Horn NOT OK Please!

There is so much nonsense on social media these days that I almost felt like an idiot keying in these thoughts.

But then I recalled this line I once saw on a T-shirt — and it made me smile and go ahead with this post. It read: “I may be an idiot but I’m not stupid.”

As you can possibly appreciate, it takes a little knowledge of English, some intelligence and a sense of humor to “get” the true import of those funny, satirical words.

While social media is full of English, especially of bombastic, jingoistic and highfalutin type, the other two departments seem to be lacking in the upper storeys of most.

Take the current fulminations about politics and politicians.

I can see a lot of angry young-and-old men-and-women write black-and-white, this-that, either-or posts.

“Oh, so you are a Congress libtard, that’s why you say so!”

“But Modi bhakts would not understand.”

“Kejriwal is the only honest politician left, but nobody allows him to work.” 

I squirm uncomfortably, sometimes clenching my teeth and often scratching or shaking my head, even as the lies, damn lies and statistics lie all around me that no Swachh Bharat or broom can sweep clean.

The worst part of this cacophony going on in social is that the gazillions of Indians who WILL VOTE (and decide the fate of candidates equal to or worse than them) can neither read what has been written nor care. (Sad, for they wouldn’t read this either, but hey, this one is for YOU.) They will go by the advice or diktats of their local leaders, bahubalis (disgusting use of a word to mean goondas), mullas, monks, pandits, padris —or whoever holds influence in their respective biradaris!

Meanwhile, in the television studios of the country, pictures of three, four, five, six, seven and sometimes even eight or more “talking heads” will keep popping up on your screen. It will be a continuous, abominable scream. Cheekha-chilli, with every political party rep brazening it out like a Sheikh Chilli.

And the crux of their argument? “We are not as bad as the folks from other parties are. Remember what they did when…” (Even if many of them have changed parties several times.)

I want to tell these guys: All of you are the worst. Unfortunately, you are all we got.

The best minds of the country have either been brain-drained to better economies or prefer to do good without jumping into politics or just watch this circus quietly from the sidelines.

Whoever comes to power is likely to grab it with both hands and restart the loot engine chugging and thugging along in this godforsaken country for decades and decades on end. (Also read: "India and the Morality of Corruption")

Looking at the politicians’ past record, I can guarantee you that long after the current elections are over:

- Cows will continue to roam the streets, eat plastic and roko rasta (rather than go to Rome and eat pasta — just for rhyme’s sake, for reason has long been butchered).

- There will be more hoardings about cleanliness everywhere but the shit and piss and dust and stink will continue to smother India right under our pinched noses (look at most public urinals in Delhi and Mumbai, for instance).

- The bewildered, brash, helpless, uneducated, TikTok-watching youth of this country will have no idea where to look for jobs — or how to do them properly if they happen to get them. (Skill India? Shut the F*ck up, go look at how many masters and doctors still apply for and agitate for peon-type jobs, not to mention the “unemployability” of our engineers.)

- States and the “strange caste of people” inhabiting them will continue to fight for backwardness and reservations.

- Farmers will continue to hang themselves under debt and distress — and politicos will continue to shed crocodile tears, insulting the reptiles in the process.

- Education will continue to be mistaken for school buildings and health, for insurance policies.

- Black money will continue non-demolished (and non-demonetized) like illegal structures and the so-called legal high-rises.

- Women will continue to be worshipped — and mocked and raped.

- Cases will continue to pile up in courts and criminals will continue to get the benefit of doubts (and power touts).


So, don’t be stupid. Remember this popular line of Hindi TV anchors: “Iss hamaam mein sabhi nangey hain.” (Everyone is naked in this bath-house.)

It’s another matter that viewers have also noticed that it is these same anchors who put more soap into the slippery hands of those shameless bathers, causing more froth and bubble to emerge.

Will this bubble ever burst?

I think I’m being rationally non-exuberant.

NOTA-chance.

