even the UN to resolve the issue.

"Any Indian position that is not fully in line with international law risks creating a dangerous precedent regarding international peace missions and the fight against piracy," Monti told Singh in the phone call, according to a statement from the Italian premier's office.

The main reason for all of this is the sensitive coalition politics of India for which Italy could have been the role model judging from its own history and the imminent regional elections which were due when the incident happened, giving politicians an issue to capitalize on and very little elbow room to act sensibly and equitably to dissolve the issue.

Since the story began to unravel, another unfortunate incident in which a fishing boat was hit and sunk by an Indian ship, killing 6 fishermen have cased panic and raised the temper among the fishing community of Kerala.

However, this time the ship involved flies an Indian flag and its crew has behaved in the shameful and underhanded way only the Indians can be expected to behave; by switching off lights and fleeing the site without stopping for any rescue of their own countrymen or informing the authorities.

The local government and the politicians who are in no hurry to resolve the Italian issue until after a very sensitive local election due on the 17^th of March are in even less of a hurry to bring the Indian ship Prabhu Daya and its crew and owners to book.

If you are in a sea going vessel and near the Indian coast, keep your curtains down and be ready to change course even if you will run in to some Somalian pirates, which is a safer option.

Article first published as If You Hit Someone On The Indian Coast It Is Better To Switch Off Lights And Run on Technorati.

Do You Think Lady Gaga is Changing the Face of Celebrity Culture?

2012-03-12T15:37:00.000Z

Can Lady Gaga make a difference and change the world for a better place when celebrities of our times from Lady Diana to Whitney Houston have been down the road, without much success? Perhaps, with the power of the social web behind them, Lady Gaga and other young celebrities can make a difference.

First sign that they may be able to make any positive change, is in this recognition by the establishment that it is time the enormous clout of social web, supported by modern technology, is reckoned with.

There is no other plausible reason to explain the acceptance of the top most educational institution of the world to act as the spring board for the Born This Way Foundation of Lady Gaga, named after her 2011 album and hit song, which promotes self-empowerment and has become an anthem for gay pride.

With 20 million followers on Twitter and sophisticated web technology enabling her to feel the pulse of her followers, Lady Gaga who had her own bitter experience and the support of other celebrities like Oprah Winery, could persuade Harvard to lent its name and backing to her cause and thereby gaining strong conviction among her millions of followers

Lady Gaga's new foundation is aimed at empowering young people to fight bullying
by promoting tolerance and acceptance and will be working with a new media agency to create a social media environment that fosters the foundation's goals.

Gaga spoke to more than 1,100 students from several states, faculty and invited guests at Harvard, urging the young audience to "challenge meanness and cruelty."

"I believe that if you have revolutionary potential, you must make the world a better place and use it," she said.

She reminded them that there is no law to make people be kind to one another and added: "I wish there was because, you know, I'd be chained naked to a fence somewhere trying to pass it."

Not surprisingly, the ideas of Lady Gaga resonate with more mature thinking and trends elsewhere like the acceptance of vulnerability in addressing the social issues, giving much hope that they are likely to strike a chord with the youth of the world.

For instance, Brené Brown, a research professor at the University Of Houston Graduate College Of Social Work, who spent years studies vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame addresses empowerment by posing the questions:

How do we learn to embrace our vulnerabilities and imperfections so that we can engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness? How do we cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection that we need to recognize that we are enough - that we are worthy of love, belonging, and joy?

For the Harvard University, the ultimate custodian of propriety, the enormous popularity alone is no reason to recognise and welcome a pop singer like Lady Gaga; the event has attracted criticism as a marriage of strangest of bed fellows.

But the willingness of the prestigious university to get involved with Lady Gaga has to with being in line with a new trend of including the phenomenon of the social web in to the knowledge base and accepting its social engineering clout, more than the brownie points it can add to its collection by associating with a very noble cause.

The invitation of another young artist to share his viral marketing success on the web with its faculty and students of another top notch business school, the IIM of Ahmedabad, where leading corporations of the world queue up to recruit the best business brains, is indicative of the trend and an example of the new found clout celebrities are acquiring from the social web.

With such active interest being taken by such leading institutions on the social engineering potentials of the social web and the support they are willing to lent to a new generation of coconscious achievers in the arts and sports, who are willing to extend a helping hand, there is hope that the celebrity culture, which revels in narcissistic and destructive escapades, will have a newer and kinder face.

There is evidence that as the notion and adulation of celebrities and the celebrity culture spread beyond the Oscars, Grammys and Hollywood in to the world outside, so do the new trends and values.

This has been demonstrated by Vidya Balan, a film actor from Bollywood who won the National award for the best actress of the year but chose to celebrate her success by visiting and addressing an unfortunate group of women who are victims of human trafficking.

Lady Gaga deserves to be applauded to be the one to show the way by putting her clout on the social web to promote her profession and a good cause.

Follow Sreedhar Pillai on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lastingrose

Why Election 2012 Make Vladimir Putin Cry In Victory And Rahul Gandhi Smile In Defeat?

2012-03-09T04:05:00.000Z

Putin's tears, which appeared as he announced hiselection victory as the new president of Russia, have become the but of several jokes. They have not certainly softened the cobble stones of the red square though they must have made his long gone mentor Lenin turn in his nearby mausoleum.

Honestly, Putin shouldn't have cried like a baby. Ex KGB agents do not shed tears after winning an election especially when it was rigged. The result of the Russian Presidential election was a foregone conclusion, and didn't matter for the rest of theworld, as evident from the reaction of world leaders and the poor coverage and attention it received as a non event. Around the world, Putin's tears are seen as nothing but crocodile tears.

Quick Poll

Do you think Putin's Tears Were For Real?

No one really knows why Putin burst in to tears and chocked for his words. There are several theories in circulation. But if they were indeed tears of national pride of the self appointed President of Russia, the fact that free and fair elections were held in a third world country should have brought a few drops of shame in the eyes of every patriotic and freedom loving Russian.

Well, if it is no longer politically correct to call India a third world country, it is all the more shameful for Russia to be democratically compared to another BRIC nation and placed in poor esteem.

Putin and other leaders who hate a free and fair democratic process have something to learn from Rahul Gandhi, the young leader of India, who has constantly shunned away from power his 160 year Congress party, which ruled India for most of the time after its Independence, wants him to take on.

If the election 2012 in Russia made Putin weep, despite his lack of intention to give up his iron grip on the lives of millions of Russians, the recent democratic elections in the largest state of India, Uttar Pradesh with a population of over 200 Million, brought smiles on the faces of millions of Indians proud about their democracy, especially of Rahul Gandhi, as he addressed a press conference to concede defeat and accept his share of responsibility.

In fact it should be Rahul Gandhi, who must be crying for the 'apparent' defeat and loss to his party in the recent elections! Though no one has a plausible explanation to the tears of Vladimir Putin, other than perhaps psychiatric explanations, there are plenty of reasons why Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party shouldn't be depressed at the outcome of the elections.

The hype and expectations built up around his campaign by the Indian media gave the impression that he is to be "blamed" for a loss he hasn't caused because in absolute terms he has managed to increase his party's vote share by 40%.

Though many observers agree that the hard work and efforts of Rahul Gandhi exposed and ousted the corrupt and inefficient government of Chief Minister Mayavati, the hard political reality on ground failed to turn the voter's discontent in to votes for his party.

Rahul Gandhi has been criticised, as an outsider campaigning in the state of UP couldn't effectively relate to the voters and couldn't be seen as one who is there to deliver on the promises.

Most of all, the Congress party, like its opponent BJP, failed to present a viable leadership and party structure to form a new state government the electorate could vote for, while a well established and regional Party, despite several corrupt and failed stints before, attracted a mass of negative votes.

However the main take away from the elections indicate that the conclusions from the electoral verdict were all logical, proving that the Indian electorate certainly has a mind and can apply it in casting its franchise.

- The dynamics of elections to the national parliament and the state assemblies are no longer the same and need to be played up on separately to gain election success.
- Much like the European Union, India is in fact a union of "federal" states, each with its own sense of independence, issues and politics of casts, religion and other factors of electoral balances.
- Diminished external threats and higher economic growth of the recent past has made "national" parties and their leadership less relevant to the state politics.
- The "national" parties have failed to build the party structure and leadership to substitutes for the prominent leaders who migrated to a national leadership.
- Measures of the central government imposing quota for women in local governance has increased the active participation of women in politics and their influence in elections over issues which matter to them like corruption.
All of the above are indeed lessons, the largest democracy can be proud of and learn from and certainly make young leaders like Rahul Gandhi to deliberate on for evolving new strategies.

If Putin indeed believes he has the support he claims which brought tears to his eyes, he should be willing to hold a re-election free and fair for all to see. He can take a few lessons in real democracy from his BRIC partner.

Article first published as Why Did Election 2012 Make Vladimir Putin Cry In Victory and Rahul Gandhi Smile In Defeat? on Technorati.

Please, For God’s Sake Don’t Call Engelbert Humperdinck Engelbert Hyperlink!

