This is about internet.org a.k.a Free Basics from Facebook

In May this year, Mark Zuckerburg announced taking an altruistic turn and pledged Facebook’s resources in providing internet access to some parts of our planet, the aim was to provide free basic internet access on a platform that was christened internet.org. This month that got re-christened as Free Basics for Facebook. There was a truly desi spin given to this measure which was identified with #ConnectIndia, the motive remained the same.

A lot of charitable work has been done by Tech Entrepreneurs from North America. Ground breaking research in combating AIDS, eradicating polio and with that goal in mind for leprosy. Contraception, infant care and nutritional supplements were all led at some point by or are continuing to be led by foundations funded by big corporates, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is just one such example. With that background a lot of people welcomed Facebook wanting to provide basic internet service to regions that haven’t been exposed to it so far.

Imagine a village, where a basic phone that has an internet browser is available but with no infrastructure to let the phone access the billions of web sites that constitute what’s essentially known as the INTERNET. Imagine a service provider, who embarks on provisioning GPRS, EDGE or 3G or LTE connections, and get these phones on the information superhighway. Imagine the poor farmer being able to access weather patterns or current prices for his crop, to be able to carry out financial transactions without having to visit the nearby town’s bank.

Imagine the farmer’s child, accessing the finest of lectures on trigonometry or fine arts or literature or ideas for that school project. Imagine the lady of the household being able to access all the video and music and be able to chat with her distant cousin in a foreign land or another village without wasting money on phone calls that go dead in the monsoons. The intent in provisioning free basic internet access can never be faulted. So where is the problem?

The problem is in how Facebook wants to solve this conundrum. Facebook wants to tie up with internet service providers in the region and get them to allow access exclusively to http://internet.org. On this platform Facebook has curated a set of websites and made available as part of it’s free basic internet service. No points for guessing that Facebook is the only social media platform available, not Google+ or Ello. The platform is also not going to support HTTPS URLs which means no encryption of data between the user and the destination on the internet. To cite just one problem with this, if you were to access your bank account on a HTTP connection a sniffer can access your username and password bloody easily.

Facebook therefore wants to direct these new users to a tiny set of websites that constitute the internet. In the name of providing free basic internet all Facebook is doing is finding newer users in the developing world, and since they can’t afford the costs associated with internet connectivity, provides them with seemingly free access but restricts them to a platform it has built (internet.org) and thereby increase it’s own customer base and therefore deny them access to those billions of websites that would otherwise be available on the internet. Now if anyone thinks, “Isn’t this how the missionaries landed in Africa with the Bible?” it won’t be misrepresentative.

Why would they do that? The answer is fairly simple. Google, Facebook and Twitter are the significant platforms in the world in terms of number of users on them as well as number of active users. I’ve completely disregarded data from Chinese social networking sites since they operate in isolation compared to the rest of the world. Google and Facebook have almost the same number of active users (around 1.4 billion). Google’s revenue last year was $66 billion while Facebook’s was a little short of $12.5 billion. For approximately the same amount of users Google rakes in more than 5 times in revenue.

There is going to be significant pressure on Facebook’s stock in maximizing its potential to earn more dollars per user. Facebook’s organic growth has reached a plateau. It acquired WhatsApp for a gargantuan valuation to add to its user base and it probably made sense too. It hasn’t come up with a clear roadmap in integrating the platforms though it has tried to innovate with making calls possible between WhatsApp users. How else can Facebook grow?

That’s where the air brushed altruism comes into picture and that’s in getting more people onto their platform but since they have their own challenges Facebook sets out to solve one such challenge, by giving them internet access but restricting it to internet.org. After a few years you’ll be surprised when someone who grew up with Free Basics from Facebook says “We have Facebook” when what they actually should be saying is “We have Internet”.