“Khatam” (The End)

#TeachersDay: Thoughts on Reforming Education

It is another Teachers' Day on Sept. 5th, at least in India. I believe it is celebrated on several different days around the world. Whatever be the date, the idea is similar: celebrate and honor the contribution of teachers in our lives.

But, does the world really value teachers highly today? How have teaching and the teachers around us changed over time -- over years, decades, centuries? And what about the students? Are they really putting their best foot forward and giving it their best shot -- like Arjuna did when he pierced the eye of the revolving fish with his arrow in that famous story from the Indian epic Mahabharata?

In a world getting hotter, more crowded and ever more chaotic with each passing day, these are questions worth pondering -- because the students of today will inherit that world and make it worse or less worse (making it better seems a slippery possibility, but that is for another blog post :)

As far as India is concerned, what I have noticed is that the overall quality of teaching and teachers has been coming down -- ironically, in the midst of an abundance of knowledge available through the greatest library ever created on Earth, the Internet. Barring perhaps a few hundred schools in a country of 1.3 billion people, the quality of teaching -- and consequently, of learning -- is of grave concern, as survey after survey has pointed out in recent times.

On the brighter side, there seems to be a new movement in education that talks about things like blended learning, self-paced learning, life coaching and other progressive ideas. Driven by online lectures, knowledge repositories and the growing capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI), new education ventures seem to be sprouting up all over.

However, in the midst of these mushrooming novelties, I think some fundamental things are still missing and we have quite a distance to cover before we can bridge the gap between a child's true potential and helping her realize it to the full or near-full level.

First of all, we need to completely overhaul how we currently build and run schools. We have all heard of that famous quote about not letting our "schooling" interfere with our "education" (the quote is often attributed to the writer Mark Twain but possibly it was Grant Allen who first expressed such sentiments as long back as the 1890s).

Whoever said it, we are still stuck with the dissonance between the two: schooling and education.
I was fortunate to have met or studied under some honest and dedicated teachers. I'm reminded of this definition by one such teacher (with inspiration possibly from the Swiss educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi): he once told us that true education is the harmonious development of the three H's -- hand, head and heart.

Unfortunately, the schools we so earnestly built became places where hundreds of thousands of students "reluctantly went" to "mug up or cram their lessons" by rote learning. Some of those students developed keen interest in studies and turned out to be the brightest ones, acing the toughest competitive exams (and often going abroad for "higher research or studies" to succeed commercially). But they did so mostly on their own initiative and supported by private coaching/tuition, etc. The typical institution of school had little to do with their success.

In today's knowledge-rich world, (super) specialization is very much required. But I think we need to relook at the stage a child is encouraged or nudged to pursue such a specialization and not take the cookie-cutter approach (10+2 or whatever) we have traditionally been taking.

Rather than build walled classrooms where students are bunched together and given (mostly) insipid, boring "lessons" -- which most teachers now, by the way, are just too keen to "finish off" so that the syllabus is "covered" -- we must make schools into happy, joyous, fun-filled "sanctuaries for children" if you will, where they discover the importance of learning in life, are given multiple chances to identify their interests and pursue those interests with the guidance of teachers genuinely interested in their life-success.

Alas, what we have in most places in India is the spectacle of students ferrying bagfuls of books and notebooks back and forth between home and school. The things they most look forward to when going to school is not the joy of learning but the company of their friends (which is fine as an important add-on).

The curricula, too, need to be totally revamped for New Age learning. The question of why they are learning something and its practical applications (or significance of applications) is as important as what they are learning -- in order for them to show genuine interest and be more curious about the subject at hand.

Chinese philosopher Confucius is said to have remarked, "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand," way back around fifth century BCE (that's when he lived, right?) But in India the majority of schools are ill-equipped to show their students how things work or enable them to "understand by doing." Their typical approach? "Here, take these dense texts and just mug them up."

This is not to belittle the role of memory in learning. In fact, India has the oldest (and at its peak the most advanced) tradition of auditory learning -- writing of the texts came much later. But the keyword in all learning is "understanding" -- which goes for a toss when the emphasis is merely on cramming, even in higher grades when students have better grasping and perspective prowess.

