rohitj's domain

Indian parliament is trying to bring women reservation in elections. Which means that each political party will have atleast 1/3rd women candidates in elections. I personally find this decision useful. Useful because we need women in political system. Some might argue that its not gonna help. But I think it will. Having more women in political system means more concerns about women empowerment in society. The biggest opposition for this bill probably came from SP, the party which has quite some influence from Muslims. Now a women leader from Muslim side is quite uncommon. This bill will encourage Muslim women to come up and have a voice. Of course, one women leader in a city will empower other women in that city.

Now I know this is sexist. I am not really against sexism or racism, but this is too much. But you can not win this war with ideals. (I don’t fully support Gandhi philosophy).  What is important is that it remains at 1/3rd, and doesnt increase. Come on, women is India are not that incompetitive.

Late 80s and 90s was the worst time for Indian cinema. Indian movies lost the idea of having a theme in it. People like Salman Khan, Govinda, Shahrukh khan, Sanjay Dutt, Sunny Deol became top actors. Most of them didn’t have any clue of acting. Shahrukh who ruled the industry for some time was merely a joke as far as serious acting is concerned. I do like Shahrukh Khan’s movies, but thats just because its usually a light movie, not because it has some nice theme, or nice acting. People like Naseeruddin Shah, Nana Patekar, Amitabh Bachchan, Shabaana Aazmi were missed. Songs were made basic necessity. Old movies used to have songs as well, but they didn’t come out of blue. Those songs used to move the movie forward. But songs like Kurta Phaad Ke were there for no good reason.

I see a new trend in Indian cinema now. Actors like Kay Kay, Irfan Khan, Rahul Bose, Konkana Sen are proper actors. Their movies may not be “commercial” movies as such, but their movies always have a theme, and more importantly a serious acting. These actors make me like Indian Cinema again.

Update : I have talking about Bollywood, not Indian Cinema as such. Apologies for mixing the terms. Bollywood means just Hindi/English movies, not south/east indian movies. I do not know much about South/East Indian movies.

I was coming back from a meeting. I was standing in the bus stop chilling, waiting for the bus which was late. Then came this girl and a guy. I hardly noticed them. They stood in front of me. Girl was talking on phone. When she finished on phone she asked the guy what he did on weekend. The guy said “Nothing on Saturday. On Sunday I watched Slumdog Millionaire.” <pause> “Its a good movie”. The girl replied, “yeah its a good movie. The part which I was atleast was, was SO India.” <”So” with a stress>. I was standing there, I heard it. My next inpulse asked me to ask her what she knows about India. And those who know me, know that its natural for me. I would fight with this person. But to your surprise, and mine too, I didn’t say anything. I smiled. No, I laughed.

I laughed because some people still think that India is a land of snake. It is full of poverty and thats all it has. I laughed at the ignorance and unintellect of that person. This is specially significant here. Here as in America. Because America has lot of Indians. (I never noticed that untill I started looking at different research groups in academia and industry in general). And after this, if this person could still think that way, I am sorry for her. Now, I am not saying that the life shown in that movie is untrue. With good approximation I can say the story is true (not the millionaire part, but the slum life). But is this India? Oh, not just India, she said “*so India*”.

When I read this post, I thought its just exaggeration, but guess what? I was wrong.

An interesting thing happened yesterday. Supreme Court of India said that content on a blog is your responsibility. And the disclaimer “views expressed on the blog are that of the writers” will not help you at all. Here is the news link. This happened after someone started an orkut community against Shiv Sena. And of course, content became vulgar. Those who don’t know, Shiv Sena is a group of extremist Hindus. I think they usually are bad in expressing their views, which usually involves violence. But anyways, this raises the question of Freedom of Speech. Does it snatch that freedom? If it does, is that right?

Few months back, there was an arrest. The guy made an Orkut community “I hate Sonia Gandhi”. And posted some vulgars comments as well. Here is the news link. Now, I hate Sonia Gandhi as well, and it seems Police and court accepted that its fine to hate Sonia Gandhi, and its fine to even write that. But writing opinions in vulgar language was not accepted. And hence the guy was arrested. (on a side note, google gave information about the guy to the police). Those who don’t know, Sonia Gandhi is Congress President. Congress is the ruling party in India right now. Sonia Gandhi, according to me, is dumb. I don’t think she knows anything about India.

So, the question is, is it really against the fundamental rights of expression and speech? It might be interesting to note that anti-campaigning in India is not allowed. Which means that to promote your product, you can not say that other products are bad. And to promote your party in elections, you can not say other parties are bad. Those who don’t know, in US you can do anti-campaigning. Now, I am not sure what is right. Should vulgar language be allowed in public? If yes, then of course it should be allowed on web as well. If not, it shouldn’t be allowed on web as well. And visa-versa.

