My Tech Blog: January 2006

Paritrana :: The Bumpy Road Ahead

This post may be considered as a sequel to my first post on Paritrana, the new political party created by a group of ex-IITians and is creating a lots of ho-hulla in Indian Blogosphere. It also has got attention of Indian media (like Indian Express). Thanx to under-construction status of their website, we know very little about their aim, approach, philosophy and action plan. But a post at Arthashastra named "Paritrana - getting to know them a little bit more" presents an informal interview with the national treasurer of Paritrana. It gives a rough idea on the rough road ahead of Paritrana even after getting so much attention in Indian blogosphere. Here are soe of the conclusions that I can make out from the posts and the comments that followed after:-

The road ahead of Paritrana is not going to be smooth. Ultimately they have to enter the political battle field and content for elections both for assemblies and parliaments. They need resourses. The more they aspire to achieve, the more resourses they need. And acquiring resourses is not a simple task. The resourses they are needed is not just confined to the economical aspect, the human resourse aspect also going to create a big problem to them. Getting party worker, motivating them to their noble cause, mobilizing them, getting grassroot level support is going to be a herculian task. Even if there is no dearth of abled, dedicated, and corruption-hating individuals in India, but finding them, motivating them to join their party is going to be yet another big hurdle. Their is a easy-to-guess wrong solution to it, that is to select individuals not full-filling those stringent requirements and finally be similar-to-yet-another-party in India, and loose the support of ur peers too.
From the interview it seems their policital philosophy can be described as developmentalist and centrist. It is definitely a good sign.
But the bad thing about it is that they are going to contest elections in a country where the functional literacy level is below 33%. Note the word "functioanal" in the previous statements. And elections are fought on emotioanally-appealing agendas, caste, religions, and with the money-power. In such a chaotic highly imperfect world, it will be a terrific task to win battles without compromising ur ideals. Those guyz at Paritrana have to a strong social engineering leadership and decision taking skills.

But still there is a hope. They are IITians who are considered as the cream of the society. They have fixed their mission. They are definitely going to win. But how much they are going to win is going to be decided by the future. God bless you guyz @Paritrana for ur noble effort

How the other Half Live

Posted by Subash | 8:43 PM
[2] Comments

Media is supposed to give the true picture of a country in an utopian world. But unfortunately the a practical non-utopian world, the problems of the lower strata of the society is often ignored. But in 1890, Jacob Riis, a Dutch immigrant to the US, wrote about - and photographed - the appalling slum conditions in New York City. Around the 1890s, half of New Yorkers lived in slums (similar to modern Bombay) and Riis wrote his book to garner much needed attention. The book was called How the Other Half Lives.

Now there is yet another similar effort being put forward by a group of indian blogger to give a better picture of the often-ignored "other-half" of the Indian society and possibly some solution to improve it via blogging at How the other Half Live. Some of big-boos of Indian blogosphere like Dilip D'Souza, Shivam Vij are a part of this nice effort. Alternative and Innovative blogs like this are definitely a good sign for indian blogosphere. Thunmbs up dudes@the othe halves !!!

Paritrana :: Political Party for the INDIA of 21st Century

Posted by Subash | 9:41 PM
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Rather than explaining the whole story, let me quote a part of the article from Times of India on the hope of 21st century, a political party formed by five IITians in India.

BANGALORE: Seems like Mani Rathnam’s Yuva is getting off the reels. Five IITians, all in their 20s, have decided to take up mainstream politics. The youths, based in Jodhpur, will be in the city to campaign for their national party, “ Paritrana’’ , which was launched in Jodhpur on Friday.

“Giving up handsome pay packages, comfort of family and support of friends wasn’t that easy,’’ says Tanmay Rajpurohit, the national president of the party and B Tech in aerospace from IIT Bombay followed by an MS from GeorgiaTech and double masters in arts.

“But my inner voice told me that I should invest my efforts in my country rather than making my pockets heavier,’’ said Ajit Ashwalayan Shukla, vice president of the party.

The complete story can be read at http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1384682.cms . Also the official site of Paritrana can be visited at http://paritrana.org/index.html .

Some "Cool" CSS Links

Posted by Subash | 5:41 PM
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I have a strong interest towards web designing and presenting stuffs in a beautifull and appealing ways. As expected my bookmark at del.icio.us has a speacial bundle on web designing with tags like css, javascript, ajax and so on. Here are some of the cool css tips and tricks site that I have bookmarked over time.

I request all my blog/site reader to post more cool CSS links as comments to this posts if you know any :-