Writing a good and catchy intro (opening lines) for a story has assumed so much significance in journalism that for many reporters, often the intro is the story. Understandably so, because competition between broadsheets has become so cutthroat, that newsroom bosses remain under pressure to churn out content which will attract the reader first and maybe inform him later. Fresh recruits ‘on the beat’ sent to some press conference carry that distinguishable expression of worry over their faces that voices the concern, ‘Where do I pick up the story from?’
The question is not illegitimate, but its interpretation has changed of late. ‘Where do I pick up the story from’ earlier used to mean which of the so many things talked about at the conference holds the highest importance – thereby deserving place in the opening lines. Now it means what smartass and wittily constructed sentence (even if vaguely relevant to the story and its facts) can I come up with to get the reader read my news item. It is like using Aishwarya Rai to advertise a new electric drill or a bulldozer. Viewer spots a beautiful face staring out of a newspaper ad, and once the attention is captured, we can leverage it to sell whatever… fairness crème, television, cooking oil or Patton tanks.
No real harm is done in writing a catchy intro to attract a reader toward a news item, as long as the item performs due diligence in delivering all the facts in the later paragraphs.
How are fresh recruits reacting to the newsroom pressure for good intros? Quite funnily. I have seen a huge number of fresh recruits set their browser homepages to one of the many websites on the Internet that contain famous quotes by famous people from where they cull out intros for their stories. If the story has a sociological flavour, begin with a Chomsky quote. For political, it is Abraham Lincoln of JFK. If the story is on personalities or celebrities, Freud has blurted out enough dope on people and behaviour to work as coherent intros. And George Bernard Shaw is the all-seasons man, he has said something witty about everything before dying. PG Wodehouse is the resort of the humorously inclined.
Is it doing the reader any harm? Mostly no. Because stories allotted to a fresh recruit are usually not important enough to affect the reader’s life in a big way. Is it doing the young reporter any harm? Maybe yes. Excessive pressure on intros does channelize all energy towards those first four sentences of the story. The remaining 300 words end up being mishmash and a vague representation of the facts. Over time, will this generation of reporters become as good writers as the newsroom bosses they work under?
One look at the Metro pages of any of the half-dozen broadsheets in Mumbai proves this. Beyond the intro, most stories are a mess. They begin with something and conclude with something completely unrelated.
As a classic example, I copy-paste the intro and the final paragraph below of one such story I read and leave it to you to guess what subject the story was about.
Intro: Men are four: He who knows not and knows not he knows not, he is a fool – shun him; He who knows not and knows he knows not, he is simple – teach him; He who knows and knows not he knows, he is asleep – wake him; He who knows and knows he knows, he is wise – follow him!
Ending paragraph: “Some of the challenges involved in KPO will be maintaining higher quality standards, investment in KPO infrastructure, the lack of talent pool, requirement of higher level of control, confidentiality and enhanced risk management." Mr Walia adds.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Nothing Doing
And then Diwali shopping was taken hostage with our lives being the ransom.
I was in merry mode in the bustling Karol Bagh market with a friend when the Delhi triple blasts occured, and even at 6:45 pm the market did not seem to have any inkling of the mayhem that had happened a couple of kilometers away at Paharganj. Only after I received a couple of frantic calls from outstation friends asking if I was safe did I know that crowded spots in Delhi were the most dangerous places to be on earth at that time.
Our first reaction, naturally, was 'Vacate This Place'. Outside Karol Bagh too, things were pretty calm, even as the rush hour Delhi traffic grappled to remain stable in light of the city's fresh crisis. I must laud the Traffic Police for their management though, for despite the blasts and the accompanying chaos, traffic moved on smoothly on our entire way from Karol Bagh to Bengali Market via CP, all of which are at stone's throw from Paharganj. Before leaving Karol Bagh, we really doubted if my friend would be able to reach her home for the day.
My condolences towards the families left aggrieved by today's blasts. The blasts have occured at prime festive period of both the Hindu and Muslim community. Jaish-e-Mohammed is being said to have committed the ghastly act. I wonder how they justify their jehaad to themselves by ending people of their own community and disrupting a festival that celebrates the same Prophet that they cite to justify the jehaad. No it's not complicated, it's just plain sick.
I was in merry mode in the bustling Karol Bagh market with a friend when the Delhi triple blasts occured, and even at 6:45 pm the market did not seem to have any inkling of the mayhem that had happened a couple of kilometers away at Paharganj. Only after I received a couple of frantic calls from outstation friends asking if I was safe did I know that crowded spots in Delhi were the most dangerous places to be on earth at that time.
