Friday, September 01, 2017

Modi Government = Sellers of Vaporware = Pivot Government

The massive failure of demonetization, one of the worst things done by an Indian government, affected every common Indian citizen. Old men saw their fixed deposit incomes go down. Small businesses shuttered down for months. Millions of workers lost their jobs. The unorganized sector, responsible for most jobs in the country, took a left hook (this government loves big business only). RBI's credibility took a big beating. Farmers couldn't get timely and adequate payments for their produce, resulting in protests and suicides. GDP growth slowed down.

The Modi government is best at two things:

1. Sell the public on fancy plans and slogans - They call all this vaporware in the software industry.
Three + years of this talkative ('vachaal') government and all India got was shitty phrases...'smart cities' anyone? Hope your street isn't flooded during this monsoon.

2. Announce new plans as soon as you learn about the failure of the existing plan - they call it pivoting in the software industry.
The habitually pivoting government explains the demonetization failure as saying it was all about a cashless economy anyway, as if cashless economy would take away all the corruption, and it didn't matter that the consumers and small businesses would have to pay the fees associated with all digital transactions.

The people of India are gullible and anxious people. They sent a bunch of dubious and mouthy people to power. If only we had acted as smart VCs and tried to see behind their marketing.

Remember 'shining india' of 2004? Actors from the same training institute that time too.

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Friday, September 16, 2016

When will peak BJP come?

Peak Congress was probably its 2009 Loksabha elections win. Now it is BJP time, which plans to open 500 offices across the country and Modi says 'winning elections' is a 'national responsibility' (he said 'rashtriya kartavya', which sounds grand). Smart. Equating fortunes of a political party with what a nation must do.

Power nourishes hubris. A lot of it. We have seen Congress fail. We have seen the Left getting confused and stumbling. Now, it is BJP hubris time.

Again, one party claims to have all the right answers. People in BJP are aware of the noise they are making. Nitin Gadkari, a BJP minister, says Modi's achhe din slogan in 2014 is now a millstone, and that the Indian public will always be a 'dukhi atma'. Right.


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Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Yes, we need S.O.P.A.

Oh, yes, we need S.O.P.A: Stop Outrageous Political Assholes.

From an interesting conversation on Hacker News

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Friday, September 23, 2011

Elizabeth Warren: There is nobody who got rich on his own. Nobody

Elizabeth Warren is the law professor who earned everyone's praise for her performance as the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the U.S. banking bailout (formally known as the Troubled Assets Relief Program). Now she is a United States Senate candidate.

Here's her socio-economic lesson for those who called Pres. Barack Obama’s proposed new tax increases for the rich (up from 35% to 39%) as “class warfare”.
I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.' No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.
You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

A good education for the 'cult of self-made' so popular nowadays. 

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Wednesday, January 09, 2008

How Kevin Rose has set a bad precedent for new media moguls

In the age of old media in the year 100 BC, newspapers used to endorse presidential candidates and assorted other political wannabes. They still do.

Showing us that New Media Moguls of the 21st century have the kevlar-plated souls of Old Media moguls, Kevin Rose of Digg fame has made his choice: Ron Paul (Republican) and Barrack Obama (Democrat).

On one hand, this is nothing.

But, tell me: which newspaper owner (Digg is no newspaper, but some idiots think it is) can boast to have a rabid fan following of 1 million geeks and counting?

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Wednesday, May 30, 2007

How the internet can change politics

Jonathan Freedland has written a timely article in The Guardian about the revolutionary effects of the internet on politics and democracy and asks whether web tools can actually better democracy or stifle it.

By Stifling, I think Jonathan means suffocating irritants such as Madness of crowd, Digg crowd, and abusive bloggers among other enemies of the useful web.

Writing about the challenges before the modern but always calculating politician, Jonathan concludes that,
the changes now in train could go either way, expanding democracy or contracting it.

Read the whole article here

Related Mediavidea articles

6 requirements for a Tech President

How Web 2.0 can change Politics

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