Cyril Maithily Gupta's Blog

There was an article in The Hindu today by Arundhati against the movement for Janlokpal, she’s eloquent as usual, and she misses the point, pretty much as usual. In this article I am trying to talk about the points she raised and hopefully when we are done we might have a broader perspective of this movement than what Arundhati has projected.

Arundhati’s most important gripe seems to be that the people in the movement are raising slogans like – (a) Vande Mataram (b) Bharat Mata ki jai (c) India is Anna, Anna is India (d) Jai Hindi. Would she prefer if they said (a) India Hai Hai (b) Indian govt murdabad (c) Jeeve-jeeve Pakistan, when they come out on the streets to demand that the Indian government creates a better system for our people?

She’s lying when she says that the slogans are the answer you get when you ask questions about Janlokpal. The team that’s running Janlokpal has made every attempt to talk to anyone who is concerned about it, and to alleviate all their doubts. For months there was a public referendum on the provisions of Janlokpal, very openly, and lots of provisions were rejected, modified, and adapted according to the inputs of the people. This is a fact, not what Arundhati is saying.

Even now Anna Hazare and his team has announced that they are open to any public debate on Janlokpal and they will answer all the questions that anyone might have on any issue. Yesterday Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan did just that on a popular television network. There are videos of the team members speaking on different aspects of Janlokpal and why we need them that have been online for months.

Arundhati, lie one caught.

Her second claim is that Janlokpal seeks an overthrow of the Indian state. Lying again. For almost an year now the Janlokpal team has been working with the government, with all the members who care, to frame a strong law against corruption. They’ve met the current government leaders, opposition leaders, chief ministers, individual MPs, talking to them, and telling them why the country needs a strong anti-corruption framework. Is that working to overthrow the state?

They sat on a very hostile government panel and tried everything they could to push their proposals forward in the way government wanted them to. After the government panel wasted the nation’s time and failed to include even one, repeat, even one important proposal of the Janlokpal bill, and instead sought to push their own Jokepal which would prosecute the victims instead of the perpetrators, they decided to sit on a dharna asking the government to make a strong bill.

Let me remind Arundhati that this was done in a perfectly legal and non-violent manner, and Anna is asking this administration to implement Janlokpal, not seeking a new government. Are you trying to tell the people of India that demanding a strong anti-corruption framework amounts to overthrowing the government? Let us hear that again more clearly.

Arundhati, lie two caught.

Next she proceeds to tell us that Anna Hazare is a ‘freshly minted saint,’ which should suggest that he has no right to speak against public injustice as apparently, only stale saints are allowed to crusade for India.

Wait a minute though, this freshly minted thing doesn’t sound true at all. Anna Hazare took voluntary retirement from the Army in 1978 and started his campaign to transform Ralegaon Siddhi. All through the next decade he worked hard for the villagers campaigning for things like liquor prohibition, grain banks for the poor, better milk production, creation of more schools (he sat on a fast for this), against untouchability and for collective marriages. In 1991 he started the Bhrashtachar Virodhi Jan Andolan. What was Arundhati doing then? Oh wait, she hadn’t written her first book yet.

Anna Hazare has led many movements against corrupt officials and politicians. Powerful people. People who’ve maligned him, filed false cases against him, and even sent him to jail. He has borne the worst of what the powerful and the corrupt have to offer, unlike Arundhati whose only achievement seems to be making radical statements. It’s a shame that someone like her should call a fighter like Anna a ‘freshly minted saint’.

Arundhati, lie three caught

She is also giving a distorted version of the sequence of events that unfolded during Anna’s stay at the Tihar jail. She’s saying that Anna remained in Tihar as a ‘honored guest’. If you are looking for honored guests Arundhati look for Suresh Kalmadi, Kanimozhi, A Raja, Manu Sharma, or Vikas Yadav, maybe even Afzal Guru. Anna isn’t one of them.

Let me remind you that Anna Hazare was picked up from his residence by the Delhi Police. He hadn’t been on the streets murdering people with a gun the night earlier. He was at Rajghat where he sat for an hour in meditation.

The police sent Anna to Tihar in 7 days judicial custody. To prevent what? A non-violent protest against corruption in India. On 16th August nearly 15,000 people of New Delhi and Mumbai courted arrest. They went to JP Park, Azad Maidan, or whatever the venue was in their city, asking the police to arrest them. They did not burn buses, break glasses, or set fire to homes. I have a photograph of the special jail at Chhatrasal Stadium for you here.

The government was counting on their belief that no one would come ahead for Anna, and that they would be able to dispose him the way they disposed Baba Ramdev. Unfortunately for them the people of India had had enough. Anna was made an ‘honored guest’ in your words because of all the people who were in the jail, and outside the jail for him.

Why didn’t Anna come out? Because he was asked to (a) go home, (b) leave town. When Anna Hazare asked whether he would be allowed to hold an unconditional protest the Delhi police refused. Anna said that if they release him he would lead the protest and they would have to arrest him again, so it’s better that he remain in jail until the government agrees to let him protest.

Usually when a protest is organized, the people who run the protest have enough time to make preparations. There has to be enough room, and proper arrangements to make sure that the thousands collected are managed properly and without harm. If Anna had gone to the protest before the arrangements were made it could have resulted in utter chaos that might have had serious repercussions for the people gathered. Do you realize that Arundhati?