2012-03-03T17:49:00.000Z

Mobile phones may have a problem in predicatively suggesting the name of Engelbert Humperdinck in text messages, but for millions who will miss Whitney Houston and her music, the name Engelbert spells magic and nostalgia.

The BBC has announced this morning that 75 year old Engelbert Humperdinck, once the heart throb of women around the world, will represent the United Kingdom in the Eurovision song contest, to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan, on 26 May. Engelbert has stated that

"It's an absolute honour to be representing my country for this year's Eurovision Song Contest." "When the BBC approached me, it just felt right for me to be a part of an institution like Eurovision. I'm excited and raring to go and want the nation to get behind me!"

Engelbert Humperdinck, dubbed the "King of Romance", is best known for his 1967 hit Release Me, which kept The Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever off the number one spot.

For those who haven’t herd of this legendary singer who became famous for his crooning, Engelbert Humperdinck has received four Grammy nominations, a Golden Globe for Entertainer of the Year and is one of only a handful of artists with a star on both the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the Las Vegas Walk of Fame.

"Release Me", his 1967 smash hit version of the 1950s country song was the one that started it all for Engelbert. "Release Me" was succeeded by two more hit ballads, "There Goes My Everything" and "The Last Waltz," earning him a reputation as a crooner.

As per the BBC, the song Humperdinck will perform for the Eurovision contest is yet to be announced but will be recorded in London, Los Angeles and Nashville.

It will be written by Grammy award-winning producer Martin Terefe and Ivor Novello winner Sacha Skarbek, who co-wrote James Blunt hit You’re Beautiful.

Arnold Dorsey who was born in Chennai, India to a British army officer, took his stage name Engelbert Humperdinck from a German composer best known for his opera Hansel and Gretel.

"I have such wonderful childhood memories of Madras. I like the sun, and my 10 siblings and I went from a big home in India to relatively modest surroundings in England, which can be so cold and grey. Life in England was tough initially, but then we settled down."

Engelbert is equally popular in India and a generation of Indians have reciprocal feelings about him. Engelbert was worshipped to the extent that the Konkani singers, Alfred and Rita Rose, named an offspring after him.

No Goan and Parsi event was complete without Engelbert's music. It was perfectly in sync for our weddings, dances, village socials and Sunday morning hops for the waltz, fox trot or dancing.

There is no doubt that even the “digital” generation around the world, especially in India will be thrilled to hear the “King of Romance” croon again even if they can’t get his name right!

Article first published as Please, For Godâ€™s Sake Donâ€™t Call Engelbert Humperdinck Engelbert Hyperlink! on Technorati.

Why Are Italian Captains, Like Costa Cruise, Not The Flavour Of The Month?

2012-03-02T08:18:00.000Z

The New Year so far had not been a lucky one for the Italian sea faring lot, especially the captains of the Italian vessels. First there was the Costa Concordia disaster, resulting in the death of several people which, many believe, could have been avoided by timely action of its captain Francesco Schettino and the Costa Cruise Company. In fact the scandalous behavior of the captain has gone in to the history books with his arrest on charges of his having caused the shipwreck

"owing to ... imprudence, negligence and incompetence" resulting in deaths, having abandoned about 300 people "unable to fend for themselves", and "not having been the last to leave" a shipwreck”

Even before the dust from the biggest disaster of the year so far has settled and the agony and pain from the disaster, with seven people still unaccounted, lingering for several families and their relatives, another Italian vessel, its captain and marines employed for its protection are embroiled in a International row on account of two unarmed fishermen from Kerala, a southern Indian State, who were shot dead on the high seas.

If the circumstances which lead to the Costa Concordia disaster were unbelievably insane, given the safety standard one would take for granted in the 21st century maritime life, the events which lead to the death of the two fishermen and the arrest of the Italian marines by the local police of an Indian state are right out of an exotic thriller.

Apparently the unbelievable incidence of shooting from a bobbing ship, killing precisely two unarmed persons in a bobbing and approaching boat, took place in broad daylight, in Indian waters at the orders of its captain!

The Italians claim that the ship and the pirates they shot at with warning shots away from targets, eventually thwarting the pirates and their boat from approaching the ship, were different from the boat and the fishermen who were killed.

Once again, an Italian Captain is in the centre of a controversy for lack of clarity and straight forward explanation of an in incident which has blown out of all proportions and grown in to a major international and diplomatic row between India and Italy.

So far, Italian ministers who have flown to India were unable to dissolve the issue which has become a maddeningly sensitive enough to upset the results of a local election, vital for the ruling congress party with stakes in the state and central government.

The incidence has also brought up severe lack of clarity as to the onus among the ship owners, the Italian navy and the Italian government regarding culpability of shooting and murdering innocent unarmed foreign nationals from Italian owned vessels in international waters.

To add further to the pain and lack of trust of the people of coastal Kerala , which look at the whole incidence with suspicion, another boat has been sunk in a collision with a ship, which has gone without reporting the incidence, killing two fishermen with three others missing.

When you consider the fate of the latest Costa Cruise vessel Costa Allegra, which went out of power supply and had to be towed from high seas, leaving its passengers with out food and other necessities for three days, it looks like the maritime diversions from life are certainly jinxed, at least for the Italian sea men!

Article first published as Why Are Italian Captains, Like Costa Cruise, Not The Flavour Of The Month? on Technorati.

Is It The Social Web That Gave The Verdict In Oscars Vs Baron Cohen?

2012-02-29T06:00:00.003Z

The independence of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and of the United States of America is admirable. The sheen on its prestigious Oscar awards night, as the second most watched event in the US, has only got brighter in recent times. However, it looks like the social web can now influence how the Oscar award ceremony is conducted and will continue to do so in the future.

Every year the controversies around the award night, which surface both before and after the gala event, generate more interest and discussion than the event itself.

This year it was the turn of Sacha Baron Cohen to kick up the storm and grab his share of attention by intending to appear in the outfit of his role in his upcoming movie "The Dictator" with an urn of the 'ashes' of his friend, the real world dictator Kim Jong-il, even as many people felt that it was too much self serving and the Academy threatened to refuse him admission

Proving how the academy worried about the disruption to the biggest event in the industry and the fall out in its reputation, the Academy President Tom Sherak has issued a statement dismissing the speculation that the Academy was somehow in on the whole stunt of Baron Cohen.

"I'm telling you the truth, this is not a stunt that we were involved in at all. We can have another conversation about how things happened and whether we overreacted - but trust me, it was not like we helped make this up."

That raises the question why did the Academy object to the request of Sacha Baron Cohen to appear in his now famous uniform in the first place? Judging from his contribution to the motion picture industry and the record of box office success of his films, the Academy had only reason to welcome him as an honoured guest, especially as a cast member of Hugo, which received several recommendations and was considered a front runner for the top award.

It seems his reputation as a 'Controversy's child' and his Jewish origin have more to do with the reticence of the Academy than a mere intention to let his pranks annoy the guests and ruin their show. As mentioned in a piece on the Wiki about Baron Cohen:

"Aside from the comic elements of his characters, Baron Cohen's performances are interpreted by some as reflecting uncomfortable truths about his audience. He juxtaposes his own Jewish lineage with the anti-Semitism of his character Borat."
No doubt, the character of Admiral General Aladeen could have had unpredictable reactions in a world unsure about the gentle breeze of the Arab spring, which the Academy was in no position to judge and perhaps causing nightmares to its members who were trying to foresee the repercussions.

The Academy also has failed to reckon the genius of Sacha Baron Cohen, who perhaps unintentionally, has blunted any adverse reaction by releasing his famous clip but certainly meant to underscore his main theme of ridiculing dictatorship by the act of spreading the ashes of Kim Jong-il on the famous red carpet and thus send his real message to the whole world.

However the 'viral' and positive reaction to his clip of objection released on the web two days before the Oscar night must have given as much relief to the Academy members as the pressure of negative world opinion, if he were to be banned from the event for his prank which more and more people were ready to accept as such.

It appears that, after all the showing up of a "Dictator" for the Oscars could be a funny prank and nothing objectionable, thanks to the collective wisdom of the social web, which has the sea change in attitude towards dictatorship the Arab world has recently witnessed to its credit.

Baron Cohen was not alone to get an admission to the Oscar 2012 night thanks to the power of the social web. Uggie, the ten year old dog who was refused an entrance to the event on grounds many people will consider frivolous on the part of the Academy, finally got to share the Oscar and the stage with his co actor Jean Dujardin. The appearance of Uggie on various shows like the TMZ live before the night prompting public appeal on TV and the public outcry on and off the web has earned Uggie the fame and place in history he so well deserved.

With sentiment analysis tools like Wisewindow, which can listen in on the 'chatter' on the social web and analyse with natural language algorithms, is now possible to gauge what the world thinks and how it intends to act on various issues.

Applying such sophisticated tools on the social web allows you to anticipate the winners, taking some of the surprise and excitement from the award night gala. But, more importantly, the social web is also silently changing the politics and morals of the Oscars.
There are in fact plenty of reasons why the Academy should listen to the voice of the world.