I don’t think I like the concept of anti-campaigning. And I don’t think I like the concept of vulgar language in public places. Internet has become very important and very used part of communication system. And so, the etiquettes we teach the children and expect from people in general should be applicable on web as well. Why is it that a guy should be allowed to use vulgar language on web, but not in public places? (socially and legally both)

Those who know me know that I am open to each and every religion. I am one of those who takes full interest in other religions (which is why I read Bible, or some of Quran) . Which doesn’t mean I agree with them or not, but I do respect other religions. Anyways. I have tried to keep this blog away from my fury towards Muslims, but I guess, I am gonna break that. I have Muslim friends and they have been awesome, but I still say it (aloud) and I assume those and others agree with this. Today the greatest pain in neck for the world is probably Muslim terrorism. I am not just calling it terrorism, I am using the word “Muslim Terrorism”. Weather they are in Israel, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Pakistan or India, they are threat. I am including India as well, because India has maximum amount of Muslims. And Indians sure know how horrible it has been. “Economic Times” is one of the finance news papers in India. Rather I should say Economic Times is the only proper finance news paper in India. And it keeps itself away from general Indian life or politics. And of course, it attracts only the educated people of India. All this means that they are usually logical. Anyways, this is what they had to say after recent Mumbai incident :

There is also a disgruntled 130 million-strong Muslim minority that has often proved highly receptive to the extremists’ message. India’s political and security leaders have long privately acknowledged and feared this fact. Now, the world knows it.

As far as India is concerned, Muslims constitute 13% of Indian population, but you wouldn’t see them in that quantity, because they always live in separate localities. And people are not allowed to enter these localities. If a terrorist enters these localities (Which they do, because these places give them shelter), police or army can not enter these areas. If a terrorist enters a Mosque, police will think 100 times before entering Mosque, though if its a temple, police will enter immediately. The Economic Times article says it clearly.

My the best memories of Cricket are of course that of Sachin’s. His batting is the only thing that makes me watch cricket. I can not also forget those awesome innings which Sachin Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly played together. No doubt most of the Indians enjoyed Saurabh Ganguly’s glory days. Then came the time when he slipped down in performance (and team spirit as well I believe). Anyways, it was his last inning 2 days back. A test match against Australia. His performance was good in first inning. But in second inning, he got out duck. Zero runs in last inning of his test cricket life. Surely a sad story. But then Bradman also got Duck in his last inning. Anyways, of course his fans and his rivals put that video of his last inning on youtube. Since I don’t watch TV, I turned to youtube to watch that final moments, but it so seems that BCCI has made google remove those videos. Why? Well, I don’t know. BCCI doesn’t even have the copyright on those videos. This is what youtube says about those videos “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Board of Control for Cricket in India”. No, I do not understand. First of all, BCCI doesn’t own any copyright on these videos. Second of all, even if they were afraid that people will insult Ganguly, where is the freedom of expression. Didn’t they insult Ganguly by kicking him out of team for sometime. And didn’t they insult him by making him play under a junior’s captaincy who once played under Ganguly’s captancy. And what about the fans? The fans who couldn’t watch his last inning. BCCI simply snatched the freedom of expression. And of course Google supported them.

So, I was going through some links talking about IPR situations in India. In India people usually do not know what “copyright” is. Copyright is not even enforced to normal people. I guess its limited to large scale industries. The main reasons for this are mainly 2. 1: that people are not at all aware of it. 2: that India is a developing country, and enforcing copyright here will mean enforcing them to choose alternatives. I remember talking to an employee of this big firm (name/company-name compressed) who said that “we” know about piracy. Rather people sell pirated CDs in ground floor our office. “We” do not stop that, “we” encourage it.

I recently got to know about some talks titled “How to exploit IPR”. Apart from that while doing a study on newly made “Competition Act of India”, I got to know how India is bound to preserve IPR from abroad after signing TRIPS. India being one of the highly developing countries will soon start shifting towards bad business strategies. Though some efforts are being taken like CC India and Tempostand, (and soon free culture club at IITK ), we need to move fast. Its good to be ahead.

While doing some search I came by these 2 links which explain copyright/patent laws in India. Copyright period (in general) in India is “life+60″. And patent (in general) period is 20 years. And yeah, copyleft is copyrighted.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Patents-in-India:-Law-and-Procedure&id=69217

http://ezinearticles.com/?Copyright-in-India:-Law-and-Procedure&id=73309

Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose said that English strategy was “Divide and Conqueror”. I think the following image says more than that.