WRONG 'UNS

One day on the morning India plays cricket you will switch on the TV and a scroll will flash:"Breaking News: Sachin flouts rules, has aloo parathas for breakfast. Trainer furious,players envious!"

News about cricket on TV is no longer about runs and wickets. It is about packaging gone potty. About international captains dressed up in medieval armour for the most tasteless advertisements in the history of advertisements,about Sidhuisms, about nailing the "guilty" at the end of play, analysis programmes called "Silly Point", and anchors cutting live to reporters with brain-bogglers-"XYZ has just got a century. Hame bataaiye, what are his thoughts at this moment?" ("F***in'hell, just saved my a**.")

Then there is the meaningless micro-live coverage: the BCCI's working committee meetings, its team selections and now the movement of the cricketers before a big game. Well-coiffed men and women report live from outside hotels breathlessly announcing that the team bus is about to leave for the stadium. No one has yet hired a helicopter to track them to the ground but you never know. As things stand, the breakfast buffet is the next frontier. "What's it going to be for Bhajji today-skimmed milk or full cream? SMS us your answers, win a life-time supply of Amul Taaza tetrapacks.

Live cricket today is seven hours of action, in extreme close-up, direct to your living room. All other punditry on the idiot box is superfluous unless there is a spin on it. Today there is more spin, less cricket. The idea of a day's play throwing up a "mujrim" is toathesome because we live in a country where real mujrims sit in government. Get a grip, everybody.

All is, of course, rationalised by the tyranny of the TRP, the need to grab eyeballs. So players of varying capabilities, agendas and IQS, cast as impartial gurus, prattle on for hours.No wonder the entire circus goes ballistic, looking for "mujrims" when India loses. No victories, no feel-good, no feel good, no ratings, no ratings,no ads,no ads, no moolah. And you thought facing the new ball against Australia was tough. Try turning sport into showbiz and we'll see how those Aussies do.

In keeping with flavour of the sleazon, the day a spycam is planted on the team bus or in the dressing room doesn't look too far away. Tip for Team India: mind your language, guys, and work on those abs.

GENERATION ME

There are 250 million young people in India between the age of 18 and 35. Never before has India been a country of so many choices. Whether it is vocation or education, leisure or lifestyle, today's young Indians can go anywhere and become anything.

This growing and very visible demographic profile also contributes to the buoyancy of the economy and the general sense of feel-good we find around us. But India is not a homogenous whole and a decade ago, there were many Indians to contend with- urban,rural, small town, big city, metropolis and boondocks. But thanks to the expansion of mass media, those differences have got blurred. Not in real terms like opportunities or infrastructure but certainly in ideas and aspirations. Every young Indian, whether in Jamshedpur or Jammu, with access to TV and the Internet, believes he or she is an equal stakeholder in the prosperity that the country seems to promise today. when they travel to big cities to fulfill their dreams, they travel with more confidence and less trepidation.

NET DEFICITS

The Internet no doubt challenges ignorance, but it is also a purvey0r of false information. It is decentralised and anarchic, since nobody controls or owns it. To borrow a phrase from al Biruni, it is a mixture of pearls, pebbles and dung. Yet, many people utterly believe what is posted on the Net. Newspapers tap the Net for background information. Hence, noted astronomer-mathematician Brahmagupta is placed in 628 BCE instead of CE 628. The Jantar Mantar observatory is said to have been employed for predicting eclipses. Not true. Predictions require mathematics not instruments. A newspaper described Aryabhata as "a scholar at the Nalanda university" and credited him with authoring the so-called "heliocentric theory of gravitation". We know very little about ancient astronomers, our only source being stray comments in tersely worded scientific shlokas by them or in those of their commentators. Some speculate that Aryabhata was head of Nalanda university. Even if this were true, it does not necessarily mean that he was a student there. A website even displays a picture of Aryabhata standing in front of his university! As for the heliocentric theory, this is illiteracy of the highest order. A mathematical theory is constructed so that it can have wide application. It can't be centred on the sun or anything else. The Internet has 11,800 entries on Aryabhata. How does one decide which ones to reject? The Net also throws up problems of rigour. M.K. Gandhi is widely quoted as saying the earth has enough for everyone's need but not greed. Many versions of this statement are doing the rounds. Which are correct? Some Hindus in North America were the first Indians to use the Net. They have constructed an Indian past that would help them cope with their real or imagined problems in an alien setting. With dependence on the Net as a primary source of information growing, it is necessary to create an authentic web resource from an Indian perspective. Indian newspapers should form a consortium to set up an online Indipaedia or encyclopaedia Inica. A committed band of editors and contributors should prepare entries. This might seem like an ambitious and lone-drawn affair but may be worth the effort.

PRESENT EVERYWHERE

In the first original Star Wars film, princess Leia famously appealed for help to Obiwan Kenobi by appearing in front of the Jedi Knight as a small, see-through projected form of her physical self. Meanwhile, elsewhere, R2D2 and Chewbacca were shown playing chess with artificially imaged pieces floating in front of them. In the last Episode III movie too, absent members take part in meetings by having their facsimiles broadcast directly among the real people in attendance, much like an enhanced version of present-day videoconferencing. Even though it's tacitly assumed all these are three-dimensional holographic representations of reality, such stuff is still way in the future- in a galaxy far, far away-because right now all we have is a method of producing a partial 3D image of an object which, in any case, needs a solid backing medium to be expressed on such as paper, plastic or metal. Producing lifelike holograms which could be free floated into mid-air to form a hovering image visible from all sides remains for the time being at least in the realm of science fiction. But perhaps not for long.

