Gary Kirsten: India’s new potential coach

So the man who thought India was a weird place with only “hotel socialization” and bad food is now going to be the coach of Team India.

Not questioning his cricketing credentials – I think Kirsten more than proved himself on the field – the gritty, sound cricketer who would wear down bowlers with his  perseverance – a cricketer grounded in the sound fundamentals. What I am questioning is the integrity and attitude of a man – who would come to India and talk disparagingly and condescendingly about the country – from his apartheid era white man perspective.

Of course, now with India shining and with the Board of Control for Cricket in India the richest in the world, every ex-cricketer around the world and their grandmothers gush about the energy and passion about cricket in India – since there is more than a little money involved in being the head coach of Team India – however, I am more than a little disturbed about his reported comments – given the fact that he grew up in apartheid South Africa and cannot be accused of cosmopolitanism and international sensitivity – amply demonstrated by his comments about his disappointment about India not being his ideal of white only South Africa.

He’s got a two year offer as coach – I only hope he a job better than his world-view or packs his bags and goes back to his South African utopia after the end of his term – if he survives that long.

ATT Wireless Customer Service Feedback

On the topic of wireless, my regular readers are well aware that I have a less-than-stellar view of ATT Wireless’ network coverage and service levels especially compared to my Sprint experience.

I had a couple of experiences, which in the interest of fair reporting, I felt I had to report – partly because I get a lot of hits here about people comparing Sprint and ATT services.

Number One: Customer Service

Simply put, ATT’s customer service, in my experience has been absolutely excellent. Now this could be potentially because I am under a corporate plan – or – it could be because I have always been used to Sprint’s absolutely horrendous customer service and anything else is significantly better.

But seriously, everytime I have called ATT, I have gotten absolutely wonderful, prompt and accurate service. Owing to the fact that I will soon be traveling overseas, I just recently called ATT to unlock my Treo 750v – and it took all of 7 minutes for ATT to provide me an unlock code – no questions asked.

If Sprint were a GSM company, I can only imagine how long that would take.

All in all, absolutely wonderful experience.

Number Two: Coverage in central Pennsylvania

I recently went on a roadtrip from New Jersey to Ohio and beyond – and I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of ATT coverage in the boondocks of central-east Pennsylvania especially around the hilly  areas around Pittsburgh including the tunnels. Very impressive.

Now, I must add Sprint had pretty uniform coverage too – along I-76 – but I used my ATT phone way more often – and given my low levels of expectation from ATT – it was surprisingly good. Surprisingly, ATT just seems to have horrendous coverage in Central Jersey.

But both these points, I think, were worth calling out.

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Verizon Wireless to open up network

Anyone who follows telecom probably has heard of the Verizon Wireless announcement by now – about opening up its network to any compatible CDMA device assuming it passes a certification test which will involve a “nominal cost”.

And the effects of Google’s Android and open handset alliance is already manifesting itself – Verizon kicked it off and I predict that Sprint and ATT will follow. Sprint is already a member of the Open Handset Alliance. ATT has held off till now – especially since its interest is vested with Apple’s iPhone based platform (which is far from open) – but the direction of the telecom network and the industry as a whole is towards standards based openness and ATT will have to jump in – sooner or later.

As I posted earlier, this is directionally similar to the way the traditional wireline industry opened up. After all in the 1960’s pre-divestiture period, ATT prevented home users to attach any landline phone not manufactured by ATT, ostensibly in the interest of “protecting” the network. And that was the tack that all wireless companies essentially used – protection of the network – and milking their users to pay to use anything on the network that they had already paid in the first place to use. An analogy would be Comcast charging the exorbitant  USD 79 they charge for a month of cable internet – and on top charging a surcharge to use MapQuest.

Its a step in the right direction. Now only if they soup up their EVDO network, I’ll jump ship from Sprint anyday (and take my Sprint Treo 700p with me)

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Interesting Video – Our choices, our future, our planet

Since when did we become a theocratic state?

In the face of widespread disturbance in Kolkata in the face of widespread rioting to protest Nandigram and to demand the visa cancellation of Taslima Nasreen.

Predictable buffoonery followed – with CPI(M)’s State Secretary Biman Bose, asking for Taslima to leave West Bengal if her presence caused law and order issues.

