Views on news 07 january 2016

VIEWSONNEWS`50
THE CRITICAL EYE
www.viewsonnewsonline.com
Governance Section
VIEWSONNEWSJANUARY 07, 2016 `50
THE CRITICAL EYE
www.viewsonnewsonline.com
2015 AT A GLANCE
ISSUES THAT MEDIA COVERED IN THE YEAR GONE BY48
COMIC
CON
Ticket to
a wonder
world
28
STUMBLING
BLOCK
Keeping
the net
free
40
12
CHENNAI
FLOODS
Where the
press went
wrong
18
UNDERRATED
GENIUS
A tête-à-tête
with Kiran
Nagarkar
36
TMM Special
12
HerPakvisitcouldbethefirstfeather
inModi’sforeignpolicycap
SushmaScores

PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI’S financial
and governance initiatives in parliament may well
have laid a big fat egg so far, but his peripatetic
diplomacy, I am compelled to proclaim, has begun
to yield dividends. The successive parliamentary
fiascos—the abysmal failure to make progress on
the GST bill and other crucial economic reform
measures dear to the prime minister’s heart—mirror
the atmosphere outside parliament.
There’s constant political street fighting amidst
charges and counter-charges of vendetta politics,
victimization, intolerance, tit-for-tat use or abuse of
investigative agencies and strident invective. The
streets simply pour into parliament and all legislation
comes to a standstill because legislators are in no
mood to cooperate or to make the government in
power look good. This, sadly, has been the leitmotif
of Indian politics over the
last few decades.
While devoting exten-
sive, wall-to-wall coverage
to the political warfare be-
fore, during and after the
Bihar elections in which
Modi and his image as a
serial winner suffered a se-
rious setback, the media
did not appear to pay ade-
quate attention to one solid
win scored by Team Modi
not in India but outside it. In
Pakistan.
A nation’s foreign pol-
icy is usually considered
an outcome of national
consensus. No matter how
crudely opposing politicians may go after each
other’s throats on domestic issues, they usually
stand united in the cause of nationhood in dealing
with neighboring countries and the world. This un-
spoken compact can be broken only at great peril to
any government that steers dangerously away from
it. Changes, therefore, are incremental and great
care is taken by foreign policy bureaucrats and the
security establishment to take the Opposition into
confidence.
I
t was because Modi stuck to this tradition that he
was able to dispatch his foreign secretary to Pak-
istan to negotiate a return to some form of nor-
malcy with that country. The stark difference
between Modi’s inability to steer domestic policy
through parliament while managing to parley a rela-
tively successful path in foreign affairs stems from
a stark reality. The domestic paralysis stems from
the perception that Modi and his party’s real agenda
is to turn the nation away from Nehruvian consen-
sus into an agenda set by reactionary Hindutva ad-
vocates; the successes abroad are proof that when
a leader of a diverse nation like India cultivates good-
will instead of confrontation at home, he will be
rewarded.
It is laudable that Modi sent Sushma Swaraj to
Pakistan by herself along with a professional dele-
gation from the Ministry of External Affairs, instead
of trying to hog the limelight for himself. That in itself
demonstrated that he was more interested in creat-
ing a serious outcome rather than a gala event fea-
turing Rockstar Modi.
And Sushma delivered the goods with great
finesse and professionalism. The ongoing compos-
ite dialogue process between the two nations was
SUSHMA’S FIRST
TRIUMPH
EDITOR’SNOTE
4 VIEWS ON NEWS January 7, 2016