She also said that Anna’s team whizzed in-and-out of prison and it is a privilege that no one else has. Anna’s team came out when the individuals chose to be released, and when Anna refused to budge Kiran Bedi and other team members were invited by the government to try and negotiate with Anna. How does that compare to Kalmadi having a nice tea-biscuit brunch with the Warden a few days ago? Or Manu Sharma being surreptitiously paroled? Did you hear about them at all?

Arundhati, lie four caught.

Her next claim is that MCD worked hard to prepare the grounds. Is that right? I will bet anybody that Arundhati didn’t go to the grounds to inspect the preparations, and she’s talking out of her head again. I went to the ground and saw the state it was in. Here is a photograph for you Arundhati. Do you see the MCD here? Or do you see young people who are rushing to clean the wet mud, trying desperately but in union, to make the place better than a pigsty so that the people could stand.

Even if they weren’t, and even if MCD had sent all their workers to prepare the grounds for Anna Hazare’s protest, would there still be a reason to complain? What MCD did there was its job. The Ramlila Ground is supposed to be maintained by the MCD for massive gatherings. When MCD doesn’t do its job and the grounds is water-logged and mosquito infested, it creates a serious health hazard for everyone who’s there. MCD prepares the grounds for all public protests too. It did the same for Sonia Gandhi’s rally just a few months ago. Arundhati, you want the MCD to not do its job because this protest is not organized by a political party?

Arundhati, lie five caught.

She’s upset that the Lokpal has wide-ranging powers of investigation, surveillance and prosecution, and then she uses her amazing writing skills to suggest that Lokpal will practically have everything except their ‘own prisons’. I am on the verge of losing my breakfast!

Arundhati, one would expect someone who questions the Indian legal system so openly to have better knowledge about it. The police has the powers of (a) investigation, (b) surveillance, and (c) prosecution. So does the CBI. How are Lokpal’s power different? The only thing that Anna is asking for is that the Lokpal be a specialized body against corruption and that it must not need to seek permission from anybody to prosecute a corrupt office holder. Our present system puts severe restrictions on the investigative bodies. That’s why a CBI under the prime minister could not file a charge-sheet against A Raja, but when the supreme court took over the investigations A Raja was brought to jail.

Arundhati, I know that you knowingly did not make the point that the powers of Lokpal are limited to investigation, collection of evidence and prosecution. The Lokpal can bring a case to the court, and the judge will then decide on the basis of the presented evidence whether the person is guilty. How is that radically dangerous?

Arundhati, lie six caught.

It’s really amazing to see how Arundhati Roy can go to ridiculous lengths to fill the reader’s mind with garbage against Janlokpal. If you didn’t know about her problems with the Indian government, you could easily imagine she has been paid by it to write the article. She’s actually suggesting that the hawkers who pay the beat constable to set up their stalls might have to pay the ‘lokpal representative’.

Lokpal representative? Now she can frame those words and hang them on the Red fort for all to see and it still wouldn’t become true. The Lokpal is not a policing body. They can’t go and collect ‘hafta’ from the hawker.

When land-owner’s land is grabbed illegally and a mall is built there, or when a poor person’s store is unjustly removed, or when the beat constables or MCD representatives, or other government agency officials unjustly seek bribes from the people, that is corruption. The Lokpal is built to take care of that.

According to the provisions of the Janlokpal Bill, a citizen can make a complaint against an office holder, and the lokpal will investigate the complaint. If it is found true action will be taken. Lokpal is not going to send beat lokpallers to collect hafta from the poor. That’s downright ridiculous and only a fancy imagination could have conceived it.

Arundhati, lie seven caught.

She also says that the choreography, and aggressive nationalism seems to be like that of anti-reservation. It’s a clear attempt to draw the dalits away from the fight against corruption. And how inappropriate an attempt it is! It is the deprived, the dalits, who have to the bear the worst of corruption. The rich and the influential are filled with upper caste people who can actually use the present system to their advantage because they have money power, influence, and contacts.

The dalits don’t have the same advantages, that’s why when all other things being equal, it is the dalit who stands to lose when they compete with the upper caste. All due to corruption!

Now coming to the choreography. What sort of vague word is that? ‘Choreography’, what are we supposed to understand from it? If she’s talking about the slogans, we’ve already dealt with that. What else could she be talking about?

The anti-reservation protest was fraught with street violence and self-immolations. The people who opposed reservations closed down schools, colleges and offices, burnt buses, had violent clashes with the law, and burnt themselves to death. That hasn’t happened in Anna’s movement. This movement is perfectly peaceful and organized. Even when people are on a march, they stop at the red lights and crossings to let the traffic pass before continuing. What the hell is Arundhati trying to imply with her ‘Choreography’ then?

Arundhati, lie eight caught.

The next bit is very cruel. She craftily tries to separate Irom Sharmila, Bastar, Jaitapur, from the fast and implies by extension that Anna Hazare does not oppose Posco, or the farmer deaths in Maharashtra, or any of the other myriad problems that our country is battling right now. This couldn’t be furthest from truth.