Our first reaction, naturally, was 'Vacate This Place'. Outside Karol Bagh too, things were pretty calm, even as the rush hour Delhi traffic grappled to remain stable in light of the city's fresh crisis. I must laud the Traffic Police for their management though, for despite the blasts and the accompanying chaos, traffic moved on smoothly on our entire way from Karol Bagh to Bengali Market via CP, all of which are at stone's throw from Paharganj. Before leaving Karol Bagh, we really doubted if my friend would be able to reach her home for the day.
My condolences towards the families left aggrieved by today's blasts. The blasts have occured at prime festive period of both the Hindu and Muslim community. Jaish-e-Mohammed is being said to have committed the ghastly act. I wonder how they justify their jehaad to themselves by ending people of their own community and disrupting a festival that celebrates the same Prophet that they cite to justify the jehaad. No it's not complicated, it's just plain sick.
Monday, October 24, 2005
Jazz update
I must admit, I had severely underestimated the prowess of a five-string bass until I watched that Flecktones concert video yesterday. Now because Victor Wooten is an unbelievably demented and probably the most brilliant cat ever to hold a five string, he can do to harmonics what Wodehouse can do to the idyllic British life.
There are at least 5 harmonics hidden on each string below the fifth fret, adding up to some 25 on a five-stringer, which can be used to construct a fairly complex piece with a simultaneous bassline no the E and A strings. Who'd have thunk! You have to see Victor do it to believe it. Besides Victor, the only bass player who has experimented so extensively with harmonics is Jaco Pastorius, expecially in the latter half of his career.
Hazaar magajmaari later, I laid my hands on five bootlegs of the Jonas Hellborg-Shawn Lane-Andrea Marchesini India Tour. While the Delhi concert, which I had incidentally attended in 2003, is a tight set featuring a spunky Time is the Enemy. The Someplace Else and Tripura House concerts are quite similar but a little predictable. The two-disc Aizawl concert is probably the most complex and best technically speaking.
Meanwhile, the Sunny Jain Collective is touring India and I hope to catch them while in Delhi.
There are at least 5 harmonics hidden on each string below the fifth fret, adding up to some 25 on a five-stringer, which can be used to construct a fairly complex piece with a simultaneous bassline no the E and A strings. Who'd have thunk! You have to see Victor do it to believe it. Besides Victor, the only bass player who has experimented so extensively with harmonics is Jaco Pastorius, expecially in the latter half of his career.
Hazaar magajmaari later, I laid my hands on five bootlegs of the Jonas Hellborg-Shawn Lane-Andrea Marchesini India Tour. While the Delhi concert, which I had incidentally attended in 2003, is a tight set featuring a spunky Time is the Enemy. The Someplace Else and Tripura House concerts are quite similar but a little predictable. The two-disc Aizawl concert is probably the most complex and best technically speaking.
Meanwhile, the Sunny Jain Collective is touring India and I hope to catch them while in Delhi.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Of Honeymooners and Fitting Replies
It so happened, one member of a Yahoogroup that I am member of married (a girl) and immediately left for France for a long honeymoon-cum-business trip in the first week of this month. Before leaving, he turned on the on-vacation auto-reply feature on his email account. Anybody who sends him an email now gets a "I'm on vacation, but I will reply after returning" message generated automatically by his mailbox.
The problem that has so resulted, is that any email sent to the Yahoogroup reaches the honeymooner's email account and makes it generate the automated vacation reply. Since an email sent to a Yahoogroup comes back to the sender, the automated vacation reply reaches back to the mail account in question and elicits another auto-reply. An infinite loop takes over and there's mayhem! Like testerday, group members exchanged some 25 emails all of which invoked the honeymooner's mailbox to go into an infinite loop and fill the Yahoogroup by over 400 vacation auto-reply mails in the past 24 hours.
The honeymooning couple, meanwhile, are understandably, err.. honeymooning in Paris, completely cut-off from the Internet, oblivious to the whole thing. The Moderator, who can block the honeymooner's emails until his return, is away reporting the earthquake in Kashmir.
Any solutions? :D
The problem that has so resulted, is that any email sent to the Yahoogroup reaches the honeymooner's email account and makes it generate the automated vacation reply. Since an email sent to a Yahoogroup comes back to the sender, the automated vacation reply reaches back to the mail account in question and elicits another auto-reply. An infinite loop takes over and there's mayhem! Like testerday, group members exchanged some 25 emails all of which invoked the honeymooner's mailbox to go into an infinite loop and fill the Yahoogroup by over 400 vacation auto-reply mails in the past 24 hours.