The state of inter-city, inter-state road transport in India

Yet another bus has met with an accident near Haveri on it’s way from Bangalore to Mumbai, lots of human lives lost, this happened yesterday. Recently we heard about the tragic death of close to 50 passengers heading back to their home towns for Diwali on the ill fated luxury bus that went from Bangalore to Hyderabad. Sometime back a bus fell off a bridge into a gorge killing a lot of passengers travelling in it, this bus was bound to Shirdi, most passengers would have been pilgrims. This writer has been a first hand witness to a gory accident near Chithode on NH 47 on 4th Nov 2011 involving a truck carrying airline fuel and a luxury bus full of passengers from Bangalore headed to Coimbatore. The bus caught fire after colliding with the tanker and in the ensuing chaos a lot of lives were lost.

The blame usually is first placed on these new hi-tech buses: Volvo, Mercedes Benz, Corona, which are well equipped to deal with emergencies better than Ashok Leyland, Eicher or TATA buses. These hi-tech buses have superior suspension, use fire retardant materials for their construction and have excellent automated mechanisms to manoeuvre the vehicle and bring it to a sudden stop if needed. Drivers are the number one reasons for accidents and it’s not like any driver would want to crash his bus wantonly. Most drivers are contracted or paid per trip and they stand to gain if they keep driving without taking a rest. That results in fatigue and therefore misjudgement which leads to a fatal accident. But there is a larger lacuna that is being exploited to the hilt by greedy bus operators and that is of supply and demand.

Road transport between states used to be exclusive domains of the state governments with the state run transport corporations plying buses connecting cities, usually as reciprocals almost exclusively. All this changed drastically in the late nineties when private bus operators began plying buses exploiting loopholes in the Motor Vehicles Act which allowed them to run buses on hire or for tours which was used as a shroud to run regular inter-city or inter-state services. This sector has grown into a fierce monster that had made millionaires out of bus operators, earned lots of taxes and bribes for the state’s apparatus, helps the well heeled reach their destinations quickly and comfortably and yet is a scary ecosystem that the state has no jurisdiction over anymore.

In the late 90’s, this writer solely depended on SETC (erstwhile Thiruvalluvar) buses to commute between Madras (Chennai today) and Coimbatore. There were two other buses operated by Cheran Transport Corporation (known as TNSTC – Cbe now) between these two cities. The total seats available on a Friday or Sunday back then was less than 250. Compare that to the 1900 seats across the 50 buses that ply between the two cities today, you can imagine the scale at which buses are run and the economy that flourishes as a result. Entry taxes at check posts, bakeries, hotels / canteens, petrol bunks, toll gates, drivers, cleaners, automobile workshops are examples of some areas where money flows in a licit manner. But there is a  large chunk of revenue that is made illicitly primarily by the State apparatus: Transport department, Commercial Taxes department, Police etc.

The bulk of our country still commutes long distances by train. One can only imagine the level of bribes that must be exchanging hands in the Railway Ministry to ensure there is always a supply demand deficit in the Railways  to ensure the crowd that doesn’t make it onto trains gets to use the services offered by the private road transportation industry. Their pricing is based on whim. How else can one fathom the cost of tickets going up by a factor of 2 or 3 when it’s a long holiday weekend? Are these buses licensed to transport cargo, which they load to the brim most of the days in every space the bus has and on it’s roof? Is it completely legal in selling tickets in the name of “conducted tour” but what they are essentially doing is infringe into the domain of state transport? How does one explain the silence of the state government, every single state in the country is united in this cause, and the state transport employee’s trade unions in this domain? A lot of questions remain unanswered, will the State wake up and listen?

Nursery school syndrome (The Anna Hazare Project)

“Miss, Ralph spit on me Miss” squeaked Sam, a 4 year old in the UKG class of Civil Society Mat & H S School. “Ralph, I’m going to come and give you a rap on your knuckles” thundered Miss Beula, the class teacher of UKG and darling of the kinder garden school children. Ralph replied “I’m sorry Miss, I coughed and spit came out”. “He’s lying Miss, he’s lying Miss” squeaked Sam again.

That was a snap shot of kids carrying tales against each other in nursery school. Here’s an example of another who refuses to grow up, who can call anybody anything but can’t take it when it comes back. Whose pack has the authority to sermonize from the highest moral high ground but who gives them the right to use your and my name and say they represent “us” or “the people” ?