Unlike Arundhati, Anna Hazare has recognized that too many of the problems that our country is facing are a direct result of corruption. That’s why a Madhu Koda is able to earn thousands of crores in graft money directly depriving the adivasis. That’s why Yeduyarappa is able to give illegal miners a free hand. That’s why Bastar and Irom, and Niyamgiri exist. Because of corruption.

If our framework made the responsible people accountable, it would create a huge difference in all of these issues. Imagine a bastar free of poachers, miners and land grabbers, a maharashtra village where the government’s benefits schemes are truly implemented. Forget all the other instances, just imagine what Manrega can really do for the people if it is implemented honestly.

You’ve also claimed that Anna doesn’t care about the farmers in Maharashtra, or in other places, even though he has spent his entire demonstratively in fighting for the poor and deprived villagers and farmers. Maybe you didn’t hear about this because you were too busy hobnobbing with India haters.

Arundhati, I believe that fighting corruption is fighting on behalf of all the people you’ve named, and not against them. If you believe otherwise, give me your reasons.

Arundhati, lie nine caught.

The next slander if of course the ultimate weapon that anyone can hurl at Anna. That he supports Raj Thackarey or Narendra Modi’s alleged wrongdoings. This is a joke, specially in sight of the fact that many of the hardliners aligned with the BJP, the hindu-brigade, and Narendra Modi are up with cudgles against Anna Hazare. They’re making the claim that Anna Hazare is an agent of Congress, propped up by Congress to facilitate the crowning of Rahul Gandhi.

The communists have no love for Hazare, the right wingers have no love for Hazare, and the Congress has no love for Hazare. My God! He must be awesomely right!

Answering your gripe, Anna Hazare has said it publicly multiple times that he is against any oppressive actions targeted against any community and that he supports a system that gives equal rights to all citizens irrespective of their religion.

And if you think you were succeeding in your nefarious scheme to distance the muslims from the movement, you’ve failed. Muslims as a community have lent their support to Anna Hazare in a massive way. Many Imams and Maulavis have made public statements, and the Dar-ul-Uloom, which is the biggest body of Muslims in India has said that it is the duty of every Muslim and citizen of India to support Anna Hazare. If they are wrong, then you must know something that they don’t. Care to share?

You’ve also brought the ‘Youth for equality’ into this. So what if Anna’s movement is supported by the Youth for Equality? It is also supported by the All India Youth Federation. Let me show you a pic of AIYF activists who marched against corruption for Anna. Lest you’ve forgotten the AIYF is the youth wing of the Communist Party of India.

Do you realize that when it comes to this fight against corruption Anna does not choose who supports him. He gratefully accepts their support. Of course he doesn’t give them anything in return except a law that’s strongly against corruption.

That’s why the Gyan Das Akhara of Ayodhya, and Hashim Ansari, the famous anti-temple litigator have jointly expressed support for Anna Hazare. Do you have the courage to rise above your own pettiness?

Arundhati, lie ten caught.

You are also very misinformed, or maybe you choose to present wrong information to the people. You have said that ‘Kabir’ is an NGO run by Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia. Actually Arvind Kejriwal does not run Kabir. He is an executive member because Manish Sisodia is an old associate from Parivartan, but he does not manage it, or intervene in it. It is managed by Manish Sisodia. Arvind Kejriwal’s foundation is the PCRF. They have received no donation from Ford. Their balance sheets are available on their website for public inspection. Have a look at all the money this foundation has.

Arvind started this foundation with 14 lakhs, the money he got with his Magsaysay Award. He used it for public cause and to support RTI in India.

The PCRF maintains complete accounts for the present anti-corruption movement too. Details of all incoming donations are available on the website of India Against Corruption, and expenses are detailed too. You should have a look at that.

The amount Kabir has received as donation from Ford is $200,00 and not $400,000 as you claimed. This is verifyable form the website of the ford foundation (http://www.fordfoundation.org/grants/search). You could have done well to note that this donation has nothing to do with the present movement, but you did not. I will do this for you here. This donation was made in 2011 to Kabir to promote the use of RTI in India, and not to support the India against corruption movement.

Arundhati, lie eleven caught.

You say next that the present bill fails to bring the corporates and the NGOs against the ambit of Lokpal. Does our present legal system allow that? Does our present legal system allow surveillance of the functioning of privately funded NGOs or corporate bodies in the same manner that it allows the surveillance of government organisations? The legal experts have said no, and this is the reason according to the team that they are not proposing this at the present time.

What you’ve forgotten is the fact that it is the government system that’s the worst offender when it comes to corruption, because it allows its misuse by the private sector resulting in the problems you’ve mentioned. There are already checks and systems to prevent and prosecute the wrong-doings of the private sector, but they are compromised because the investigative bodies are in the graft, or their masters are.

If we can make this start by creating a law that forces the government systems to work properly it will undoubtedly lead to better handling of the private sector too. Can you imagine the telecom companies benefiting from 2G the way they did if they didn’t have A Raja working for them? Or the various private companies making huge profits from CWG tenders if Kalmadi and Sheila Dikshit didn’t back them so brazenly?

Anna’s team has given the commitment to keep fighting, to further the cause, and take fresh measures to rid the people of corruption once the Janlokpal bill is in place. By making the Janlokpal bill an excuse to talk about all the different malaise we have you are attempting to short-circuit the anti-corruption drive itself. How is fighting government corruption any less holier than fighting corruption in private organisations?