The honeymooning couple, meanwhile, are understandably, err.. honeymooning in Paris, completely cut-off from the Internet, oblivious to the whole thing. The Moderator, who can block the honeymooner's emails until his return, is away reporting the earthquake in Kashmir.
Any solutions? :D
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Dare to disagree with Arindam Chaudhry's IIPM?
As a solution to dalits' and minorities' electricity problems, Malay Chaudhry (the self-proclaimed management guru father of his self-proclaimed management guru ponytailed son Arindam Chaudhry) calls for giving each dalit household a diesel engine dynamo 'which will give light for 4 hours a day during the night' (akin to having an eggs-&-sandwiches breakfast for the afternoon dinner). He also advocates two tube wells in each dalit village to solve the drinking water problem, complete with a business plan (it's not too tough to attach statistics to an argument).
(Source: 'Renewing India: Let Caste/Community Divide Disappear' in the IIPM full-page advertisement in October 10, 2005 edition of Hindustan Times, Mumbai. No newspaper considers Malay Chaudhry a man worthwhile enough to write a column, so he has to pay and get his articles printed via advertisements)
The atrocious english language slips aside, the stupendously rising fuel prices and the sheer incongruity and drying up of the water table make Malay Chaudhry's arguments sound like those coming from a class VIII student. Is THIS the class, understanding and maturity of Malay Chaudhry, a former IIM Bangalore professor and Founder Director of what he claims to be 'India's no 1 B-school'?!!
You might ask me why I am even taking the IIPM propoganda so seriously. It takes only a pea-brain to figure out how dubious the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) is as a place to study from their full-page approval-seeking print advertisements.
I am doing this because if you question or pooh-pooh the claims of IIPM from the POV of a concerned consumer, like Mumbai-based magazine JAM magazine did and blogger Gaurav Sabnis followed up with more questions, IIPM stifles your voice by slapping a Rs 125 crore damages legal notice and threatening police action.
Simultaneously, the IIPM PR machinery spruces up fake blogs all over the Internet to discredit Gaurav Sabnis' name. Now what if more concerned citizens question IIPM's unfair practices... will Arindam Chaudhry stoop to newer lows as sending goondas to each home?
It would be interesting to know if there are any cases pending in the consumer courts against IIPM. It is very likely that there are. The AICTE has already objected to the use of the phrase 'Indian Institute of' in IIPM's name.
Meanwhile, several bloggers have come up to back Gaurav Sabnis.
If IIPM actually goes ahead with a legal recourse against Sabnis, they will end up axing their own foot. A defamation case eventually puts the truth to test. Imagine if this blows up into a court case, and a couple of disgruntled IIPM students are gathered to come forward and testify against the institute's malpractices in a court. I am sure the pony-tailed and mouse-voiced Arindam wouldn't consider that an increase in his happiness quotient.
(Source: 'Renewing India: Let Caste/Community Divide Disappear' in the IIPM full-page advertisement in October 10, 2005 edition of Hindustan Times, Mumbai. No newspaper considers Malay Chaudhry a man worthwhile enough to write a column, so he has to pay and get his articles printed via advertisements)
The atrocious english language slips aside, the stupendously rising fuel prices and the sheer incongruity and drying up of the water table make Malay Chaudhry's arguments sound like those coming from a class VIII student. Is THIS the class, understanding and maturity of Malay Chaudhry, a former IIM Bangalore professor and Founder Director of what he claims to be 'India's no 1 B-school'?!!
You might ask me why I am even taking the IIPM propoganda so seriously. It takes only a pea-brain to figure out how dubious the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) is as a place to study from their full-page approval-seeking print advertisements.
I am doing this because if you question or pooh-pooh the claims of IIPM from the POV of a concerned consumer, like Mumbai-based magazine JAM magazine did and blogger Gaurav Sabnis followed up with more questions, IIPM stifles your voice by slapping a Rs 125 crore damages legal notice and threatening police action.
Simultaneously, the IIPM PR machinery spruces up fake blogs all over the Internet to discredit Gaurav Sabnis' name. Now what if more concerned citizens question IIPM's unfair practices... will Arindam Chaudhry stoop to newer lows as sending goondas to each home?
It would be interesting to know if there are any cases pending in the consumer courts against IIPM. It is very likely that there are. The AICTE has already objected to the use of the phrase 'Indian Institute of' in IIPM's name.
Meanwhile, several bloggers have come up to back Gaurav Sabnis.