The need of the hour is a revolution, not just an evolution, in learning.

Happy Teachers' Day -- nay, change that to Happy Teaching and Learning Age!

(Image: Google.com)

So, What Kind of Ashamed or Proud Indian Are You?

I do not remember exactly when but sometime in the past 10-15 years or so, a phrase caught the fancy of people in India. “Mera Bharat mahan,” it said in Hindi, meaning, “My India is great.”

This happened much before the current ruckus around Prime Minister Modi’s remark to the effect that Indians have turned from being ashamed to proud in the past one year (presumably under his rule). The social media largely took it as an insult that the insinuation was that Indians were an ashamed lot before they elected him and his party BJP to power. The hashtag #ModiInsultsIndia started trending furiously.

The two “items” above are somewhat related and symptomatic of a virulent divide that can be seen playing out on social media, in various clubs and other platforms, among different “stripes” of Indians.

The arguments are seen flying thick and fast, without much justification or civilized discussion, often taking an ugly, unintended or tangential turn. The prevailing attitude is: my way or the highway.

Let’s first see the different sides of people in India.

One side, let’s call it Side A, comprises a small majority that wears its pride on its weapons of noise and nuisance. Some in media call them the “saffron brigade” but I find it silly to use the otherwise nice and healthy moniker “saffron” (which represents the color as well as the substance) for a motley bunch of trouble-makers. Members of Side A keep coming up with inane remarks or pronouncements once in a while, usually with distorted notions of what being a Hindu means and often with little or no impact on the society at large. (But the media adds turbo aviation fuel to their puny fires and makes the whole affair seem like a conflagration. More on media in the Side D part below.)

On another side are the majority of “common” people, Side B. In India you can see them everywhere: on railway platforms, in bustling markets (not malls), in buses, toiling in the fields or at construction sites, in factories and offices, and several other places where “the milling crowds” can be spotted. They belong to multiple religions. One way to define their commonality might be that the wealth manager of a bank wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole. Constituting 70 to 80% of Indian population, they are primarily busy worrying about the next meal or sticking to their work or job. Mostly, they have no business about this “proud Indian” thingy.

Let’s call the political class, Side C. What? Why are you laughing?? It’s we, people of the page, who have elected them (in whatever fallacious ways democracy works in India). With two of them, Arvind Kejriwal and Narendra Modi, hopes of positive change surged among the electorate in recent times—but more recent events concerning both these “special characters” are quickly dashing those hopes into the dust. (Now a third character, a curious sort, is going around on padyatras (walking journeys) after taking a two-month-long holiday and flip-flopping about what he should be doing or should not be doing—and the eyes of the nation are watching his handsome face with bewilderment mixed with suspicion or sycophancy, take your pick).

[Also read: Why Kejriwal is right about being scared?]

It is an open secret in India how its political class has failed every test: be it making India an egalitarian society, controlling population (or pollution, for that matter), achieving self-sufficiency in defense or technology, or any other parameter of the human development index. Yes, there’s one thing they have excelled in: filling their own coffers and making sure their next seven generations are taken care of, especially at the cost of common citizens they are supposed to “serve.”

[Also read: An Open Letter to Indian PM Narendra Modi]

Side D can be considered to comprise media folk (for the sake of simplicity, I’m including both mainstream and social, though it’s not so simple, I know). Barring some very, very few kindred souls, whose hearts ache for real, investigative reportage (though they may not be able to produce much “journalism” for want of financial or editorial patronage), the majority are happy-go-lucky, shouting, rash, brash, prejudiced, hurried and harried types. The kind you see on TV shoving mikes in people’s faces for “bites,” or trying to out-shout a battery of “personalities” speaking simultaneously in ominous voices from small squares on the screen, or the ones belting out quickie articles without much thought or corroboration of facts...You get my point, right.