Arundhati, lie twelve caught.

The only sense you are making is in the last paragraph when you say that Anna’s movement is the result of the failure of the legislature which is filled with criminals and millionaire politicians who have ceased to represent their people. You know, that’s exactly the point that Anna Hazare has been making. Our MPs are totally living in denial of the people’s needs and aspirations. They believe that 9% growth of GDP is an achievement worth having 11% food inflation for. It is their corrupt mindset and disconnect which must be challenged, and that’s exactly what Anna is doing when he mobilizes people in such a massive manner against corruption. The fact is, we should all be thankful to Anna Hazare for reminding the MPs that a democracy is not just made up of the parliament, but also of the people.

Note: This article is copyright free. You can share it wherever you want, you can post it on your fb or twitter profile. You can put it on your blog, even with your own name if you want. You can translate it and use it. You can add to it, trim it. Just don’t change the facts and the purpose. Thank you guys for your overwhelming response.

When I was a child there was a particular image of the media and the journalists who used to bring the news to the people. The image was of an upright, in pressure, yet strong establishment, and the journalists were honest, threatened, yet full of resolve to bring the truth out in the open. Now we all know the truth.

Nobody in India now believes that the media has a single shred of honest blood left in its vein. The people believe that the popular media is in the pay of many different vested interests, and is in full control of the lobbies that are sponsoring them. When we watch the news, or read the papers, or see the coverages on the Internet, it’s clear who a particular media house or reporter is aligned with.

The media too no longer thinks that it is successful in fooling a lot of people, and that’s putting a new kind of pressure on it. The pressure to try and salvage whatever little credibility it thinks it has left.

Frankly, media can get away with almost any bullcrap they choose to present on the television, on print, or radio because there’s no dissenting view, no differing facts, no links to other stories, but online the story is different.

The news website of all media houses now must have a comments box below their news, and if they don’t have it people don’t come back to their sites. The reason is simple, unlike other media sources like the newspaper, radio or even television, the Internet is a medium which encourages people to click and go to a different place if they are not happy with what they see.

That’s why it is consistently proven that those websites which have a free comments box, and let people comment freely are more popular than those websites which do not have a comments box below their news.

Those websites which have a more or less laissez faire policy about the comments attract more visitors, and bring repeat visits. That’s why the media websites are under pressure to let people comment freely, which puts them in an all new kind of pressure too.

Whenever there’s a biased story on the site, scores and sometimes hundreds of dissenting comments appear. A lot of them are just flames, but many present real facts, biting commentary and insightful observations. The comments than invert the very existence of the article, totally reversing what a reader not in the know would carry away from the news.

The web medium then due to its very democratic nature is a bad servant to the political masters of the media slave. It’s a good thing, because the journalists are less prone to write a totally biased news because they know what’s coming.

However there’s another side of it. A lot of the comments are plain flames, many are rumors and many are outright blatant lies. There are racist comments, comments that cross all boundaries of decency and courtesy, and comments that damn the opposition to hell and beyond.

It changes the quality of the news and often the flame wars will shift the focus away from the real issue. Worse than that, sometimes the flame war going on is so offensive that it makes the reader angry, or sick, and may even give rise to feelings of mutual antipathy.

The comments do cancel out offensive and biased news sometimes, but what about the bias they carry? There’s no simple solution; we can only hope that the majority of the people in the democracy are sensible enough to put them out of the way. Of course, that’s the basic premise of democracy: that the majority of the people are smart enough to choose good things.

Now if only it worked as it is advertised.

I love science fiction because it makes fantasies possible. When you read well-written science fiction stories with solid hard science as base, it just seems that one day it could all really happen. Traveling to the stars, finding new realms — it could be within our grasp.

Science fiction presents a vision in which human beings are a citizen of the stars, living on many planets all around the universe, but if there’s one thing I know for a certainty, it’s that there’s no other HOME.

In the whole universe, Earth is the only planet that we can call ours. There is no other world in this universe that will be like Earth for us. No other world can be as hospitable or as comfortable as our lovely HOME.

It’s not about the size or the color temperature of our sun; or about the distance or the inclination of the Earth’s orbit; or even about the gravitational pull and the unique mix of elements.

Earth, life, and our existence is a product of innumerable factors, innumerable random events; manifestations shaped by chance and fortune. It is not just our home, but also the mother which gave birth to our species and civilization. It is the producer and we are the product, perfectly adapted to exist and thrive here.

No other planet no matter how physically similar it is to Earth, or how well it matches its orbit and mass; can be the home that Earth is for us. It cannot support life as we know it. We may live there by engineering the environment but it can never be our home.

Maybe if everyone of us thought about this a little more, and the economy a little less, we could work towards a better existence for humanity in our HOME instead of bigger and bigger GDP.

Earth gave us intelligence, now let’s pray for wisdom.

I read a lot of news, mostly on the Internet, but my family subscribes to three newspapers and I glance at them when I see them around. One of these is Mint, it’s a financial newspaper run in India by the Hindustan Times group. I’ve noticed that Hindustan Times tows the government line on things a lot, and the editorial sometimes looks as if it’s written personally by the representatives of the government of India.