Article first published in The Huffington Post as Has the Social Web Tamed the Oscars if Not Sacha Baron Cohen?

Follow Sreedhar Pillai on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lastingrose

Baron Cohen Has Made His Point, But Will "The Dictator" be There?

2012-02-26T18:29:00.000Z

Will Sacha Baron Cohen upset the 2012 Oscar gala and the celebrities? That seems to be the question on everyone’s mind this weekend rather than who will be taking the prestigious award home in the prime categories.

Though Sacha was assured to be declared as a person non-grata, if he turned up in the costume of Admiral General Aladeen of Wadiya from his movie The Dictator, which resulted in strong protest from Sacha who released a clip on the internet to register his protest, apparently the organizers have sensed the public mood and sent him the entry passes.

Though the objection to Sacha Cohen’s appearance in the now famous costume was officially declared as being “promotional” for his yet to be released film, it is not difficult to see the huge global political fall out and the repercussions in an already strained and thinly balanced international relations, and the embarrassment the organizers are desperately trying to avoid.

Whether Sacha will decide that his immediate aim has been met in terms of gaining publicity and that taking things too far will only eventually hurt his cause, is a matter to wait and see till the award night.

Apparently Sacha Cohen is not the only thorn in the famous celebrity feet which will grace the famous red carpet tonight.

There is a widespread feeling that the Oscars, the biggest and most anticipated and prestigious of awards, and the most watched award ceremony itself are somehow ignoring the very aspects of the movies which endear them to millions of viewers.

The case in question is how Uggie, a ten year old sweet doggy, who has stepped in to make “The Artist”, a silent movie and hot contestant for the award in the best movie category, so much more lovable to viewers around the world, is refused an attendance at the prestigious night.

Apparently, more famous and privileged invitees of a different species objected to the presence of Uggie and the potential loss of camera focus on themselves due to the angle they will be at to catch Uggie who will be closer to the floor level than they are!

However TMZ Live has taken upon them the cause of Haggy and gave Uggie and his trainer and Owner a touching slot on the show. The host Harvey Levin even made an appeal to the Oscar hosts on behalf of Uggie.

A lot of people may not miss Sacha if he didn’t turn up for the Oscar Night, but millions more will be disappointed if they won’t be seeing Uggie steal the whole show.

Article first published as Baron Cohen Has Made His Point, But Will "The Dictator" be There? on Technorati.

Did Whitney And The World Love ‘Whitney Houston Going Home.’?

2012-02-20T20:19:00.000Z

‘Whitney Houston Going Home.’ Did Whitney And The World Loved It?

Judging from the paltry coverage of her funeral service by the world media at large, except by celebrity sites like TMZ, it looks like much has been already said and written about the ‘Going Home’ ceremony of another of 20^th century Icons, the much loved pop singer Whitney Houston. So what more is there to say?

There are many events and occasions which have left indelible marks on human memory for the visuals and voices they carried and in some cases for profound changes in world opinion and attitude.

However, certain occasions like the Kennedy assassination and the death of Princess Diana spring to mind as events which left the world shocked out of wits and saddest at the time but somehow despatched the real grief home only during the funerals, which were grimmest of affairs in grandest of settings.

The funeral service of Whitney Houston turned out be an ordinary affair in an ordinary church, yet caught the attention of the world and evoked feelings of loss and bonding of a different kind, which has made Whitney more endearing and human to millions of viewers who have turned more sympathetic.

Like thousands of others, Whitney Houston probably died of a quiet heart attack, after eating a ham burger with some satisfaction. An ordinary event in the life of a celebrity, which shot out of proportion and shocked the world thanks to the aura of negativity given by the media and the instant technology at its disposal today.

The bottom line is, Whitney actually belonged to a station in life which is home for a large majority of the people in the world. Like in the case of Lady Diana, it was the special corner of love and sympathy Whitney somehow managed to secure in the hearts of millions which sent the pain around in huge dollops rather than the heights she could carry her music with her wonderful melisma.

That is why, the ‘Going Home’ ceremony so affectionately and caringly organised by her mother and relatives turned out to be something the world could watch and relate to and something which would have made Whitney Houston enormously happy.

It was in fact a Home Coming celebration for some one who completed a very successful journey in life which Whitney Houston, accomplished diva and singer was denied by her untimely death. It was entirely in order to give her a send off where everyone could have thanked her and she could have thanked everyone who helped her along and the right thing to do.

More than anything else, the speeches and the songs sung in her praise by other famous performers like by Kevin Costner and Stevie wonder have put on some wonderful colour and shades to the caricature, perhaps somewhat distorted, the world had in its mind. At the end of that entire protracted event, the diva of Newark had certainly come out in shining armour as a sweet darling of the entire world, ready to be carried off by the angels for the only performance Whitney Houston ever had to give. Certainly Whitney Houston couldn’t have gone home happier!

Perhaps one of the biggest rewards of living in the 20th century and carrying on in to the 21^st is the enormous shock, grief, despair, anger, excitement or joy one get to share with the whole world simultaneously from events defining our times around the world, which wouldn’t have been possible without the marvellous 20^th century inventions in communication.

Article first published as â€˜Whitney Houston Going Home.â€™ Did Whitney And The World Love It? on Technorati.

What On Web Has Changed For President Obama This Election?

2012-02-18T06:30:00.000Z

Twitter is no longer enough to win an election.

Move over Google, Twitter and Facebook. Enter WiseWindow, Arktan and Percolate. Search, tweet and like are out. Sentiment analysis, taxonomy, social stream, passive curation and second screen conversation, are a few of the new buzzwords President Obama and anyone else aspiring to win the US election needs to master in a hurry!

These innovative technologies, with amazing data collection, filtering, analysis, curation and interaction capabilities, can tell what people are thinking right now and their intentions before they become action, enabling you to curate and chose what you tell them and how you interact with them so that you can shape the world and the market place the way you need, all in real time. That is why who wins the next US election is going to badly need them!

Transforming Unstructured Data into Market Intelligence: An interview with Marshall Toplansky, President, WiseWindow

WiseWindow, which specialise in sentiment analysis, is in fact ahead of the presidential candidates. Partnering with The Daily Beast (now a part of Newsweek), they have created the "Election Oracle," which scans 40,000 social media sites, listening to millions of daily comments, and creating a 10-day moving average that is mixed with traditional polls to create their predictions.

Apart from President Obama and artists like Lady Gaga who has a fan base of about 20 million, who will need these new, mind boggling technology products of branding and influencing human race? Well, in the words of WiseWindow, anyone with management responsibility that belongs to the C-suite:

• CEO - Chief, Chief
• COO - Go-to-Guy
• CIO - No.1 Nerd
• CMO - Brand Boss
• CFO - Money Mogul
• Consumer Researchers
• Customer Support Personnel
• Common people, that's you and everyone else!

In reality you, the consumer, are most benefited by the new collective power derived from the application of these technologies, to influence like never before in the history, what the media, politicians, entertainers and the Industry at large will deliver.

Any organization, politician or brand aiming to stay ahead of the market and fickle consumers and supporters, whose tastes change seemingly overnight, will need to heed to this collective power, which is already flexing its muscle in the media and entertainment industry.

Reuters recently launched 'Social Pulse', a new social media hub designed to show you the most talked-about news, companies and influencers across the Web, which features, with technology and service provided by WiseWindow, a revolutionary stock sentiment module, based on opinions from hundreds of thousands of sources captured and curated, clearly demonstrating the predictive abilities offered by the technology.

Using Percolate, Reuters has created Counterparties, a way to build more engagement with two of their finest journalists, Felix Salmon and Ryan McCarthy. A combination of algorithmic filtering of most interesting content which they react to allows an audience to follow along and engage with these editors all day.

Universal Music Group, who manage Mindless Behavior, Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Dr.Dre, Justin Bieber, and their official websites is using Arktan's Life stream to deliver aggregated and curated content on the official websites of the artists. With the ability to add comments and reply to posts, the social influence of the artist sites has grown dramatically.

WiseWindow, a sentiment analysis/measuring company, turns the chaos of online chatter, what people are saying online now in blogs, tweets, status updates, and reviews, in to a database which illuminates consumer sentiment across hundreds of dimensions and then provide a stream of consumer sentiment and intention data that can be integrated with business intelligence systems so that organizations can become more agile and responsive.

Arktan on the other hand is primarily about building "interactive" curated social experiences. Arktan provides very deep interaction capabilities, like the ones on the websites of Lady Gaga, with the ability to respond to comments, likes, social sharing, aggregated conversation, etc in real time. These much richer curation capabilities, which give brands the control they want and sentiment analysis capabilities including Natural Language Processing as well as analytics, set Arktan's technology apart from passive curation tools.

Percolate which is primarily about letting a brand build passive curation experiences, scrapes five million sources daily, turning a brand's strategy into the interest engine and using proprietary algorithms to sort and bubble up only the most relevant and interesting content for a brand editor to comment on and publish to social platforms and websites.

