France's brush with ISIS has lessons for India

There is profound alienation among the Muslims in France and the ISIS attracts followers in such a milieu.

Today’s India, in the Narendra Modi era, has a great deal to learn from France. Alienation exists in many regions of India in many forms.

The tragic happenings in Jammu and Kashmir should be an eye-opener.

When people revolt against State coercion, the nadir is reached.

Intolerance toward the minority communities or attempts to humiliate them or the refusal to go the extra league to build an inclusive society -- these are all evident today in our society. Much of it is happening in broad daylight, too.

If the lessons from the tragedy unfolding in France are properly understood, we have no reason to get sleepless nights over ISIS 'modules' and 'sleepers' in our neighborhood and the authorities can firmly and with transparency deal with its traces in India whenever or wherever they show up, if at all, as a freak phenomenon.

Read the complete article by M. K. Bhadrakumar, Former Ambassador to Uzbekistan and Turkey
http://www.rediff.com/news/column/france-brush-with-isis-has-lessons-for-india/20160715.htm

About M.K.Bhadrakumar
M.K.Bhadrakumar served in the Indian Foreign Service for three decades and served as ambassador to Uzbekistan and Turkey. Apart from two postings in the former Soviet Union, his assignments abroad included South Korea, Sri Lanka, West Germany, Kuwait, Pakistan and Afghanistan. He served thrice in the Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan Division in the Ministry of External Affairs, including as the Head of the Division in 1992-95. Mr. Bhadrakumar sought voluntary retirement from the IFS in 2002 and has since devoted himself to writing. He contributes to various publications in India and abroad and is a regular columnist for Asia Times and The Hindu. He has written extensively on Russia, China, Central Asia, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan and on the geopolitics of energy security. He normally resides at Delhi, when not travelling and lecturing abroad.

Negotiating slow internet speeds, the Facebook way

As can be seen from the comparative graph, internet speeds in India are not great. In fact, India lags behind most of the developing Asian countries in terms of average internet speeds offered to their citizens.

Nevertheless, there are few companies who has leveraged this adversity of slow internet speeds and converted this into an opportunity. Facebook is one of those.

Facebook has over 142 million users in India, of which about 133 million access the social media platform through their mobile phones.
Also, about 69 million people in India use Facebook daily, of which 64 million access the platform through their mobile devices.
India is the largest market for Facebook outside of the US. At the end of December 2015, the US-based firm had 1.59 billion monthly active users.

Facebook launched Facebook Lite in June last year. This application was built to use less data and work well despite constrained telecom networks, specially in developing countries. Consuming less than 1 MB space, Facebook Lite supports over 50 languages.

Facebook Lite crossed the 100-million-user base mark globally within nine months of launch.
The growth was led by strong uptake in markets like India where internet speeds are traditionally poor.

Reference:

1) http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Facebook-userbase-crosses-142-million-in-India/articleshow/51330777.cms

2) http://qz.com/725999/facebook-has-a-workaround-for-indias-frustratingly-slow-internet/

George Everest Who?

Sir George Everest was born on July 4, 1770 in Wales and came to India as a cadet in the Bengal artillery in 1806.

In December 1834, he bought an estate called the Park near Hathipaon in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, India, where he built his office and residence. The house is known today as Sir George Everest's House and Laboratory, or Park House. The house is situated in Park Estate about 6 kilometres (4 mi) west of Gandhi Chowk / Library Bazaar, (the west end of Mall Road in Mussoorie).

He was largely responsible for completing the section of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. In other words, he drew the map from South India extending north all the way to Nepal, a distance of 2,400 km.

Mount Everest is named after Sir George.

Everest retired in 1843 and he returned to the UK, where he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was dubbed a knight in 1861, and in 1862 he was elected as the vice-president of the Royal Geographical Society. Everest died in London in 1866 and is buried in St Andrew's Church, Hove, near Brighton.

Trial post for Adi

Trial post for Adi

Kunjunni Maash

Latest from Common Floor

Since their inception, Common floor-Apna Complex combo has witnessed and staged quite a good number of nasty wars.
It has been mostly between individuals and individual driven. In a few situations when it became utterly difficult to accomplish the governance of this complex, the community has come forward, united to defeat the defaulting individuals involved so that they were unable to push their agenda.
But this latest of its kind is different, in the sense, it is the first time a small group of individuals as a part of implementing their agenda has resorted to the sophisticated techniques like

1. Infiltrate the decision making body and positions of power. In this case, management committee.
2. Resort to a planned coordinated propaganda campaign in the media(read as email forum) by twisting historical facts and publish it in a manner which is favorable to their agenda.
3. From the positions of power, indulge is subversive acts so that all the opposing elements to their single point agenda is removed from the equation.
4. Run covert campaigns and willful publish of data corrupted to suit their needs.

