DOES THE FARMER REALLY KNOW?

Creation, or non-creation of jobs, has been discussed as a yardstick of success or failure of a government. It is indeed a meaningful measure of the wellbeing of the economy. An ITI-pass plumber or a welder in a small town can at best hope to earn subsistence wages of about ten thousand Rupees a month. In fact even graduate engineers go abegging for such a salary. Thinking of a marginal farmer or a small milk-producer (gwala) numbs the mind. He has no salary - he and his entire family work for free in the field or in tending to the cattle. He sells the produce out of what is leftover from family's own consumption. That pays for his other needs - clothes, medicines, house-repair, cooking, education of children and the other myriad necessities of daily life.

Now, there is no job like that in the world that doesn't pay wages. Surplus produce cannot be called a wage, certainly not for all the members of the family. The wife, the mother, all the children are actually working for free. Each one of them should actually be getting the minimum wage every day for their back breaking labour, say ₹200 to ₹300 per diem. If they did claim that wage, our milk would cost us seventy-five Rupees a litre and wheat sixty Rupees a kilo. After all a large farmer or a dairy-owner does pay his workers some wage. So, our cheap milk, vegetables and food grain are actually a product of self-inflicted slavery. 

So friends, pray to God that the small farmer doesn't became aware of this!

                    ---ooo---

BLOATWARE IS BACK

With the advent of Android and iOS there was a hope, howsoever slim and shortlived it proved later, that software writers were back to being sensible once again. I was told the Windows XP had a billion lines of code. The initial years of Android and iOS were ruled by constraints of limited processing power, low memory in the mobile devices and need to quickly roll out software. Apps, the nifty little pieces of software, had made the routine easier and quicker. The mobile Operating Systems themselves were compact, yet functional and stable.

Soon, the cliques of code-writers realised that they would be out of business and jobs. So, the guild struck with a vengeance. They soon started writing bloatware once again like there was no tomorrow. And lo and behold, the hardware industry lapped up the opportunity like a drowning man clutches a life buoy thrown to him. So we are now commonly looking at 1.7GHz Octa Core processors, dedicated graphics processors and assisted cooling accompanied by 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.

We are back to the past, where software was distributed on double sided DVDs. Apps now are as big as half a Gigabyte. Even an upgrade is a few hundred Mega Bytes. Take a look at the attached screenshot - an upgrade of MS Word weighs in at 306 MB. A mere upgrade of just a component of the MS Office, that too of the mobile version is all of 300+MB or the size of half a CD! Not long ago, full MS Office came on ten floppies adding up to just about 14 MB and later on a CD of 700MB. Hard Disks were considered large if they had a capacity of 30GB. But that was before the bloatware took over.

That is not all. All other Apps that I fondly installed on my iPad or the Android phone also need  upgrades every two weeks. So if you have say 40 Apps, not an unusually large number, each one of these will "offer" a free upgrade (update) twice a month, demanding an average of 50MB data traffic for it. That makes nearly 4GB of data every month (2x40x50) just to make up for the stupid code-writers' slip-ups. Well, I often think that I am the stupid one to have fallen for all this. Even unlimited WiFi plan is not really unlimited - we all know that. There was a time, when the industry or the discerning users or at least the nerds cursed Microsoft for coming out with an upgrade (they called it a patch) every six months. But, now we do not even murmur at this rip off - in matter of data charges, personal time and possibly unknown security-holes in the App, which they want to plug every fortnight.

The Empire has Struck Back!

                                            ---ooo---

KANHAIYA KUMAR (Why target a single person?)

Numerous TV debates have harped on this point. Why single out one student, when a whole lot of others were shouting seditious-slogans? Why only in JNU, when you a tango with similar people in Kashmir? Well, Kanhaiya was (is) the leader of the JNUSU and was leading the crowd that day, when they called for destruction of India. That is good enough reason to put him behind bars. Whether he uttered those same very words from his own lips is not important. But, the legal issues go beyond that. Why make a single person (or just a few) pay for the crime of many? 

Let's go back to the days, when music piracy was at its peak, five to ten years ago. Powered by peer-to-peer networks like the Limewire, BitTorrent or Napster, millions of young men and women, older ones too, downloaded and shared songs, which were copyrighted by record labels or music companies. It happened in India and many countries.  But, in the USA, which prides itself on a tough regime of patents and copyrights (a great factor in its vibrant culture of innovation and creativity in academic, scientific, technological and entertainment fields), the record companies took the matter into their hands. They sued unknown millions for damages. Of course, it was technologically possible to list out each one of those anonymous downloaders and make them party in the legal battle. But, they narrowed down to just a few, out of which two cases are the most celebrated. The judiciary went along with this course.

Jamie Thomas-Rasset, a Woman from Minnesota was fined US$2,20,000 (RS. 1.5 Crores at today's exchange rate) for just 24 songs. She ended up paying US$9167 (Rs. 6.25 lakhs) per song. The case was filed by the Recording Industry Association of America and went up to the Supreme Court, which upheld the penalty.

The second case is of Joel Tenenbaum, a PhD student of Boston University, who ended up paying US$6,75,000 for just 30 songs or US$22,500 (Rs. 15.30 lakhs) apiece. The Supreme Court refused to even admit his appeal.

