Archive for India 2009

The Day my mind stood still – 2

// December 7th, 2009 // 7 Comments » // Articles, India 2009

I have this wonderful habit of dropping things when I eat and that day the soup cup was so fragile that I had to be extra careful that I should not drop it. I have to say about a few people I met during the breaks – Dinesh, my junior at MBA – absolutely creative guy who got a job in Oracle in the most bizarre way you can think of, left the job in 6 months to join Radio Mirchi because he felt Oracle was boring… ;)

Felix Chandran – who did the creative stuff for TedX Chennai – Should I say more?

Smriti – consultant at Delloite US. She had come for a vacation and visited TedX

Rabi and Christian Fabre – CEO of Christian Fabre fashions – interesting personality.

Chinmayi – Singer, RJ, VJ and Enteepreneur. Had a good conversation with her about her business, reality shows, education etc. She has a company called Blue Elephant – a linguistics company – in simple words they do translation services. They also do translation services for Zoho.

Rama Vadakattu – works in eBay but with entrpreneurial spirit and a host of guys from Thoughtworks…

I was hoping for a good session after lunch because they had a good lunch and I didn’t want to sleep off…

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The day my mind stood still – 1

// December 1st, 2009 // 9 Comments » // Articles, India 2009

Disclaimer:

1. All views in the post are mine and written with an open mind.

2. I am not going to bore you with my bad photographs. Check the following link for wonderful photographs from Felix Chandran. ( another awesome guy I met in TedX Chennai)

http://picasaweb.google.com/felixchandran

I was travelling back from TedX event in IIT to my home. As it’s a long bus back, my thoughts were spinning around the people who I met, listened and interacted with. I had 3 questions in my mind

1. Should I quit my job and start agriculture, which I believe can be transformed in to an organized industry in India?

2. Should I quit my job and start travelling from North Pole to South Pole just like that haphazardly without any plan in mind? Mind you travelling is one of the many things I love

Or

3. Should I stay where I am and make small changes in my own domain with the simple powers I have and make a difference in the lives of the people I know?

The answer at the end of the series

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Why Australian Cricket Team and BJP are same?

// August 26th, 2009 // No Comments » // Featured, India 2009

The loss of Ashes for Australian Cricket Team coincided with the infamous ousting of Jaswant Singh from BJP, the second largest national party in India. Jaswant Singh was ousted because of writing a book about Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

The problems in Australian cricket team ( was the best cricket team in the world till Sunday) and BJP ( one of the most disciplined parties in India) are strikingly similar and shockingly it seems the problems will get worse.

As I see there are 3 major problems in both..
1. Replacement Crisis
2. Identity Crisis
3. Leadership Crisis (more…)

Google and Indian Elections

// April 7th, 2009 // No Comments » // India 2009

Internet has become part and parcel of our lives. That’s an age old statement. Google has become a part and parcel of our lives is the new statement. And it’s an under statement.

Elections in India are like festivals. The hoopla, money and the madness are intriguing and also interesting. This year is no difference but there is a huge swing by the political parties towards a new medium called “Internet”. From Google Ads to Tech Crunch, Advani is asking people to vote for a change. Shashi Tharoor with his Facebook page.

It’s all happening in India.You can call it Obama effect but i would say a pragmatic move because 42 Million new voters are going to vote this year and to woo young voters, you should be there where they are.

There are some nice initiatives from some private and public institutions to increase awareness of voting. Like the www.jaagore.com of Tata Group, www.empoweringindia.org by the Chief Election Commissoner of Tamilnadu along with Liberty Institute of India

But Google is doing what it can do the best, giving access to information. Google along with Hindustan Times has started a campaign called “Be an Informed Voter”, where you get real time aggregation of information from different news sites, election quotes and most importantly information about your constituency. They have most probably aggregated the news from the Indian Census and provide information like literacy rate, urbanisation, mortality rate, development etc., I tried my hand on Thanjavur (my consitutency). Check that out here

Thanjavur Consitutency in Google

And you can personalise your page accordingly to get specific information about your constituency. A nice initiative from the Internet Giant.

Check out the Tech Crunch post on the same and for more information on Internet Marketing Initiatives of Indian Politicians check here ( an article by Gauvrav Mishra)