Desicritics Author: GV Krishnan

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the Beatles

GV Krishnan — Fri, 8 Feb 2008 10:52:48 EST

Newspaper obits on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi highlight the time spent by the Beatles at his Rishikesh ashram in the 60s. For those of us in newspapers, the Beatles’ stay at the ashram in 1968 was a major media event. Several reporters, including many representing the British media, descended on Rishikesh, a sleepy pilgrim town in North India peopled by saintly souls and yogis on a renunciation mode.

Most other residents opted for Rishikesh so as to lead a life of relative obscurity at the Himalayan foothills. Mahesh Yogi wasn’t a seeker of enlightened anonymity. He probably chose Rishikesh because it provided the right address for those with spiritual credentials. His ashram, not an open house, was being run like a gated spiritual community. Located on the far side of the Ganges, his place was accessible from Rishikesh town only through a pedestrian suspension bridge over the river (Lakshman Jhoola). You needed clearance to gain entry to the Maharishi ashram, tucked away in the densely wooded hill area.

A helipad near the ashram, built with Mahesh Yogi’s blessings, facilitated his high profile disciples who preferred to air-dash to the ashram backyard, rather than motoring from Delhi to Rishikesh. The cottages at the ashram had all basic comforts, including geysers and air-conditioners, suited to VIP lifestyle.

Secluded location and the security arrangements at the ashram ensured that the celebrity inmates were insulated from the prying outsiders, notably the media. Newspaper reporters were not allowed. I went into the ashram for a look-see under the pretence of being part of a TV documentary crew . Newspaper reporters, under pressure to produce stories on the goings-on at the ashram, relied on visitors’ tales and accounts of obliging ashram staffers.

News agencies such as PTI and UNI maintained a constant watch; and major newspapers had their stringers camping at Rishikesh. The Statesman, New Delhi, deputed a reporter on the Beatles beat. My friend Saeed Naqvi of The Statesman, along with a staff photographer, drove from Delhi to Rishikesh every weekend looking for a Beatles story. I don’t know if Saeed ever got an interview with them.

I did manage to spot Paul McCartney, and even exchanged pleasantries with him, while location scouting for a documentary on the pilgrim town. He had apparently strayed out of the ashram and was walking about on his own, on an isolated stretch of the river bank. Our TV producer Yavar Abbas, for whom I was then a legman, and his cameraman from London, walked up to him for a chat. The Beatle, suitably amused to see a fellow Brit at such a desolate spot, indulged in small talk for a while.

The chance encounter would have given Yavar valuable footage. But then our cameraman had left behind his equipment at Shivananda ashram, across the river. That was where we were staying. The next day we gained access into the ashram, thanks to the glib talk by Yavar who was filming a documentary for telecast by BBC. We had an audience with Mahesh Yogi, but the Beatles were nowhere to be seen.

Instead, we found a large group of Russians at the congregation. They were officials and technicians visiting a public sector drug manufacturing unit set up at Rishikesh with Soviet collaboration. The next day my newspaper carried a story headlined – Mahesh Yogi Ropes in Russians.

Delhi Techie Blogs to Pay for LSE Study

GV Krishnan — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:03:49 EST

Blogger Ankur Shankar has a mission - to blog his way to the London School of Economics (LSE). The 25-year-old techie in NOIDA wants to study economics at LSE. He has an admission offer, but no funds. Ankur is hopeful that his blog would raise ad revenue to pay for his studies in London.

It works this way. Google’s Adsense places assorted ads on Ankur’s blog. His earnings are related to the number of hits his blog gets; and the ‘clicks’ for a specified ad. Online advertising in India represents about 10 percent of the companies' overall advertisement budgets, according to Business Standard. Media pundits reckon this form of marketing has huge potential; it has scope for ‘contextual advertising’ that seeks to match buyers with sellers in a meaningful way.

Advertisements appearing on blogs are chosen to flog products and services that would interest the niche readership of a given blog. Ankur posts short stories, on a daily basis; a story a day for 180 days. Ankur’s blog – The Million Dollar Story – is a six-month project that started in December last. His needs to raise $1,10,000, by May-end, so as to enable him to join the two-year M Sc course in Economics, starting at LSE in July, 2008. It is reckoned he would need a million page-views a month, for the next five months.