The growing, prosperous class of entrepreneurs, businessmen and industrialists can make up Side E. They are not bothered about who is in power: they want electrical power for their machinery. They are not bothered about corruption: they want their things done. They are increasingly losing patience for long-term planning: they want quick results (read money). To be fair, there are a few conscientious, honest guys (and gals) in this category, but they are too few in number and just too difficult to find, especially in a “developing” India.

The majority on Side E are like the storied baniya (person of a caste in India thought to be shrewd at business since old times) who told Yamraj (an Indian deity said to appear at the time of one’s death, a la Grim Reaper) when the latter asked him whether he would like to go to heaven or hell: “Jahan do paise ka fayada ho wahan le chalo bhai!” (“Take me wherever there’s some profit to be made!”)

I have often seen such businessmen chant “Mera Bharat mahan” with an impish twinkle in their eye rather than pride in their heart.

There’s another, much smaller class, though. Side F defies stereotypical categorization but you can be sure they do exist. I’m not supporting or endorsing anyone, but I’m talking of the Anna Hazares, the E Sreedharans, the MS Dhonis, the Khemkas of India who are doing what they must to salvage, nurture or enhance whatever pride India is left with after centuries of foreign rule, exploitation, ignorance and misdirection. Here I would also include people with some sense of discretion and a modicum of education and decency in their head who can perceive all the histrionics going on at the moment. They may lack monetary means or political capital or influence but they have wisdom in ample supply.

Sure, there are overlaps and inter-connections among the above sides. But the point is, before you go batty over the question of hurt pride, you may want to look at which side you are on. And, along with that, consider how you would like to answer these questions:

* Who are the people in India who have the right to take pride in being Indian?
* What are the specific things to take pride about India—from its glorious past as well as its jumbled present?
* Is there a proud future for India as a whole in the next 10, 20, 30 years? (Don’t quote GDP only, please!)
* What are the various ways in which that pride can be hurt? Which of those ways are most harmful to India in terms of real impact? How much time should be spent on discussing minor hurts versus that spent on taking effective measures?

Maybe it’s high time we stopped getting on our high horses every now and then and, instead, started putting things in their right perspective. No short-cuts but long, even arduous pathways; no slanging matches but exchanging well-reasoned arguments; no shouts, nor murmurs but just the right tone to convey the right sense of pride in the right context.

An Open Letter to Indian PM Narendra Modi

Dear Narendra,

I’m addressing you with your first name even though you are the Prime Minister of India. This I’m doing after taking a cue from you during Barack’s recent visit to India (Barack, as you very well know, is the President of the United States of America, also known by the quaint acronym POTUS, especially, I’m told, by the legions of security personnel who protect him from known unknowns, unknown knowns or whatever…you get it, right?).

I hope you now have some breathing space from your jet-setting schedule and from entertaining world-renowned guests to tea at expansive lawns, amid the sharing of stories of courage and hardship from your childhood and youth. You, like your bespoke tailoring suit, rock, man! I know this because you yourself have told everyone loud and clear at multiple forums.

And even though you have tried to share your Mann ki Baat (matter from the heart) on state-sponsored radio, something tells me you are hiding a lot deep down your 56-inch chest.

In all possibility, this hiding may be causing you undue pain, pain that is hidden from this cruel world that only knows to laugh at, ridicule and criticize politicians rather than show any empathy.

The other day, I overheard a bunch of wealthy businessmen chuckling at your discomfort. One of them remarked, “Bechara Modi! (Poor Modi) He must be sick and tired of one or the other of the Sangh Parivar making some religiously loaded or divisive comment every now and then. If this goes on, his economic agenda will be derailed sooner than Kejriwal can change his mind!”

As of writing this post, Kejriwal hasn’t but Rahul Gandhi, the scion of India’s long-ruling Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, is probably thinking of changing his mind about something critical in his life—perhaps because he couldn’t change the sinking fortunes of the Congress party in the last general election.

But then I digress, so let’s come back to you…

You apparently set in motion a Modi wave that swept through the poor country that India is. The millions of jobless youth, tens of thousands of entrepreneurs whose businesses were suffering because of UPA-II’s scams and indecisions (and the handful of mega-industrialists who had billions riding on that wave), among countless other voters, brought you and your party to power.

