In India, lots of spending on poor quality

Over the weekend in Bangalore, I had promised my daughter I would take her to an up market store that sold a variety of breads with exotic names and ingredients ranging from olives to sunflower seeds.

On Saturday morning, we braved the maniacal traffic and went to this place, only to find that the breads were two or three days old. The cheese-and-garlic loaf, a favorite in our household, was three days old, according to the label. An employee graciously recommended the wheat bread that was only a day old.

Close by is a Chinese restaurant that serves Indo-Chinese food, a mix of Chinese flavors and a pungent Indian idiom. The “ drums of heaven” there are usually soggy, while their noodles can be very sticky.

But the bakery and the Chinese restaurant continue to attract customers by the droves. They stand in queues outside, something unthinkable say a decade ago when most of Bangalore eat home-cooked food. A number of restaurants, with claims to offer Thai, Spanish, Italian, Provencal, Egyptian and other varieties of cuisine have also sprouted across the city. The fare is in most cases indifferent, but that does not deter customers from queuing up and paying exorbitant prices.

That had me surprised until I recalled an old, but no less relevant it seems, concept in sociology. An eminent Indian sociologist, M.N. Srinivas, observed in his field studies among one some of the communities in India, that the castes positioned lower in the hierarchy tend to imitate and modify their culture to resemble that of the dominant caste in the locality. Srinivas called the phenomenon Sanskritization, as the values and culture that tend to get imitated by the new social upstarts were the Sanskrit, Brahmanical ones.

What does this have to do with the large number of crowded restaurants and malls in Bangalore ? A lot, I think. Unlike previous upstarts, who believed that assimilating Brahmin and Sanskrit culture, rituals, and customs was key to their social climbing, the new upstarts have in a strange twist decided on American culture as the dominant culture to be imitated and assimilated.

These days Indians have wine tasting parties, to refine their taste for something they never consumed earlier. You have chefs of five-start hotels and other, usually self styled gourmands, writing in the society pages of newspapers on the finer points of rare delicacies like caviar and truffles.

A lot of affluent Indians are turning their back to their own rich and ancient traditions in food, dressing, and other aspects of culture, to a new world of mainly American kitsch. They are getting there rudderless and without discernment, creating an opportunity for a new set of consultants and purveyors of culture, most of them parvenu. Add to them snooty restaurateurs and five-star chefs. If you find the pasta sticky, don’t complain to the chef. He is more likely to turn around and tell you, without batting an eyelid, that is how pasta is eaten by the Italians. Probably he is learning too.

Maybe this is a transitional phase, but these days in Bangalore, and most of urban India, good food is a rarity, particularly if the idiom is not Indian.

In India, like New York, a proposal for a traffic congestion tax

The Indian city of Mumbai, formerly called Bombay, may implement a kind of congestion tax. Drivers will have to pay to drive on some of the city’s key roads during peak traffic hours, the city’s traffic management consultants, Mastek say, according to a report by an Indian TV channel IBNLive.

The plan of action involves setting up cameras and scanners on major congested roads to detect the car's registration number, the TV channel reported. Special software will be used to determine the car owner, the owner will then be sent a bill based on his road usage, and electronic payment systems will be set up to make bill payment easier, it added.

Key Indian cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore are facing traffic jams and long delays because of an increase in population, and the number of vehicles on the road.

In April, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, unveiled plans for a congestion charge on cars entering the busiest parts of Manhattan. That move has been stalled by New York state legislators who hold that a congestion charge on driving in Manhattan will lead to congestion in areas around Manhattan, where people going to Manhattan will park their cars, to avoid the charge.

In Mumbai, the reduction of congestion of its main roads may also shift the burden to other parts of the city which already face heavy flow of traffic. Unlike Bangalore, Mumbai has a well-connected suburban railway system, which gives most of its residents the option of using the train rather than drive to work.

London moved to congestion charging in February 2003. The zone was extended into west London and doubled in size in April, according to a recent report in The Guardian. Other cities like Singapore and Oslo have entry tolls and other forms of congestions pricing.

Internet reflects, nay amplifies social problems

The Internet is a mirror to the population that uses it, Google Inc.’s vice president and chief Internet evangelist Vinton Cerf told the BBC in August. “When you have a problem in the mirror you do not fix the mirror, you fix that which is reflected in the mirror”, Cerf said while rejecting regulation of the Internet.

To my mind, to stretch Cerf’s metaphor a little, the Internet is like a concave shaving mirror. It magnifies and throws up every blemish in society, because it offers a far greater degree of anonymity, and much greater and easier access to people.

In the old days, I had to worry about having my pocket picked by a person next to me in the subway or a bus or in the park. These days, using the Internet, a person as far away as Lagos or Moscow can dip into my pocket.

Recently I put up my laptop for sale on a popular auction site. It was my first auction, and I was delighted that someone had made me an offer within less than an hour of my posting my item ! Then the bidder got in touch with me and requested me to do him a favor and ship the laptop to his dear friend in Nigeria in time for his birthday. Incidentally, I has specified when placing the laptop for auction, that I would not arrange to ship the product.

