Hoardings for publicity - Midday way

Using Hoardings effectively as publicity medium must be an art. It is a completely different and highly limited medium, when compared to Television. You don't have the luxury of having catchy video or audio with a background music and all you have is a two-dimensional surface to sell your product. You will have to take pity at the convept creators for, they have the get the attention of the people in a short span ranging from 20 or so restless seconds in a traffic signal or to few seconds, when their attention is diverted from the road.

Not very often, do you see a very creaative and captivating ideas in hoardings. Don't you get tired at seeing ads with women displaying their jwellery or saree or to read scores of lines on some Insurance product. I would have voted for Airtel and Worldspace hoardings and may be to some extent for Hutch too in the recent past, for having some imagination and new idea.

Recently, the English eveninger Midday, had a series of hoardings in Bangalore to mark their launch in the city. And the concept was brilliant, poetic and humorous, a fact, which you would accept if only you have seen the hoardings. The hoarding was sparsely filled; the top left had three phrases one in each line and the bottom right had the logo and the name of Midday - all in a red background.

What made it interesting were the phrases they have come up with. The three phrases covered the three different aspects of the city and at the same time had some common link among them. Sample one here:

Lal Bagh
Purple Haze
Bluetooth Technology

Nothing can put Bang in a nutshell as this: gardens, pubs and IT and don't miss to notice that some colour is common among them. If you like it, here are some other phrases that best characterized the city; with my favourite in the end.

Yo dude
Yean Guru
Yenna Machchan

One ways
By-two coffees
Three million immigrants

Hot Bisibelebath
Cold Coffee
Warm-hearted people

Traffic Jams
Iyengar Cakes
Java Cookies

Low-waist Jeans
Skyhigh Rents
Middleware Technology

And, I am tempted to add these:

Raj Kumar
Deve Gowda
Narayana Murthy

150 Cr Alleged Bribery
1941 Cr Proposed Airport
39000 Cr IT Exports

Human values: Do we have anything left?

Today its Saturday and I was casually browsing the web, before I stumbled on the headline Honeymoon murder: Bride guides groom’s ‘killers’ route via SMS in Indian Express.

The story is about a newly-wed girl killing her own husband of 8 days in their honeymoon to elope with her lover. The girl comes from an upper-middle class family in probably grew up in conservative environment and with these I presume that she is educated at least till college level. The girl falls in love with a Christian auto driver and the parents hurriedly marry her off to some distant relative, who in all possibility could have been kept in dark about her affair. The girl agrees for the marriage, as she is concerned for her mother's health, but, she and her lover decide to kill the husband after the marriage, that too in their honeymoon. The couple are followed by the killers (a friend of the driver comes to help in killing) and the girl communicates their movement to them by SMS. And, finally they kill the innocent husband and the bride now plays a drama of unidentified persons killling her husband and robbing her valuables. The police solves the case, thanks to an alert auto driver hired by the killers.

These to me are plain and simple mortals, whom we meet day in and day out. A girl falling in love with someone outside the caste or religion is not bad at all. But, what disturbs me is that it has gone to the extent of cold-blooded murder of an innocent person, without any thoughts of guilt feeling by three people - the girl, her lover and his friend. Remember, the murder was not committed out of anger in a flash second, but with complete planning and coordination. The attack-by-unidentified-persons drama by the girl proves their level of planning to cleverly escape from the police.

To be fair, the girl's parents are also to be blamed partly for their age-old beliefs on other-caste/religion no-no mentality. Curiously enough, the girl was concerned about her mother's health, when she agreed to the marriage. but, didn't thought second time before conspiring to kill her husband.

You might remember about the gruesome killing of 13 people (including 4 children and 4 women) for some old family enmity in a village in Andhra Pradesh. But, then I was telling myself that, its the lack of education and development that pushed these people to the vicious cycle of revenge. But, in this case, the upper-middle class girl has been educated and is supposed to have the ability of independent thinking, some sense and respect for human values.

We all believe that, education and economic well-being will make the country and society to progress. But, now I am not sure as I see that the values are eroding visibly.

Where are we heading?

Nehru-Gandhi & Sons Pvt. Ltd aka Congress (I)

Well, its about dynastic politics of Congress and you may argue that, "Whats the matter, almost every party in India has its share of sons and daughters, so why single out Congress alone?". But, wait a minute, it might be true to a large extent, but still there are differences in Congress.

