States of being

I'm getting that out-of-body feeling again.

I remember past events and wonder.
"Did that happen?"
"Was that me?"
"Who has the person that I was back then?"
"What was she thinking?"
"Did she actually feel that way or was it posturing or was it just a thoughtless action?"

Sometimes I feel like I'm going through multiples lives, or states of being, in the same lifetime. Like I've been many different people already and still have a few people to become.

Death and taxes I

"And this saved thousands of lives"

How do you save a life? Since we've not quite figured out immortality yet, you can only save someone from immediate death and push it out to later death.

"This extended thousands of lives" doesn't quite have the same ring though...

Knowing what is not okay

Now that I've vented a bit of the frustration I feel at the unending incidents of rape, molestation and abuse in India, I'm trying to think of how exactly we can get out of this mess. It's too insidious and deep rooted in our system for any quick solution - like castration or public flogging of the criminals, as a lot of people seem to be suggesting.

The loudest voices are calling for the death penalty for the accused. To send a message out to all others. Somehow, I doubt that will work. No one in India thinks they will get caught for a crime. No one in India thinks a victim of molestation will even go to the police. The police are scary! Plus, I don't see how this will help the girl who is battling for her life. Who is faced with a lifetime of trauma and medical complications even if she makes it out of this crisis. I'd rather see the accused spend the rest of their lives labouring in jail to support the victim and pay the medical fees. The impact of this crime is not over. The payment for the crime should not end either.

How do we stop this from recurring? Maybe we need to look at why it happened in the first place.

We've finally got to a point where no one is blaming the victim for provoking assault by the way she dressed/going out too late at night/not being more careful of what bus she boarded. At least, no one is saying this publicly, although a lot of people probably think so. We can pass by provocation by the victim as a reason for why this happened.

Since it was not late at night and it was not a deserted location, so we can't say that it was a time or place that sees unusually criminal activity, which is why the accused saw the opportunity to attack an unprotected victim. It was 9:30pm, it was a moving bus that even passed by police checkpoints and she was with a male friend.

The bus was illegal in that it was not allowed to ply on that route. But then, our roads are filled with illegalities. I'm told curtains on a "luxury" bus are not illegal, so that wasn't a breach of security, although tinted windows on a cab or passenger car would be. The lack of a functioning helpline like 911, vigilance cameras on public transport or security checks on the background of bus staff are probably the other issues with the state of security.

The biggest "cause" of course, is the mentality of the accused. Men who thought that it was okay to do this. That they could heckle a woman for traveling alone with a man. That they could attack the couple with an iron rod. And continue beating them. And then rape the girl. For an hour. From all accounts, these men had regular day lives - a bus driver, a gym instructor, a fruit seller. They were not regular criminals. They not even very smart about crime, as they held on to the stolen phones which were used to track them down. In fact, they were regular guys, who saw an opportunity to have some "fun". They thought beating and critically abusing two strangers was fun. Like boys who throw stones at dogs.

We have to face it - our country is filled with people like this. People who you could interact with every day, who will probably behave exactly like this if given the chance. Because they think it is okay. Increasing the penalty for such incidents will not help because these guys were obviously not thinking of consequences. The police and legal procedure were the farthest things from their mind.

We could make the police more visible, of course. A stronger force with more powers. But that will probably mean that the police will attempt to herd the public away from crime rather than stop crime while enabling the public to go on about their regular lives. It will probably mean the closure of pubs and no more late shows or movies. No woman should get out of home without adequate male protection. Crap like that.

The fear of the police is not the reason why someone would not attempt a crime like this. It is the knowledge that this behaviour is NOT OKAY. That is something you expect people to know instinctively. But in fact it is not instinctive, it is social conditioning. Conditioning that has obviously failed with a lot of people in this country.

How do we bring it back? Do we include it in our school text books since our homes are obviously not sending out this message? Tell our kids that domestic violence is not acceptable - instead of telling them that non veg food provokes violence? Should our text books include profiles or successful women who achieved great things and helped our country - while doing regular things like going out for a late movie with a friend and then catching a bus back home? Do we need posters on the walls celebrating women who are living independent lives? The message that it is perfectly acceptable for a lone woman going about her life is not an acceptable target. She is minding her business and you can mind yours.

We need to get this message across - to the men who think targeting defenseless women is okay, to the women who think that if the victims were just more careful they would be safe, to the police officers and politicians who think that women are going out and getting raped just to make their lives more difficult.

It's not a message that should have needed saying, but obviously, many people still don't get it.

Another day, another rape

Today again, we have been outraged by the brutality and bestiality of our fellow Indians. The only thing surprising is that we can still be outraged. This is incident is not novel. The day a newspaper does not report at least one incident of molestation and harassment should be declared a national holiday.

Maybe we are outraged that it happened to a medical student - it could happen to any of the women reading English language newspapers that have reported on this.