Today on the front page of the newspaper there was a ‘Quick Edit’, on how the falling prices of the Brent Crude Oil were a breather to India, and would presumably help in combating inflation.

As a section of the media is wont to, they used crafty choice of words, and positioning to suggest that the Indian government is doing all that it can to help the people of India. So when they mentioned that the government of India recently raised prices of petrol which contributed to the inflation they prefixed the word ‘reluctantly’, and then they also recommended (is that the editor talking?) that the government does not lower the prices of petrol now even though the crude is falling (though the rationale behind raising the prices was that crude is rising), and make up for the ‘losses’ of the oil companies.

It seems that for these partially blind economy analysts the Indian economy is just the upper middle, and the higher class. Economic reform for them is about preserving the ‘growth rate’, and reporting increase in profits of big corporations year after year.

They go into a panic when they report that the stock market fell 400 points, but they seem to think that the rampant corruption in implementation of welfare schemes like MANREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee), is a part of the process that can be reported on the 3rd page when something really awful happens.

These is the kind of thinking that has brought the western economy to the brink and put the entire world in peril. You can ignore the deprived class at your own peril, and only for a short while. If you keep trying to do that what you get are things like the French Revolution. The world should take note of the rioting in London, and start thinking differently about the economy.

The corporate lobbyists are suggesting measures like cutting bank rates to give the economy a stimulus. without a corresponding cut in petrol prices this is going to make the already horrifying inflation rate even more monstrous.

I wonder if there’s a Neera Radia like troll helping the newspaper editors write their news this time round too?

A few days ago I promised to create a free application that would post your Google+ updates to Facebook and Twitter. It’s online now at netvaniplus.netvani.com.

Netvani+ Posts your Google+ update to Facebook and Twitter
Netvani+ (http://netvaniplus.netvani.com), is a new online service to send your Google+ updates to your twitter and facebook accounts automatically.

This online service uses OAuth 2 to authenticate your Google account, your facebook account, and your twitter account, and then it scans your Google+ profile page periodically to discover new public posts that you might have written. When it finds a new public posts it posts them immediately to your twitter and facebook accounts with a link to the original post on Google+.

Some features:
Post to Twitter, Facebook, or both
Delete any account any time
Choose too post all new updates, or only those that carry the hashtag #netvani+
Choose to submit only the new latest, or up to 3 new posts automatically

This Google+ posting service works on all browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.), on all versions.

Security & Privacy
Security and Privacy are very important things that you need to keep in mind when you go online on a social network or share your information online.

Netvani+ uses OAuth2 which is a secure way of signing up with websites online without sharing your password or sensitive information. You can delete the OAuth access token associated with your account from within Netvani+ itself, or within twitter or facebook.

Netvani+ does not record any information that’s not vital to providing the service.

How does it work
Netvani+ works by constantly scanning your profile page for new updates using HTTP, and then posting it online to facebook and twitter using OAuth. There is no Google+ API right now, and Google+ is constantly changing, so I expect there will be some changes as we go along.

What will come later
I hope to give you an RSS/Atom feed of your latest updates very soon, and refine the service as we go.

Your suggestions and bug finds are important. You can mail me at cyrilgupta@gmail if you discover something.

The service is fully open right now, and I haven’t assigned any limits or invitation requirements. I only launched it today, so if there are unforeseen bugs, I am looking forward to the reports.

Thanks for reading and sharing.

If there are any questions about this service, technical or otherwise, I will be glad to answer.

Here’s my analysis of some ‘pretty good reasons’ that makes Facebook thing Google+ won’t beat them. See the light…

1. This is all Facebook does – Well, before Facebook arrived on scene, that’s what all Friendster did. It’s not about who has specialization in what, but who has the more compelling idea. The more I think about the Google+ proposition the more I think it’s pretty compelling in comparison to what Facebook offers.

I guess the story is about trust. Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, Orkut made people more receptive to the concept of a public life. So you’ll notice that each successive iteration of the social network has less emphasis on privacy. Friendster was all private, Twitter is all public, and Facebook gives you an option, but seriously how many people in our Facebook friends list are people we are really friends with?

2. People don’t want to manage groups – I don’t even get this. Facebook has lists, twitter has lists, Google has circles. I think private lists are better than public ones because it allows the user to have some sense of honesty about the relationship. In Facebook you really can’t put people in a group called ‘Someone I hardly know’, and hope to progress with the relationship.

So well, private lists/groups/circles are a feature that I’ve found use for, and I am certain many have too.

3. Group Video chat is a corner case – Well… The smallest group size is 2, in case we didn’t realize that. Group chat can be used by two people just as well as 10. It’s not a limitation, but an extension. I don’t know why Facebook feels this is a problem if I can invite some more people to a conversation.

4. Everybody’s on Facebook already – It’s a good point, but it represents friction, not a barrier. People will be slower, and will take longer to move, but ultimately the herd will go where the leaders go. If Facebook wants to retain its majority by a margin I think it should be forgetting about its lead and focusing on creating cool features that users will love.

Zuckerberg said separately that it’s about connecting apps, makes a lot of sense. Facebook is indeed one of the most popular platforms, but they haven’t been terribly good at making it developer friendly. The API documentation is poor, and liable to change. There are many limitations which restrict the developer. Most of them due to privacy issues.