Whether Ankur’s Million-dollar-story would raise a million page views a month is a mega question. Undoubtedly, his endeavour has evoked much word-of-blog support and several bloggers have put Ankur on their blogroll. What gets him readers, however, would depend on the appeal of Ankur’s posts. The blogger is set to turn out a story a day; and he reportedly spends some three hours every evening on his blog post, apart from holding a day job.

A reader’s comment left on a recent post says it all – “…effort is highly commendable, but you need to take more time and write better stories; your stories haven’t excited me to come back and read another one”. It occurs to me that Ankur, instead of slogging it out on his own, could take on board a bunch of bloggers contributing posts to his blog. This could be a way to boost page-views; and the contributing bloggers would have the satisfaction of furthering Ankur’s cause.

In the last five weeks Ankur’s blog has raised a little more than $300, creditable in itself, but it doesn’t look as if it would take him anywhere close to the target figure. Ankur is, however, hopeful that the buzz his blog generates among bloggers and in the mainstream media would get him noticed by a corporate sponsor. And he promises to work for a company that sponsors his LSE course for five years after his graduation.

IIT Kharagpur Plans School for Entrepreneurship

GV Krishnan — Sat, 5 Jan 2008 09:41:46 EST

IIT Kharagpur plans to open next year a school for entrepreneurship. It would target students with "financially secure backgrounds", says the IIT director D Acharya, adding that the school isn't for job seekers, but for "potential employment generators". A school, I guess, for the kin and close cousins of the Birlas, Nandas, Ambanis; the tech-millionaires, and of those who have made fortunes on real estate, and mushrooming malls and multiplexes.

One wonders if the idea of a five-year course at Kharagpur would appeal to this lot. Business moms and dads send their heirs to US b-schools. Would Kharagpur sound as good as Wharton or Stanford to them? Also, five years doing an entrepreneurial course may seem too long a time for those who are willing and eager to get into their family-held businesses.

The e-school idea was first floated by Prof. Acharya at an Entrepreneurship Summit on the Kharagpur campus in November last. Expressing disappointment at the lack of entrepreneurial spirit among students, he observed that for IITans the challenge was not getting a job for themselves, but doing something of their own and contributing to India's growth.

The IIT professor's points have been echoed in a Silicon India blog by Gunjan Sinha who would like to see the emergence of, what he calls, the entrepreneurial India. He speaks of the need for building network-infrastructure in a professional environment. Mr Sinha points out there are some 27,000 professional associations in the US. Wonder what his take is on the Kharagpur e-school idea.

As an idea, I reckon, it is entrepreneurial; in the sense that no one else has thought of it. But would an e-school make business sense? Wouldn't it be better to have it as an add-on to the MBA program, with an additional year or two of e-schooling for the benefit of students with entrepreneurial aptitude? As someone who has neither been an academic nor entrepreneurial I lack credentials to answer these questions. I can only raise them. I wonder how many people with "financially secure backgrounds" have an aptitude for entrepreneurship.

Maybe heirs of business millionaires may not wish/need to go for such schooling, for they can hire professionals to complement their own skill sets, says Som Karamchetty, who has once taught at Kharagpur and he is now engaged in volunteer buisness counselling to entrepreneurs under th auspices of US-Score. Dr. Karamchetty, coming as he did from a middle-class family, says he lacked the ability to risk his meagre resources, and so 'I ventured late in life'. In his reckoning entrepreneurs are both born and can be groomed, as is the case in many other creative fields. He shares Kharagpur director's enthusiasm for the e-school concept - "let us leave skepticism at the door and support Dr Acharya in his highly deserving venture".

Abraham Tharakan, a Chennai-based consultant, blogs about conspicuous lack of private initiative to promote industries in Karala, although the state accounted for over $16 billion remittances from 1.8 million Keralite NRIs in 2006. Bulk of this money went into building fabulous houses and investment in land. That kind of fund-flow could have made a thousand businesses bloom. Mr Tharakan attributes it 'a general lack of entrepreneurship' among the moneyed in Kerala.

Would an e-school help promote entrepreneurs here? Isn't entrepreneurship about taking business risks? We have it from Hotmail Bhatia that nine in ten products conceived in Silicon Valley flop, but the one that succeeds more than makes up for the failed nine. Which is what, I guess, entrepreneurship is all about. It is a matter of mindset.

