The changing face of India...

India is changing, removing layer upon layer of accumulated dust, to reveal a "shining" economy.

Two television advertisements symbolize this change:

1. Lifebuoy for women (from the makers of "tandurustee ki rakshaa karta hai Lifebuoy")
2. Fair and handsome (from the makers of "Fair and Lovely" fairness cream)

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Another quote symbolizing the new India:
"India: From self-reliance to Reliance"

Thane Mayor's Half Marathon (Varsha Marathon)

Today, I walked the half-marathon organized by the Thane city mayor. It was supposed to be flagged off from the Thane Municipal Corp. headquarters at 8.30 am. I reached there on time, but the race start was delayed for multiple reasons. I also had not entered officially for the race. Thus, I started off along the race route on my own at about 8.45. I had already decided that I would walk the whole distance, may be run a little bit for fun.

The route was - TMC - Highway service road to Teen Haath Naka - LBS Marg to Mulund checknaka - Wagle Estate - Kores Colony - Vartak Nagar - Pokhran #2 Circle - Vasant Vihar - Ghodbunder Road - highway service road to Teen Haath Naka - Hari Niwas - Back to TMC. A big chunk of the route was new concrete streets, other parts were half done tar roads or roads full of potholes (or pot-wells or pot-lakes!). Along the route, there was the new Thane to see - the tall apartment buildings, with commercial security and the new stores that had replaced the old factories, mixed with older, smaller, dilapidated-looking buildings yet to be replaced, and some jhopdis. The route went all the way to the foothills of Yeoor and cut through a fair chunk of the new Thane across the highway.

Some sundry notes, in no particular order:

I was pleasantly surprised at how well the initial stretch of the marathon was set up. Road blocks had been erected, there were signs at every kilometer, and there was police presence at every major intersection, stopping vehicles from entering the route. There were also a lot of Palika Safai workers, who apparently had just finished cleaning roads along the route. Only some traces of the garbage that usually lines some of the streets could be seen. There were also several waiting spectators.

I walked the first 4-5 kilometers by myself, before the real participants in the race passed me, near the Yeoor foothills. The lead runner, and several others chasing him at that point were barefoot. There were quite a few women also running (I counted a total of about 25-30 that passed me).

The barefeet runners were easily identified by the slapping sounds their feet made against the roads. The runners with sneakers by contrast, made a much softer sound.

The course had way too many potholes, little stones, and other hazards along the road to be running barefeet. The hard surface of the tar and concrete couldn't have made it any easier. Kudos to all those barefeet runners!

I am quite sure thousands of rupees were spent on the huge banners all around the city, with huge images of Uddhav and Bal Thackeray, Anand Dighe, Mayor Rajan Vichare, all and sundry local sena leaders, and even, Matoshri Thackeray, and Matoshri Dighe. There were also two large shamianas at the starting point, a huge sound system to drum up enthusiasm, and so on. Why didn't some of this money go to support the lead runners who were running without shoes on? The stated aim of the marathon was to prepare state runners for national and international events. Couldn't proper gear be provided, at least to the lead runners? (It appears that the only group of elite runners that had some shoes on were from the Army). The money spent on erecting huge banners of people who in their entire lives have probably never participated in any significant athletic activity, let alone a marathon, could've been better spent that way. Shiv Sena, and Shiv Sainiks, are you listening?

Apparently, more than 50,000 participants had registered for the marathon. No more than 500 must've passed me by the time I finished the race. Where did all these people go? (Well, there are some answers: There were not 50,000 participants for the full distance - the women's race ended at the 15 km mark, the children's race was even shorter, the senior citizen's race was a couple hundred meters at best, and most vitally, the participation numbers were inflated by the compulsory registration of schoolchildren from the municipal schools. Again, the publicity needs of having organized the largest marathon ever triumphed any realities!

A big thank you to the much maligned and oft neglected civic workers - police personnel, safai workers and the numerous other city officials who contributed to the event. The police and safai workers had been out in the rain since 6 am, making arrangements.

Apparently there is another marathon this coming weekend (30th July). The Mayor's Varsha marathon was a Satish Pradhan promoted event for the past 16 years. Now that he has switched from the Shiv Sena to Congress, it seems he's taken the marathon with him. So one week after the Sena-sponsored marathon, there's going to be a Congress-marathon. Amazing that the civic authorities can be subjected to the stress of hosting two marathons, for such petty political reasons

By my obervation, the largest cheering crowds were in the lower middle class areas, where people were on the streets in huge numbers. They were enthusiastic, cheering everyone on with "Come on", "Bhaago", "Run" and so on. By comparison, near large apartment buildings like Kores, Runwal and Hiranandani complexes, hardly anyone noticed the runners.

Heavy rains started around the time I was near the 16 km mark, and continued for about a half hour. Incredible to walk in such rain! Fortunately, during most of this time, I was on the pothole-free stretch.

Around the 19 km mark, my thighs started cramping up. At this point, I had to start running, for that was the only way to avoid the pain in the thighs and keep going.

Oh, yes. My time for the half-marathon distance was 3 hours 5 minutes.