The bidder however persisted, and even sent me an online link to his bank that showed that the funds for paying for the laptop had been kept in escrow, for disbursement as soon as I proved that the item had been shipped to his dear friend. Unfortunately, when I traced the bank web-site to its owner, I found that it wasn’t owned by a bank, but by a resident of London.

After seven days wasted, and canceling the transaction, I put up the item for auction again. Guess what ? I had a bidder again within the hour. No two guesses: the bidder wanted his girlfriend in Benin to have it in time for her birthday.

I still don’t know, and frankly don’t care who were the folks I dealt with. Were they really Nigerian scammers, as some pundits told me ? The rub is that I had been promised by the auction site that I could theoretically reach customers throughout the world. All I had succeeded in doing was attracting to myself anonymous criminal elements from around the world.

The recent hacker attack on the Bank of India site in India, and others in other countries, testify that we are at a big risk on the Internet when we least expect it. According to this report, you just had to go to the Bank of India web-site and your computer was hosed with a whole lot of compromising malware and Trojans.

Even my email is not safe. I am not talking only about folks dropping viruses and Trojans through my mailbox. Security software folks like Symantec have made a great business out of their ability to block and remove this vermin.

I am talking about the large variety of offers, some offering to cure my sexual debilitations they are privy to, others promising to keep me in a diazepam-induced Nirvana for as long as I can pay for it, and still others thoughtfully offering me a chance to share in a rich widow’s inheritance.

Apart from their being a nuisance, there is the chance that somebody may be gullible enough to be inveigled into these deals. There are a large number of reports that confirm that a lot of folks in the US have in fact got into deep trouble trying to share in someone’s loot.

The Internet gives us the most valuable and scary insights into the depths human nature can sink to, when given global access and anonymity. Does this mean that we should shut down the Internet ? No ways, I make my money of it, I download music far faster than if I had waited for the local brick-and-mortar store to stock it, I can research information on the net, I can chat up distant friends on instant messengers, people under repressive regimes can now communicate with the outside world !

The point is that we have to be very, very careful, starting with the realization that it is not a brave new world out there in cyberspace.

The Internet and its promise of Second Life is not the promise of liberation from a cruel terra firma. It is the same sad world we live in, only a lot more unsafe, because the criminals can now get you in the privacy and security of your home. Forewarned, as the old saw goes, is forearmed. Irrational exuberance could have deadly results.

Internet reflects, nay amplifies social problems

The Internet is a mirror to the population that uses it, Google Inc.’s vice president and chief Internet evangelist Vinton Cerf told the BBC in August. “When you have a problem in the mirror you do not fix the mirror, you fix that which is reflected in the mirror”, Cerf said while rejecting regulation of the Internet.

To my mind, to stretch Cerf’s metaphor a little, the Internet is like a concave shaving mirror. It magnifies and throws up every blemish in society, because it offers a far greater degree of anonymity, and much greater and easier access to people.

In the old days, I had to worry about having my pocket picked by a person next to me in the subway or a bus or in the park. These days, using the Internet, a person as far away as Lagos or Moscow can dip into my pocket.

Recently I put up my laptop for sale on a popular auction site. It was my first auction, and I was delighted that someone had made me an offer within less than an hour of my posting my item ! Then the bidder got in touch with me and requested me to do him a favor and ship the laptop to his dear friend in Nigeria in time for his birthday. Incidentally, I has specified when placing the laptop for auction, that I would not arrange to ship the product.

The bidder however persisted, and even sent me an online link to his bank that showed that the funds for paying for the laptop had been kept in escrow, for disbursement as soon as I proved that the item had been shipped to his dear friend. Unfortunately, when I traced the bank web-site to its owner, I found that it wasn’t owned by a bank, but by a resident of London.

After seven days wasted, and canceling the transaction, I put up the item for auction again. Guess what ? I had a bidder again within the hour. No two guesses: the bidder wanted his girlfriend in Benin to have it in time for her birthday.

I still don’t know, and frankly don’t care who were the folks I dealt with. Were they really Nigerian scammers, as some pundits told me ? The rub is that I had been promised by the auction site that I could theoretically reach customers throughout the world. All I had succeeded in doing was attracting to myself anonymous criminal elements from around the world.

The recent hacker attack on the Bank of India site in India, and others in other countries, testify that we are at a big risk on the Internet when we least expect it. According to this report, you just had to go to the Bank of India web-site and your computer was hosed with a whole lot of compromising malware and Trojans.

Even my email is not safe. I am not talking only about folks dropping viruses and Trojans through my mailbox. Security software folks like Symantec have made a great business out of their ability to block and remove this vermin.

I am talking about the large variety of offers, some offering to cure my sexual debilitations they are privy to, others promising to keep me in a diazepam-induced Nirvana for as long as I can pay for it, and still others thoughtfully offering me a chance to share in a rich widow’s inheritance.