Citizens to Turn Bangalore Green

GV Krishnan — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 13:44:10 EST

Tabloids are not just about scandals, glambiz and other trivia. Bangalore Mirror and a local private trust have clubbed up to promote tree planting in their city. Mrs. Janet Yegneswaran, who founded the trust a couple of years back in memory of her husband, has been engaged in encouraging Bangalore residents and neighborhood communities to chip in their bit in her endeavour to make a difference to the city’s green cover.

Tree lovers can have saplings planted in their neighbourhood on payment of Rs.100. Janet’s Tree-for-free trust identifies vacant spaces (could do with volunteers) and seeks permission from authorities and site owners to have saplings planted on their land. Residents can sponsor saplings to be planted at specified spots, to mark special occasions such as birthday, death anniversary of dear ones, wedding day, graduation day, and what have you. A California-based NRI, at the end of her vacation in Bangalore, had 21 saplings planted the day she left India, as her farewell gesture to the city.

Imagine the number of city students going abroad for higher studies; young IT professionals leaving on their first posting abroad. If each one of them were to sponsor a sapling to mark the occasion, we would have green cover in many neighborhoods and also the stretch between the city to Devanahalli in three to five years. Isn’t this something that ought to interest the city authorities and BIAL? I would suggest they launch an ad campaign – ‘ A Green way to Leave the City; Leave behind a Tree’.

Anyway, the day Bangalore Mirror carried the story of the California NRI’s farewell gesture Janet’s phone started ringing; people called to have saplings sponsored in their names. Janet, who has been running the trust since Nov. 2005, hasn’t heard from so many sponsors, on any single day, ever since the trust was founded in 2005. She got a call from a public school boy in the 7th std who wanted to plant saplings near his house at Banashankari.

A resident of K R Puram wanted saplings for his site at Baglur layout. A residents association, representing 50 houses in Shakthinagar (near Banaswadi) wanted to have two saplings planted on every house-front. The NRI whose farewell gesture triggered a spurt in citizen-sponsors had 21 saplings planted at Cartman Eco Park in Koramangala. It is said the foreign nationals working for earth.org have planted 237 saplings, one each for every country.

Meanwhile, in Mysore, a grandiose plan launched to restore the city’s green cover, at an estimated cost of Rs.128.04 lakhs, has run into trouble. Why? Because of a fund-flow issue involving the Mysore Urban Development Authority (MUDA) and the forest department. Unlike Janet’s trust, government departments tend to get bogged down with cost estimates and funding. Costing is important, but fund-flow (between departments, which is usually a matter of book adjustment) can’t be the be-all and end all of a community welfare scheme.

According to a media report, trouble with the Green Mysore Project started right in the first year (2005), when the forest department planted only 37,000 saplings, instead of the targeted one lakh plants. There is no knowing as to how many of them survive today, as the department has stopped maintenance of the planted saplings. What is worse, the departmental nurseries have no saplings to be planted in 2008.

The forest department claims MUDA owes them Rs.32.76 lakhs till date, of which Rs.19.75 lakhs is required for nurturing saplings for planting in 2008. And repeated reminders to MUDA have gone unanswered. Going by the media report, MUDA has much to answer for, if the Green Mysore project is given up.

But the forest department doesn’t cover itself with glory either. As partners in the project, shouldn’t the department explore other ways to keep the tree planting going? The green Mysore story is typical of most government projects. Fund-flow falls short of budgetary commitment. There follows a flurry of letters, file-notes, meetings, and recorded minutes. And the project gets shelved for want of funds.

The point is that neither the forest department nor MUDA appears have given the Green Mysore project the priority it deserves. What’s more , they don’t appear accountable to the public, insofar as neither MUDA nor the forest department has seen it necessary to sustain public awareness in the greening project, with periodical progress report on the project. As partners in its implementation MUDA and the forest department could release through the media a quarterly progress review, giving details of not just the money spent, but also the number saplings planted during the previous quarter, their cumulative total, plants survival rate; and the localities covered till date.

Taslima Nasreen: Where Does She Go From Here?

GV Krishnan — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:37:45 EST

Where does she go from here? I refer not merely to her ‘homeless’ status, but also her literary works in progress, if any. I am not familiar with her writings; Taslima Nasreen is less widely read than written about, not always for the right reason. Leading a life, unsettled and under constant threat of violence takes courage. But can Taslima, or anyone else in her nomadic situation get any writing done at all?