termed “comprehensive dialogue”. It remains es-
sentially the same as before—a menu of issues
including Kashmir, Sir Creek, Siachen, counter-ter-
rorism, trade, visas and confidence-building meas-
ures. An add-on is religious tourism.
It represents continuity and gives due recognition
to what was achieved previously by Congress and
BJP governments through this process—the Delhi-
Lahore bus service, India-Pakistan trade, a new visa
regime, a mechanism on prisoner exchange and the
2003 ceasefire on the Line of Control. Of course,
there’s the odd chance that this could come undone
the moment the next terrorist attack takes place.
N
obody, but for pathological hawks, wants
war and bloodshed and wastage of precious
resources that can be used for fighting
poverty in both countries on an arms race. And no-
body expressed this sentiment better than former
premier Manmohan Singh who wished that one day
“we should have breakfast in Delhi, lunch in Lahore
and dinner in Kabul”.
The supreme challenge before Indian and Pak-
istani leaders is not to give in to rabid elements or
to back off when terrorists try to disrupt solutions
and talks aimed at resolving the biggest security and
foreign policy challenge for both countries. And they
should be strengthened in their resolve because this
new initiative—which will facilitate Modi to attend
the SAARC meet in Pakistan in September 2016—
has been openly welcomed by the UN Secretary-
General, the US, Russia, China, and above all, the
Pakistani media which has echoed Sushma in dub-
bing the outcome as a “breakthrough”.
Even though the Congress has been publicly
churlish about Modi’s new Pakistan initiative, its
leaders have privately welcomed this move because
the party’s stated position has been that a strong
and stable Pakistan under a civilian government is
in India’s long-term interest because it is the best
defense against terrorism as well as a positive factor
in India’s land route trade relations with Afghanistan
and Iran.
Our cover story reveals that Sushma’s visit was
a carefully choreographed and calibrated move.
It is laudable that Modi sent
Sushma Swaraj to Pakistan by
herself along with a professional
delegation from the MEA, rather
than hog the limelight for himself.
MEA
ONTHE
RIGHTTRACK
External Affairs
Minister Sushma
Swaraj with her
Pakistani
counterpart
Sartaz Aziz in
Islamabad during
her recent visit
5VIEWS ON NEWS January 7, 2016

C O N
LEDE
A Fragile ModusVivendi
Editor
Rajshri Rai
Managing Editor
Ramesh Menon
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Executive Editor
Ajith Pillai
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Meha Mathur, Sucheta Dasgupta
Deputy Editor
Prabir Biswas
Art Director
Anthony Lawrence
Deputy Art Editor
Amitava Sen
Graphic Designer
Lalit Khitoliya
Photographer
Anil Shakya
News Coordinator/Photo Researcher
Kh Manglembi Devi
Production
Pawan Kumar
Head Convergence Initiatives
Prasoon Parijat
Convergence Manager
Mohul Ghosh
Technical Executive (Social Media)
Sonu Kumar Sharma
Technical Executive
Anubhav Tyagi
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18
22
Nature’sEye-Opener
12
GROUND ZERO
The government and the media misread the Chennai flood situation and
were slow to respond to the crisis. The deeply ingrained North-South divide
in the Indian psyche may have prejudiced them. BIKRAM VOHRA
SocialMediaSavedtheDay
While mainstream media lingered, bloggers and Twitter users stepped
up to the plate, disseminated vital information and coordinated rescue
efforts. SUNIL SAXENA
New Delhi’s move to resume talks with Islamabad was a carefully choreo-
graphed one. But whether it will achieve justice for the 26/11 victims and
lasting peace is the big question. RAMESH RAMACHANDRAN reports

R E G U L A R S
Cover design: Anthony Lawrence
Edit..................................................04
Grapevine........................................08
Quotes.......................................10
Media-Go-Round...........................11
As the World Turns.........................17
Web-Crawler....................................27
Design Review................................44
Breaking News...............................46
Vonderful-English............................54
BOOK REVIEW
RIP, Ravan
and Eddie
32
42
50
Comics and Culture
SPOTLIGHT
28
The fifth edition of Comic Con Delhi elicited
more footfalls and sales showing the increas-
ing creation and consumption of the graphic
art form nationwide. SUCHETA DASGUPTA
T E N T S
The heroes of Chawl No. 17 traipse
through the City of Dreams one last
time. Here’s a tribute to the never-say-
die attitude of the Mumbaikar.
EDITORS’ PICK
Train to
Nowhere?
The `98,000-crore Mumbai-Ahmed-
abad Bullet Train reduces commute by
two hours but comes at the cost of rail
safety, toilets, schools, highways and
public health. SHOAIB DANIYAL
ADVERTISING
Don’t Block Us!
Digital media is under threat—from
ad blockers. If their use becomes
pervasive, most online businesses
will wind up. Content on internet
will no longer be free. MR DUA
SPECIAL STORY
The Spirit of
the Mahatma
Trustees of Navjivan Publishing
House which prints Gandhian litera-
ture, have given the
building a
makeover, complete
with an art gallery,
cafe and Wi-Fi so
that it becomes a
thinkers' hub.
KAUSHIK JOSHI
INTERVIEW
36
40
Better Late
than Never
Novelist and play-
wright Kiran Na-
garkar recalls his
advertising days,
his forays into
writing, his run-in
with the Censor
Board and how he
won the Sahitya
Akademi award.
KRISH WARRIER
THE MEDIA MONITOR
2015 at a
Glance
48
An issue-based review of what the
electronic media covered in the
year gone by