If you are excited and want to have a quick look at how these breaking technologies can affect you, check out TweetSentiments.com which provides Sentiment Analysis on tweets using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning technologies and Storify where you can have a go at curation and create your own article with content from the web.

Article first published as How Has the Web Technologies Changed for President Obama This Election? on Technorati.

Do You Want The Guys At TMZ To Serve Up Hot News Even Hotter? They Can!

2012-02-16T13:50:00.001Z

Technology is changing how celebrities like Lady Gaga build up a fan base of 20 million and then interact with them to keep them hooked to her magic. Now the guys who follow the celebrities and serve up the news they make like TMZ.com are learning a thing or two about the ways celebrities use social media.

Taking a leaf out of the new book of how to get the hook swallowed even deeper, TMZ has added a much greater and innovative punch to their delivery. The TMZ live is a terrific example of how you can spice up what you serve with what is available on the social media right now and create an ever increasing fan base of loyal followers.

The show which is presented as a talk show actually cuts in to the studio workplace and gets everyone else to chip in making it wider and give it an ambiance of an office. Everyone can relate to this as this is very real and what happens in every day life in any office where people work together.

The show is brisk, informal, and chatty and dwells on the hottest topics for just enough time to keep them hot.

4:30) Did Whitney know she was going to die? Mike reads the eerie Bible verse she quoted before her death.
(13:50) Whitney's death sparks a serious debate -- would you rather live fast and die young ... or boring and die old?
(21:04) Kobe was caught smooching Vanessa last night -- people rightly shocked she'd take him back.
(22:50) Evan says Kobe "loves" Vanessa so much ... that he constantly cheats on her (allegedly).
(26:30) The Heart Attack Grill -- which sells an 8,000 cal. burger -- had a diner literally have a heart attack there this week.
(28:45) The owner of the restaurant calls in -- defends his gut busting menu to an inch of his life.
(32:12) Our fatty good loving staffers totally have the owner's back on this one. Shocker.
(34:30) Is Kate Upton too big for Victoria's Secret?
(38:00) Another argument to wrap up the show -- is buying $100,000 handbags the biggest waste of money ever?

The hosts take in live calls and get the callers to participate in live discussion.

A simultaneous twitter stream lets anyone farther away, even on other continents, like the

where I watched the live show, send in their take by tweets which scroll up on a side box for everyone to see.

A live stream of comments gives you an in depth feels of what those who are eager but can’t jump in and speak their mind have to say.

To boot it all, a live survey with related questions, sort of gives you a chance to put a line under, say a last word on the topic.

Overall, the entire combination has turned TMZ, which has started as a blog, to a totally new category of media, yet to be christened but sure to be imitated.

For millions of people, celebrity gossip and news is addictive like drugs. Their life depends on a sizable doze of it which was being served by tabloids before the internet and social media. Now they are hooked to it even more because modern technology can provide the experience of being with the news makers where the news happens in real time and even interact with them as on the website of Lady Gaga, where her ardent followers even have a backstage entrance to interact with her.

Article first published as Do You Want The Guys At TMZ To Serve Up Hot News Even Hotter? They Can! on Technorati.

Did Whitney Houston Plan The Grandest Of Her Exits?

2012-02-14T06:52:00.000Z

The world is in shock of loosing yet another music prodigy of modern times!

It may be too soon to speak without being disrespectful to the departed, but whether the diva, famous for her sensational concert exits often with her signature piece “I will always love you” wished it to be or not, her death in reality has turned in to her grandest of exits!

According to reports her body was removed only around midnight from her hotel room. Has this given her a chance to share an exceptional honour even in death? Whitney’s mother, Cissy Houston, spoke to her on the telephone half an hour before she died and Miss Houston was said to have been looking forward to the party.

“A surreal scene unfolded at the hotel as the party continued while Miss Houston's body remained in her room on the fourth floor, which was sealed off with yellow police tape.”

No one in history, except Julius Caesar, perhaps had his or her praise sung to the world and immortalised, while the soul which was separated from the body must have been looking down on it and smiling in greatest of joy at the fulfilment of the life just ended.

"Whitney Houston, simply put, had the greatest voice in the world. She was a gift of God. Hearing her sing was like listening to magic. If it wasn't for Clive Davis, the world may not have known about this miracle voice," Combs

It must sound cruel and uncaring to think of still holding a party when an invited has just departed, especially if it happened in the next room. But in the case of Whitney, who has been honoured with six Grammy awards, it was not just a party she was supposed to attend that evening, it was her mentor and music producer Clive Davis's customary pre-Grammy party, typically one of the most fun-filled highlights of the week leading to the music industry's top awards ceremony

For Whitney, it would have been a party held by her mentor who made her the Whitney Houston the whole world pines for, where she would have found herself the happiest. How could Whitney have asked it to be stopped, if her soul could, it would have sung “I will always love you” for all in the party hall to hear!

"Simply put, Whitney would have wanted the music to go on and her family asked that we carry on,"

Though some statements have been issued by the coroner about the cause of Whitney’s tragic death, and we may never ever know exactly, one thing seems to be true. Whitney Houston may not have asked for it but God has granted her the best stage she could have wished for a final performance.

Article first published as Did Whitney Houston Plan The Grandest Of Her Exits? on Technorati

What On Web Will President Obama Need To Win The Next Election?

2012-02-11T08:54:00.000Z

Move over Google, Twitter and Facebook. EnterWiseWindow, Arktan, Percolate and Klout. Search, tweet and like are out. Sentiment analysis, taxonomy, social stream, passive curation, second screen conversation, are a few of the new buzzwords President Obama and anyone else aspiring to win the US election needs to master in a hurry.

Whoever wins the election, one thing the 45th US president can be sure about is the unprecedented power the country has gained to shape the future of the world, thanks to the internet giants and new technologies of upstarts like WiseWindow and Arktan.

These innovative technologies, with amazing data collection, filtering, analysis, curation and interaction capabilities, can tell you what people are thinking right now and their intentions before they become action, enabling you to curate and chose what you tell them and how you interact with them so that you can shape the world and the market place the way you need, all in real time. That is also why who wins the next US election is also crucial to the world than ever!

"You can think of social media as a hole that has opened into the collective consciousness and we're tapping into it." Sid Mohasseb, CEO WiseWindow

Apart from President Obama and artists like Lady Gaga who has a fan base of about 20 million, who will need these new, mind boggling technology products of branding and influencing human race? Well, in the words of WiseWindow, anyone with management responsibility that belongs to the C-suite:

• CEO - Chief, Chief
• COO - Go-to-Guy
• CIO - No.1 Nerd
• CMO - Brand Boss
• CFO - Money Mogul
• Consumer Researchers
• Customer Support Personnel
• Common people, that's you and everyone else!

In reality you, the consumer, are most benefited by the new collective power derived from the application of these technologies, to influence like never before in the history, what the media, politicians, entertainers and the Industry at large will deliver. Any organization aiming to stay ahead of the market and fickle consumers, whose tastes change seemingly overnight, will need to heed to this collective power, which is already flexing its muscle in the media and entertainment industry.

Reuters recently launched 'Social Pulse', a new social media hub designed to show you the most talked-about news, companies and influencers across the Web, which features,with technology and service provided by WiseWindow, a revolutionary stock sentiment module, based on opinions from hundreds of thousands of sources captured and curated, clearly demonstrating the predictive abilities offered by the technology.

WiseWindow, which specialise in sentiment analysis, is ahead of the presidential candidates. Partnering with The Daily Beast (now a part of Newsweek), they have created the "Election Oracle," which scans 40,000 social media sites, listening to millions of daily comments, and creating a 10-day moving average that is mixed with traditional polls to create their predictions.

Using Percolate, Reuters has created Counterparties, a way to build more engagement with two of their finest journalists, Felix Salmon and Ryan McCarthy. A combination of algorithmic filtering of most interesting content which they react to allows an audience to follow along and engage with these editors all day.

Universal Music Group, who manage Mindless Behavior, Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Dr.Dre, Justin Bieber, and their official websites is using Arktan's Life stream to deliver aggregated and curated content on the official websites of the artists. With the ability to add comments and reply to posts, the social influence of the artist sites has grown dramatically.

WiseWindow, a sentiment analysis/measuring company, turns the chaos of online chatter, what people are saying online now in blogs, tweets, status updates, and reviews, in to a database which illuminates consumer sentiment across hundreds of dimensions and then provide a stream of consumer sentiment and intention data that can be integrated with business intelligence systems so that organizations can become more agile and responsive.

Transforming Unstructured Data into Market Intelligence: An interview with Marshall Toplansky, President, WiseWindow

Distilling more than 100 million online comments a month into an organized data set with a new level of accuracy and timeliness, WiseWindow literally opens a window on the Web with a direct view into the thoughts and actions of consumers, where you can see trends wax and wane in real-time.

Arktan on the other hand is primarily about building "interactive" curated social experiences. Arktan provides very deep interaction capabilities, like the ones on the websites of Lady Gaga, with the ability to respond to comments, likes, social sharing, aggregated conversation, etc in real time.