I wonder if she ever regrets having written something, so long back, that was to pose a life-long challenge to her life; to brand her infidel and be banished from Bangladesh. Not that an apology would now alter her life. I am all for freedom of expression. But those who assert their right to write their personal truth on socially sensitive issues ought to realize that such freedom comes with social constraints, and consequences.

Arguably, the city she came to adopt as ‘home’, and the local authorities there have an obligation to protect Taslima. This hasn’t happened, which is why she is ‘on the run’, for her safety, from her beloved Kolkata. Her current situation is fluid, and sticky. And Taslima hasn’t helped matters by talking to the media from her ‘undisclosed location’.

She told The Hindu that the external affairs ministry has conveyed that she wouldn’t be able to return to Kolkata anytime soon; and wherever else she chose to stay in India, she would have to lead a life in captivity.

‘Captivity’ isn’t quite the word I would use to describe ‘security cover’ extended to the high profile writer. “Why do I have to lead a life in captivity?”, Taslima is quoted in her telephonic interview with The Hindu’s Marcus Dam, “all I’m asking for is to be able to lead a normal life”.

Isn’t she asking for a bit too much? Celebrities don’t have the luxury of ‘normal life’, as you and I understand it. Snag is Kolkata isn't the only city that isn’t happy to welcome her back. Authorities in Hyderabad and Jaipur have demonstrated their disinclination. However, Mr Narendra Modi of Gujarat, during his poll campaign, is reported to have invited her to his state. I don’t know if Taslima reacted to Mr Modi’s offer, which could well be public posturing.

Meanwhile, our media tracks Taslima wherever she goes, even in an ‘undisclosed location’. What’s more, she appears more than willing to oblige them, with quotable story. This, at a time when those concerned with her security would want to keep her location a secret. Wouldn’t it help if Taslima were to maintain a low profile, by staying off headlines, till such time the authorities finalize arrangements to settle her somewhere safe and secure?

The Bangladesh writer has, on more then one occasion, expressed her gratitude to the media. Their presence have been a life-saver, at times, for her, when Taslima came under attack from a bunch of intruders at the Hyderabad Press Club not long ago. But media exposure could also work against her; and it doesn’t always win her public sympathy. As she herself put it, “I have become, it appears, an embarrassment to all…”. And media interviews at this time don’t help matters, do they.

'Hotmail' Sabeer Bhatia on The Idea of 'Failure'

GV Krishnan — Sun, 9 Dec 2007 09:41:46 EST

When Sabeer Bhatia, who made his first million early in life, talks about the idea of 'failure' he ought to be taken seriously. It is not in our business culture to embrace failure, he says - 'we have not matured with the idea of failure'. People are surprised when he tells them that the story of Silicon Valley has been that nine out of ten products failed, but the one that made it more than made up for all earlier losses.

A failure is seen in the US as 'a badge of honour', as he put it; as an experience you learn from; something that spurs you to try again; and something that works up your hunger for success. And what does he find in India? You have people (promoters) saying, "Oh God, you've failed; I'm not sure if I would want to come anywhere close to you".

Mr Bhatia told the BBC the other day that raising funds for new ventures was tough here. India isn't such a hot or happening place for young techies with big business ideas, particularly if their ideas entail risks. And it is not in our business culture to factor in failure. Safe and secure are the attributes that attract funding. A project idea fraught with risks is, simply, no, no. According to Mr Bhatia, any new product that comes out of Silicon Valley takes five to seven years to realize its business potentials.

Google Search, starting in 1999, didn't make a go of it till 2005. Sabeer's 'Live Documents' took four years in developing. Mr Bhatia conceded he was lucky to have made a pile on Hotmail within two years. This was a decade back. As a student in Pilani he never thought he would become a businessman one day. And he did, with a bang, at Silicon Valley. Perhaps, it had something to do with Mr Bhatia's peer group at Stanford - Steve Jobs (who started Apple Computer) and Vinod Khosla of Sun. Though his subsequent business initiatives have not been such big hits, Mr Bhatia's Hotmail story still opens many doors for him.

I wonder if our home-grown first-generation millionaires in business – Infosys' Murthy, HCL's Nadar, Jet's Goyal and Deccan's Gopinath – share Mr Bhatia's perception that desi business culture constricts techno-preneurs, and that institutions in India tend to value experience and seniority, rather than intellect and creativity. His insight into business culture helps us get a sense of the predicament of our middle-class entrepreneurs, with knowledge as the prime asset. Power-point presentation of their bright ideas is, perhaps, the only collateral our knowledge-driven entrepreneurial class, can offer prospective funding agencies. These guys can take their bright ideas elsewhere. Some do.