If IIPM actually goes ahead with a legal recourse against Sabnis, they will end up axing their own foot. A defamation case eventually puts the truth to test. Imagine if this blows up into a court case, and a couple of disgruntled IIPM students are gathered to come forward and testify against the institute's malpractices in a court. I am sure the pony-tailed and mouse-voiced Arindam wouldn't consider that an increase in his happiness quotient.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
My peon put a fly in my coffee
Business Risk Management elicits visions of a group of dashing necktie wearing smart-alecs working overtime to protect an enterprise from investment, capital and credit risks, godown damages, hackers and such.
The US-based business risk consultant firm Control Risk Group (due to make its formal announcement of India operations tomorrow), however on its website offers solutions to 'bomb threat', 'audio forensics' and 'kidnapping' too for businesses!
Did you know that companies also outsource to Control Risk Group for protection from...
The US-based business risk consultant firm Control Risk Group (due to make its formal announcement of India operations tomorrow), however on its website offers solutions to 'bomb threat', 'audio forensics' and 'kidnapping' too for businesses!
Did you know that companies also outsource to Control Risk Group for protection from...
- Construction Fraud
- Corruption
- Defensive Driving Training (when the CEO is attacked by a biker gang at Worli sea face)
- Extortion (D-company, beware!)
- Product contamination (is there poison in your project leader's masala-chai?)
- Anti-money laundering.
I say, what about the biggest risk of them all: intra-office romance?
Friday, September 30, 2005
Fodder for the green men!
Finally, higher education in Bihar has received its long awaited shot-in-the-arm through the route of foreign-university collaboration. A university in the UK has started a course in Astrobiology. Astrobiology, as the discerning mind would immediately grasp, is man's age-old hunger to search for alien life.
The course, besides studying astronomy, will also examine 'popular culture, including films like ET and students will also study obscure texts' related to extra-terrestrial life.
Aliens according to popular culture and obscure texts (and lately definitive literature like 'Men in Black' and 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'), are strange looking people who disguise themselves as people and clandestinely mix with the Earth public and work from inside to destroy humanity via economic and social misdeeds.
Now we know for sure where to find these Aliens... among the politicians of Bihar! Hence, the students' field trips and live experiments are largely going to be in Bihar. Now the question is, will these students do enough research to help these Aliens find their way back home?
The course, besides studying astronomy, will also examine 'popular culture, including films like ET and students will also study obscure texts' related to extra-terrestrial life.
Aliens according to popular culture and obscure texts (and lately definitive literature like 'Men in Black' and 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'), are strange looking people who disguise themselves as people and clandestinely mix with the Earth public and work from inside to destroy humanity via economic and social misdeeds.
Now we know for sure where to find these Aliens... among the politicians of Bihar! Hence, the students' field trips and live experiments are largely going to be in Bihar. Now the question is, will these students do enough research to help these Aliens find their way back home?
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Our celebrities just don't get it
Former Beach Boy Brian Wilson on his website has made an open offer that if you donate $100 for Katrina victims, he will will give you a call on your phone and answer a question of your choice.
True to his word, people have actually testified to receiving calls from him after they made the donation (courtesy Boing Boing).
I wonder why celebrities in India cannot do something like this in the times of Tsunami or Gujarat Earthquakes. A similar offer by people like SRK, Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Shekhar Suman or Sachin Tendulkar would do magic to calamity donations. What we do see them doing, though, is participating in an all-star show the proceeds of which they claim would go into a relief fund. And we all know how much an educated man trusts such claims.
True to his word, people have actually testified to receiving calls from him after they made the donation (courtesy Boing Boing).
I wonder why celebrities in India cannot do something like this in the times of Tsunami or Gujarat Earthquakes. A similar offer by people like SRK, Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Shekhar Suman or Sachin Tendulkar would do magic to calamity donations. What we do see them doing, though, is participating in an all-star show the proceeds of which they claim would go into a relief fund. And we all know how much an educated man trusts such claims.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Whoa-cabulary!