The Anna Hazare Project

I just woke up from a revolution. I thought my country was on the cusp of a massive uprising. I was worried about the outcome, thankfully I’ve been spared of seeing bloodshed or a coup d'état. For a closet crusader like me this was the perfect opportunity to stand up and proclaim my support to the cause. It’d have been so hip and so today to have proclaimed something like “My heart bleeds for this frail old man who has taken it up all upon himself to rid this nation free from the curse of corruption, for me and my brethren”. Oh how patriotic it’d have been, I’d have become in one sweep the star amongst my Facebook, Orkut friend list and could have added at least a hundred followers on Twitter. The fact is I didn’t see all this coming, I, like many people I know simply didn’t “rise up” to the occasion.

I overdid it, there was no revolution. I had to look beyond the media reports that said “thousands” at the Jantar Mantar in New Delhi and realized it was almost “a thousand” there and the remaining that added up to the sum to make it “thousands” were almost all journalists and their respective OB (outdoor broadcasting) vans, drivers, technicians, cameramen, orderlies and basically a tom, dick or a harry related to the media-news circus that our country is subjected to every night at prime time. It’s another matter that this cartel put their heads (empty anyway) together and decided that 24 hrs was prime time.

So we had editor-in-chief’s of news channels mouth lines like a telugu or tamil potboiler’s climax scene, looking into the camera and appearing to be addressing each one of us personally, trying to get us all to wake up to reality and take action. Unfortunately, for them, this wasn’t a movie and they didn’t command such star power to pull off an MGR or an NTR on us. It’s so damn easy to sit in the air conditioned confines of a news studio with the crème de la crème of “civil society” (a new term that’s taking air time as if “uncivil” it was yesterday) sit around a round table debating with vociferous and vigorous voices on how they’ve had enough and how it was time to tackle the bull by it’s horn. The irony was palpable, they needed a senile old man to go on a fast for a bill none of them would have read to understand what was in it that would suddenly appear to be the ten commandments to root out corruption, the one big ill that is the reason for every other sickness that plagues this vast country called India.

Every 10 minutes were intercut with scene from “ground zero” (ergs Jantar Mantar), where protestors gleefully appeared before camera for their 10 seconds of fame in national consciousness. One could have mouthed inane and obnoxious stuff like “this is India’s Tehrir square”, “we’ll rid this country of it’s disease”, “there are thousands here and we are all with Anna” and still get away with it because the media is too busy catching up with the rapid developments, getting more and more members of the “civil society” on telecons, videocons (not the brand), mycons, yourcons, basically conning all of us that there was this revolution underway which was spreading across the nation like a tsunami. Every city that had a 3 digit STD code in the country had “civil society” representatives standing like they would for a middle school choir song and singing “Hum hongey kaamyaab” or “we shall overcome” based on which school they went to and reaffirm their cause to the great Anna with candles in their hand. Candle light vigils are the new fad.

Does wearing a white cap and going on fasts makes one a Gandhi? That’s a question that’ll need a separate blog altogether.

In the end (I refuse to assume it’s a beginning) the “civil society” got the government to do something that’s been unprecedented. It relented to their demands. I have just one point to add here about independent bodies in India that are also successful, the best example being the election commission. The success comes from the fact that all the parties involved need the election commission to get their mandate to get to power and hence have actively contributed to and adhered by it’s strictures which is where the commissions’ success comes from. That needn’t be the case with all other statutory bodies that are constituted in the country. I’m not a fan of politicians or politics, I do vote when there is an election and I try not to pay bribes as much as possible simply because beyond the urge to not aid corruption is the urge to fish for trouble and be a pain in the neck to someone in power for a moment, even if it’s brief.

I’m disgusted by the fact that “civil society” can be led by folks whose merit is just that their supreme Ayyatollah Shri Anna Hazare vetted their names. There is no doubts that the top cop was a sterling character during her stint in the IPS. Or the RTI activist who has fished many a govt file and gotten people into trouble, rightly so. But I don’t understand what’s that virtue in them that’s gotten them into a position where they’ll frame law jointly with elected representatives (I and you voted for). How can a non elected body, outside the frame of the Indian constitution assume upon itself the task to terrorize the government with a fast and get it to bend and crawl and heed to every one of it’s demands?