Which is such a pity. For, in Mr Bhatia's reckoning, "our economy, the way it is going, allows people to take phenomenal risks and become superbly successful in three or four years." He concedes cultural constraints made it tough for many young techies to explore their bright ideas, and take them to entrepreneurial level - "we have so many have-nots that people here are happy differentiating themselves from the have-nots."

Our mindset is not amenable to taking risks; our business mentality finds failure unacceptable. Maybe, when they next hold Bangalore-IT.com or a global business summit, organizers should have a session on the dynamics of failure, inviting speakers who have faced notable failures.Our business leaders are fond of summit-ing only with those who have made it big. It is time they realized there is much to be learnt from the failures.

We needn't celebrate failure, as Mr Bhatia says Americans do, and see it as 'a badge of honour'. But we need to learn not to be scared of failures, if we want to realize the full potentials of our economy, as Mr Sabeer Bhatia sees it.

Bangalore House-Owners Oppose 'Sakrama'

GV Krishnan — Wed, 5 Dec 2007 02:47:53 EST

Violators have rights, including the right to protest government action and to appeal against penalty for their violations. Several resident associations in Bangalore have moved the court, seeking a stay on the Karnataka Sakrama scheme; which gives house-owners time till December 15 to 1) admit violation of municipal laws in their buildings; and 2) seek regularization on payment of penalty.

Widespread stir, public interest litigation, and a wait-and-watch attitude adopted by most house-owners raise a question mark on the enforcablity of the scheme in its current form. Out of 2.1 lakh application forms sold in the state no more than 4,100 are reported have been filled and submitted to the authorities to date. The deadline for filing applications expires December 14. Such large-scale non-compliance may well force the authorities to extend the deadline and re-work the scheme to make it more widely acceptable.

The government came up with the Sakrama scheme to cope with building laws violations in Bangalore, Mysore and other towns in the state. Property owners have, over the years, become accustomed to flouting building regulations with impunity, presumably, with "currency persuasion" at the right quarters in babudom. Officials, whose job it is to ask questions and enforce building laws, would have us believe that building violations could not be addressed by the authorities due to "staff shortage and pressure of other work." A likely story!

Now that the government seeks to restore a semblance of respect for its building laws, protesters are crying "foul", calling for action against "guilty" officials who had led builders up the garden path. Wonder how many house-owners would follow up their charge against officials with complaints in writing? No one suggests that officials should go unpunished but the snag is in pinning down the guilty. It’s like a TV chef listing out the recipe for rabbit stew – "First, catch a rabbit..."

Meanwhile, Mr B K Chandrashekar, chairman of the Karnataka legislative council, has weighed in to back the Bangalore house-owners' cause. He has met the urban development department and the Bangalore municipal officials; plans to meet the governor and also talk to the Union Urban development minister. Such is the clout enjoyed by Bangalore's house-owning population.

The halla raised over the Sakrama scheme doesn’t necessarily make it a public-interest issue, like a power tariff hike or a stiff rise in bus fare. Sakrama adresses and impacts urban house-owners who have violated building laws. A majority (as high as 80 percent) in the property-owning segment of a city’s population may well be guilty of violations. Banglore is peopled by a huge chunk of residents who don't own landed property in the city. They aren't bothered by Sakrama. Nor are the law-abiding house-owners.

Building law violators may have reason to feel that regularization rules are stringent and the levy payable is "heavy." But then some banks and financial institutions have, thoughtfully, offered credit to meet penalty payments. A school of thought believes that a regularization levy, to be effective, ought to be punitive enough to deter future violations.

Giving into pressure for lowering penalties would amount to giving violators a tax break at the expense of law-abiding house-owners. Wouldn't they feel like the ultimate loser, for having gone by the book when they built their houses? The legislative council chairman calls for rules relaxation in respect of "genuine" residential sites and of buildings owned by lower middle-class and poorer sections. His suggestion sounds reasonable, and persuasive, if we ignore the point that everyone is, and must be seen to be, equal in the eyes of the law.