OK, the week gone by, counting from today, is the one that I wrote most extensively in since moving to Mumbai. A list of Top Words and Phrases I used in my newspaper writing in the past week. They keep ringing in my head.
nagpada, chappell, building collapse, eloquence, beach, delighted, saki naka, reliance, patel, VoIP, a study in stupidity, bluetooth, parochial blasphemy, underrated, indian penal code, commendable, investment per megawatt, susu kare chhe, bourses, sensex, zoomed, climbed, hedge funds, flew, sped, tarannum, bungalow, bookies, dabhol, stem cell, kaun banega marodpati, entwine, lokhandwala, sylvan, 26/7, eviscerate, cellular, fixed, gorgeous, MHADA, MMRDA, BMC, vilasrao, biotech, alternative, sectoral, earnings per share, core banking solution, basel ii standards, capital adequacy ratio, organic network, promoter group, paid-up capital, premium, jungle mein mangal, naxalites, rr patil, ipod, itunes, sex scandal, cocaine, main toh bas naukri kar raha hoon, relief package, bridge, port, low pressure area, subir raha ko gussa kyon aata hai?, broker, value addition, VAT, marginal pricing, nefarious, nepotism, vixen, gandhian, pole dancer, Q1 profits.
In other news, I enjoyed test-riding an iPod Nano today. That installing its supporting software on my office computer nearly crashed it is another issue.
nagpada, chappell, building collapse, eloquence, beach, delighted, saki naka, reliance, patel, VoIP, a study in stupidity, bluetooth, parochial blasphemy, underrated, indian penal code, commendable, investment per megawatt, susu kare chhe, bourses, sensex, zoomed, climbed, hedge funds, flew, sped, tarannum, bungalow, bookies, dabhol, stem cell, kaun banega marodpati, entwine, lokhandwala, sylvan, 26/7, eviscerate, cellular, fixed, gorgeous, MHADA, MMRDA, BMC, vilasrao, biotech, alternative, sectoral, earnings per share, core banking solution, basel ii standards, capital adequacy ratio, organic network, promoter group, paid-up capital, premium, jungle mein mangal, naxalites, rr patil, ipod, itunes, sex scandal, cocaine, main toh bas naukri kar raha hoon, relief package, bridge, port, low pressure area, subir raha ko gussa kyon aata hai?, broker, value addition, VAT, marginal pricing, nefarious, nepotism, vixen, gandhian, pole dancer, Q1 profits.
In other news, I enjoyed test-riding an iPod Nano today. That installing its supporting software on my office computer nearly crashed it is another issue.
Man is a Political Animal!
If politicians have the right to behave like animals, why can't we let dogs vote? They have paws too.
A look into history reveals that politics and animals have consistently been in cahoots.
Last week in Bihar, a group of dissidents of a national party took out a rally featuring a battery of pigs and donkeys, drawing a similarity between their own state and that of the animals.
Devi Lal, our former Jaat Deputy Prime Minister's state residence in New Delhi had two well-bred buffaloes from Rohtak as housemates. The old man refused to evict the bovine beasts from the state property, insisting that he could not run the country properly without two fresh glasses of buffalo milk every morning. Cops on security at the house confessed to have mistaken the beasts for the D-PM and vice versa on many occasions. Why two buffaloes? Nobody knows, but the second one was for backup, one might guess. Even Saddam Hussain kept two lookalikes.
The charkha-weilding Mahatma Gandhi mentored what was probably the world's most traveled goat, which he took with him on all foreign tours. One European country even accorded the goat in the esteemed 'state guest' status.
Of course, every now and then politicians turn into the equine to be traded like silk in greedy government formation attempts. Some actually behave like stampeding horses when put inside an assembly hall and armed with mikes with weak bases fixing them to the tables.
A look into history reveals that politics and animals have consistently been in cahoots.
Last week in Bihar, a group of dissidents of a national party took out a rally featuring a battery of pigs and donkeys, drawing a similarity between their own state and that of the animals.
Devi Lal, our former Jaat Deputy Prime Minister's state residence in New Delhi had two well-bred buffaloes from Rohtak as housemates. The old man refused to evict the bovine beasts from the state property, insisting that he could not run the country properly without two fresh glasses of buffalo milk every morning. Cops on security at the house confessed to have mistaken the beasts for the D-PM and vice versa on many occasions. Why two buffaloes? Nobody knows, but the second one was for backup, one might guess. Even Saddam Hussain kept two lookalikes.
The charkha-weilding Mahatma Gandhi mentored what was probably the world's most traveled goat, which he took with him on all foreign tours. One European country even accorded the goat in the esteemed 'state guest' status.
Of course, every now and then politicians turn into the equine to be traded like silk in greedy government formation attempts. Some actually behave like stampeding horses when put inside an assembly hall and armed with mikes with weak bases fixing them to the tables.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Anti music-swapping tool is ineffective
Infuriated by file sharing programs that supposedly make musicians like Metallica take to begging bowls and encouraged by the ruling against Kazaa in Australia, the IFPI, a British music industry conglomerate akin to the RIAA, has launched an anti music-swapping tool that searches for file sharing programs on your hard drive and then proceeds to delete them. The conglomerate has further called upon all the world's offices and colleges to run this tool on PCs in their premises so as to ' increase efficiency by preventing workers from wasting time downloading music' and protecting copyrighted music at the same time. You can test-drive the program here, its called Digital File Check.