It’ll be interesting to see how Google deals with its API. Till now judging from the other APIs for other Google products I’ve seen that they usually make things quite open and put give control over privacy issues to the app user (as it should be). If Google gets the mix right, and is able to closely integrate other solutions like Youtube, Reader, and Picasa, then it will have an offer that can give Facebook nightmares.

My newest venture, that I am still working on by the way, is Netvani.com. This is a social networking management and monitoring tool that makes managing the presence on social networks easier for businesses.

The Social Internet is till uncharted territory for businesses, and even big businesses with big budgets are having trouble coping with the unique demands of the social web. A business usually has several different identities on multiple networks, and needs to deal with hundreds, sometimes thousands of customers. This certainly isn’t one man’s job and it’s absolutely not the CEO’s job to manage.

But the social networks don’t share those sympathies. They’re made for one person to use, and if you recruit someone else to manage your social identities you’re going to have to share your password with them.

Even with objects like Facebook Pages, where you can have multiple admins, it’s risky to give admin status to everybody because all admins have the same rights and anybody can just kick you out, or close the page. I had a personal experience of this some months ago when I saw the events page of a very popular pan-Indian event close down inexplicably. Evidently, one of the many admins had seen it fit to delete the event!

So the problems that businesses urgently need to solve include:

1. How to manage multiple identities.
2. How to get teams working together.
3. How to give everybody secure access.
4. How to automate frequently done tasks to save time.
5. How to get a total and comprehensive view of the enter social media presence.

My company is attempting to solve these problems with Netvani. We are building have built a tool that helps solve these problems and more, making it easier for businesses to run their social media campaigns and manage their social presence online.

It’s work in progress, and we’ve launched a beta version for people to use free. Hopefully, their feedback and usage will help us learn what we need to improve, and what we need to do to make this a very useful product.

Even in those who believe in the personal freedom of all there are differences of opinion when it comes to choices that can be perceived as influenced, or misguided. It is not untrue that religion decides a lot of matters for you, which otherwise you’d decide on your own if you were thinking independently.

Recently Vicharvarna had another dialog, this not time not an inner conflict, but with another thinker. The issue was the recent ban on Burqah by France.

On matters like these, Vicharvarna feels, you’re wrong no matter what side you choose. But here’s the dialog reproduced for all to read and ingest.

Vicharshabda: France bans the burqa; joins Iran and Saudi Arabia in the league of countries who legislate women’s clothing. Charming company.

Vicharvarna: Yeah, and weirdly those who were perfectly alright with Saudi Arabia’s right of ‘self-determination’, and ‘cultural values’, are appalled at France’s insistence on keeping women out of burqah.

So how else do you handle this when the chained begin to love the chains? Honor their right to be in bondage… So yeah

Vicharshabda: The issue is rather simple for me. I don’t think there can be secular society that doesn’t celebrate multiculturalism. And for multiculturalism, individual freedoms have to be guaranteed by the state.

France, in this case is taking away those freedoms. Their rationale is rather dubious. They essentially look at the burqa with a symbolistic view of subordination of women. Along with it are copious amounts of islamaphobia.

Undoubtedly, they are building a monoculture. Nicholas Sarkozy, in his visits to less developed states (including India) has been a champion for protecting Christian rights, while his own country comprises of 51% atheists with a large percentage of non-practicing Catholics.

These burqa banning steps for appeasement of women and secularists will bring them no, or dangerous outcomes. Unfortunately, politicos want to be seen doing something towards an issue, rather than truly tackling it.

Oppression is never symbolic Vicharvarna. The law and the state has to deal with it on a case-to-case basis. If women want to wear burqa and Sikhs want their turbans, they should be allowed to.

Vicharvarna: Multiculturalism is a fine goal, but where do you draw the line between culture and oppression? Some cultures eat their dead… Others kidnap their woman when they want to marry them. Don’t let multiculturalism be an excuse for an oppression.

Islamophobia is a very fashionable words in certain circles these days, but the by connecting abominations like burqa with the islamic culture, we aren’t doing it a favor.

View the burqa separately from Islam, they’re not synonyms. Banning the Burqa is not banning Islam. If evil practices like these are abolished we’d all be a little better off. It’s making them an integral part of religion which really screws the world in so many places.

If in India we didn’t have Hindu reforms and made practices like sati, or widows isolation, etc, and made them the identity of Hinduism… Well, where would we be today?

Vicharshabda: The point is “choice” vs “perforce compliance”. If I want to dress in dhotis, or wear a cross on my neck; I should be allowed to. If I don’t want to, my society/community should be persecuted if they force me to. Banning the burqa/cross/dhotis/turbans doesn’t stop oppression.

In India, women had no choice. I’d even debate the lower castes had no choice. I don’t think there are any Hindu texts that mandate strict compliance to these principles either. The shit hit the fan after Manu…

Vicharvarna: It’s a weird story when we come to choices. There were a number of women in India who thought it was their sacred duty to immolate themselves along with their husbands, and yet others who thought not wearing white, or trying to enjoy life after their husband’s death was a sin.