A technique for projecting holographic images to make both still and moving three-dimensional displays is currently undergoing development in the United States at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This technique, unlike older ones based on stereoscopy, would not involve the use of polarising goggles, specialised eyewear or other visual aids. Also, unlike in holographic displays as practised until now, visibility of the image would not be restricted to a narrow range of directions;instead, it would be observable from any side. In other words, the display could be viewed as though it were an ordinary three-dimensional object. The technique has obvious potential value for the entertainment industry as in video games and home theatre, and for military uses like displaying battlefield scenes overlaid on terrain maps. It could also be used as store displays, for exhibiting rare museum artefacts and in operating theatres where a patient's vital signs could hover above the chest during open heart surgery. As for princess Leia, she could be projected straight to our living rooms in future.

HOT JOBS

I am not an economist. But I don't have to be one to know to be one to know that there is something horribly skewed with the Indian economy. About 60 percent of the country's labour force works in agriculture to produce just 21 percent of national income- GDP. Conversely, survives sector that generates over 50 per cent of the GDP employs only 27 percent of working Indians. The missing link that I am hinting at is the industry. Unlike the services sector, industry can create jobs of the kind that can absorb unemployed and underemployed from agriculture. Industry today has only 17 percent of the labour force on its rolls.

India is either rewriting the laws of economic growth - that say an economy transits from an agricultural one to being industrial before becoming services-driven-or it is doing something fundamentally wrong. In China, 70 per cent of the workforce is employed in agriculture and only 30 per cent is with industry and services.

That's tragic because it's India, and not china, which claims to be an emerging knowledge superpower. In a knowledge economy, it's the people and the people's skills, what experts call employability, that determine success. For companies in such an economy, their talent pool becomes the most valuable asset, more valuable than capital, land or machines. We all knew India has the world's largest pool of 'skilled' manpower.Ironically we were wrong. It took two years of sustained job growth to blow this myth. India's workforce is large but not skilled. In a McKinsey surveys, 81 per cent of the executives polled said the biggest challenge to growth was not infrastructure or poor governance but scarcity of talent. That's a dubious distinction for the world's second most populous and the youngest country. Obviously, we desperately need to fix our education system.

That's bad news for companies and the country. But for today's job seekers it's the most heartening news. Today companies using innovative ways to overcome the shortage of skills and going beyond the metros to hunt for talent. I always felt much of India's economic progress has been despite the government. It seems much of employment growth will also take place without any significant help from the government.

SEVENTH TRUTH

I was in college when I heard Aziza Mustafa Zadeh's album Seventh Truth. An introspective track, which swings between being fiercely emotional, joyful and sad, it touched me immensely.

There was the charming Ay dilber, the subdued I am sad, Wild Beauty, etc. But the song that affected me the most was Fly with me. This beautiful singer from Azerbaijan(once part of the USSR) sang the English and Azeri lyrics about the adventure to free one's spirits, to the sound of the western classical piano, supported by percussion and the sound of drums. All incorporated to the strains of traditional Arabic melody! There was no boundary to her style, but a beautiful fusion of diverse lyrics, vocals and instruments. It was the most melodious attempt at bridging the gap between world music. I went into raptures every time I heard it.

Not only was the song pleasing to the ears, it made me open-minded about various forms of music. It also taught me not to be limited by favourites and to keep an open mind and listen.

SEX CRIMES

The World Health Organisation says that a woman is raped in India every 54 minutes. It is a horrifying and depressing statistic because it tells an uncomfortable truth: that no matter how we measure progress, India remains medieval in the way it treats its women.In villages, the threat of rape is a constant; the act is used to settle scores in caste and power tussles. Women have, therefore, generally felt safer in the anonymity of our towns and cities.

This seems to be changing. Around Holy festival, three rape cases were reported-two in the capital and other in Mumbai. If this could happen in the most cosmopolitan and westernised of Indian cities, the feudal north or the conservative south could hardly be any safer for women.

They aren't. Women are increasingly vulnerable in our cities. They are being picked off the street and raped inside moving cars, assaults are more common inside campuses, date rape is on the increase and merely travelling alone leaves a woman open to risk.

In the last decade, the growing number of women in the workforce has given them greater economic and personal freedom. With it has come greater vulnerability and greater risk. While women have adjusted to the demands of working in male spaces, the reverse adjustment has not been as smooth. Women may have changed the way they see themselves but men, it is clear, have not.

Today the battle being fought is against the male psyche which seeks to exercise control over women through abuse.

LAWLESS INDIANS

Let's face it we are an undisciplined nation and this is manifest in all walks of life, on our roads, in public buildings, in parks, everywhere. Go anywhere in the world, to the smallest country in the Far East, they may be poor, underdeveloped but they are spotlessly clean. You don't have to be a high-tech wizard to realise that litter has no place on roads, that ancient monuments, which we are so lucky to have are to be cherished and preserved.

A foreigner is a guest, and in true Indian tradition a guest is the equivalent of God: Atithi Devo Bhavah goes the adage. But how do we treat our guests? From the moment they land to the bedlam that we call airports, with endless queues at customs and emigration, to the pushing and shoving that is needed to obtain a trolley, the very first experience in our country is a big turn-off. Then there is the dishonest cabbie who takes his guest all over town, on a tampered meter. When halting at traffic lights, they are harangued by beggars, maimed and disfigured, little infants, bare-bodied mewling in an emaciated woman's arms. Is this the Amazing India that our tourism industry tom-toms about? Where is the glorious civilisation, dating back to Harappa and Mohenjodaro, the visitors had come to experience? Is this the capital of an India, emerging from the shackles of imperialism, riding on the brave back of the IT, ITES industry, all ready to take its place as a colossus of the emerging decade? Of course, the glistening glass facade buildings, housing the new knowledge industry, swanky malls, world-class hotels, are also a side of our Janus-headed city. But till the mismatch between the two faces remains as stark, the sobriquet of a world-class city will remain a chimera.