Now don't tell me these people can afford to write bad software, because on my pc, which has both WinMX and Ares P2P clients, it fails to locate any of them!
Now just to be sure the files were not protected and all this was not a surreal abberation, I copied the P2P program files to several locations on my hard drive and ran Digital File Check again in a rather uneducated but rational-sounding attempt to help it trap the P2P devils but to no happiness.
Any takers for this software... whatsay, Pointy Haired Boss?
Now don't tell me these people can afford to write bad software, because on my pc, which has both WinMX and Ares P2P clients, it fails to locate any of them!
Now just to be sure the files were not protected and all this was not a surreal abberation, I copied the P2P program files to several locations on my hard drive and ran Digital File Check again in a rather uneducated but rational-sounding attempt to help it trap the P2P devils but to no happiness.
Any takers for this software... whatsay, Pointy Haired Boss?
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Offshore
Big ideas and projects take too much time to take off in India. Protesting environmentalists, a free media, ballot-happy legislators and the gang are forever finding faults with development. Stay orders in courts, misleading media reports, protests that go beyond the right to freedom of speech are tools that delay power projects, housing schemes, flyovers, highways and industries.
A very dangerous and unpardonable specimen that poses a high risk to development is the uninformed journalist, the media's in-house ignoramus.
In April 2004, several villages near Satara in Maharashtra, the hub of wind energy in India, turned against windmills because they believed that the windmill blades drove away rain clouds, causing a drought.
A local newspaper ran a story 'confirming the villager's concerns': "The large blades of a windmill first attract rain coulds towards them using magnetic power. The blades then slash through the clouds to cut them into pieces, thus affecting rainfall and causing a drought."
Soon, the local MLA sensed that playing the tune of the people and the media is best for future election prospects. The next day he was seen leading a rally demanding the demolition of the thousands of plush windfarms in Satara spread across thousands of acres and worth hundreds of crores of rupees. He even produced rainfall statistical data for the last 4 years, attributing a universally bad monsoon to the windmills' rain-killing tendency.
Not to be left behind in displaying utter stupidity, the country's only Ministry of Renewable Sources of Energy in the Maharashtra government ordered a probe into the issue.
Not one soul of consequence came forward to talk reason for weeks. The controversy died with a big Indian Express story pointing out the stupidity of it all, the only oasis of rationality.
I am a firm supporter of renewable sources of energy, be it big dams and hydro projects, wind, biomass or the lesser prevalent solar and geothermal. With fossil fuel prices going up and the Kyoto Protocol in place, I think they provide a great opportunity for the country to build a cheap and robust power infrastructure from the start and and accumulate carbon credits. So incidents like the one above and the following one evoke a sense of comic frustration in me.
Very respectable publications in their editorials have been creating a lot of hype about offshore wind energy projects. They tout it as the ultimate solution to all power problems in India. One of them even assailed the IPO of Suzlon Wind Energy, world's sixth largest wind ev\nergy equipment manufacturer, because its Red Herring Prospectus did not mention anything about offshore projects. I find this obsession with offshore wind projects preposterous, just as I find rain-water harvesting as a solution to water problems in India plain dumb.
Offshore wind energy projects, incidentally, are windmill farms installed on the sea, a few kms away from the coast, because wind patterns are stronger out there.
India has an on-land wind potential of 45,000 MW, of which a little over 3,000 MW has been installed. The remaining 42,000 begs to be converted to installed capacity. State governments are putting in place laws favourable to renewable energy installation. As much as 875 MW wind capacity was added in 2004 itself, the third largest in the world for that year.
Offshore wind projects are at best a futuristic technology. They are installed mainly due to two reasons, first being the lack of enough landmass in a country for on-land projects (European countries, for example) and the second being opposition from extreme environmentalists who (legitimately) oppose windmills on land because their rotor blades are known to kill migratory birds en masse.
Other than that, offshore projects require nearly five times the investment per MW as on-land wind projects. They cannot be installed in large MW chunks and are still at research stage. The cost of power per unit from offshore projects is insanely astronomical.
Most of all, it is slightly too much to talk vigorously of the expensive offshore wind projects in India when only 7 percent of the on-land potential has been converted.
A very dangerous and unpardonable specimen that poses a high risk to development is the uninformed journalist, the media's in-house ignoramus.