It’s possible that the pain in your chest is a manifestation of all the unfulfilled election promises. And it doesn’t help that your poll prospects from the rest of India (after Delhi) wherever elections are due are seen to be declining.

I know you have tried hard to package old Congress wine of policy schemes and structures into swankier new bottles but, unfortunately, many people want results, not hangovers.

Every now and then, there are comments from one business tycoon or the other, including some international credit rating agency, that the prospects of growth have begun to look good for India. But there are contrary opinions as well.

At least one industry shouldn’t be complaining: media. I have seen your ads on innumerable pages of newspapers, on hoardings all over the city, on so many websites where you would least suspect them to appear, and wherever there has been space to accommodate your well-bearded, avuncular face. And I have not yet reached the state of naiveté where I can believe that the media moguls have given you space for free because they are all Modi bhakts (devotees) or consider splattering those ads an act of patriotism.

Let us get this straight: I’m all for ads because they affect me too, for I’m also part of the media industry. But I think spending on building toilets and recycling waste will be more effective than saying, “Clean India, Clean India!” or “Swachh Bharat, Swachh Bharat!” a hundred thousand times.

Allow me to take just one example: I sometimes use the public loos in Delhi where a lot of swanky urinals were installed in ex-CM Sheila Dixit’s tenure (around Commonwealth Games I think). But hell, there is no water or flushing system and people just keep pissing into the ceramic receptacles ad nauseam.

Would it be possible to divert some of the tidal water from the Modi wave to flush out the filth in the capital’s urinals? (Other cities and towns would be worse off, I presume, and also in need of urgent watery intervention).

Another instance where I can speak from personal experience is the poor state of data connectivity. While your government has quickly launched some websites and your social media machinery is quite active, those gestures do not a Digital India make. I know, I know, other initiatives are in the works—but my fear is that as far as broadband connectivity in India is concerned, it has been always in the works for the past 10-15 years (many other “comparable” nations, meanwhile, have zoomed past India in “digital index”).

Narendra bhai, everyone knows your full name and that you are the PM of India by now. Ab naam ki nahi, kuchh kaam ki baat chalu karo! (Now start talking of the work rather than the name.)

I know you sleep fewer hours than many of your other, able-bodied political brethren. But please remember that hundreds of millions of Indians still sleep on an empty stomach. And those who do get their fill, still have no choice but to empty it in the open.

As of now, shit is one of the biggest things we make in India. The pun, though unfortunate, is intended.

You must fix a lot of things before India can proudly unleash its “lion” out in the world for its roar to be heard.

Maybe you can start by doing more and saying less.

Weeding out Rampal-like fake gurus: what India and Modi should do

The recent episode of a self-styled godman holding thousands of “devotees” hostage in his sprawling ashram to avoid arrest in a contempt of court case has once again left a lot of people agape with wonder mixed with disgust and disbelief.

The drama unfolded over several days in the north Indian town of Barwala in the state of Haryana and left five women and a child dead and scores of people injured. The long arm of law (too long for anyone’s comfort I would say) is said to have finally caught up with the belligerent Baba Rampal.

Details of the entire episode are available everywhere on the web, including here, here and here.

But this article is not about those details—ghastly, horrendous and shameful as they are.

This article is about a serious contemplation on the rampant darkness, ignorance and poverty in one of the world’s fastest growing economies that is also home to one of the largest collections of illiterate, disease-ridden or mentally bankrupt people anywhere in the world.

It is about a mass of humanity that shares a common glorious past but which, at the moment, is as far removed from glory as the Milky Way is from the remotest black hole in the universe.

It is about a burgeoning elite class of people with money and access to power who are so intoxicated with their own sense of power that any idea of retribution or justice makes them laugh the rambunctious laughter of Ravana: only there seems to be no Ram in today’s India, only scamsters of the ilk of Rampal.