Take any Indian party, which has more than one member from the same genetic backgroud - NC & PDP in J&K, Shiv Sena in Maha, JD(S) in Karnataka, DMK, PMK in TN, BJD in Orissa, the list probably could never be exhaustive. In all these cases, you will find that, the individuals will always be referred by their party past or by their role in the government, as the case may be. For example, in TN, Stalin refers to Karunanidhi as either chief minister or party president or leader and NOT as my father. Look at the NC, Omar Abdullah is not the son of Farooq in the party forum, but a leader of the party and ditto with the Mufti family of PDP. The same is the case of Shiv sena or JD(S) or any other political family.

But, the mother of all dynasties - the Nehru-Gandhi lineage is different from that all. During and after the Rae Bareli by-election, we were given minute details of brother Rahul working really hard for ensuring huge victory margin for mother Sonia. Not to forget that daughter Priyanka worked as the election agent for her mother assisting the brother. If you don't remember these, just look at these reports in IBNLive, ET, IPS and its all about the tale of a family and not of the party. Not even a single time, I have heard Sonia being referred as party president either by Rahul or Priyanka. For the family, the contributions of other leaders in Rae Bareli (or to the party) or Rahul's own contribution outside Rae Bareli are insignificant.

This is the classic case of manufacturing a leader out of Rahul, even though there might be better qualified or deserving youngsters in the party. Consider this, Rahul never stepped out of Rae Bareli - a family fiefdom, when elections were also on in 5 states having about 116 parliamentary seats and about 800+ assembly seats between them. Rahul was never sent to campaign in any of these states, despite the fact that party was in trouble in Kerala, TN and WB - the three crucial states. He was not utilised for campaigning for other Congress candidates or to boost the morale of the cadre in these states, even when the mother was busy touring these states.

Well, lets now consider just the case of Rae Bareli and see how big the victory is. The 2004 elections saw about 48% voter turnout and this time, it was pegged at 43.34%, down by about 5% and all this after the hardwork of the son, whose sole aim was to encourage the women folk to come out and vote in large numbers. With close to 57% of the people staying away the polling booth either due to Sonia's assured victory or due to disenchantment, why such a fuss about the huge victory margin? And, if you don't know something, here is a trivia - none of the five assembly segments coming under Rae Bareli is represented by Congress, so much so for the influence of the family and party.

Comparing Rahul with other sons is becoming inevitable for me. Most of the sons or daughters of the political heavyweights, at one time or the other, have proved their abilities or leadership qualities (probably the only negative aspect would be, they are being projected overlooking the other able and deserving leaders in respective parties). They had invariably spent years in party and worked at various leves, interacted with grassroot workers and public, have lead agitations and other political movements and participated in assemply/parliamentary debates.

This is true with most of the heirs in Congress too, whether it is Sachin Pilot or Milind Deora, but Rahul is not only different but gifted too (so is Anbumani Ramdoss of PMK, who suddenly emerged from nowhere to become a cabinet minister) in that despite not being participated in parlimentary proceedings except for twice (in two years) his voice was never heard on any of the burning national issues. And whenever, he did spoke, it was like neither here nor there, displaying either utter lack of knowledge on the issue or reluctance to speak up his thoughts, if at all he had anything. To prove this, I needn't go much farther than the reservation issue: when asked for his opinion on the raging reservation debate, gem of words emerged from his mouth, "both sides have valid points". Amazing clarity, isn't it?

If you think about that, the logic is simple. Use Rahul in Rae Bareli and then project the assured victory to the charisma and hard-work!?!? of Rahul, the dedicated son or brother, as you want to look at it. This is what I call as manufacturing a leader out of a person having a specific six-letter surname and born in the family.

If the EC doesn't have any objections, the sycophants can get the name of the party changed to the one I've suggested in the title above, which will suit it more.

Pramod Mahajan - A Hope cut short

It is hard to believe that Promod Mahajan is no more for a month plus now. The people, cutting across various spectra from politics to business to Bollywood to the public, who visited him in the hospital and his funeral clearly demonstrated his popularity and charisma. For a simple school teacher without any political connection in Maharashtra, his rise in BJP and then in national politics is astounding and legendary, especially in India, where political power is transferred through the sacred bloodline rather through leadership or other hard-earned qualities; from Tamil Nadu till Kashmir or from Maharashtra till Assam- literally.