Two issues there – one, law and order is a prerogative of the state government – so if “law and order” fails owing to a three hour shutdown called by a Muslim fringe group – then the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the state government. Rather than to deal with the issue at hand (which was dealt with, since the Army was called out), to ask Taslima to leave is just playing the oft-played minority card the CPI(M) has done so many times in the past. Maybe now is a time to reconsider that abhorrent policy of the state government to hand out ration cards and other citizenship papers to illegal Bangladeshi immigrants – as we have come to see in Pakistan, these strategies always come back to bite the hand that feeds it.

Secondly, and much more importantly, we are an open society. We bengalis always like to claim our intellectual evolution in the finer arts – literature, poetry, music. So in asking a writer who has been hounded out of her own country because her writing is apparently inflammatory – is playing to the exact same fringe religiously fanatical groups that most would like to keep on the sidelines of meaningful society.

Bigger question is – how does the secretary of the ruling state government party have the latitude to ask a writer to leave – a person who has engaged in nothing unlawful. She is a writer who writes things that a lot of people find distasteful. But does that merit in asking for her expulsion? And the revoking of her visa? I thought we allowed for all opinions. I thought we were a state where free speech was valued and respected. Apparently, like many other things, not anymore – in West Bengal.

I find the general direction of absolutism in West Bengal extremely disconcerting. Whether it is Nandigram ( popular dissonance against government sponsored land-grab and violence) or be it this now – it seems that apart from being increasingly left out from the dynamic India we all hear about everyday, Bengal is regressing in this moral and political quagmire that seems more and more irrevocable.

The Left Morass: 123 Nuclear Deal and Nandigram

The Indian political Left is in crisis. Be it the opposition to the 123 Nuclear Deal or the dealing with Nandigram, it almost seems at times that sometimes even the more sensible of the coterie of Left’s leadership has actually lost all semblance to sanity and are increasingly reverting back to that one standard last resort fall back path of politicians worldwide – parroting the party line without any regard to reality, opinions of the people they represent or even just common sense.

The latest to fall in this category is the otherwise suave Buddhadev Bhattacharya – a self confessed “patron” of the arts and literature – yesterday, he actually defended the CPI(M) takeover of the villages! More so, there was no owning of responsibility for the total lack of state enforced law and order – instead he did what politicians from Bengal have done for decades now – blame the Central government for all their ills.

That is not to say the other parties are any better. Mr. Advani of BJP ( and Rath Yatra fame) very astutely observed that the CPI(M) have ” declared war against India”. Hello?!

The Communists which have long parroted the claim that they are the real sole representatives of the masses in India – are in a mess. In Kolkata, now you have the hoi-polloi protesting against the government. Buddhadev not only loses political credibility but also those he’d like the rest of us mortals believe are his friends, good taste and refinement being the binding factor.

And as usual, West Bengal, its people and the already battered reputation it enjoys gets yet another ding. So much for the much touted SEZs.

On the Nuclear Front, the Left seems to be actually relenting. Wonder if it was a well orchestrated political game from the beginning  – as  a show of force. Apparently, the Left is now open to India negotiating with the NSG as long as they dont sign the deal without discussing with them. Fair enough.

The thing about the Nuclear Deal is this – as far as the middle class and urban India is concerned – I think the Left has recognized that they are pretty unanimous in supporting the deal. Also, the America centric phobia that dictates much of Left’s ideology and actions – dont really play very well with Urban India anymore – hence to maintain any kind of political capital the Left still has with the very powerful middle class – it needs to come across as less intransigent to the deal.

I think there is a popular perception within the political punditry that the middle class does not matter in the great egalitarian experiment that the Indian Democracy is.  Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.  The Great Indian Middle Class is more than those few who work in IT companies and live in the big cities. The Great Indian Middle Class is about aspirations.

The parents of those kids who struggle to send them to English medium schools in Indore, Gwalior, Jagdalpur, Sholapur and a countless other small Indian cities are as much middle class as the rest of us. And they aspire for a better life. For themselves and for their children.

And like the rest of us, they recognize what this pseudo-socialism based on isolationist and colonial era mindset did to us for the first 45 years of our independence. And they want us to be integrated.

I realize that everything isnt perfect with everything in India. But unequivocally, I’d rather live in India of today than the India that existed pre- 1991. And I am proud we could transition as well as we have. And I recognize we have a long way to go.

And I think, viscerally, the Left recognizes all this too. Hence the flexibility. Because,  their exalted leaders – who have never had to do a day’s worth of honest work – dont want to start now.

And they would have to. Unless the Left changes. And soon.

Nandigram Update – 2

CPI(M) activists attacked the NDTV camera crews today and broke their cameras when they were trying to cover the story there.