Leave the individuals or set of individuals who held the forum for ransom to push their agenda, in most cases the agenda being just the pacification of their ego, this new group of sophisticated manipulators are the people whom we should actually be worried about.

Why?

Because what is happening here is a true reflection in a microscopic manner of, what is happening in our country in general. Small groups with agenda and ideology has been making rapid progress in using new age media successfully in propagating their ideology in the garb of progress and development. The infiltration of these groups in all the walks of life is almost complete.

(To be continued........)

Analysing the influences

One of the funniest and catchy dialogues in the movie "Gangs of Wasseypur" was from the character Ramadhir Singh.

Ramadhir Singh: Hum abhi tak jinda hain kyunki hum sanimaa nahi dekhte.
Sab saale sabke dimaag me apni apni picture chal rahi hai, sab saale hero banna chah rahein apni picture me.
Ee saala Hindustan mein jab tak sanimaa hai, log chutiya bante rahenge.

(English Translation)
Ramadhir Singh: I have outlived all my enemies till now because I don't watch films.
Everybody's mind is corrupted because of films, everyone wants to be a hero.
For as long as there is cinema in our country, people will be fooled.

Kalki Koechlin

I remember reading an article by Kalki Koechlin in Tehelka a few years back. It mentioned how, when all of 6 years old, she ran away(actually, decided to run away) from her house after a tiff with her parents. After abandoning the running away plan and while coming back, she was picturing everything in her mind like mother running towards her tearfully, father putting down the phone in which he was calling police and hurrying to wrap her in a blanket, all in slow motion.

 However, the reality was different. As soon as she stepped in the house what she was got an earful of scolding for playing out in the rain and a slap for breaking her lunchbox. Kalki's article talks about, as adults how we tend to take ourselves very seriously and get caught up in the moment. We conjure up filmy condolences, music score and all, to satisfy our emotional outbursts. We tend to imagine ourselves as hero or heroines of the movies.
Now that sounds very similar to Ramadhir Singh's view point!

Kalki Koechlin with Anurag Kashyap

So, who is Ramadhir Singh?
Ramadhir Singh is a character in the movie created by Anurag Kashyap.
Anurag Kashyap is a famous Bollywood movie director.
Anurag Kashyap is married to Kalki Koechlin.
Now, we know where Anurag Kashyap got the lines for Ramadhir Singh.

Ha ha ha...very amateurish discovery of a well known fact.

But I guess, when a historian finds out the influences in Shakespeare's life which made him create the classics, it makes stuff for Phd thesis, isn't it?

Victoria's Tears

2013 Australian Open produced some incredible performances in both mens and women section. It produced some truly emotional moments, the HD transmissions accentuating every bit of those human drama.

In the women's final there was 23 year old Victoria Azarenka battling 31 year old Li Na who rediscovered her winning ways midway through the tournament and became the overwhelming crowd favorite. Coming into finals under a cloud of allegations on poor sportsmanship, taking an extended injury time at a crucial moment of her semifinal against the teenaged Sloane Stefens, Azarenka had to battle not just her spirited opponent in best of form but also a partisan crowd booing her at the first opportunity. A tumble in the second set resulting in a concussion and suspected injury won more fans for Li Na casting Victoria deeper into the villain mold.

Then like a true champion, Victoria put her head down, dug deep, shut out the taunts from the crowd and eventually prevailed over her opponent to stake claim on the trophy for second consecutive year. However, winning the final point opened the floodgates of the pent up emotions, Victoria breaking down like a child, wailing, tears streaming. That was one of those moments were we could see a human being laid bare stripped of ego letting go off the suppressed sorrow. The tears were not the tears of joy in winning the contest, but that of victim wrongly accused hearing the verdict absolving her of the crime. The tears were that of anguish and pain of being called a cheat. The tears were that of relief, of coming out clean and a feeling of being accepted back into the fold.

“This is a trophy that she suffered to win, so maybe that explained the tears,’’ said Sam Sumyk, who has coached Azarenka to consecutive Australian Open titles.