Going into the history of the bullshit, or the sanctity as per hindu tradition is pretty pointless, because we aren’t arguing that case. We could as well say that women didn’t wear burqa at Mohammad’s time, and it would make no difference whatsoever to what the clerics have ordained women to do now on the name of Islam.

People should be allowed to make choices, but I think it’s also important to think about the merits that those choices hold. If you don’t consider the merit, you can get lost in independence or culture, and your society will be lost in stagnation.

You could tell me about the reasons why certain women choose to wear the burqah, and make them compelling, and I will accept that there’s no need to ban the burqah.

Otherwise I think burqah should go the way all the rotting cultural crap is headed.

Or in different words… I would accept the burqah if it wasn’t so holy.

Vicharshabda: As a libertarian I don’t think suicides should be illegal, nor should be euthanasia. It has to be by “choice”. As long as exercising personal freedoms don’t impinge on the freedoms of others, everything under the sun should be allowed.

The state has no business deciding the merits and demerits of one’s choices; religious or non-religious. Also, advancing a particular culture should not be the prerogative of any secular state.

I’d have preferred if they had banned male circumcision in muslims and the Jewish metzitzah. Boys have no choice but to follow their parents to the chop-shop. And, it is an irreversible procedure not generally performed by medical professionals. If the boy is made to decide for himself after he’s 18, we’d see rather different results.

Unfortunately for the boys, they have no such luxury; nor Nikolas Sarkozy the spine…

Vicharvrata: Now suicides and euthanasia… They’re entirely different. Why? Because when a person makes choices like those, there’s supposed to be a rationale behind them. Libertarianism isn’t like anything goes. Would you as a libertarian support a mad man standing on the 20th floor of a building, about to jump?

Or a drunk man jaywalking on a speeding highway (who chose to get drunk, and then chose to jaywalk).

When religion dictates your choices, and you do it just because you have ‘faith’. I don’t think supporting that is justifiable in my version of liberalism.

Circumcision is another abomination, and I’d have Nikolas Sarkozy abolish it if I could. So abolishing the burqah, gives you one less evil now to pursue.

Burqah isn’t just any garment worn for a fashion statement. It’s got other significances and connotations. It’s about making property out of women.

Vicharshabda: The mad-man’s case is simple. He can be legally proven to be insane and his choices can be curtailed, till such time he proves himself to be not insane. Just like children, they can’t be allowed to enter into legally binding contracts…

The jaywalker is taking away someone else’s freedom to speed on a highway – he can and should be stopped. I’d even give the motorist legal immunity if he is within prescribed speed limits.

Mutilating one’s body by choice by means of organ donation, tattoos or circumcision and even suicide is all OK as long as the person is doing it by choice.

If a burqa is worn by choice, a secular state should have no business damning or condemning it. The state’s views of symbolism, religious or non-religious, are the state’s alone…

Also, if we apply your principles of libertarianism, which I think are perfidious, Anna Hazare shouldn’t have been allowed to go on a fast unto death in the first place. He should have been force-fed and thrown into the gallows for blackmail.

Vicharvarna: When that the madman is mad in the court of law, you’d say that he’s not a rational human being, and thus the decision he makes is flawed.

Extrapolate that to the burqah. It’s not worn for fashion or by mere choice, it’s worn because of religious beliefs and social sanctions.

Just like the madman or the drunk person, religion has an affect on rationality and any evil practices sanctioned by religion must be stopped. The burqah isn’t worn in the privacy of one’s home, it’s worn in public, and when a liberal person sees the garment, and knows what it stands for (oppression of woman? or do you disagree?), it is naturally offensive.

It is well within the rights of a state that promotes liberal and secular values to ban all such practices which highlight the stupidity of religion which is not rational and only faith.

Anna Hazare is again a separate case and must be recognized as such. Hazare’s act is not for religion, or blind faith. It’s a well thought, and rationalized strategy that only a very conscious and intelligent human being can make.

Anna Hazare knows that his fast is a mobilization tool, it’s not religious or misguided.

Now, if you were to sit on a fast inside your home, and tell nobody about it, and then expect the government to capitulate, then I would say you fit my bill of irrationality.

I think the point you’re not getting is that there’s no rationale behind the burqah. It’s as good a choice as a madman’s or a drunkard’s. And don’t tell me faith doesn’t have those effects.

Vicharshabda: What do you do with Shri Ram Sene when they find women in mini-skirts, and those who drink, or even smoke offensive? I’ll proceed in addressing any other concerns you might have if you answer this one

Vicharvarna: Yes, I will answer this one. In this I think the flaw is with Sri Ram Sene. Because the women who were victimized were not guided by blind faith. When they practiced there right to wear mini-skirts, they were not following a religious philosophy that mainly aims to keep women in controlled environments and prevent them from being an equal part of the society.

You have to remember the part in which I mention ‘merits of choices’.

Vicharshabda: And what do we do when women in France believe that the streets are too polluted for their skin and wear the burqa?

Vicharvarna: Then I would be perfectly happy to support it. Why haven’t I been successful in communicating to you that I am not against a long flowing garmet that covers the entire body. I am against what this burqah thing stands for.

If some weird cult crops up tomorrow, and says that all women when they go out must only only wear swimsuits, and they have to do it because they a) are coerced, b) think the society needs it, c) believe it’s faithless not to… I’d oppose that on the same principle.

