The squad is out ehmm in!

A bunch of Bangalore kids has been a cause of migraine for babus at Bangalore. These kids wrote on Bangalore and its crumbling infrastructure, on disregard towards their health among youth, and also on many other lighter issues that mattered to these college students.
The bunch, nicknamed Mirror Squad started writing for Bangalore Mirror not long back, but they have already created a space in the minds of readers of Bangalore Mirror. So don’t they deserve some space online?? Well yes they do and they have got it.. Mirror Squad has started writing (eh or should I say blogging?) at mirrorsquad.wordpress.com

An extract from their about section

For those who haven’t learnt how to read images, er, the Mirror Squad is an initiative by Bangalore Mirror. It consists of us – 10 college students, who will write about issues that matter to us, and why they matter to us, as young members of today’s society and as tomorrow’s adults. No, we won’t be that serious all the time. In fact, our aim is to make our presence felt all over the paper from front page to films and everything in between, and have loads of fun while doing it.

PS. We’ll try not to tamper with the listings page.

 

 

Sounds interesting… Now if you think I am plugging Mirror Squad just cause they are part of BM you are wrong.. I genuinely like their writing..

And this is NOT my way of saying ‘thank you’ to Bangalore Mirror for letting me blog from office!

Blog, get blogged

Did I ever mention that I design stuff when bored?? I think never did.. So what have I designed latest? A few badges for Blogathon India.

What is Blogathon India? It is a blogathon event being organised by BlogaLoreans on a national level.

What is a Blogathon? A blogathon is an event in which bloggers make posts on a particular issue decided in advance, within a stipulated period of time. In this event though, the issues will be city / nation centric (like corruption, infrastructure in Bangalore etc) and the group is planning to organise an offline meet for the bloggers (in major cities). The offline meet will be at the end of the event which will span over a week. If you are from one of the metros in India drop a line at blogathon.in site for information regarding the event.

For more information check out this story I had written about the event.

Oops for got the badges, here they are.. watcha think?

I don’t believe in Valentine’s Day!

Don’t believe in Valentine’s day? I don’t either.. So what am I planning to do? Burning shops – negative. Disturb those poor couples who happen to believe in the tradition – Double negative!

I am planning to spend some time with someone I love on a different day, let’s say Feb 13 the day before valentine’s day. Now why am I doing this? Think of the advantages!

I don’t believe there needs to be a day marked on a calendar to express my love so I protest in Gandhian style (aka gandhigiri) by picking up random day and titling it Valentine’s day. Why do I need to celebrate it at all? Well unfortunately some people believe in this concept. It is an innocent concept which does damage to none.. Much like Santa Clause during Christmas.. So I decided to let it be.

What are the other advantages of celebrating it a day ahead? It is easier to get a reservation for movies, and halls will be less crowded too. It will be easier to book a table in a restaurant and just in case a couple gets a table on V day the staff will try to push them off, so they can get the next couple on the table and make more money. Also places like Church street and Brigade Road won’t be as crowded as it would be on V day.. the autos I am sure will hike their rates on V day!

PS: Why am I against Valentine’s day? I believe its a tad too commercialised for my liking!

My blog has given birth!!!

Okay my little blog (the one you are reading of course) has given birth to a blog — Little-chap!

Now if you are going to ask me if the kid is a boy or a girl here is a fact.. blogs are asexual! They are created by gods (people like you and me) and adopted by other blogs!

The first words the kid spoke was ‘Should’ and not mama! (strange!)

If you want to meet the littel fella just go here !

Okay now getting to the point.. I have started a new blog — Littel-chap using Prologue theme of Wordpress. You can read my thoughts on littele chap on the rss feed displayed on the left. You guys heard of Prologue right? — Twiter like theme for Wordpress? If not read this and this.

If this experiment works out I might quit Twitter!

India’s security compromised?

This post is a continuation of the thought presented by Chacko on the post India’s Internet security at Mutiny.

Why do terrorist attack or at least make plans to attack Mumbai so often? May be because Mumbai is the financial capital of our country! The extremists are under the impression that a bomb can pause a city that never sleeps. They wish to halt the booming Indian economy and want to see our stock market crash more often than windows! None of this ever happened even though they ripped through the soul of the city multiple times in a decade.

The recent turn of events in West Asia aka Middle East, though has exposed a chink in India’s armour. The growth of the Indian economy has a direct relation to the booming BPO industry, which is over dependent on the new medium.

Also check this part from Emily Wax’s report on the incident at Washington Post

 ”Most of the larger companies know that you have to have multiple layers of the Internet to do business on the world stage. Indian companies have learned their lessons to have backups during past breakdowns,” said Raja Varadarajan, executive vice president of Quatrro, a company that provides technical support to computer users in the United States. “We are talking about millions of dollars and jobs. What we want is to have such a good setup that the only way we find out there was a slowdown is by reading it in the papers the next day.”

Now let me think like a terrorist… I want to hurt the Indian economy… What if I disconnect India from the rest of the world? What if I simply break all those cable passing through India? Wow, that will be fun. They will loose all business links and will loose out billions of dollars in form of losses! WOW that’s fun! Also its easier to carry bombs on open seas than to smuggle them or create them in India! Oh I don’t need bomb all I need is an ship which obviously has an anchor!

Now here is my point. Should we wait for such a terrorist attack or should we create a backup? An internet connectivity with the help of a satellite linking instead of physical optical fibre linking alone? An internet connection which cannot be compromised from forces outside our border?

Temples, mosques, churches and money

Cross posted at Mutiny

If I were to ask any ordinary malayalee, if Kerala is a secular state or not, the answer will be an outright yes. The state hasn’t witnessed religious tension for a very long time as Hindus, Muslims and Christians co-exist here celebrating each others festivals with much joy (in front of the television of course!). But after speaking to a friend of mine I am having second thoughts on the secular nature of the Govt in Kerala.

Why oh why, should the govt have rights over all the money that comes into the temples in Kerala? In other words, why does the govt have control over the devaswams (a body that makes revenue, administrative decisions, for temples)?
In other words why is Kerala govt concerned solely about the money that comes into Hindu temples alone? Why don’t they form devaswams like body for churches and mosques in Kerala? Why?

Is this secularism? Can this be even considered to be a secular act? Why does the govt have to keep a tab on what temples are doing with their money, when no such attempt is made with churches and mosques?

So should govt have a say over monetary transactions of religious institutions at all? I would say yes to that. Because having an eye on the administrative functions of religious bodies, govt can control religious extremism which might originate within the closed doors of religious institutions.

So where has the Kerala govt gone wrong? In not making the law applicable for all religions? In other states, this wouldn’t be such a big issue because of the fact that followers of Christianity and Islam form a minority. But in Kerala Muslims and Christians together form almost 40% of the population, while in many areas they form a majority. Also, many of these institutions receive flurry of money in form of donations from malayalees settled abroad. Their income may not be as big as that of the devaswams; but they are still pretty high.

Is it right to let huge sums of money go unaccounted? No, they create problems for these religious institutions. We have already heard enough allegations (even on mutiny) on how church is misusing funding so availed for conversion and how mosques might be encouraging extremism!

Can’t govt put an end to all this by making it a LAW*, than a biased restriction?

* By LAW I mean a rule that is applicable to everyone and not to a particular class of society alone.

PS: The ‘friend’ I mentioned in the first paragraph is son of a Devaswam employee