My 5 ruppee prediction on future of Internet and Television – Part 1

Internet was hailed to be a successor to television broadcast as it allowed people to pull information from the cloud rather than being pushed by broadcasters.

The freedom to choose content along with the boundless variety of content available was a great combination. Comparatively, television broadcasting was a top down approach with certain people sitting in offices in metros deciding over coffee, moolah, and smoke what is interesting for them, and, for the consumer across the length and breadth of vast countries. The moolah, specially restricted the choice of content.

The assertion is completely incorrect.
During the earlier days, internet was not much different from the television as information was made available on portals such as rediff. Quiet good in the initial stages. But, slowly the content stared to increase. As people realised the value of a free pubishing platform with global reach, more and more information was now put online – current affairs,debates,commerce. Gradually, the content increased beyond the comprehension and indexing capacity of the human mind. Then came Google with its search engine which dethroned humans in the editorial board, with its coding algorithms . The algorithm skillfully indexed the wide variety of information available . The search engine now selects, or, tries to guess what is best for the consumer.Thus, bringing the freedom and the variety to choose from in a neat package. This revolutinised flow of information. All was good, until the content was produced by some select group of people/organisations on some topics that were widely believed to be of interest.

Soon the story got a new twist, social networking came into vogue, and the amount of content exploded. Moreover, the internet is now used for information warfare and people do not rely on what Google puts as the top link normally. And it takes a lot of time to come up with the best story.

This is bringing the humans back into the editorial board. If you look closely at the new products such as Google Waves, Google Side Wiki and the now ubiquitous and famous Twitter you will find how people are again relying on individuals they trust to select and share the information that they find valuable/interesting. These individuals are respected matter experts who know where information on the subject/experts will follow from. To illustrate what I mean – If you browse through Google News – you see 100s of links on a particular news topic, but if you go to Twitter, and see what the expert matter on the topic is sharing and reading you know what to read and where to spend time on.
To be contd..

Strength/Pragmatism and Morality

Over a meeting with a friend I happened to discuss the role of morality in life. The friend wanted to be convinced that morality is going to produce the best results finally in long term. This conviction would propel him like Gandhi to never waiver from the path.

Rather than battling out over what exactly is morality, and if it is subjective, we defined it in simple terms – the set of rules which does not infringe on the right of others to equality and peaceful existence. I think we in India are in a sense feel victimised by pursuing of morality by Gandhi and later Nehru. The Gandhi model did give us independence but it is too difficult to practice and asks for super human courage. The Nehru model resulted in a defeat from China and isolation in cold war. Thus, one always starts with a position that it is too theoretical and lead to back stabbing.

We decided to take two new examples, one was the ascent of Dalits and the decline in the status of tribals. One is manifested in the rise of Mayawati and other is manifested in the escalation of conflict against Naxals.

The dalit movement has been successful because it fought within the framework of the constitution and the right guaranteed to it by the Indian Parliament. The reservations propelled them to a manifold upliftment in their status over the last sixty years (although, further improvement can be made possible if they could deal with the corruption). This is similar to the peaceful movement fought by Gandhi on the basis of Truth and for the rule of law and both of them have been very successful.

The movement spearheaded by Naxals is violent and tries to transgress on the rights of one section of the society for the benefit of the other. The movement runs on the premise of revenge and intends to reverse the victimisation. Perhaps, they should have adopted peaceful means to gain power democratically and like Nelson Mandela/Desmond Tutu’s Peace and Reconciliation mission taken a magnanimous position. They would have had a chance to acheive their ends.

But, the problem is that no one respects you until you have strength be it intellectual, social, physical and financial. The reason why Gandhi was respected was that he had a huge influence on the mass of the Indian population which gave him a lot of strength to make himself heard. It was his moral solution that gave the results fast and sustained. Had the solution been immoral the British Government wouldn’t be afraid to go after him. And it is here, that Nehru’s morality failed. We wanted to make ourselves heard but did little to take a pragmatic view of our strength and build over it to lend credibility to our voice. The fiasco was simply because we were like a hollow drum which sounded loud but didn’t have the strength to withstand blows leave aside giving back a couple in return. Equality comes from respect and that has to be created on building moral, financial, social and physical strength. And probably why Naxals started to build their military strength – but they should have taken morality into account.

One can argue, that in an immoral world there has to be a tit for tat. It should be kept in mind that the tools are not by themselves immoral. One needs to build strength in all spheres, but to what use they should be employed is to be thought carefully. Physical strength to secure equality in elections Yes. Physical strength to take revenge and kill – No.

In corporate world, one can see the gulf between Reliance and Tata. In public perception, one is seen to do underhand dealings and other works on a strong set of moral principle. One is perceived to be corrupt and other is respected for the investment in society made by them.

Thus my conclusion was that Pragmatism and Morality need to go hand in hand to have a sustained solution fast.

Moral Unpragmatic Solution – Never takes off (NAM, AFSPA, Ann Suu Kyi)
Immoral Pragmatic Solution – Not sustainable, future costs are high (Iraq war, Shell Africa, Climate Change)
Moral Pragmatic Solution – Sustainable and Least cost (Tata, Gandhi, Dalit Movement)

PS: Equality is a simple concept that includes in it the seed of honesty of conduct in public life and, hence, death of corruption, but also the notion that there should be an equality of opportunity in life for all sections of the society.

Corruption and Gestures

Corruption and Gestures are the two principle things that politicians in India deal with. It is alarming to see the kind of inequality, poverty, lawlessness here. It is appaling to see that none of the checks and balances of our democracy and constitution are functioning. Is it a case to go for an overhaul of constitution? Might be!

But the problem is endemic because the gestures politicians indulge in. Govt announces various hand outs for poor sections of the society, but shies to put in place a proper infrastructure for poors themselves to work their own way out of poverty. These gestures are taken in by hungry, illiterate public with open arms, accentuating the problem. What is required is an informed society that guides people on what is right and then forces the Government and Politicans to incorporate their concerns. However, such a technique is less likely to work as the independent press and enlightened journalists have failed to bring accountability into the system.

The other idea is to restrict voting to the educated and informed. This will ensure that the entire mass of India gets educated by the time we have 2019 elections.

The role of the government has to come down to good governance only. They need to scale back otherwise corruption will kill the body politic of India and the youth force will move out leaving behind a wretched state.