These much richer curation capabilities, which give brands the control they want, set Arktan's technology apart from passive curation tools. For example brands can pick the specific social web sources such as twitter hashtags, celebrities they want to add for a TV show second screen conversation and apply filters such as Klout score to bubble up relevant content.

Arktan too has some sentiment analysis capabilities including Natural Language Processing as well as analytics but these capabilities only compliment their Social Streams product.

Percolate which is primarily about letting a brand build passive curation experiences, scrapes five million sources daily, turning a brand's strategy into the interest engine and using proprietary algorithms to sort and bubble up only the most relevant and interesting content for a brand editor to comment on and publish to social platforms and websites.

Klout measures your online influence from your social networks where you have the opportunity to influence people by creating or sharing content that inspires actions such as likes, retweets, comments and more.Klout gives you insight into the world around you so that you can understand and increase your own influence. The more engagement your posts receive, the more influential you are. Klout uses this information to provide you a Klout Score that measures your overall influence.

If you are excited and want to have a quick look at how these breaking technologies can affect you, check out TweetSentiments.com which provides Sentiment Analysis on tweets using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning technologies and Storify where you can have a go at curation and create your own article with content from the web.

Article first published in HUFFINGTON POST http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sreedhar-pillai/what-will-president-obama_1_b_1267634.html

Is a Local Language Essential to Preserve Cultural Identity on the Social Web?

2012-02-08T14:08:00.000Z

"If music be the language of love, sing on in English" will be how Shakespeare would have framed his famous quote if he were alive today! In the age of globalisation and social web, English seems to have acquired the status of a global currency, in which you can trade your emotions without losing your identity.

Jayalalitha, the chief minister of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, whose delirium tremens and tantrums have become a part of the new X factor politics destroying India, has issued in true Taliban style, a diktat that all children in her state must learn Tamil!

You can't blame her! The poor soul, despite her 65 years on earth probably has never heard of Shakespeare let alone realise how the world has changed with globalisation, and social web, how regional language no more is an essential element of regional culture.

For Jayalalitha, a film actress of yester years whose mother tongue is not Tamil but Kannada of the neighbouring state of Karnataka where she was borne and brought up, evoking chauvinistic emotions has nothing but political expediency.

For millions of Tamil speaking people, who have wasted hours staring at Jayalalitha on the silver screen, movie after movie, because of a complex and weakness they have for her fair skin, however, "Kolaveri Di" is the new sound of Tamil music which makes them proud rather than her sermon on the virtue of Tamil.

“Kolaveri Di” is a Tamil song video created in English, which went viral on the social web scoring 150 million hits and was parodied in numerous languages, all because people everywhere could relate to its real music content and simple lyrics about the throngs of love as they were penned in English of a sort.

The Lyrics of Kolaveri Di

In fact the song dominated the media for better part of past three months since its release, invoking such universal enthusiasm which provoked the youth from Tokyo to The Hague to burst out in spontaneous song and dance sequences of Kolaveri Di in public and private venues.

Doing the whole video in a universal language has no way taken away anything ‘Tamil’ from the wonderful production which is nothing but an expression of genuine creativity. If anything, it has only helped to introduce Tamil along with its creator Dhanush and his team to the whole world.

This is not the only example why language shouldn’t matter for true understanding and harmony between cultures. A similar video production created a few months earlier by the popular American artist Akon with a team from Mumbai also bear proof that power of music as food of love has not changed from the days when the Bard of Avon proclaimed it.

Through a song titled “Chammak Challo” created for an Indian film of Sharukh Khan, a famous Indian screen actor, the American singer and rapper Akon has proved the point.

Akon, with very little effort and time, managed to muster the few Hindi words in the lyrics written in English and managed to sing the song to music composed of elements from the middle east, all to enchant and capture the hearts of an Indian audience.

The Lyrics of Chammak Challo

As it turned out, the song and its video recording turned a viral hit on the internet proving yet again that, when it comes to music as food for love, cultural assimilation happen pretty fast and the social web is the modern platform where it happens.

It is really amazing that two productions which as music or artistic expressions of young artists have nothing much to write about, have become phenomenal success with an international audience in such a short time. Then isn't that the case with most of the hits with pop music?

One can hope that this is a trend which will catch up and bring more of such unifying efforts from all languages and culture on to the social web.

It looks like at least on the social web no one really cares what language people communicate with as long as it is English. As in the real world, real talent not ethnicity or cultural background which matters. As far as the language of love is concerned, it looks like the easiest way to some one’s heart is just saying ‘I love you’ rather than ‘Je t'aime’ or ‘Ya tebya lyublyu’

Follow Sreedhar Pillai on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lastingrose

If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Google and Facebook.

2012-02-06T20:14:00.000Z

The office of the prime minister (PMO) of India, the biggest democratic country, with a population of 1.3 billion people, has at last opened an account on Twitter and announced its decision today to join Facebook, following the old saying if you can’t beat them join them.

Dr Man Mohan Singh, a renowned economist and India’s Prime Minister believes in relentless handwork and action aimed at India’s economic growth despite its obstructive political environment and is a man of few words. He was subjected to severe criticism for the silence he maintains on controversial issues, especially the scams which have rocked his party’s second tenure in the governance of India.

Fed up with the abusive posts, morphed pictures and all sorts of twisted and contorted facts and false accusation which appear in the social web in the name of democratic freedom and criticism, Man Mohan Singh seems to have given up and taken the bold step to take the bull by the horns and use the social web to communicate and set things straight.

The timing of the move by the PMO is interesting. A junior court in India, where petitions were filed against Google, Facebook and twenty odd social media companies for breech of infringement of a law only enacted last year, making companies responsible for user content posted on their websites, had warned of a crackdown "like China" if they did not take steps to protect religious sensibilities.

Last month, the companies said it was not possible for them to block content.

However, Google and Facebook removed content from some Indian domain websites today, following a court directive warning them severe restrictive action if not complied.

Though no one really thinks that India, with its democratic credentials will go to any extent its neighbour China has gone to restrict the functioning of the social web, it looks like the carrot and stick policy of the government is at last paying off.

By joining the networks, the Prime Minister and his government is clearly showing that the Social web in India is here to stay and will be an integral part of the democratic environment likes the developed countries.

At the same time India has also sent the right signals, through its administration and judicial system that it is in no mood to tolerate and live with excessive and irresponsible use of the social web and will look forward to exerting the same level of control over the regular media, as a country with religious sensitivities and prone to violence.

In fairness to Dr Man Mohan Singh and his office, whose priority was to fire fight various political and other crisis over the last two years, having the fun of tweeting and posting updates like many other world leaders and millions of ordinary citizens is a reward long over due.

Article first published as If You Canâ€™t Beat Them, Join Google and Facebook. on Technorati.

Guess Who Lady Gaga Is Eavesdropping On?

2012-02-04T21:13:00.000Z

While the world waits with ears preened and eyes glued to social media sites to lap up juicy snippets of celebrity life, it’s the celebrities like Lady Gaga who are having the last laugh!

Before you get carried away, this has nothing to do with the phone hacking scandal that has rocked the British and world media. Lady Gaga is only resorting to the latest technology to realise her ambition to make her music truly global and yet satisfy her desire to connect and interact with her fans around the world.

The problem of Interscope, who manages her website, was that while Lady Gaga’s site could hold all her own content, the posts, comments, and blogs of millions of her fans were all spread across different social media and a large number of fan sites, making it almost impossible to pursue her dream.

Interscope and Lady Gaga needed a way to centralize the promotion of Lady Gaga’s content, music and merchandise on a single platform, and still allow her to remain close to her fans, which had been a big part of her success, in spite of the enormous size her fan base has grown in to.

What Arktan, a U.S. based start up, has managed to do is to enable Interscope to search across a huge array of sites like Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, blogs and fan websites to find everything being said by people and then pull out that is important right onto Lady Gaga’s website in real-time, allowing her fans to interact with her and feel close to her.

The addition of social streams and the ability to add comments and reply to posts enhance the social influence of the site dramatically. The site’s usability and attraction is further enhanced with rich inline media, comprising of photos and videos from social media sites, which is integrated into each post in real-time and with social interaction around each product in the online store.

If her desire is to get and keep her fans closest to her, Lady Gaga is amazingly succeeding in her efforts with the technology from Arktan, which has enriched her brilliant website with real-time feeds of what her worldwide fans are talking about her and by providing them something like a “back stage” access to directly interact with her, all in real time!

The Technology

Recognising the leveraging they benefit from, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter already provide dynamic and real time comment and activity streams which websites can include in their content with very little or no programming knowledge. Such streams help to engage the visitors who are members of the media to interact with the websites as well as others and also attract new members. However these widgets are limited to single membership and cannot engage multitude of fans or friends simultaneously.

‘Turn your website into a highly engaging real-time social site’ is the motto of companies like Arktan who provides an Enterprise class solution to capture data from any source on the Web including sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Tumblr, etc. and stream to your existing Content Management System in real-time, enriching the data in multiple ways by including photos, videos, maps and visually engaging snippets.