In April 2004, several villages near Satara in Maharashtra, the hub of wind energy in India, turned against windmills because they believed that the windmill blades drove away rain clouds, causing a drought.
A local newspaper ran a story 'confirming the villager's concerns': "The large blades of a windmill first attract rain coulds towards them using magnetic power. The blades then slash through the clouds to cut them into pieces, thus affecting rainfall and causing a drought."
Soon, the local MLA sensed that playing the tune of the people and the media is best for future election prospects. The next day he was seen leading a rally demanding the demolition of the thousands of plush windfarms in Satara spread across thousands of acres and worth hundreds of crores of rupees. He even produced rainfall statistical data for the last 4 years, attributing a universally bad monsoon to the windmills' rain-killing tendency.
Not to be left behind in displaying utter stupidity, the country's only Ministry of Renewable Sources of Energy in the Maharashtra government ordered a probe into the issue.
Not one soul of consequence came forward to talk reason for weeks. The controversy died with a big Indian Express story pointing out the stupidity of it all, the only oasis of rationality.
I am a firm supporter of renewable sources of energy, be it big dams and hydro projects, wind, biomass or the lesser prevalent solar and geothermal. With fossil fuel prices going up and the Kyoto Protocol in place, I think they provide a great opportunity for the country to build a cheap and robust power infrastructure from the start and and accumulate carbon credits. So incidents like the one above and the following one evoke a sense of comic frustration in me.
Very respectable publications in their editorials have been creating a lot of hype about offshore wind energy projects. They tout it as the ultimate solution to all power problems in India. One of them even assailed the IPO of Suzlon Wind Energy, world's sixth largest wind ev\nergy equipment manufacturer, because its Red Herring Prospectus did not mention anything about offshore projects. I find this obsession with offshore wind projects preposterous, just as I find rain-water harvesting as a solution to water problems in India plain dumb.
Offshore wind energy projects, incidentally, are windmill farms installed on the sea, a few kms away from the coast, because wind patterns are stronger out there.
India has an on-land wind potential of 45,000 MW, of which a little over 3,000 MW has been installed. The remaining 42,000 begs to be converted to installed capacity. State governments are putting in place laws favourable to renewable energy installation. As much as 875 MW wind capacity was added in 2004 itself, the third largest in the world for that year.
Offshore wind projects are at best a futuristic technology. They are installed mainly due to two reasons, first being the lack of enough landmass in a country for on-land projects (European countries, for example) and the second being opposition from extreme environmentalists who (legitimately) oppose windmills on land because their rotor blades are known to kill migratory birds en masse.
Other than that, offshore projects require nearly five times the investment per MW as on-land wind projects. They cannot be installed in large MW chunks and are still at research stage. The cost of power per unit from offshore projects is insanely astronomical.
Most of all, it is slightly too much to talk vigorously of the expensive offshore wind projects in India when only 7 percent of the on-land potential has been converted.
Monday, August 29, 2005
Information, Interrupted
In 1996, I traded three coins (two Irish cents and one South African schilling, to be precise) from my vast collection with a friend for two words that have changed my life, as they have of billions of people across the world.
The two words, if i remember correctly were 'dubey' and 'dubey1234', the username-password couplet to the VSNL shell account that let you reach websites on a text-only interface.
Exactly one month later, a more generous friend offered to give me a 'proper TCP/IP Internet experience with graphics' on another stolen VSNL account. He, however, refused to reveal to me the username-password, choosing to instead come to my home and login whenever I asked of him.
Nine years later, Internet access is one of the cheapest commodities in the Indian urban market. The future costs of Internet access are anybody's guess.
A subject that has been very central to the development of Internet utility since the turn of the millenium is related to the rural areas.
Small to medium sized projects networking villages to cleanse up the traditional mandi system, exchange of agricultural information and forging inter-village marriage alliances have reached some success.
Low literacy, however, remains that biggest bottleneck towards leting Indian villages go online in a big way.
Proponents of removing the so-called 'digital divide' exhert a sense of urgency in planting computers in a mass manner in the villages, at a pace that cannot be matched by the increase in literacy.
In my opinion, the 'digital divide' is a flawed concept that only serves the purpose of those who want to see computers proliferate across Indian villages. It fails to solve the real problem, that of the lack of access to information.
The inflated importance attached to the 'digital divide' and the urgency to plant computers in villages creates unnecessary complications, the least of which makes a whole workforce of software minds engage in redesigning popular software platforms in local Indian languages that can be understood by all.