Maybe it is just that it is another incident in Delhi, which is infamous for the lack of security for women. Those who are still interested in that argument can use this to show how Bombay is better. But Bombay is only city in India. 1.5% of the total population of the country. The remaining 98.5% of the country is more like Delhi than Bombay.

Bangalore is more like Delhi than Bombay. Except for the outrage. Three women were taken from their homes and raped all night, just a couple of months back. There was no outrage. Was it because they were bar girls? Because they were immigrants? Or because we are just too scared to think of the implications of that incident for the rest of us?

We'd rather cage ourselves at home with steel enforced doors and windows, round the clock security and household help imported from our community to protect against crime. And when anyone is raped or murdered, we'd rather say "they should not have been out at that time/in that place/in those clothes/wearing that much jewelery".

But when we curtail our life to prevent such things, haven't we already fallen victim? Hasn't that gang rape of the law student in Bangalore made me and every other woman in Bangalore a victim as well?

When do we stand up for ourselves and demand a better quality of life? To realise that freedom includes being able to walk out at 9:30pm and not feel your life and dignity may be taken from you at any minute.

When I lived in Bombay, I had more hours to my day. Think about how that could feel. I could go shopping at 10pm in the night. I could meet friends and go to dinner at 11pm. And then walk by the beach and hangout for a while before getting home at 1am. Think of how your life could expand if you got more hours to do the regular things you do all day. Run errands, meet people, watch a movie. And then catch an auto or taxi home. Not have to make sure you are locked in to your cages by 9pm, before the vampires come out. Not the sense of security, but the absence of fear. Rapes and murders happen in Mumbai too. But it is not the norm.

Why can't we demand that for the rest of the country? Why isn't this the norm? It is possible. Bombay has shown us it is. So have a few other cities like Baroda. I want my hometown Bangalore to be like this. I want my capital city Delhi to be like this. It starts with everyone expecting it and not putting up with the substandard lives we have to lead.

To the narrow via the wide

Brian McClendon, co-founder of 3D mapping company Keyhole, now VP of engineering Google Maps, Earth, and Streetview, on getting acquired by Google:

"We had big dreams about what Keyhole could be, but opening it up so that it could become this powerful tool for scientists studying the Amazon or emergency workers planning evacuations, we wanted something like that to happen, but we couldn’t really believe it was possible... The appeal for founders acquired by Google is that they have an idea which they have narrowed to a startup, a fiscally possible exit, but what they really want to do is something much bigger. Google can pour rocket fuel on that fire."

From here: http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/17/3322854/google-startup-mergers-acquisitions-failure-is-a-feature

About a decade back, when I thought about the internet and the new business models it meant, I know I predicted something along the lines of "this will enable producers of niche products find customers easily". My thinking was that products that haven't been feasible before, because of the small market size, will become feasible by uniting demand across geographies.

This prediction was completely false. The great new products that have come through have done so through the democratic route, not by unifying niche markets. Mapping tools for scientific research are available because even the common man had a use of those tools. Yahoo! Finance can build a better financial data product than Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters because every retail investor can use it and it doesn't depend on subscriptions from financial houses alone. Best selling ebooks can afford to be priced at much lower prices than text books that have a limited audience. Building a voice based internet device for the blind may not be economical. Building a Siri for the use of the masses is economical.


Surprisingly, too many people still try to narrow down their scope to niche markets. Possibly the thinking is that you could get a few people to pay a lot. Widening the scope, to get a lot of people to pay a little is always the better model. Like the Indian telecom industry.

Thoughts on commerce III - FDI in Retail

The Indian consumer is a highly under appreciated group. Partly our fault, of course. While all other groups form unions and call a day off work, we grumble a bit and buy what's available. Which is why, when the government and the Indian industry wrangle about FDI in retail, the discussion is foreign retailers vs desi retailers. The real losers are never taken into account - the Indian consumer. Not letting foreign retailers into our hallowed markets will not affect those foreign retailers much. I'm sure they'd like to have India as a market - we don't spend much, but our sheer numbers will probably make up for it. But if they don't get India, they won't be heart broken. China is so much bigger, and they didn't break their hearts over not getting a foothold there.

When Indian retailers say they will lose business and have to shut shop, what they are really saying is that they have knowingly been selling Indian consumers sub-standard products, because they knew we have no where else to go. They have, effectively, been stealing from the consumer, by forcing them to pay more for low value goods. The value of your money is equal to the products you can buy with it. So far, Indians have been made poor because although they have the money, they don't have the goods. Although Indians have distinctly different sizes, no manufacturer or retailer has bothered to provide us clothes and shoes of our sizes. We must depend on what they make for international sizes. Even then, I've found much better quality and fit in the discount shops in America, than in our upmarket malls in India. Manufacturing laws have discouraged innovation and the rise of small shops which make cheaper and utilitarian products for the Indian kitchen. In spite of the number of diabetes and arthritis patients in the country, we cannot access the right foods and products for these diseases. All the S.E. Asian countries have better markets than ours.

In other words, our retailers have let us down. They really have no right to prevent foreign retailers from trying to give us a better life.