Arktan technology is built on a real-time Social Operating System, developed in-house. In addition to in-house technology that does a great amount of real-time and social web curation heavy lifting, Arktan SocialOS uses Amazon EC2 for a scalable server infrastructure and Echo stream server for a scalable cloud database. This enables Arktan to build products like the life stream product focussing on the real-time end-user experience and innovation leaving the server and database infrastructure to proven cloud building blocks.

The technology package is also based on their Social TV and Live Blogging application in which posts by journalists to different social media sites are aggregated into a real-time embedded stream on their site encouraging conversation letting users to like, reply or share and driving engagement and increasing time spent.

Leading brands who are using life stream providers like Arktan to bring real-time conversation and content from the social web back to their websites feel that the technology offers “a sweet spot between just enough technology to make it easy and t a finished product that can’t be improved up on.”

Social web is exploding and blowing away advertising!

Lady Gaga is not alone to recognise that the social web is exploding and the rules of engagement with potential customers are being rewritten with breath taking speed.

The role of social media in changing the way human beings behave socially and react to advertisement and its all engulfing grip is evident from several reports which estimates the membership of Facebook has reached above 800 million and is fast approaching the billion mark, with Google+ and Twitter giving a tight chase.

This explosion has seen a host of social media monitoring tools sprouting up faster than mushrooms on a damp corner. Some like Klout specialise in calibrating and measuring people’s influence across the social media, which appear to replace the advertising sponsorship clout of stars and celebrities.

That is why a direct engagement and interaction with your fans is vital for artists like Lady Gaga.

Article originally published in the Huffington Post as

Guess Who Lady Gaga Is Eavesdropping On?

King Khan Dances To The Beats Of Akon To Seduce Dubai!

2012-01-30T14:39:00.000Z

It was an unusually chilly evening in Dubai, yet a crowd of fifty thousand didn’t want to go home without watching Sharukh Khan, the King of Bollywood, dance with the damsels from God’s own country to the music of Akon.

Not only did Khan manage to enthral the huge crowd but also get the shy and untrusting damsel heroines of Kerala to warm up to his steps and gestures and forget themselves in his charming and infectious dance movements. Sharukh Khan proved himself to be a great maestro of inspiration if not the art of dance itself.

If his dance was nearly perfect body movements and expressions of a born dancer, it was his charm and humility which came out in his interaction with the ladies and the huge audience demonstrating the perfect gentle man he is, which won the hearts and applause of the evening.

The song and dance sequence he wisely selected for the occasion is “Chammak Challo” from his Hindi film “Ra-One”, the music for which was created with Akon and recorded with Akon, which had gone viral months before.

It was indeed the high point of Ujala Asia net Awards, a show organised in Dubai by an Indian channel owned by Murdoch, which can best be described as a mishmash of the Glastonbury music festival and the Cannes Film festival.

Though the show itself, which extended over 4hours, was a good case of a text book example of shoddy, unprofessional and idiotic compeering, stage management and organizing, it has several interesting aspects about it.

To start with, despite the Arab Spring and the wind of freedom that has swept the region, it is inconceivable that such an open show involving dance and music on stage, with several female artists, could be staged in any Arab country, elevating the liberal image of Dubai and the Emirates.

However, that true artistic talent cuts across cultures, languages and boundaries of state was put to test and proved yet again, is the serious point. The combination of the music of Akon, an artist nominated five times for the Grammy award, expressed in a totally alien language, simply swayed a huge crowd including several veteran film artists, when an equally talented Sharukh Khan danced to its endearing scores and exhilarating beats.

Sharukh Khan, a practising Muslim born to Muslim parents and married to a Hindu, in a way epitomises the true spirit of India, which is carried with his persona and comes out well on his international shows. Apart from being a true Indian, he is also a one man Industry with an estimated assets base of $500 Million.

Article first published as King Khan Dances to the Beats of Akon to Seduce Dubai on Technorati.

Is There An X Factor Investors In Incredible India Should Worry About?

2012-01-26T15:20:00.002Z

India has ushered in the New Year with a desperate invitation to all foreigners to invest in its stock markets! Is there an X Factor, a real show stopper, for the Incredible India show you need to worry about?

Beset with high fiscal deficit, withdrawal of funds by foreign Institutional Investors who lost confidence in the India story and political opposition to foreign direct investment in the corporate retail sector, the government has opened the Indian stock markets to everyone who would like to invest.

But before we rush with our hard earned capital to jump in to the Incredible India band wagon and to invest in Indian stocks, it will be prudent to investigate the ‘X’ factor of India, which adds a new and unknown dimension to the stock market at the least and can potentially destroy India’s future growth at the worst!

A lot of irrational and unjustified criticism has been hurled, at its economist Prime Minister Dr Man Mohan Singh and his ministry, by the leaders of India’s own Industry as well as several observers around the world, for the current plight of Indian economy and its less than expected growth.

But what everyone has failed to recognize is the growing X (which stands for the female chromosome) factor of India, the unpredictability, irrationality and vagaries of hormones of its elected female leaders, the Chief Minister trio of Mamta, Mayavati and Jayalalitha, who are meddling with the growth agenda of the central government in power in New Delhi and hampering its capabilities to deliver free market and economic progress.

Three of India’s biggest states comprising of 30% of its population are ruled by these women of monumental egos and idiosyncrasies which spell disaster, with substantial representation in the Indian parliament. These females who act like Victorian queens and catapulted in to positions of power by massive mandates of negative votes, defy all logic when it comes to their approach to free market and the growth of economy of the whole nation.

Hardly evincing any of grasp of the economic realities and effects of globalisation which impose urgent fiscal and economic policy changes to attain the growth, they act as if the states they rule are no longer parts of the union of India.

All the three women politicians who have attained the status of cult figures with the status of a mother depend on a little known domination of matriarchal subjugation of the Indian psyche and its debilitating grip on the Indian political system which breed and abet the X factor of India. No male dissent to the absolute authority of these females is ever seen or tolerated. In fact the lack of any public debate or dissent within these regional parties smack of regimes of the despots displaced recently by the Arab spring.

Here are several examples of the X factor manifesting in the Indian political scene in destructive mode, disregarding the interests or economic progress of millions of voters, widely reported in the Indian and International press.

· FDI in retail: Mamata Banerjee puts the agenda on hold

· Govt to mollify Mamata Banerjee on Lokpal Bill

· Mamata Torpedoes Bangla Water Deal

· Jayalalitha opposes FDI in retail

· Jayalalitha slams Delhi over nuclear power plant

· Mamata Banerjee: Congress, CPM are barking dogs

· Mayawati statues: Race to cover India chief's monuments

· Mayawati sent empty jet to Mumbai for sandals: WikiLeaks

The question is, when the function of free market and sound fiscal policies which are indispensable for growth and return on any investment cannot be taken for granted, is it really prudent to invest?

The chances are that you may not even get the smell of your money again.

Article first published as Is There An X Factor Investors In Incredible India Should Worry About? on Technorati

Isn’t It A Real Shame Salman Rushdie Can’t Return Home Even In The 21st Century?

2012-01-23T14:48:00.002Z

Even Oprah Winfrey could be in India for the much celebrated Jaipur literary festival to see the calm beneath the chaos that is India when Rushdie, a celebrated and invited guest and author was forced to stay away.

There is an auspicious time for almost everything in India. Then there is elections one need to watch out for the rest of the matters!

For Salman Rushdie, the celebrated author of ‘Satanic Verses’, an English novel considered offensive by many Muslims, the invitation and the visit n must have been a routine event.

Rushdie, who had to leave India, his mother land, in order to avoid the fatwa of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeni on his life in the late eighties, has made many private visits to India in recent years and even attended the Jaipur Literary Festival in 2007.

However this time, he had to abandon his plans at the last minute after receiving intelligence information that paid assassins are on the prowl in Jaipur to take his life.

The circumstances which led to his withdrawal provoked angry reaction from a section of the writers participating in the festival who made a public demonstration of their disgust by choosing to openly and publicly read out parts of the book which remains banned in India even after twenty years!

This obviously was against the law in India, making sure these authors who genuinely were agitated by the obstruction to literary freedom In India, which everyone must be ashamed of, will be subject to legal action and arrest by the police. In a bid to limit the damage and reputation of the event, they have since left the town!

No wonder Oprah Winfrey must have genuinely concerned about all these events going on in swift succession which must have been really chaotic for anyone, who is not aware of the intricacies of the Indian social fabric, which, more than anything else, define the electoral politics of India.

Clearly it is bad timing. It is not sure if the organisers of the festival, who must be well aware of the issues and sensitivities of the vote bank politics of India, which vie for the Muslim votes in any election or the election commission which decided on an earlier than usual timing for elections in five states, needs to be blamed!

Once again, India’s image as a progressive and free democracy has been tarnished by politicising a serious literary event the nation should be very proud to host. The presence and participation of several literary celebrities and distinguished guests demonstrate the status of the event. Celebrities from Michael Ondaatje to Fatima Bhuto who partake in the festival must be disappointed at the turn of events which mar the occasion.

