I have been gleaning/ watching a lot of election analysis since yesterday - and have some interesting bits to report. To start with the blogging world, GreatBong is bang on target when he says:  ...but the Mandir issue is just too 90s, like the Spice Girls, to have any further resonance A lot of people I know ... dislike the Congress for their pandering and for their neglect of the urban middle class. They are aware of the Congress’s dismal record on urban violence. They are attracted to the BJP’s more solid commitment to policies (as opposed to handouts) of relevance to urban India, at least in comparison to the Congress. The only thing that prevents them from putting their stamp on the lotus has been the radical hard Right section of the party. Vajpayee, with his demeanor as a statesman and a moderate, was a master at bringing this section over to the BJP. L K Advani in contrast totally dropped the ball and pushed these “undecided but Right leaning” right into the Congress lap.  Tru

Check out http://www.hindustantimes.com/election09/Map.aspx# Presenting information well is an art - and HT has done a good job here. For more on effective communication of complex information, check this out: http://extremepresentation.typepad.com/blog/2006/10/36_slides_that_.html

Forenote : Apologies for sounding so crass in this post - its a rant, so guess its ok. But if it bothers you to read - don't! 1. Changing one's name on a social network to some cryptic text/phrase In the days of yore (read:2005-7) when social networks like Orkut did not have the facility of setting your status, many people changed their display names to reflect their status such as "got married", "now in Pune" etc. Now that all social networks provide a "status" field, I don't think people need to continue to change their display names - yet, so many of them do!  Again, while most are sensible to append these messages after their names, some people completely replace their names with the message. Coupled with the fact that such people often use a cartoon or random image as their profile photo, it becomes impossible to determine the person's identify even when you visit their profile. And with some who have peculiar email IDs such as arbit-d

I saw two movies today- Pride and Glory Road - coincidentally both of them focus on how the sportsmen overcame racial challenges.  While Pride focuses on a black swimming team from Philadelphia rising above competition and winning under guidance of a black coach; Glory Road is about a underdog basketball team from Texas (comprising of both blacks and whites) beating the champions Kentucky in national championship in spite of all hardships. While the coach in Glory Road ,  Don Haskins is not black himself - the story revolves round the racial undercurrents that he has to struggle against to retain the proportion of blacks in his team (7:5) and the repeated sabotage attempts that the team members have to face. Pride is more about how coach Jim Ellis must fight not only racism, but also protect his swimmers - most of them from poor background - from social evils which surround them. Both movies go a long way to tell the tale of how America as a nation has had to fight a long battle wi

Seriously - national television is too bankrupt of good reporting - as I type this they are debating on IBN 7 whether or not Ajmal Kasab has a right to use a toothpaste and deodorant while in Jail!  However, reporting standards of national TV apart - I have had a lot of my friends and colleagues believing that there is no point waiting for a trial for Ajmal Kasab , leave alone granting him a lawyer - he should simply be convicted of his crimes.  Their argument is that everyone has seen Kasab - on CCTV's - more so he has been caught on the spot and so there is nothing left to prove in a court of law, nothing left to defend for the lawyer - so why the lawyer and why the trial? Simply execute him of the charges!! The recent debate on his age too is incomprehensible to most - how does it matter if he was 17 or 18 - he is guilty, he should be executed. Well I am not a lawyer - but a student of logic and I believe that we are all making the mistake of assuming that a court is need

" The time for lighting candles at Wagah border has long since passed " - quips Veer Sanghvi in his latest article in the Hindustan Times. He argues that we now need to shun our 'friendly neighbour policy' towards Pakistan and embrace the military attitude of "hit back every time we are attacked".  Veer is correct from the Indian perspective - with the Taliban hovering on the borders of Islamabad - the Military and government have lost control of the country and we are soon going to deal with a loose group of multipolar infidels in our neighbourhood who neither understand nor heed 'international policy and neighbourly ties'.  However, looking beyond the limited view of India - Pakistan is a democratic experiment which the world cannot afford to fail.  In the multicultural word today, International politics is more like politics in a democracy - while the rich and powerful rule the roost, minorities and weaker sections also have their say. A majority

Its been 8 months since I got the delivery of my Car (on August 7th, 2008); I recently clocked the 10001st kilometer on the road in my car.  A couple of days before that, I clocked 9337 kilometers - so what's so special with that. Just that my registration number also happens to be 9337 and I was fortunate to notice the meter when it turned to 9337.      My experience with driving my own car has been great till now - the machine - Maruti WagonR Duo runs pretty cool. Except for a little lack of pick up at high speeds, the LGP engine works just like Petrol hile saving money and of course environment as well.  I have done 2 Pune trips, 1 Lonavla drive, 1 trip to Daman and numerous trips to the Palm beach road and South Mumbai - trust me having your own car to drive around gives you a feeling of freedom - Iyamlouvingyit ...  Here are some snaps of my Lonavla trip with friends (way back in September). [Click the images below to get enlarged Flickr versions] The Mumbai-Pune Expressway

I had visited Chroma in Pheonix Mills Lower Parel a couple of days back - the Nano was on display there. I clicked a few snaps with the little celebrity :-)  Here are some of them. [Just in case the snaps interest you  - today is the last date to book the Nano]

Those of you who have not seen this video   from a popular reality show in the UK - "Britian's Got Talent" should watch it. This video in a short span has become the second most watched YouTube video of all time with 100 million hits already over a weekend, and will soon become number 1 when it crosses 118 million mark. And don't watch it completely at one go - first watch the first minute of the video; pause it and contemplate what the rest of it is going to be; and then watch the rest! Done it!! (No? Then watch it first ... don't read the rest of this post) I bet you can't say you knew this would happen! In the first one minute, no one would expect that Susan Boyle would sing like a canary in the next 5 minutes.  It goes on miles to say about how much our appearances affect our perception of people. This is what Malcom Gladwell has argued in his book blink that we often base our decisions on 'perceptions' - which is why you are more likely to find a

Continued from here . Though Bhopal's claim to fame in bollywood remains the character of Soorma Bhopali potrayed by Jagdeep in Sholay, recently Bhopal has been the shoot location for a few bollywood movies . Prakash Jha who is shooting Rajneeti in Bhopal , said : "... he had come to Bhopal for the first time in 1997 for the promotion of his film Mrityudand which featured Madhuri Dixit, Om Puri and Ayub Khan [and] was impressed by the beauty of the city even then and decided to return to the city to shoot his next film.  Jha said Bhopal now has big hotels and good approach roads and that in the coming days, he may shoot at other locations in Madhya Pradesh." The point here was not to highlight the bollywood connection (of which there are many ... ), but to highlight that praise for Bhopal's infrastructure is not limited to commited Bhopalites like me :-). A quick peek at Bhopal's Wikipedia page would tell you that Bhopal is a promising city - for example the I