Blogs, Freedom of Speech and Indian Democracy

This week has seen a lot of activity in the Indian blogosphere due to the Indian government’s attempts to block certain blogs. Repercussions of this activity have been everywhere – the news was important enough to merit a piece on the technology news website news.com, a special half-hour show on NDTV, an Times of India editorial, several front and inside page news items in major Indian newspapers, and even this editorial in the leading Marathi newspaper, Loksatta. Indian Bloggers, as a group, succeeded in creating enough pressure on the government and the blog ban seems to have been lifted today. Several factors regarding this entire episode merit some thought and discussion.

Enforcing the ban: Who erred?

It has been made abundantly clear by several observers that the effect of the Indian Government’s request to ISPs was to remove access to millions of blogs hosted by blogger, typepad and geocities. Several interesting factors here:

• It has now come to light that the Indian government’s list was specific to certain blogs. It would thus be wrong to consider this as equivalent with blocking in such countries as China, Pakistan or Iran, where dictatorial governments restrict access to large swathes of the Internet that don’t agree with their cause. Clearly, the Indian government did not engage in anything different than what is common practice in many countries– blocking material that is offensive. For example, Germany and France both block neo-nazi hate speech websites. This type of censorship is not restriction of freedom of speech. Rather, it enforces “social norms” on the wild side of the Internet. Of course, the government did not help its cause by initially making the list of blocked sub-domains confidential.
  
• Many bloggers have assumed or blamed Sarkari Babus (who “by definition” don’t understand technology) had come up with a list that caused blanket bans. Would someone care to explain how such ignorant and tech non-savvy civil servants would have found offensive or terrorist-written material on the Internet? It is clear that there is some government monitoring of blogs – and there is a possibility that terrorists would use blogs to communicate with each other (by writing unpublished posts in shared accounts) – and those that do the monitoring would discover some offensive material from time to time. It is time to stop the blaming and give the government officials some credit. Their confidential list is a severely restricted list, and does seem to contain at least some material that is offensive.
  
• It seems that ISPs in India were clearly out of their depth when handling the government request. Lacking a technical means to do sub-domain blocking, ISPs should not have blocked entire domains. Informing the government of this fact before enforcing the blocking would have been a much more sensible approach. It is not clear why the babus get all the blame while the ISPs go scot free.
  

Blogs as a medium

• The rapidity with which news spreads around the blogosphere has often been a useful feature of blogs. The Gaurav Sabnis v. IIPM issue is well known among Indian bloggers, and was initiated and vigorously pursued by bloggers. In the present instance, bloggers have shown themselves to be a rather impatient community, holding the government responsible even before all the evidence was available.
  
• The influence of bloggers in pushing the mainstream media was clearly seen in the way print and television media picked up the issue within a day of it being posted on blogs. Although the effect of bloggers as citizen journalists has generally been overstated, their impact cannot be ignored.
  
• As enterprising bloggers showed the way to get around the blocks (Tor, pkblogs.com, and proxies), it was clear that the ban, like other attempts to restrict information on the Internet, would not completely wipe out access to this information. Of course, it increases the cost of access and sometimes that may suffice to curtail freedom of speech.
  
• As Lawrence Lessig argues in his Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, without citizen vigilance, the openness of the Internet is under threat by architectural changes. Bloggers, watch out against big brother!
  

Democracy in India

• It is an encouraging sign that the several thousand bloggers in India seem united in their voice for freedom of expression, irrespective of their political or other beliefs.
  
• At least in this particular case, bloggers have displayed firm belief in the idea of democracy in India. Even though they might be accused of being too quick to compare the state to autocratic regimes, it is comforting that democracy is an entrenched value in so many influential minds. This optimism must however be tempered by the bloggers constant references to the foreign media’s coverage of India as a beacon of hope, thanks to its democracy. The belief in democracy must come from within, not from outside.

Social networks of soccer

A nice visualization of "passing" in football as a social network. Data used are from the world cup finals. Notice how the playmakers - Makelele, Zidane, Pirlo - seem to have a lot of passes directed to them. See Visual Complexity for many more networks.

A poem on Bombay, by Aadil Jussawala

Amardeep Singh has put this excellent poem on his blog, along with some thoughts after the Mumbai blasts.

The Black Cloud

Over the last couple of days, I read science fiction after a very long gap. The book was Fred Hoyle's 1957 novel "The Black Cloud". It is good science and good fiction.

- The portrayal of the scientific and political establishment of the late 1950s - early 1960s is excellent. Particularly, in the aftermath of the atomic bomb, and the ongoing arms race, the societal responsibility of scientists is a central issue in the book.

- Another interesting aspect is the prescient description of the various uses a digital computer may be put to. Some of those such as speech recognition, voice synthesis, complex mathematical calculations, and so on have already become real.

- Its a quick read - the plot moves pretty fast, there are few important characters, which are reasonably well developed. The story does have a couple of twists, but does not indulge in any kind of sensational surprises.

- Its the first science fiction book I've read that actually contains derivatives and other mathematical notation to explain some calculations made by the characters. In fact, many scientific principles are discussed in way more detail than in most science fiction books.

- The portrayal of Britain's decaying power, and of the helplessness of non-industrialized nations is spot-on.

On the whole, a fun book to read.