I’d like to pose questions to every one on Facebook, Twitter or anywhere else who joined the cause without breaking a sweat and made it so fashionable (peer pressure!): It’s so damn easy to pay a bribe and escape a traffic offence or pay a TTE for a berth on a night train or the brake inspector in the RTO for an LLR or license or in the municipal office for a building plan or registrar office to underwrite sale values and pay less on stamp or any scenario where you have to deal with people in power. When will we stop being closet crusaders and refuse to pay a bribe at the cost of having to go through all the damn trouble it bestows upon us or delays that would also put our loved one’s in hardship?

Finally, this post is titled THE ANNA HAZARE PROJECT and if you’ve read thus far you’d have seen that this is so less about the man and so much more about the brouhaha around him primarily in our news media and the motley crowd of supporters he’s managed to attract. Precisely how the media kept “Breaking News” to all of you and me when the fast was on till the man assiduously broke it in full media glare. This isn’t the end of it, wait till you hear it all from the man’s own mouth and I’m sure you’ll end up wondering if this chap was a impatient nationalist, a pseudo socialist, a right wing crusader or a fading star in search of his last big limelight.

Disclaimer: All views expressed here with are my own and are not here to stoke distrust, disgust or any feeling of hatred towards any person irrespective of caste, creed, culture or religion. Despite this if there is a word or line or paragraph or the full post that offended you please let me know and I’ll be more than glad to edit / modify / delete offensive sections simply because I don’t have the money nor the resources to fight cases in the courts unlike members of the “civil society”. I guess I’m waiting for the amendment where my part of the world will go civil from uncivil.

Shri Ravishankar Prasad's contempt for the bureaucracy

Last night on "The Buck stops here" on NDTV, yes I do watch the show even after the Radia tapes, on a debate if the UPA was on the backfoot with not giving in to the Opposition's demand for a JPC into the 2G spectrum sale issue Shri Ravishankar Prasad made a number of points about Polayil Joseph Thomas (current CVC PJ Thomas) but the one that stood out was that Mr Thomas didn't work as a Director or Secretary in New Delhi and hence on that account wasn't competent enough to hold the high office of CVC headquartered in New Delhi. 

This observation brought about a rather unsavoury side of our politicians (and I suppose bureaucrats too) who seem to think as New Delhi to be the center of the Indian populace around which our lives revolve. How is working in New Delhi a medal of honour on a bureaucrats uniform? How does it become a measure of excellence and merit? Dr Babu Paul asked these very questions back to Shri Ravishankar Prasad who seemed to have taken it personally and exhibited disgust at having to answer a question raised by a bureaucrat. I've read about instances where IAS / IPS officers are treated with contempt by some illiterate politicians but Shri Prasad, an eminent lawyer in the Supreme Court, an ex Minister in the Union of India !!!

A savvy modern politician exhibiting such contempt was unbecoming of a person with such experience in the public domain with such an illustrious political life. Shri Ravishankar Prasad in a fleeting moment of rage showed his real colour, probably a belief deep inside that the bureaucrats were essentially servants of the political class. In those vulnerable moments he probably also forgot that only the cream of our educated graduates manage to clear the Civil Services exams in the first place. Salutations to Dr Babu Paul for the dignified and measured response, people like him bring dignity and respect to the profession. 

Note: This author holds no brief for the current CVC Shri PJ Thomas, this author doesn't have any proof to believe he's guilty or innocent, this author doesn't have an opinion on that front either. Eventually the outcome of PIL in the Supreme Court will make it clear if Shri Thomas was tainted or caught in the middle of a raging political battle. Dr Babu Paul writing about his first step into the IAS be a nice article to read if you'd be interested to know more about him. 

The Kerala IPL saga – A technician’s take on the the hoopla

All news channels today are running the Tharoor involvement in Kerala’s IPL story in the ‘breaking news’ mode with everyone giving little substance but more air time over what’s actually nothing. In an attempt to see if Dr Shashi Tharoor or his office would in anyway be connected to the IPL team I discovered some startling facts, all based on information available on the internet. At the outset I’d like to state that this writer couldn’t care less about Sunanda Pushkar and her association with Dr Shashi Tharoor. This writer’s objective is just to present some facts about the new Kerala IPL team related to the real estate they own on the internet and in the process show how Dr Tharoor’s office might be linked to the team much closer than what Dr Tharoor would like everyone to believe.