It is about a media that kowtows to the high and mighty rather than pursue its true calling: which is to investigate and bring to light instances of corruption and social injustices on a constant basis (and not on the whims and sudden revelations of vested interests), among other things.

And finally, it is about the poor, uneducated, often hapless people of the country who are misled by the politicians, fake godmen, spurious gurus or anyone with an ax to grind: again and again and again...

It is highly possible—as it has been made possible by the politics-business-religion-nexus countless times before—that the Rampal incident would be forgotten in a few days of hysterical TV coverage, full-page paper reports and the usual politics-inspired chest-thumping, clench-fisting and mud-slinging.

It is almost a cinch that the media would lose interest and start groping for other stories that can keep people (and advertisers) “hooked.”

And—alas—it is more than a certainty that a few years or perhaps months down the line, another Rampal-like godman would pop up somewhere in the vast topography of the country.

“Why do I say these things will be certain to happen again?” you ask?

Because India is not a (largely) homogeneous, educated, developed society but a weird mish-mash of abject poverty (anywhere from 30 crore to 70 crore poor people depending on whose stats you take), gross illiteracy (28 crore people, largest in the world as per UNESCO) and towering wealth (1.8 lakh dollar millionaires in India as per a Credit Suisse report—including a $1 billion tower-monster-of-a-home for a certain guy I choose not to name).

So, where does Narendra Modi fit into the picture?

Before I go on with the rest of the piece, let me make some honest admissions: I have some grudging admiration for this guy whom the hundreds of millions voted to power as the prime minister of India. And my admiration has nothing to do with his designer beard or outfits but everything to do with a re-ignition of hope for the youth of the country who see him as an icon and role model. It has also to do with the disgust with the stockpiles of corruption cases, scams and indecisiveness that the previous, Congress-led government and its putative PM engendered in their 10 years of misrule.

So, where Modi gets into the picture, or rather, should get into the picture (even if it’s a movie not of his own making) is a series of quick measures he and his battery of ministers and bureaucrats are required to take, in my opinion:

• Get a list of all the ashrams currently occupied all over the country.

• Start the arduous but necessary process of examining the land allocations.

• Look for trouble spots or signs that would betray the black sheep from the flock (most of them, but NOT ALL, in my own spiritual and personal experience, would turn out to be black).

• Arrange for a systematic way to interview and record the experiences, motivations and involvement of a fairly representative sample of their followers (with the vast army of central and state employees, this should be doable).

• Set the process rolling on laying down the guidelines for media on how godmen or gurus who love to get in front of cameras for giving sermons, fortune tellers who tell (and make) fortunes, etc., should be covered or “involved” in/with media. (Again, in my own spiritual experience, though most of the real gurus, rishis and munis have long disappeared from the soil of India, the few remaining ones, who are true to their own spiritual quest as well as to those of their devotees, would rather sit contentedly with a small group of people in harmony than blare out their decrees or show off their “scriptural knowledge” to a bloated, dumbstruck audience. See a related post here that I wrote on the subject when Asaram Bapu was arrested).

• Closely examine the source of funding of ashrams and where and how the money is spent.

These steps (and the impact they will create) may not root out the problem of fake godmen appearing and reappearing completely, but I think we need to make a start somewhere.

While much of what I have written above portrays India and most of its people negatively, the country also has a large number of educated, right-thinking (and I don’t mean right-wing only!) people who can contribute not just ideas but time and money to cleaning up India spiritually as well.

We may need many more Swachh Bharat Abhiyans—where sweeping is done not with a broom in hand but with a high beam of light shone upon the darkness of the mind.

Railways, Connectivity and Governance

The trio, in their intertwining ways, may be set for a big leap forward if the new Modi government follows its intent with propelling power

Like a lot of people who chug along a nostalgic track at the mere mention of Indian Railways, I also imagine a black chhuk-chhuk engine billowing smoke as it majestically pulls on the sturdy red bogies in the uplifting backdrop of verdant hills.

I'm also reminded of an old slogan played numerous times on Doordarshan: Bharat ki rail: hum behtar issey banayein, aur iska laabh uthayein. (Indian Railways: let's make it better and benefit from it.)

