Not that diary

The photo below is from my walk in Shahput Jat (Delhi) a few days ago.             It reflects the sentiment of Delhi and perhaps urban India.   There is nothing new about murals and wall-art in India. It has just found another outlet in the guise of an urban art project . The poster of Aam Aadmi Party (literally Common Man’s Party) featuring Arvind Kejriwal says a lot about democracy. AAP has risen to power supported by a nation weary of decades of corruption. So far their wins have been short-lived as they learn how to tackle the complexities of running a government while simultaneously thwarting scheming opponents. With national elections looming  this year, each street corner and each corner shop is a hot bed of debate and speculation. How do you predict which way 1.2 billion people will go?   One thing is certain- the Indian political map is set to change, and hopefully for the better. Micromax is a local India...

I have thought for some time that I am in serious danger of becoming a news junkie. But just recently I made some mental links and concluded that, in fact, there are  3 main developments occurring right now and everything suddenly makes sense. Or reduces the nonsense. Or .... well... at least brings us a step closer to making sense. In no particular order of priority, they are: Technology or The cyber-age Democracy and revolutions The rise of new superpowers (and some others in the making) On their own, each of them on their own could potentially change some parts of our future world, but acting together they are sure to change our world forever. Strangely enough these three developments are linked to each in the equivalent of the six-degrees separation for trending world events.                             ...

The past is but the past of a beginning. H. G. Wells And so Kapoor and her team at Free Pixels have opened a little window for us that takes us along with our modern day tools from the past to the future with a little stop in the present. Many of us have always believed that the only limitation to technological innovation is one's imagination. The exponential growth in technology over the last few decades has only re-affirmed this belief. In this short film, the writer and director encourage us to step out of the box and pull, push, stretch, compress or in other words simply re-shape our view of the world with one of the most ubiquitous modern-day tools: a touch phone. There is some interesting camera work and animation with a background story that is as thought-provoking as the technology story. The subtle reference to our robotic, production-line world is the complete anti-thesis of the free mind. Yet, it also points to systematic research and experimentation or a scienti...

News on 17th December 2009, UK: Cheques to be phased out by 2018. Personal experience on 8th November 2009, India: Cheques from cheque book of well known private sector bank  ‘payable at par’ only in the city where cheque book was issued. In the UK, use of cheques is declining by 10% every year. In Sweden and the Netherlands, cheques are now virtually extinct. In India, we have a long way to go before we can seriously consider being in the league of paper-less transaction countries. Although giving us company are the US and France where  successive administrators have seriously resisted the phasing-out of cheques even as cheque usage continues to decline. Coming back to India and the plethora of cash transactions that occur every day my first reaction was to sigh again. Then I decided to give it deeper thought. Even 5 years ago no one would have thought that a country with worrying UN and World Bank-type ‘Basic Facilities Depravation Statistics’ wo...