The way Rendezvous sports won the IPL bid and the fact that there was only one Malayali name was in the owner’s list and he had 1% share in the team was a little hard to believe. It was a little baffling that businessmen with absolutely no connection to the state would like to put up an IPL cricket team spending atrocious amounts of money. The parallels between Dr Tharoor’s political debut and Rendezvous debut in IPL is too obvious. A virtually unknown in Kerala politics, Dr Tharoor was given a ticket to the Lok Sabha seat of Thiruvananthapuram. This despite the fact that he wasn’t from Thiruvananthapuram but from Palakkad in Kerala. He won and subsequently went on to become the Minister of State for External Affairs. The way Rendezvous bid and won the IPL franchisee for Kochi was very similar to Dr Tharoor’s Lok Sabha victory.

Every one has a Twitter account these days, it’s such a huge hit in India. So the Kerala IPL team has it’s own Twitter account too. The screenshot below shows their page and their website (the standard.in) which I take it is their official website. I’m not willing to be fooled by the news displayed on “The Kerala Standard” website, it’s a nice way to keep getting in traffic from search engines. While checking who registered the domain for the Kerala IPL team, where it is hosted I hit upon some information which need to be clarified by our Minister for External Affairs. His office is for sure involved in more than just being good friends for a bunch of people who want stand up for the Malayali pride in fielding an IPL team. Here’s the registrant information of this website, the registrant’s name might be familiar to the one’s on Twitter already. Read it along with the registrant information of Dr Tharoor’s official website.

Domain ID:D3883893-AFIN Domain Name:THESTANDARD.IN Created On:17-Nov-2009 13:23:02 UTC Last Updated On:21-Feb-2010 13:14:07 UTC Expiration Date:17-Nov-2011 13:23:02 UTC Sponsoring Registrar:GoDaddy.com Inc. (R101-AFIN) Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED Status:CLIENT RENEW PROHIBITED Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED Registrant ID:CR29734645 Registrant Name:Jacob Puthenparambil Registrant Organization: Registrant Street1:Puthenparambil Registrant Street2:Pulincunnu PO Registrant Street3: Registrant City:Alleppy Registrant State/Province:Kerala Registrant Postal Code:688504 Registrant Country:IN Registrant Phone:+91.4712703745 Registrant Phone Ext.: Registrant FAX: Registrant FAX Ext.: Registrant Email:  jacob@tharoor.in Name Server:NS1.SLICEHOST.NET Name Server:NS2.SLICEHOST.NET Name Server:NS3.SLICEHOST.NET

Domain ID:D3443246-AFIN Domain Name:THAROOR.IN Created On:26-Mar-2009 07:13:16 UTC Last Updated On:04-Mar-2010 17:44:22 UTC Expiration Date:26-Mar-2011 07:13:16 UTC Sponsoring Registrar:GoDaddy.com Inc. (R101-AFIN) Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED Status:CLIENT RENEW PROHIBITED Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED Registrant ID:CR7566948 Registrant Name:Shashi Tharoor Registrant Organization:Office of Dr. Shashi Tharoor, MP Registrant Street1:TC 24/2074 3, Panavila Jn., Thycaud PO Registrant Street2: Registrant Street3: Registrant City:Thiruvananthapuram Registrant State/Province:Kerala Registrant Postal Code:695 014 Registrant Country:IN Registrant Phone:+91.4712324555 Registrant Phone Ext.: Registrant FAX:+91.4712324666 Registrant FAX Ext.: Registrant Email:praveen@tharoor.in Name Server:NS1.SLICEHOST.NET Name Server:NS2.SLICEHOST.NET Name Server:NS3.SLICEHOST.NET

Looking at the WHOIS information for thestandard.in and tharoor.in one can safely conclude that Dr Tharoor’s office or one of his staff members has registered the website for the Kerala IPL team. The email ID listed is jacob@tharoor.in which is probably the official email address of Dr Shashi Tharoor’s OSD, Shri Jacob Joseph. This information is available on the contact page on Dr Tharoor’s website. Did the Minister’s office register the domain for the Kerala IPL team? If Yes then why unless they have a stake in it? If No then why is the official email ID of the Minister’s OSD listen on the domain’s contact information?