As we all know, the idyllic image of yore gradually gave way to a realisation that the world's largest rail network also became one of its most burdened, creaky and squalid. What primarily happened over decades was that nobody made it better (not the passengers, certainly not the government) while everybody used and abused it to the hilt.

There were a few attempts at betterment in the form of Rajdhanis and Shatabdis, but largely, much of what exists today was built or enabled by the British (with Indians as labourers, true)—with occasional tweaks, tricks and “expansions” by the Independent babus and netas.

To me, one of the most useful and significant changes came in customer service through electronic ticketing. (The guys at CRIS have done a humongous job.)

So it came as a whiff of fresh air when the Modi government announced its intent and a few ideas to modernise the Indian Railways and make technology a driving force for that endeavour. Among the things that the PMO has suggested are Wi-Fi connectivity on all passenger trains in three months and the use of closed-circuit television for monitoring cleanliness (in addition to security, of course).

Earlier in July, the government had announced a Diamond Quadrilateral of high-speed trains (that some in the media referred to as semi-bullet trains!)

The most important announcement, in my own view, concerns the mandate for different but allied ministries and departments to work together (highways, water resources, transport, etc.) As most people in IT know, silos are often bad for agility and performance—and governance couldn't be any different.

In another positive sign last year, RailTel, the telecom arm of the Railways, launched Railwire broadband service in certain areas of the country. Around the launch, RailTel MD RK Bahuguna had said that it is designed to provide “an open source content delivery platform for providing various services, including broadband internet, eHealthcare and eEducation,” among others.

Imagine what Modi & Co could achieve if they were to expedite the process and get the maximum out of RailTel's 50,000 or so kilometres of fibre optic network: for the benefit of the Railways; for the sake of better and wider Connectivity; for what is the raison d'être of Governance—benefit of the masses.

Maybe it's time to dream a different dream.

Abki Baar, Technology Apaar

When you sit down to write a post on the very day election results in the world's largest democracy are announced, it is hard not to be touched by the surge in people's mood.

But that's just about how much I'm going to give it leeway for. Like Kejriwal would have said (or should have said): Miles to go before we sweep.

While we have seen and heard a lot of I-told-you-so's, cries of wolf and not-fairs in the past few days (ever since the upswing for Modi/BJP appeared on the horizon), there is so much work to do that any victory parade is not only premature but uncalled for.

It is hight time the conversation moved to setting things right: the sooner, the better. And time it moved from the prolonged kerfuffles on caste, religion and laddoos to a well-reasoned discourse on nation-building, mess-clearing and forward-moving.

The key pillars of such a conversation, in my opinion, are legislative, industrial, technological and environmental—which, if taken cohesively together, will lead to a rise in India's stature and improvement in its human development index.

In the tech aspect, which is our concern here, there have been several lost opportunities in the past 10-15 years. To give but one hint, we celebrated the year of broadband several years back, but are we a broadband nation yet?

Sure, we have done really well in software exports and the BPO sector, but as a consumer and “owner” of technology, we are way, way behind others.

Thankfully, things are at a stage where they can take off big time—and if the new decision makers in government would just give them a nudge, it would help.

Already, India is said to be the No. 2 market for Facebook in terms of user base. Over 40 million smartphones were sold in the country in 2013—a three-fold annual increase. And around 250 million Indians use the Internet.

And yet there is no IT manufacturing to boast of. Much of the apps and content used here are either developed elsewhere or their IP is owned by firms abroad. Most of the young IT graduates entering or working in the industry are “code mules” rather than cutting-edge programmers, creative types or risk-takers.

To put it straight, even if tritely, the ICT scenario in India is not developing holistically.

For some initial years of its growth and recognition on the world stage, it might have been all right for India to follow a lopsided or opportunistic model. But for India to stake the claim as a true IT power,  the ICT story needs to be accelerated as a whole. What the government must do is press the pedal and shift the gear.

Files to go before we tweet.