Apart from their being a nuisance, there is the chance that somebody may be gullible enough to be inveigled into these deals. There are a large number of reports that confirm that a lot of folks in the US have in fact got into deep trouble trying to share in someone’s loot.

The Internet gives us the most valuable and scary insights into the depths human nature can sink to, when given global access and anonymity. Does this mean that we should shut down the Internet ? No ways, I make my money of it, I download music far faster than if I had waited for the local brick-and-mortar store to stock it, I can research information on the net, I can chat up distant friends on instant messengers, people under repressive regimes can now communicate with the outside world !

The point is that we have to be very, very careful, starting with the realization that it is not a brave new world out there in cyberspace.

The Internet and its promise of Second Life is not the promise of liberation from a cruel terra firma. It is the same sad world we live in, only a lot more unsafe, because the criminals can now get you in the privacy and security of your home. Forewarned, as the old saw goes, is forearmed. Irrational exuberance could have deadly results.

Minister, leave the kids alone !

The decision by the government in the state of Karnataka in India to ban mobile phones, for school kids under 16, is quite thoughtless. As Bangalore, the capital city of Karnataka and a technology hub, gets increasingly unsafe, as traffic gets unpredictable, and traffic jams are frequent, it is both reassuring and necessary for kids to be able to communicate with their parents.

A parent I know in Bangalore was quite distressed that in future she would not be able to communicate with her kid while in school. She told me she has found a work-around. "If they will not let my kid buy a phone, then maybe I will take an additional connection in my name, and give it to the kid," she said.

If the government is concerned about mobile phone users disturbing the class, and quite rightly so, this is a matter for the discipline committees in each school to handle. Blanket bans don't help, and only reflect the schools' inability to handle discipline.

Getting kids to reduce their use of mobile phones to only emergency calls, to avoid the suspected harmful effects of mobile phones, would be a matter to be handled jointly by parents, teachers, and kids.

We are seeing a similar dispute over the use of mobile phones in schools in New York, according to a report in the New York Times

The people of Bangalore would at this point be better served if the police enforce existing rules such as banning drivers from using mobile phones.

The government should also consider clamping down on pedestrians who negotiate the roads while distractedly talking into their mobile phones. The need to be "connected" seems to be so strong among people in Bangalore, that often folks plug on their headsets and start talking just as they are leaving home. Often car drivers honk at jay walking pedestrian, but the pedestrian cannot hear over the mobile conversation, or is too engrossed in the conversation.

Bangalore: paying the price of economic boom ?

Bangalore, India’s software and call center outsourcing hub, is slowly emerging as a marketer's dream, with its whole lot of atomized and bored people. Offer them the malls and they rush there hoping for companionship and excitement that small communities once offered.

Why is the city becoming atomized ? Analysts in the city say that it has got to do with ever-shifting neighborhoods. The neighborhoods are changing - once upon a time they were stable communities of people who knew each other very well from birth through puberty through adulthood and old age. Neighbors once gossiped about one another, but they cared to gossip ! Conversation was possible because there was a common history, common issues, and everyone knew each other very well.

Now a neighbor can be a call center worker whose timings are not the same as yours. “If he disappears and the cops come asking, I can't say a lot about him...because all I got from him in the last six months was a sleepy "Hi", and yes he once told me was moving jobs to another city,” said Shankar, a long-standing resident of the city, about his neighbor.

The police are more likely to come asking about neighbors these days because the crime rate is going higher with muggings, rapes, suicides on the rise -- a by product of stressful lives, migratory populations, and resentment over a yawning economic divide, according to the pundits.

“The folks on the other side where I live are IT professionals,” said Shankar. “They have been around for one-year, and they are leaving for the US in the next six months. We have promised to write to each other.”

Just across from Shankar’s home are two gated apartments – a new phenomenon in Bangalore, patronized and affordable only by the very rich among the city’s software professionals and corporate executives. “I can only tell them from their lovely cars that zip in and out,” he said.

“I used to like to go and chat with some old friends over "chai" (tea), but we gave up because we couldn't make it because of different working hours, and some of them travel a lot,” said R. Ganesh, another second-generation resident of the city. When Ganesh had the time, he couldn't get parking even two kilometers from the teashop.

As Bangalore gets more affluent as a result of the boom in outsourcing to the city the number of cars, including expensive foreign cars, has gone up, even as the local government continues to neglect the roads and other infrastructure. A construction boom has also cut into public spaces.

“So now we use the technology wonder called "chat" on Instant Messenger. We :)) instead of actually smiling. I haven't figured out yet how one does a back-slap on IM, or a tight hug for a very good friend,” Ganesh said.

Enter the marketing guys who no longer offer only products, but whole experiences and a life style around them. “The new mantra is why are you being old-fashioned, clinging to that old tea shop which will get brought down anyways to give way to a sky rise building in glass, concrete, and steel ? Go instead for a wild-life safari, or join the golf club, or go to the swanky malls that have come up !,” said Ganesh.