Do you understand me now?

Vicharshabda: Now I do. Took me some time for me to understand you are coming from.

For the law and judges a crime is a crime is a crime. The intent behind the crime doesn’t make a major sway in their judgements. If it did, most first time murderers would have been running along the street scott-free. The law cares a shit about intent, whether or not it can be proven. If it did, I would have already killed a dozen netas after collecting enough evidence. In that vein, Anna Hazare’s suicidal tendencies don’t escape the ambit.

Vicharvarna: I don’t know what you’ve understood Vicharshabda, but you’d better spell it out, cause you’re making the wrong assumptions again. I didn’t say intent, I said merit.

There’s a world of a difference between intent and merit, and you have to distinguish between that. Moving to law and crime is again misdirection, because they’re oranges, and we’re talking about apples.

The fact is you’ve said everything except handle the main issue. Which is the merits of banning a burqah vis a vis wearing it.

So why don’t we talk about that.

Vicharshabda: But why do you think it is possible to have merit without intent? Also, I will reiterate my position. I am pro choice in burqa, sex, drugs, abortion, prostitution, suicide, euthanasia and porn as long as freedom of others aren’t impinged on. I am against when things are forced for any reason; religious or non-religious.

Vicharvarna: From my end, let me conclude by saying, that I am anti anything that religion makes you believe you want.

Vicharshabda: If you are leading to religion as “mass insanity” I’m totally with you.

Unfortunately, the laws of many nations and the UN included aren’t made by neutral atheists. The judges that decide on religious issues (Ram janmabhoomi for instance) can be argued to have conflicting interests because of their religions…

Yes. The system is broken. Even people in influential positions that subscribe to this view won’t risk their careers on it.

Vicharshabda: Merits and de-merits from a state’s perspective require consensus. In turn, consensus necessarily requires that intents (to bring about a certain outcome and the way it is brought about) be aligned.

Guess all the questions are answered now, let me know if any remain. All the best with your blog post and let me know when it is up.

Vicharvarna: Of course Vicharshabda, I am firmly of the belief that religion is irrational, and there’s more evidence for little green men from outerspace then a white bearded old man in the sky. Yet the very same people who rubbish the former believe in the latter

If you feel interested: Dialogs I

Ever since the Arab world got caught into a whirlwind of regime changes, I’ve been hearing calls from different sections of the Indian society to ‘do an Egypt in India’, or ‘do a Tunisia in India’, and now ‘do a Libya in India’… Well, why?

We’ll all agree that the sort of revolution that the Arab world is witnessing was long overdue. The dictators there have been in power for many decades, and mostly with the help and sanction of western democracies. This change was long overdue, and Internet was a great tool, exposing the people to the freedom and openness of the International society.

But India is a different case. We have been a democracy of some sort since 6 decades, and the regimes that we’ve had during all this period were people imposed. We get to choose who leads us every 5 years, and we are the people who’ve made all these bad choices which led to corruption and other evils. We chose corrupt people because we had other motivations like caste, regionalism, and of course – religion.

So we are looking for a change here, but the change we want is not the same kind of change as in Egypt, and we are not fighting the same kind of people. We want mass mobilization, and mass action but putting it in the same category as the Egyptian revolution is an insult to the uniqueness of India and its needs.

The revolution in the Arab world has many dimensions, and social justice, freedom of expression are only one part of it. Other more prominent themes are religious divide, and anger against the western democracies, particularly America.

More importantly, it’s not in the interest of any movement in India to present the Egyptian or any Arab country’s revolution as a model. The dictators have been deposed, but we don’t know where the countries are heading on to now. They can be an ideal and secular democracies, or one dictator might be replaced with another, or even worse, they might turn into single-minded Islamic republics a la Iran with a fake democracy in which the people are manipulated by politicians and stirred into hate into making the wrong choices (now, isn’t that happening in India).

So until the time when the revolution in these countries comes to a conclusion, I will strongly advocate against branding any civil movement in India along these lines. We don’t want to regret later in siding with a cause that went nowhere, or went in a direction where we don’t want to push our country.

Caution aside, there are other arguments that should be considered about the civil rights movement in India.

- They have been around a long time before the flickering of the first spark of opposition in Egypt.

- We’ve had more than one regime changes due to civil rights movements, and they were all brought about by democratic methods.

- We don’t have a single target like Husni, or Gaddafi or Ben Ali, what we desire to change is a system that works to the disadvantage of the down-trodden, and that can’t be the result of a Tahrir Square or a Jantar-Mantar.

The civil rights movement in India should be led with specific goals, and those goals are infinitely easier to achieve in the Indian society. Those goals include :

- A stronger anti-corruption law.

- Empowered anti-corruption bodies.

- Speedier and effective prosecution.

These goals have already been clearly defined, and the means have been laid out too. Steps like the Jan Lokpal Bill, mandatory public disclosure of assets for all pan-card holders (and not just government officials!), and fast-trial courts can bring about the change we need.

The civil movement we push should target these, and in a democratic manner.

It’s good to hear about the change in Egypt, but I am not convinced we want the same change in India. Are you? Present your arguments.

Important lesson, not to forget:

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