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The crowdsourced traffic light

The crowdsourced traffic light

December 09, 20182 mins

I’ve been wanting to write this post since 2009. Really. Exhibit A : Year in Bangalore – the Unwritten Posts. When we moved to Bangalore 10 years ago, good reason prevailed to not get immediately…

The Guide’s trouble with the Censor Board

The Guide’s trouble with the Censor Board

September 06, 20161 mins

If you thought Bollywood’s troubles with the Censor Board are a recent phenomenon, think again. R.K. Narayan recounts, in The Writerly Life, his experience with the movie making process of The Guide…

Death of a soldier doesn’t sell, period.

Death of a soldier doesn’t sell, period.

June 06, 20155 mins

[Editor’s Note: Last week we had a kerfuffle in our high school Whatsapp group. The Minority Report voiced the ‘unpopular’ notion that the armed forces are a bunch of attention seeking spoilt brats. I…

Rise of small town India

Rise of small town India

May 20, 20144 mins

Pic courtesy flickr/Google [Editor’s Note: The piece below was penned by Akshay Garg, former co-founder at Komli Media. It appeared on his Facebook feed and I’m republishing here with his permission…

Gandhi-Nehru to Anna-Kejriwal: an interesting cross-era analogy

Gandhi-Nehru to Anna-Kejriwal: an interesting cross-era analogy

January 12, 20143 mins

In case you haven’t noticed, the most interesting Indian political discussions are happening on Facebook. Last week, a friend (a keen follower of the ‘India story’ with an appetite for indulging in…

The Merchant of Corrupt Venice

The Merchant of Corrupt Venice

March 23, 20132 mins

Pic courtesy maddyndss.edublogs.org I think of Portia’s famous speech often – every time a corrupt minister gets implicated in a corruption scam. When Infosys’ Narayana Murthy came up with that…

Manmohan Singh’s shambolic apology for the 1984 anti-Sikh riots

Manmohan Singh’s shambolic apology for the 1984 anti-Sikh riots

February 21, 20131 mins

In Dec 2012, Firstpost’s Editor-in-chief R. Jagannathan (@thejaggi on Twitter) wrote an incisive piece titled Maya, Modi and the art of the unapologetic apology. It caught my attention this morning…

On a nation with drastically low expectations

On a nation with drastically low expectations

February 12, 20131 mins

Three tweets from @albatrossinfo (RT’d by CentreRight India’s Prasanna Viswanathan) caught my attention this evening. 1) As a nation we are a race of people with such low expectations from the ruling…

Ejipura evictions and Karnataka State Human Rights Commission

Ejipura evictions and Karnataka State Human Rights Commission

February 05, 20132 mins

If you have read about last month’s evictions (and demolition) of a slum in the Ejipura/Koramangala neighborhood of Bangalore.. and want to do something about it, here’s a sample of the letter you can…

Bangalore BESCOM’s MD sets the bar for (gasp) efficient babudom

Bangalore BESCOM’s MD sets the bar for (gasp) efficient babudom

February 01, 20131 mins

While the UPA-II government has been working tirelessly to muzzle social media at every opportunity they get (and creating some along the way), some bureaucrats are using social media the way it’s…