To re-inforce the idea that the CPI(M) leadership is somehow living in some kind of rarified alter-reality,  the General Secretary of CPI(M) Prakash Karat, that great fighter of the disadvantaged claimed that “noone can throw the CPI(M) out of Nandigram” since they had actually won the election and “won the people’s confidence” – with that same infuriatingly silly inane smile on his face.

Of course it does not matter to him about poor people got shot in an internecine war between the CPI(M) and other opposition – he can, like all Leftists, sit in airconditioned, black cat protected Delhi quarters and talk about how they have the “confidence of the people”.

Fucking disgusting.

PS: In another news, the governor of  West Bengal – Gopalkrishna Gandhi, in an interview said that he was talking to “Jyoti Babu”  – that man who single handedly fucked up West Bengal in 3 decades of his rule – to maintain peace.

What else is there to say? Like I said, fucking disgusting.

Bengal in crisis, again.

So Nandagram is back on the front pages again. The great self professed protectors of our people and our sovereignty -  Communist Party of India – and their cadres engaged in veritable battles with the BUPC ( the organization trying to prevent the takeover of the land) – and actually, according to HT -went around firing indiscriminately in opposing villages “taking them over”.

All this – when are constantly opining leftist leaders are all uncannily quiet about the mess in their backyard ( Apart from lashing out at the Bengal governor for criticizing the mess).

Today apparently, the Bengali intelligentsia stormed a police station to free some of their compatriots – after apparently they were lathi-charged against. Absolutely unbelievable stuff.

Bengal is a cesspool. Has been for a few decades now. And everytime you think that it cant sink any lower, things like this come along – bringing out in the open the political incompetence, corruption, hypocrisy and the arrogance of power.

Watch this space for further updates.

Google introduces Android

Google today introduced an open source Linux based mobile device platform called Android. Google teamed up with major handset manufacturers like HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung. In the United States, eventually when the handsets become available, they would be available via Sprint-Nextel and T-Mobile.

Essentially, the differentiator is that Google would give its OS for free to phone manufacturers who are free, under the Open Office license – to add additional features to it. Also, independent developers are free to write and distribute applications based on the open API Android will provide.

Number of ways Android could shake up the Telecommunication industry. Traditionally, operators have been notorious in the way they have dictated terms to handset manufacturers -ostensibly to protect the networks they build and operate. Now with Android, atleast the participating operators, essentially open up their networks to hundreds of applications that will be freely distributable to any handset using the Android platform.

To operators, it provides a competitive value add advantage – a potential lure to subscribers from other operators – in a market that is already saturated.

It would seem to me analogous to the 70’s and 80’s when ATT prevented customers to even plugging a phone of their choice to phone outlets – exactly for the same reasons that cellular providers now provide – network security. And then de-regulation changed everything.

The one concern of operators would be – that they are potentially be letting go of revenue streams based on use of their network – essentially cannibalizing their own services – for e.g. I can use a third party GPS software free of cost instead of paying the 5-10 dollars I’d have to pay Sprint or Verizon per month to currently use Telenav. Brings back that entire Net Neutrality debate – now on wireless networks.

We’ll see how it all goes – but definitely a potential game-changer for the industry. A time of great excitement for consumers. It can only mean good things for end-users.

 PS: As a long time Palm user, back from the Tungsten II days, I just wonder, where the hell was Palm in the list of 50 odd handset manufacturers – especially, since Palm has been designing its Linux based next generation Palm OS for a really long time. Topic for another post though.

Rumors on the Pakistani Emergency

There has been a number of rather hilarious rumors floating around in Pakistan after the imposition of emergency in Pakistan:

•  Mushi is under house arrest himself – apparently locked up by his sub-ordinates. Apparently, the kind of president that Mushy is, he came out “strongly” against such rumors and called it ” a joke of the highest order”. Go figure.
• Imran Khan, who was really placed under house arrest yesterday has apparently escaped in the dead of night – this rumor has not been categorized as a joke by the great president.
• Apparently, Bhutto – that tainted ex-PM who very cynically forged an agreement with Mushy in not-such-a-secret meeting – before Mushy screwed her (metaphorically, baba!) by imposing Emergency (not such a surprise given his illustrious track record – Kargil, Taliban turnaround etc.) – is apparently the real leader.

As is wont in the sub-continent culture,  people cynical and tired of powerplay machinations tend to make the most uncomfortable things more palatable by masking it in humor. Guess, this is what it is as well.

For once, I feel bad for the people of Pakistan.