This was achieved by his shrewdness in political management, in cultivating grassroot support and in easily building bridges with people, be it Ambanis or Bachchans (though its ironical that, he failed to have a good relationship with his own brother). Arguably, he was the best bet for BJP, plagued by internal strife among its second generation leaders. Who else one could think of as a future Prime Minister, if not Mahajan? He was one of a rare breed of leaders, who are characterised by dynamism, charisma, organisational skills and vision for the party and the country.

He brought a new style of politics to the traditionally controlled BJP, which was till then controlled by RSS. While RSS was probably sulking with his lavish lifestyle and gennext thoughts, chances are that, he was either busy talking with industrialists for party funds or strategising for some campaign or acting a troubleshooter for the party or defending the party in televised media shows. How many of us would have forgotten his traditional smirk and wondered about his cool even when he was pushing politicians from other parties to take cover in a debate in some satellite channel? If, you think about it, there are only two leaders, who had effectively used media in/ for their political career - Chandrababu Naidu and Pramod Mahajan.

In a sense, when he pitched for a BJP-Shiv sena alliance in Maharashtra way back in 1989, he probably foresaw the power of a simple mantra called coalation, which has now become the shortcut to political power in the country, where a new party is launched every month. Though, he might not had a popular votebase as that of Vajpayee or Uma Bharti or Narendra Modi, his organizational skills and innovative ideas compensated for more than his shortcomings.

The rise of BJP to the political peak, undeniably has the contribution of Mahajan, if not its fall in 2004. Many say that it is his India shining campaign as the reason for BJP's defeat, but I don't accept that quite (see Tail piece). Promod's untimely death is probably the worst thing (at least till now) to happen for BJP, which is being chased by bad luck after its shocking defeat in 2005. It will now be an impossible task for the party to find a successor, after all Chanakyas are not born always.

A great hope for the country was indeed cut short in the middle, in a tragic way. As many have already said/ wrote, it is unfortunate that India lost its future Prime minister. I guess, this is the biggest tribute to the man called Pramod Mahajan.

RIP Mr. Pramod Mahajan!


Tail piece: One important reason for 2004 defeat, is the strong coalation build by Congress, which clearly learnt the lesson from BJP's earlier victory. The unrest in left parties struggling to retain their identity in a fast growing economy as reflected in the growth of the Indian middle class and the political compulsions of regional parties as in the cases of AIADMK vs. DMK in TN, RJD vs. JD in Bihar, BSP vs. SP in UP; Congress became the natural choice for them all. They all knew well that Congress can never become dominant in their own turfs as is established in almost every state election held after 2004.

IAS officers from Vokkaliga community

I was reading T V R Shenoy's column in Rediff titled The decline of Bangalore and one strange sentence caught me off guard. The relevant portion is reproduced here (note in italics mine).

... A few months ago, he (S M Krishna) was invited to a function to congratulate newly selected IAS officers from the Vokkaliga community, scarcely an official duty of the governor of Maharashtra! (The Vokkaligas and the Lingayats by far the two most powerful castes in Karnataka politics.) ...

I can't believe this. There is a function to congratulate the IAS officers of a particular community, mind you these people are supposed to act without any bias of caste, language religion etc. and still IAS officers go on and participate. (And more worse, a person of the stature of Krishna - formerly a chief minister and presently a governor - also attends the function). If this happens, what is the gaurantee that they will act impartially in any event of communal clash or in the postings of junior officers? Just a few weeks ago EC has to recall a Gujarat IAS officer, who didn't wanted any Dalit and OBC colleagues.

Isn't there any code of conduct for IAS officers? Or the Ministry of Personnel (which, I believe deals with these) doesn't see this incident as a gross violation by the IAS officers, who participated in the function? The caste/religion/language syndrome has earlier inflicted our politicians. But, if it also penetrates in the bureaucracy, it spells more ills for the nation.

Resign Mr. Buta Singh

In an important judgement the SC today declared the May 23 dissolution of Bihar assembly as unconstitutional, but it permitted the elections to be conducted taking into account the prevailing circumstances.