However, the renewed demand to lift the ban on the novel of Rushdie which the chaotic events have spurred as an outcome of the whole episode as well as the decision by Rushdie to address the festival through video conference must offer some consolation to everyone for who free speech is as vital as free air!

Article first published in TECHNORATI as http://technorati.com/politics/article/isnt-it-a-real-shame-salman/

Is The Vodafone Judgement A Signal India Is Ready To Play Ball?

2012-01-22T06:32:00.000Z

While India’s underbelly, its cricket pride, is being battered around the world, it looks like its judiciary thinks it is time to play ball. The Supreme Court has ruled that the $2.2 billion claim of the Indian tax department on Vodafone for the purchase of shares from Hutchinson is illegal. It has taken the judges of the Supreme Court to see that India needs to play fair to claim its position among the G20.

No doubt, the remaining ‘five star’ communists of India and its available polit buro in Delhi, will see this as an overture by Indian judiciary, even a gross capitulation, to the American Imperialism. However its cautious secretary, Prakash Karat is likely to stay clear of any comments against the judgement as it can be construed as contempt of court in India for which he can be locked up in the infamous Tihar Jail which already holds a number of Indian politicians.

The credibility of India, as a democratic nation ripe and mature for free market and holding out huge potential for growth, which attracted massive inflow of western capital in recent years, was going for a toss, abetted by all kinds of obstructionist and partisan politics as well as sporadic vigilante activism.

In fact one of the Supreme Court judges who qualified the tax as “Capital Punishment”, an act against capitalism. The demand for $2.2 billion in capital gains tax "would amount to imposing capital punishment for capital investment since it lacks authority of law...," K.S. Radhakrishnan, one of the three judges ruling on the case, said in his order.

It looks like, fortunately for India, its judiciary, the only democratic institution with power to arbitrate on contentious political issues, has come to realise that it is time for India to behave like a true G20 nation to lay its claim to a seat.

Despite the moral aspect of the case, arising out of the fact that the case related to taxing a deal between two foreign multinationals which operated and generated the capital gain over operations in the Indian soil, and previous judgement by the lower courts and by itself against Vodafone, the Supreme Court has chosen to arrest the damage to the reputation of India as a safe destination for foreign capital.

Can this be taken as a sign that doing business in India is entirely safe for foreign companies? The truth is that India, which has only seen a series of set backs to its growth in the past year and faced with huge budget deficit, has no choice but to aggressively attract foreign capital.

For the political movements which prefer to drive looking in the rear mirror, like that of Prakash Karat, it is time to stop over and consult their road maps like the political redefining of ideology he has recently published.

For the Indian leadership which in fact realised that this is only way out, from the days when India went nearly bankrupt from its socialist agenda of four decades, in the late nineties, it is a matter of continuing the reforms it has initiated and taking the fast lane to progress.

Article first published in TECHNORATI as http://technorati.com/business/article/is-the-vodafone-judgement-a-signal/

Can India Really Block Google And Facebook Without Banning Candles?

2012-01-17T10:36:00.002Z

The simple answer, like in the case of China is “yes”. However if the question is, can India afford to take such extreme measures, the answer is likely to be “not really” because, simply put, India is not same as China when democratic values are concerned.

Concerned with the rising and abusive character assassination of the political leaders through morphed images and the dangers of inflammatory posts in a religiously super sensitive nation, the flash points of which the government has to strive very, very hard to keep from exploding, the Indian government and now the Indian judiciary have warned the Internet giants that they need to act.

The question is can the internet giants comply and if they will, should the Indian authorities insist on things almost technically impossible on account of the gigantic and growing use of these social media sites?

More importantly, should India be a party to stifling information which the world never know about without the social media like the purported inhumane act of the US army, recently circulated on the social media, inviting strong criticism and appropriate corrective action, perhaps the only way such things can be prevented in the future.

To be fair, though there is no mechanism to judge, detect and thwart offensive material from getting published, both Google and Facebook have built in mechanisms for anyone who may be offended to report such entries and get them officially removed.

Isn’t this how things work in any democratic society including India when it comes to normal media or public expression? In real world no one can be stopped from expressing what he or she feels like. All you can do is to remove such expressions from records and impose appropriate punishment to the offender as per the law of the land.

Then there are “ways” to gag the source of information like the ways adopted to silence Julian Assange and financially destroy his Wikileaks, at least for now, by the very nations where the social media was borne and developed in to the mass platforms of expression, characterising the 21^st century human evolution.

In fairness, the Indian authorities are not likely to initiate any stringent action, as was demonstrated in the case of banning of Blackberry in India. For one thing, procedures, especially implementation of law, with several layers of appeal, do take outrageously long in India, where time is the healer in many cases.

What the government is concerned about is its image, which is being unjustifiably tarnished by all kinds of unproven accusations, which gets magnified in the social media. The solution, rather than the uncharacteristic oppressive measures India cannot afford to take like the autocratic China, lies in the political and intellectual evolution of the Indian society, which is relatively young, educated and bestowed with discerning ability.

Chances are, any such action to block either Google or Facebook by the government will be high jacked by the issues starved political opposition, to campaign for the vote bank of urban youth, by organising, for sure, candle light vigils, like the recent trend in India. All Google and Facebook need to offer will be free candles for each new status update or post!

Article first published in TECHNORATI as http://technorati.com/blogging/article/can-india-really-block-google-and/

The Joy Of Eco Love And Living Your Dream Is More Widespread Than You Think.

2012-01-14T16:45:00.000Z

The Channe4 show, Grand Designs, in which TV presenter Kevin McCloud follows some of Britain's most ambitious self-building projects, as intrepid individuals attempt to design and construct the home of their dreams, is exciting as the episodes depict how the almost impossible dreams of people somehow materialise. But one always wondered if the price in terms of the financial, physical and psychological struggle was worth it.

That was why when one of my close friends and colleague told me a few years back that he and his wife too were excited and serious about living their eco friendly dream and were relocating to France, I didn’t realise how serious he was. I always thought the dare devils who become celebrities on the TV were always a minority who you don’t meet in real life but, Les and Christine Sheldon really proved me wrong.

In fact it was another close friend Salim, thousands of miles away in India, who dreamt and realised his dream of building an eco friendly home in his ancestral land, strewn with teak and rosewood trees hundreds of years old, who proved to me that the art of living for Eco Love is not restricted to the western world and is more universal than one would have thought.

While the Sheldons had to go through the rigors of moving lock stock and barrel across the channel and hunting, finding and developing a dilapidated property in a village with hardly 30 inhabitants, in reality a harrowing experience not much different from the episodes you watch on the television, my friend Salim had to wait till his retirement to eventually find the time to realise his dream home and had to struggle no less, albeit for different reasons.

As it happened, Les had to dig as deep in to the ground to build his swimming pool as he had to climb to repair his crumbling roof and of course do all the hard labour of renovating the in interiors to convert to modern habitable rooms which he lets out as well as landscape the wonderful garden space he and his guests surely enjoy.

Salim, on the other hand had to get his tiles seasoned under rain and sun for a couple of years to get that antique feel for his new roof so that it doesn’t stand out under the shade of the old trees and surrounding greenery, small change in comparison to the task of supervising and managing a horde of unskilled labour he could muster locally.

Nevertheless, looking at what they have achieved, I must admit that perhaps the joy people derive from pain and hassle they go through to fulfil their desire to go back to the nature and find harmony with it is greater than what they derive from achieving more material things in life.

While modernising, rebuilding and developing your home is nothing new and in many cases something you can’t avoid, if you love nature and give that love to your project, the whole process can be a rewarding experience, like more and more people are finding out.

Article first published in TECHNORATI as http://technorati.com/lifestyle/green/article/the-joy-of-eco-love-and/

What Makes Even The Russians Go On A Pilgrimage To Sabarimala?

2012-01-05T07:33:00.000Z

Though it is a gross exaggeration to call the recent visit of twelve Russians to Sabarimala the ultimate capitulation of Marxism Leninism to the Indian Mythology, the event has opened a rare and unique travel experience to people from all over the world who seeks exotic adventure of a different kind.

If you are not a woman under menopausal age and if you are willing to do a spiritual penance for 41 days, abstain from eating meat and enjoying sex in your thoughts and life, let your hair and beard grow uncut and lead a Spartan existence, then you can venture in to this life changing trip to Sabarimala which more than 50 million Indians of all religions already make every year!

For the team of Russians from Moscow led by Induchoodan, who has made this trip more than fifteen times and who practices Ayurveda, the ancient Indian system of medicine, this unique pilgrimage to Sabarimala has probably come to mean what it does for millions of Indians:

A spiritual journey riddled with mortal dangers the arduous preparation for which require sacrifice of comforts and self purification, an atonement which render you the strength and support to face difficulties of everyday life, an enjoyable way to gain the inner peace and joy only attained through much harder practice of yoga prescribed by the Hindu religion.