Jacob Joseph
Officer on Special Duty
Telephone: 23014118
Email: jacob@tharoor.in

Source: http://tharoor.in/contact/

Additionally I also have considerable proof to believe that both these websites are hosted out of the same datacenter in the US, I did a trace of the IP address and see them pointing to the same location owned by RACKSPACE. The underlined lines below shows that both websites though they resolve to different IP addresses are hosted out of the same datacenter and the IP space is owned by RACKSPACE, one person manages the hosting space rented here in all probability. Do the Minister’s office or personal staff host the Kerala IPL team’s website? If Yes then why is the minister denying close association with the IPL team? If No then how come the Minister’s official website and the Kerala IPL website are hosted out of the same facility? Coincidence? A might one I’d say !

tharoor.in (174.143.27.168)

13   355 ms   416 ms   294 ms  RACKSPACE-M.edge2.Dallas3.Level3.net [4.59.36.50]

14   287 ms   285 ms   283 ms  vlan907.core7.dfw1.rackspace.net [98.129.84.181]

15   284 ms   286 ms   289 ms  aggr511a-1-core7.dfw1.rackspace.net [98.129.84.149]

16   285 ms   282 ms   291 ms  174-143-27-168.static.cloud-ips.com [174.143.27.168]

thestandard.in (204.232.202.72)

15   268 ms   267 ms   271 ms  main1.above.net [209.133.126.42]

16   268 ms   277 ms   275 ms  vlan907.core7.dfw1.rackspace.net [98.129.84.181]

17   302 ms   289 ms   281 ms  98.129.84.217

18   272 ms   273 ms   294 ms  204-232-202-72.static.cloud-ips.com [204.232.202.72]

Shri Jacob Joseph who also is associated with mobmag.in and tenders4u.com is an active twitter user and Dr Tharoor even once attributed him to the reason for getting onto Twitter. Why should the Minister deny his close association with the Kerala IPL team and attribute it to just mentoring when his personal staff seem to be closely involved in their presence on the internet? Surely the interests aren’t philanthropic.

The URL posted today by Dr Tharoor’s OSD is in bad taste. Why rake up Mr Lalit Modi’s past when that’s already been part of a court dispute in the BCCI election case? When you knew he was indicted why did you even seek his favour for an IPL team? This particular gentleman has always gone on overdrive on Twitter when Dr Tharoor landed into a controversy, should a Union Minister of India’s personal staff start giving out sound bites? Are the personal staff of the Minister exempt from helping hold the integrity and respect of the high office the Minister holds and get into a slander match with a sporting honcho who thinks he can turn any sport into a money spinner?

I’m sure every information on the WHOIS pages of these domain will be changed overnight, but the fact that they were on them till today is a testimony to the the shallow thought that went into owning these online resources. It’s not a crime to own a stake in a cricket team in a format that’s exciting and gets good ad revenues for broadcasters. Someone should take a long hard look and say “let’s stop insulting the intelligence of our audience and come clean out of this.” It’s not a big deal, but would mean a lot to folks such as this writer who have loved Dr Shashi Tharoor’s books and have seen every interview he has given about a dozen times on the internet and looked up to him as a man who made his country proud all through his career.

India is on Twitter?

We are living in a chaotic period in the modern India. Telangana, Naxals, Inflation, Kashmir, Terrorism, Liberalization … buzzwords that are heard everyday on TV, in the papers, on the internet and at bus stops in our country. Last year particularly was the coming of age of Twitter in our country. We saw a whole gamut of famous people get onto to Twitter and started using it mostly to promote their own personal agendas.