Mega Land Grab in Bangalore, The Silicon City

GV Krishnan — Sat, 1 Dec 2007 12:50:25 EST

It is absurd; it’s pure theatre; and it is unacceptable. My reference is to the records tampering allegation a Karnataka Congress MLC has made against the chairman of the joint legislature committee that exposed a 45,000 acre land grab in greater Bangalore. I don't expect Mr A T Ramaswamy to be recommended for a Rajosthava award for carrying out a thankless task of chairing the panel. But to accuse him of foul play is preposterous.

For those who haven’t heard, the Ramaswamy committtee has come up with the finding that 45,000 acres of government urban land in and around Bangalore has been grabbed by 46,000 individuals and institutions. The list is said to include politicians, builders, businessmen, showbiz people, and even heads of spiritual/religious institutions.

ABSURDITY: Mr V S Ugrappa, a Congress MLC, has charged Mr Ramaswamy and others with “tempering documents”, in a bid to “malign political opponents, notably, the Congress”. The encroachers named in the report include family members of a former Congress chief minister. On the face of it, it is hard to imagine that the panel chair would stoop so low as to meddle with documents obtained from government departments in the course of his committee investigation. Mr R would have had to be naive, and downright stupid to have attempted records tampering, even if such a thing were possible.

If Mr Ugrappa has any evidence to substantiate his charge, he hasn’t shared it with the media that reported his accusation. I have a problem with our media here. How could a responsible newspaper report a scandalous allegation without as much as asking the accuser (Mr Ugrappa) if he had evidence to substantiate his charge? The usual balancing ploy media adopts to get reaction from the targeted person (Mr Ramaswamy) isn’t enough in this case; Reporting faithfully what Mr Ugrappa alleged without questioning the veracity of his allegation is not my idea of fair reporting.

THEATRE: Which doesn’t mean his action could go unreported.The story was that this Congress MLC, along with some party folk, barged in to interfere with whatever Mr Ramaswamy and his committee men were doing in Vidhana Soudha. The Congress MLC was involved in an altercation with a committee official. Isn’t obstructing an official from performing his legitimate duty a crime?

Mr Ramaswamy and the committee official were at the Vidhan Soudha to meet the assembly speaker to hand over to him half a truckload of documents held by the committee, now that it had submitted its report.

UNACCEPTABLE: That a serious allegation undermining the integrity of a joint legislature committee and its chairman is made in so casual a manner. And that the person making the allegation is allowed to get away with it.

The Ramaswamy panel, in its seven-volume report lists 46,000 persons/agencies/institutions/companies held guilty of grabbing government land. The scale of encroachment could be much higher than what the committee has been able to detect (45,000 acres).

Mr Ramaswamy, in a letter to the governor, attributes the mega land grab to mischief and corruption “at all levels, with public servants creating and abetting bogus records on the basis of which government lands are grabbed fearlessly by builders and others”.

Legislation providing for special courts to try land-grab cases - the Karnataka Prevention of Land Grabbing Act, 2007 - has been awaiting the President’s assent for the last eight months.

Now that the state is under President’s rule; and that the committee report is with the government, the least we, the people, can hope is that the relevant Bill would get Presidential assent without any further delay.

Get Real, Arshad Warsi; This Isn't Reality TV

GV Krishnan — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 11:55:46 EST

I thought you were cool, Mr Arshad Warsi; one of the more sensible guys in Bollywood. And, I reckoned you would give it back to those blighters who racially abused you and Bipasha, while filming in London. What you did, instead, was disappointing; you cribbed about it in the media – “I was shocked; I am not used to this sort of thing”. This isn’t on, not from ‘Circuit’, of Munnabhai fame.

Let’s consider what really happened. Warsi, with co-star Bipasha Basu, was filming outside a pub at Southall in London. A couple of whites in a passing car stopped by, shouted at them something about ‘brown skin and black skin’ and buzzed off. I know this could hurt a sensitive soul, but Warsi, you can’t be too sensitive to stray utterances of berserk minds.

Any Asian resident in Britain would tell you this sort of thing happens to us all the time. Pubs and street-corners, notably in a working class area, are designed for hoot-and-run racial abuses. Most people ignore it as public nuisance. Some hoot back at the racists, if it makes them feel any better.