Sabarimala is a hard to reach hill amidst the lush forests of the western ghats of Southern India, which finds its mention in the several thousand years old Indian Epic Ramayana. It was approachable, until recently, only by arduous trekking through thick forest and hilly terrain for fifty kilometres.

For the people of central Kerala, the annual pilgrimage to the temple in Sabarimala dedicated to Lord Ayyappan, an amalgam of ultimate preserving and destructive powers as per the Hindu Mythology, had been a part of social and religious life, a communal and harmonising influence, for several centuries. A number of celebrities and high profile personalities who made the pilgrimage in the recent past have spread the unique pilgrimage experience to the rest of India, with explosive growth in the numbers of people who make the visit every year.

Even if you are not of the physical type who enjoy trekking in difficult terrain or are not inclined spiritually to undertake the rigours of the pilgrimage, the Sabarimala season from November to January in Kerala offer an abundance of opportunities related to the pilgrimage to make your trip enjoyable in different ways.

Delving in to the legend of Lord Ayyappan and the history of the region and the practice of worship which evolved with Buddhist and Hindu influences, the wonderful ecology of the region, the social fabric of Kerala with rare harmony of religions and conflicting political views can all add to your experience.

An abundance of information of the world’s largest pilgrimage awaits every traveller, with a quest as the ancient Chinese travellers, who visited the region and wrote about the pilgrimage had. The Russians have just rediscovered Sabarimala in the new millennium.

Article first Published on TECHNORATI as http://technorati.com/lifestyle/travel/article/what-makes-even-the-russians-go/

While it's Raining Cats and Dogs in Chennai, it's Time to Visit Chennai Margazhi

2011-12-31T15:21:00.001Z

A raging cyclone is crossing the Indian peninsula causing havoc and rain but that is no reason to miss a visit to the world’s only city with a season dedicated to music and dance. The Margazhi festival of Chennai in southern India is a unique opportunity to fill your holiday with an enchanting glimpse in to the rich culture, tradition and food of India.

Margazhi is a month in the Indian Tamil calendar covering December and January. But it is getting to be more associated with the unique carnatic music and dance festival being held in the city of Chennai since decades and evoke nostalgic and romantic feeling in many people, especially among the expatriates who wait for a whole year, yearning for an annual visit.

The best thing about the Margazhi festival is that each day is filled with many musical and dance events in several venues till late night most of which are absolute free with no tickets or entrance fees. The festival aims to promote talent and give an opportunity for the artists to perform in public attracting both professional and amateur practitioners of the arts from around the world.

If you are after a relaxing and fulfilling holiday, it is indeed great fun to hop in and listen to some invigorating music in the mid morning, spend some time on the beach or enjoy some really ethnic food, do some browsing or shopping for exotic jewellery or clothing in the afternoon and then return for more enjoyment of some exhilarating dance in the evening. You can do all of these in any order you like for several days non-stop if you wish.

The festival is in fact an amazing panorama of true Indian culture you can only remotely sense in the hype of “Incredible India”. The artistic intensity of vocal Carnatic and Hindustani music, exotic instruments and solo performances, and riveting dance performances by lone exponents and groups will leave indelible tracks on your memories to take home, unlike a normal holiday you will soon forget about.

What makes it even more interesting is the availability of really ethnic food at many venues during the season, which is normally served only in private homely functions,

thanks to the month of Margazhi, considered inauspicious for marriages and other functions. For connoisseurs, this wonderful treat for the palette is an added attraction of the festival pampering all of your senses.

If you seriously want a rejuvenating break and don’t know how to get that well deserved tranquilising change away from your world, then Margazhi in Chennai may be what you may be looking for.

Article first published in Technorati as http://technorati.com/lifestyle/travel/article/while-its-raining-cats-and-dogs/

Is The Death Of The Lokpal Good Riddance To Bad Rubbish In Indian Democracy?

2011-12-30T16:34:00.000Z

At last everyone can take a sigh of relief; democracy is safe, at least for now. The much debated Lokpal Bill has been literally, in fact actually torn up in the Indian Parliament! The Lokpal Bill was put to sleep at midnight.

Despite all the flak she is taking for her seemingly flip flop attitude to her coalition partnership of the UPA government, Mamta Banerjee, the maverick of Indian politics, must be credited with saving democracy in India this time around.

The Lokpal Bill is a piece of Indian Legislation, which no one in the right thinking mind ever wanted though it has been mooted forty years back as an antidote to corruption in India. Though the resistance to the Lokpal had more to do with the prevailing corrupt political process in the past, for the modern Indian politicians, much evolved, an idea of a super cop to look over the democratic institutions rang the danger bell, just in time.

The process of Lokpal, which went on for the best part of the year stalling important policy decision making by the government and progress of the country, smacked of an Indian merry go around with:

Team Anna putting a gun on Man Mohan Singh’s government insisting a bill be passed before the end of the year,

The government desperately trying to get the parties on board and enact the Lokpal Bill

The politicians pulling the carpet under the feet of Anna Hazare, who they fear to confront directly, by raising objections and hurdles for passing the Lokpal legislation.

What broke the fun was the objection Mamta Banerjee raised to a clause permitting the central government to enact anti corruption laws for the states, a promise extracted by Anna Hazare from a parliament under duress which it has no power to deliver.

In reality the real corruption Anna Hazare is fighting against happen in the domain of the states over which the central government has no control. The reasons for corruption is the lack of infrastructure and equal opportunities for education, healthcare and housing, amplified in the cities by huge difference in the wages of private and public sector caused by massive foreign money inflow. The rural India comprising of 90 % of Indians don't even know who Anna Hazare is and don't care.

Though the attempt to pass a bill in the Indian parliament failed eight times before and the recent episode appeared more chaotic than ever, in fact it has proved the strength of the democratic process yet again and why democracy has survived in India when it failed in the neighbouring countries.

The Lokpal, a totally unworkable idea which went against all the checks and balances enshrined in the Indian constitution, was born out of the frustrations of an upward moving urban society and imposed totally under pressure on a government which believe more in accommodation and inclusive politics than confrontation.

While the wind of democracy was sweeping dictatorships around the world, no where democracy was being thrown away for dictatorship like in India by candles and text messages by a generation, pampered by massive inflow of easy foreign investment, which has no idea of the struggle of their grant parents to win the freedom they have taken for granted.

What the people of India should ask themselves is why, after 60 yrs of Independence, they vote based on caste, religion and every other stupid and selfish interest other than honesty, ability and progress of the country. Don't blame the government which can’t control the representatives you vote for.

Article irst published in Technorati.com as http://technorati.com/politics/article/is-the-death-of-the-lokpal/

Another Acid Test For Democracy.

2011-12-24T06:58:00.000Z

Barely noticed by the world, yesterday was an important day for democracy!

The world’s biggest democracy, which came under the threat of being usurped by populist and anarchists, aided by the frustrations of an urban middle class and hyped by eyeballs hungry media, showed the first signs of its inherent parliamentary strength and democratic will to fight back. After the cool breeze of Arab Spring, the tabling of the Lokpal bill in the Indian parliament turned out to be a respite for democracy shaken by the tremors of a harsh Indian summer!

In a year widely reckoned as a year of Gandhian struggle, the Anna Hazare movement of 2011, which had all the trappings of a Gandhian agitation, turned out to be testing time for democratic values and process in India. Totally un-Gandhian, the agitation had the harsh and moralistic premise of being able to stop corruption by punishing and sending the corrupt to the jail and not by finding and eliminating the causes in the first place. Anna and his coterie dictated and insisted that it is the only way, even if it meant destabilising the nation’s democratic process and established law and order set up and paving way to oligarchy and anarchy by appointing an all powerful Lokpal as per their terms.

The Indian parliament representing 1.3 billion voters and comprising of 543 elected members was brought to its knees in the summer by Anna Hazare and a combine of self proclaimed moralists demanding an ombudsman with powers to punish corrupt politicians, judiciary and civil servants, effectively a super cop to oversee the three pillars of democracy. They were able to do this by stage managing a fast by Anna Hazare, carefully choosing a festive weekend when thousands of city dwellers, frustrated by the widely media hyped 2 g scam and outsiders transported by extreme religious groups were drawn to the event in a show of support. A government, already weakened by accusation of corruption by a coalition partner and repeated stalling tactic of the opposition in the parliament simply chose the path of non confrontation, by accepting the demand to pass a bill in the winter session

However, the parliament has regained its senses and collective wisdom about the need, usefulness and consequences and above all the practicality of appointing a Lokpal as, hitherto silent members have expressed their views on tabling of a bill by the government.

That, the government was determined and was able to table a bill despite the repeated insinuations and threats of agitation by the Anna Hazare team, the efforts for which were started forty years back, in itself is proof that the democratic government can function under pressure and duress.

That, the Indian parliament is able to resist the intimidation by unelected moralists and orchestrated populism and can openly and bravely question the infringement of its democratic rights and duties is a lot more heartening to anyone who can’t breathe in anything but a democratic society.

Article first published on Technorati.com as http://technorati.com/politics/article/another-acid-test-for-democracy1/