While this community of computer-planters grapples with these complications and experiments with new ideas, the Indian villager is not getting access to any information.
A viable alternative that has been gaining support is that of community radio.
A small radio station made to cater to a small area costs less than One Lakh Rupees to set up. If given into the hands of the community, the possibilities are immense.
Local panchayats can form content policies, a village-level group can create the content custom made for the local needs and disseminate information in a universal format. Public-private participation with the intervention of NGOs can broadly provide the required censorship.
Community radio, however, remains illegal in India for all the wrong reasons.
One would fear the upper-castes in a village take over the radio and use it for lower-caste oppression, or political parties use it to brainwash votebanks.
The Indian Government, however fears an altogether different problem: that of national security. What if a jehadi group takes over a radio station and converts it into a hate-breeding anti-nationalism tool?
The apprehensions are obviously hypothetical and overinflated. The success of community radio in Latin American countries, with all its cocaine mafia, military-civilian tussles and trigger-happy rebels is there to see.
The government in India, can start off by legalizing radio in the interior and problem-free states like Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Goa, Haryana and Punjab. Small pilot projects to test the waters can be a good beginning. Given the free press and public scrutiny in the country, rest assured that these projects would be fairly guaged for feasibility and viability from all angles.
The government, however, will have to take an initiative first. If it engages the various organs of society into a debate, the effort will not be fruitless.
The hesitation of the government to do even that bit is disheartening.
Ten years after the Internet changed Urban India, we require a similar revolution in the rural spectrum. Given the progress we are making in education with respect to rise in population, community radio is a information empowerment solution that the government must consider with absolute urgency.
The two words, if i remember correctly were 'dubey' and 'dubey1234', the username-password couplet to the VSNL shell account that let you reach websites on a text-only interface.
Exactly one month later, a more generous friend offered to give me a 'proper TCP/IP Internet experience with graphics' on another stolen VSNL account. He, however, refused to reveal to me the username-password, choosing to instead come to my home and login whenever I asked of him.
Nine years later, Internet access is one of the cheapest commodities in the Indian urban market. The future costs of Internet access are anybody's guess.
A subject that has been very central to the development of Internet utility since the turn of the millenium is related to the rural areas.
Small to medium sized projects networking villages to cleanse up the traditional mandi system, exchange of agricultural information and forging inter-village marriage alliances have reached some success.
Low literacy, however, remains that biggest bottleneck towards leting Indian villages go online in a big way.
Proponents of removing the so-called 'digital divide' exhert a sense of urgency in planting computers in a mass manner in the villages, at a pace that cannot be matched by the increase in literacy.
In my opinion, the 'digital divide' is a flawed concept that only serves the purpose of those who want to see computers proliferate across Indian villages. It fails to solve the real problem, that of the lack of access to information.
The inflated importance attached to the 'digital divide' and the urgency to plant computers in villages creates unnecessary complications, the least of which makes a whole workforce of software minds engage in redesigning popular software platforms in local Indian languages that can be understood by all.
While this community of computer-planters grapples with these complications and experiments with new ideas, the Indian villager is not getting access to any information.
A viable alternative that has been gaining support is that of community radio.
A small radio station made to cater to a small area costs less than One Lakh Rupees to set up. If given into the hands of the community, the possibilities are immense.
Local panchayats can form content policies, a village-level group can create the content custom made for the local needs and disseminate information in a universal format. Public-private participation with the intervention of NGOs can broadly provide the required censorship.
Community radio, however, remains illegal in India for all the wrong reasons.
One would fear the upper-castes in a village take over the radio and use it for lower-caste oppression, or political parties use it to brainwash votebanks.
The Indian Government, however fears an altogether different problem: that of national security. What if a jehadi group takes over a radio station and converts it into a hate-breeding anti-nationalism tool?
The apprehensions are obviously hypothetical and overinflated. The success of community radio in Latin American countries, with all its cocaine mafia, military-civilian tussles and trigger-happy rebels is there to see.
The government in India, can start off by legalizing radio in the interior and problem-free states like Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Goa, Haryana and Punjab. Small pilot projects to test the waters can be a good beginning. Given the free press and public scrutiny in the country, rest assured that these projects would be fairly guaged for feasibility and viability from all angles.
The government, however, will have to take an initiative first. If it engages the various organs of society into a debate, the effort will not be fruitless.
The hesitation of the government to do even that bit is disheartening.
Ten years after the Internet changed Urban India, we require a similar revolution in the rural spectrum. Given the progress we are making in education with respect to rise in population, community radio is a information empowerment solution that the government must consider with absolute urgency.
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