Shashi Tharoor, by far the most followed and eloquent amongst the newest twitterers from India keeps hitting media headlines for a casual remark he makes to his friend or commenting about aspects of foreign policy. The media which erstwhile played the role in bringing the message from the establishment, film starts and other avenues was finding it hard to cope with the fact that all these people now were directly talking to their target audience. Given this new channel established the media then had to report what was going on in Twitter which most often was a tad stale for the one’s that follow all these celebs on Twitter in the first place.

You have prominent personalities from the electronic media like Rajdeep Sardesai, Vikram Chandra, Sagarika Ghosh, Prabhu Chawla, Barkha Dutt …. on Twitter. You have reporters from these channels on Twitter. You have Vir Sanghvi, N Ram, Pritish Nandy and a whole gamut of professionals from the print media on Twitter. The film industry is there on twitter. All these folks promote their own articles, shows, movies on the medium. The folks from the media sometimes encourage debate, my favorite is Vir Sanghvi who never seems to have a problem calling a spade what it is. Go on, tweet to your hearts content and if you get a reply from one of these celebs do make a big deal about it.

Last week I was standing in a long line at a railway booking counter. The counters open at 8 AM and if you are one of those hapless one’s hoping to get a Tatkal ticket on a weekend train you better get to the booking counter by 8:15 AM or you don’t stand a chance in hell to get a confirmed reservation. Being the 17th person in the line I was slightly worried. As the crowd moved with only 10 more left an officer in Army uniform turned around:

Officer: Tatkal ticket?

Me: Yes sir, Saturday’s train, just 17 tickets remaining.

Officer: Aagay jao, mera tho utna jaldi nahi hai. (Go ahead, mine isn’t as urgent)

Me: Bahut shukriya sirji. (Thank you sir)

Don’t we need more people like this officer to make this world a better place?

Ratan Tata - A true Indian entrepreneur

Ratan Tata has been in the news all the time and more so recently with the recent success they had in winning over Corus. What makes this man special? Is it the size of the businesses he oversees? It is the number of areas the TATA group has been able to diversify into? Is it the amount of value he's creating for his shareholders? What is the story about this man that makes him so special and likeable?

Ratan Naval Tata was born on the 28th of Dec 1937. In 1962 he graduated with a degree in Archietecture and Structural Engineering from Cornell University. He came back to India and was sent to work on the shop floor in Tata Steel for 3 yrs. How many of you remember a TV set called Nelco Blue Diamond? Nelco (National Radio and Electronics Company) was his next destination where he was made a Director.

Ratan completed a Management program in Harvard and around that time Emergency was imposed in India which led to a lockout of Nelco. From here Tata went to work in the textile business of the Tata's which had mixed results. The main reason for this was attributed to the labor problems in Bombay then under the astute leadership of Datta Samant, a strong trade union leader.

In 1991 Ratan Tata took over as group chairman of the TATA group and this period saw TATA consultancy services going public and the foray of TATA motors into the passenger car market. The TATA Indica was an ambitious project because no Indian company had designed cars before. The easiest way was to find a foreign partner and manufacture cars under a JV. Ratan chose to take the path that was never travelled.

TATA Indica was launched on Indian roads in 1998 and it met initially with a lot of criticism and was also plagued with defects and other running problems. But to the company's credits everything was sorted out in a short span of time and it's one of the best selling cars of the country today. This was followed by the supremely successful TATA Indigo which still sells like hot cakes. The TATA's are all set to launch a luxurious version of this car named Indigo XL.

Ratan also led TATA to Korea and acquired Daewoo motors heavy vehicles division. TATA Tea acquired Tetley. Tata Teleservices acquired Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) when the Government divested it's stakes in it. Corus was a tough bargain because CSN stepped in and upped the ante. But Ratan says they bought it for a price which was within what they had decided and it surely is a victory for the group.

Ratan Tata is know for his integrity in business and the values that he holds dear to him. An intensely private bachelor, he loves dogs, flying, electronics, technology and cars. Rumor has it that he drives a TATA Indica to work in Mumbai. His next big adventure according to him is to fly the F16 for which he's been invited. A big cheer for the man who makes India proud, who serves as a role model for countless indian and who strongly believes that corporates should give back something to the country.

This interview with Rajdeep Sardesai on CNN-IBN on being conferred the 'Indian of the year' is a must watch.