The incident happened in a predominantly Asian locality. Those familiar with London would tell you Southall is so ‘desi’ that no white, with racially abusive intentions, would want to be caught making trouble there. It is not an area for anyone to take panga with desis. What Warsi encountered was a couple of cowardly, car-borne cat-callers of the racial kind. They, presumably, were unaware of Arshad Warsi’s celebrity status. Maybe, they didn’t care. Which may well be the sticking point with Bollywood visitors, accustomed to strangers seeking autographs, rather than shouting swear words at them.

“For me it was an alien thing,” Warsi is reported to have told the media. Another actor chipped in, “you come to London, and you’re shooting; this is the last thing you expect”.

Come now, Warsi. You should know better. Skinheads and hoot-and-run scumbags are almost everywhere. You could report to the police. I reckon Britain has a law against racial abuse. But then you can’t legislate against racial mentality, can you ?

Lage Raho, Arshad Warsi.

Bangalore Media: When Hard News Is Difficult To Come By

GV Krishnan — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 01:14:01 EST

The media in Bangalore appears on loose ends, in the absence of spoon-fed news stories generated by the coalition government. A recent newspaper report said journalists were finding good news stories hard to come by under the governor's rule. In the earlier regime, reporters on the state secretariat beat had 'the privilege of meeting ministers twice a day' and many of them could walk into the office of senior officials, including chief secretary, on working days, 'for (gathering) information on governance'..

The media report would have us believe that the open-door system adopted by ministers and officials generated a steady flow of news reports on 'policy issues and development programmes'. Surely, no government can generate 'policy' stories for the media on a daily basis. My sense is that ministers fed the secretariat reporters with self-serving statements and lofty welfare announcements. What is spoon-fed is usually spin and hype, rarely, hard news. One definition of news is, it's something someone wants to keep under wrap; the rest is all plug. Officials, generally more reliable than their political bosses, can't be expected to part with any information other than what they would want media to know at any given moment. Clever officials know how to soft-soap even hard-boiled journalists with tea and small-talk.

In the current scheme of things the governor, heading the state administration, doesn't need to make self-serving statements to the press. Nor is he looking for media mileage. No wonder, as the newspaper said, 'the flow of information from the corridors of power has become a trickle'. It is, what they call in journalistic parlance, silly season. It is a period when media, starved of hard news stories, fills space with frivolous stories.

Typical of a silly story of the season was this Page One report in a national daily, headlined - Metro derails business on M G Road. The report says 'the controversial' Metro Rail project work has caused a drop in business turnover in Bangalore's most-sought-after shopping center, M.G Road. Nowhere in the 13 paragraphs that follow does the reader get an inkling of what is 'controversial' about the Bangalore Metro project. My take is the Metro is a widely-welcomed infrastructure project that most people say should have been thought of years earlier.

Describing M.G Road as a once throbbing commercial district, the newspaper report says the place now 'resembles a graveyard'. I have never known of a graveyard-like place that has 'frequent traffic jam'. In fact, the burden of the newspaper story is that shopkeepers on this busy road are losing business because of increased traffic and huge traffic problem since work on the Metro project got under way two months ago.

A shop-owner is quoted as saying the months of November and December is his peak season when he did roaring business and made considerable profits. Not so this time - "the (ongoing) work on the Metro Rail has ruined small businesses". The shopowner talks of having to downsize his sales staff. Sales supervisor in a handlooms outlet complained that traders and employees were having to park their vehicles on other roads and walk to work. Some other trader spoke of the dust-raising construction activity.

Admittedly, noise, dust and traffic dislocation are inevitable when you take up a project on the scale of Metro rail and such elements are factored in when they take up the project. It is not as if they don't have traffic chaoses elsewhere in the city. If this is a newspaper story at all, it is not very newsy one. It is a 'lazy' story, with which those of us in the media are only too familiar. All it takes to produce such story is a cell phone and a few numbers, of shop-owners on M. G Rd. As a former newspaper reporter, I have been there; have done that. Such story-on-demand are produced in response to a farmaish by a hard-pressed news editor who needs to fill a hole in a news page.

One can pick hole in the published story. as a self-serving piece projecting the narrow business interests of M.G Rd. traders. A seasoned reporter would have padded out the story, with a few quotes from a worker on the construction site, a Metro rail official, and some shoppers. You need not look for them any farther than your office water cooler. And one other thing, I would have also thrown in an out-of-box suggestion. Why not make that stretch of M.G Rd. a pedestrian zone; and persuade the army to allow parking on the parade ground adjacent to M G Rd. ? it is good enough to generate a couple of letters to editor.