The argument that a single person should not be penalised since millions others were doing the same fell flat on the judges. The downloaders (pirates, actually) even argued that they would pay for the album, which they had copied, an amount of a few dollars. The judges were not impressed. They said that an example had to be made of them. They also said that the loss to the recording industry went far beyond just the loss of sale of one single album by the accused. Today, such blatant music piracy is virtually non-existent in the USA. One is scared of even making copies of CDs for one's friends.

Well, an example has to be made each of Kanhaiya Kumar and of SAR Geelani. And the damage they have caused goes far beyond mere an evening of slogan shouting and a seditious press-meet. Thank you.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/sep/11/minnesota-woman-songs-illegally-downloaded

http://www.digitaltrends.com/music/appeals-court-denies-piracy-penalty-plea/

RADIO WAVES A HELLO FROM THE PAST

One of the biggest regrets of my life is that I have not listened to the Vividh Bharti for decades now. Such has been the invasion of the Television in our lives that we have voluntarily surrendered to its designs. Sitting in a couch, staring at a flickering screen while those unrelenting enemies fat, cholesterol, triglycerides, unburnt-calories, Vitamin-D-deficiency, varicose veins and flabby-belly ceaselessly shooting at you, has been a lost battle for good health.

The laws of physics are mercilessly unfriendly. A visual must be viewed directly since the line of sight is but a straight line. The potato is therefore necessarily bound to the couch. Sound waves, on the other hand waft and swirl around the house, from room-to room, in you garden and onto you balcony. The radio uncomplainingly sits in a corner, a most tolerant and liberal device not seeking to arrest you into confinement, and regales you while you read the newspaper, sip your morning cuppa, walk on you treadmill, brush and shave or even take a shower. It works on your mind and not on your eyeballs. It doesn't enslave you, it befriends you. It captivate you, yet does take you captive. Human mind, the radio knows, is a powerful receiver. It can process multiple inputs, all at once. So, you can listen to the news while you drive, tap the table to Kishore Kumar while you eat your porridge or play with your children while the radio regales you faithfully unconcerned with what you are doing.

So, whether it was a lazy summer afternoon or a cold winter night, you could be snuggled indoors and let the tuner beat the blues for you. The radio was a democratic device that entertained no matter where you were in the house. It enchanted the children, the Dad and the Mom, the housemaid and the passerby alike. If you wanted to enjoy a primetime serial, though the term serial was not invented then, you could curl up in warm blankets and listen to the Hawa Mahal. Or you could tune in to Radio Ceylon and enjoy the Binaca Geetmala, the weekly "award" rating of music that could outdo the glitzy Grammy function. The best part of it was that the compère Amin Sayani came out tops every Wednesday, beating the songs that he played. The Vividh Bharti was the station, we didn't have channels then, that kept the love of music alive across generations through special programmes like Chhaya Geet and special programs for Fauji Bhais. Does Jhumri Talaiyya still exists on the planet earth? Let me find out next time I tune in. Raju, Babli and Pinki must have grown up now. Their postcard requests were read out as if they were personal messages from long lost friends.

Tuning in to obscure and distant radio stations gave greater pleasure than actually visiting London, Peking or Washington DC. The Aha Moment of locking into the clearest reception of the BBC or the Voice of America was as rewarding as a grandmother's success in threading a needle without glasses. The modern avatar, the FM Radio, comes close to the old faithful AM, but the latter still wins because it served you, without aerials and antennae, in basements and on sky-scrapers, in the hills and forests, on sea beaches and on high seas.

I have missed you, Radio! The #WorldRadioDay just told me that I have missed a lot in these years. I promise to make up for it. #ThankYouRadio.

---ooo---

PATANJALI STORES - Bhag MNC Bhag!

Visited the Patanjali Store just out of curiosity after having heard good things about it from many persons. "Total delight" is the only term that describes my experience. I have always been suspicious of Babas and have kept my distance from them. I would prefer to learn Yoga from Shilpa Shetty to a Baba-type teacher.

They say that Baba Ramdev has commercialised his brand. Nothing could be further from truth. He indeed has. The Patanjali brand of household stuff sells like hot cakes even in a small town like Salem and one has to wait one's turn in a queue. The reasons are not difficult to see. Everything is so well presented, packaged and ridiculously low-priced that one can only curse oneself for having been cheated all these years by the likes of Hindustan Lever, Colgate and Proctor and Gamble.

The Patanjali Stores sells everything of daily need - soaps, detergents, toothpaste, rice, atta, pulses, cooking oil, biscuits, cornflakes and even instant noodles. Every single thing is packaged professionally matching, if not beating the MNCs. Prices are unbelievably low. Soap cakes for half the price of what Hind Lever sells, shampoos and seventy percent cheaper, biscuits at half price and so on. Pulses are unpolished and very attractively packed. All foodstuff is fssai approved.

The range of soaps can shame Hindustan Lever and that of biscuits the Britannia company. The quality is top class and reassuring. The salespersons are ultra polite and are obviously well trained. They had staff, which spoke Tamil, Hindi and English. There is also an in-house consultant, who prescribes Ayurvedic medicines for you, all of which are available in the store at very reasonable prices. The blend of heritage and herbal offerings with modern stuff like moisturisers, sunscreens and hair-conditioners, liquid hand-washes is seamless.

This Baba is soon going to give the MNCs a run for their money. He has also launched a major advertising campaign in the media. The best part of it is that he does not use a beauty-queen or a film star as a brand ambassador. His market savvy and care for details will soon be a case study in Management Schools.

I recommend a visit to your nearest Patanjali Store.

(Disclaimer: I am not a follower of Baba Ramdev)