Since independence, Congress has used the Governor's office as an extension of its own party offices and has removed several unfriendly governments abusing the power of article 356 provided by the constitution. It is often said that old habits never die. True to the saying the since last May, when Congress came to power - thanks to its unexpected victory - quickly got to its pastime of playing politics with governor's offices around different state capitals.

To begin with governors appointed by the previous NDA regime were asked to resign before the end of their tenure. The next episodes happened in quick succession in Goa and Jharkand. Then followed the dissolution of Bihar assembly, which was dissolved at an unholy ghost hour with president signing it from a distant Moscow. We were explained that, this is to prevent horse-trading (a practice followed by Congress many a times in the past to gain majority).

Lalu second-fiddled by the leftists, who suffer from NDAphobia (rather, BJPphobia) finally managed to convince the Congress boss about the impending danger of NDA forming government with voluntary support from breakaway LJP MLAs. And, pooh... the government dissolved in less than a day after a report that was manufactured by governor.

The SC enquiry of the dissolution (when it was challenged by few NDA and breakaway LJP MLAs) raised more questions and more interestingly SC decided to call for the confidential reports of the governor to the home ministry. The weak links in the chain of events were exposed in due course. We learnt that the governor's report dated May 21, 2005 actually contianed an attachment of a press report, which appeared on May 22, 2005 in Sunday Tribune. And, we were told by Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium that, "though the clipping was part of the governor's report, it was not gone thro' by him". Astonishing explanation! Now we have a situation, where by a governor's report is doctored by some unknown person (of course, without his knowledge) and the central government dissolves the assembly based on such a report.

Now, with SC striking down the dissolution as unconstitutional, the mistake has at least been partly corrected. Lalu-Buta & Co has already caused embarassment to the prime minister and the president by their actions. This should not be allowed to continue.

Mr. Buta Singh should be asked to resign immediately and failing this, he should be removed. Only this will ensure a free and fair elections in Bihar.

Oracle and National ID cards

A report in Business World on Sep 26, 2005 claims "Oracle India to issue national identity cards" as part of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). It was also reported in a popular mailing list dedicated for e-Governance in India - India-eGov. The report further states that Oracle India will be assisted by Home ministry in this under the Multipurpose National Identity Cards (MNIC) project. Nothing could sound more ridiculous than this, if this report is indeed true.

We should clearly demarcate the boundary between the roles of government departments and private companies so that each party operates within their area. I would understand, if Oracle assists the Union Home ministry in the project by providing the database to store the details of the citizens. But, here the report swaps the roles of the home ministry and Oracle. If a private MNC is to issue national id cards, then I fail to see the reason, why we should have the home ministry. The consequences of a MNC having access to the complete (or even part of) national database containing the vital details of citizens are serious and unforeseeable.

This author tried to gather more information on this and browsed thro' Oracle India site, e-Gov Centre of Excellence jointly initiated by Oracle & HP and Google news, but without any success.

Curiously enough a simple Google search on "Oracle national ID cards" threw hundreds of thousands of results. Almost all the results show that Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison has been advocating for national id cards based on digital technology and fingerprints, in US and UK at least since 2001 and even offered the software to make it possible - free of charge. This offer was rejected even by the greatest anti-terror campaigners in the world - George Bush and Tony Blair - on concerns of privacy and citizens' freedom. Writing in The Register Andrew Orlowski points out that, attempts by Oracle chief is to "create new demand and new markets for his wares." He further says explains, "...there would be downstream benefits for Oracle of course, in the form of consulting and future applications."

So, does it mean that Oracle - after having failed in US and UK - is now trying to push the idea of national ID cards in India, in an effort to sustain its market share? Will this not make the Indian govt. to be in the mercy of Oracle forever?

It should however be noted that the present proposal is silent on the use of biometrics in the national id cards. But, given the track record of projects being executed in India, this could well be a closely guarded secret, since the citizens right-to-information is still in the paper, despite the law being passed recently. The Indian public has every right to know the necessity of the present project and the need to award the project Oracle, if it has been do so already. We can not just do anything and everything for the sake of buzz words like e-governance, enabling citizens etc. and we need to be extremely cautious in deciding e-governance projects.

Tailpiece: I only hope that, the reporter misreported the news, which originally could be something like "Oracle to help government in issuing national id cards".