Grapevine
Sharad Pawar’s birthday
celebrations on December
10 at Vigyan Bhawan were a
show of strength for the NCP.
The president, prime minister,
vice-president and leaders of all
other parties milled around to
wish the septuagenarian. Many
MPs, ministers and MLAs were
left standing due to the
over-crowding of well-wishers.
The award on the occasion for
the best speech definitely goes
to Madam Gandhi who shed
light on some little-known facts
about Pawar and his father-in-
law, who was a test cricketer.
She mentioned that Pawar
must have imbibed his
spinning tactics from him.
The prime minister too found
it appropriate to praise the
leader of the party that he once
unceremoniously referred to as
the “Nationalist Corrupt Party”.
PM Modi praised the leader’s
knowledge in agriculture and
said that like a true farmer, he
could gauge which way the
wind would blow and take
steps accordingly.
Are we looking at a consensus
presidential candidate
for 2017?
PawarPower
ProtestingCMs
Recently AAP’s beleaguered MLA Som-
nath Bharti was at Dwarka Police Sta-
tion with his famous dog, Don, accused of
biting Bharti’s estranged wife Lipika Mitra.
Is minister Maneka Gandhi, who is known
to take up animal rights, aware that the dog
is being dragged to the police station time
and again? It seems that Bharti is sticking
out his thumb saying, “Don ko pakadna
mushkil hi nahin namumkin hai. (Catching
Don isn’t only tough, it’s impossible.)”
Visitors to parliament, which
include MPs, officials and
media persons, are in for a shock.
The price of food in the various
canteens is set for a steep rise. A 25
percent rise has been proposed after
a campaign by select MPs to end
the ridiculous pricing—`6 for a
dosa, ` 4 for a plate of rice, `18 for a
vegetarian thali, `51 for a plate of
chicken biryani and so on. In the
past five years, the canteen has got a
subsidy of `60.7 crore—all drawn
from taxes. The subsidy
actually goes up by `3 crore every
year. Meanwhile, all parliament
regulars will brace up for the price
hike from January 1, 2016.
PriceRiseHits
Parliament
CatchingDon
There has been a deluge of
protests by CMs against gover-
nors. After Delhi Chief Minister
Arvind Kejriwal’s nasty spat with
Lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung,
chief ministers of Arunachal
Pradesh, Assam and West Bengal
have joined the chorus. Arunachal
Chief Minister Nabam Tuki claims
that Governor JP Rakkhowa is
using the Raj Bhawan as a BJP
office. Assam Chief Minister Tarun
Gogoi has a similar complaint
against Governor PB Acharya, who
has an RSS background. Mamata
Banerjee’s government too has
conveyed its dissatisfaction about
Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi
to the center.

The Capital was abuzz with odd
and even numbers gossip. Ac-
cording to one gossipy birdie, the
move by the Delhi government to
give 10,000 permits to
additional autos to deal with the
crisis seems to be less about pollu-
tion and more about politics. After
all, issuing 10,000 auto permits in
two weeks is not easy. Even basic
checks like license, nationality
and criminal record will take a
good deal more time. What’s
more, the move will leave
Delhiites at the mercy of the auto
drivers on foggy, polluted winter
days. Is it mere coincidence that
“auto kings” Rahul and Rajiv
Bajaj are the best of pals with the
Delhi CM? All said and done, cur-
tailing cars and adding autos shall
end up being a zero-sum game!
OddandEvenGossip
Government media offices have
been on an overdrive. A photo-
shopped image of Prime Minister
Narendra Modi posted by the over-
zealous Press Information
Bureau(PIB) on the official website
showing him in a helicopter during
an aerial survey of flood-hit Chennai
was hurriedly removed after ques-
tions were raised in social media
about its authenticity. Apparently,
the PIB had been photoshopping
images earlier too during the
Manmohan Singh and Atal
Behari Vajpayee dispensations, to
boost PR drives.
In a similar vein, in a sarkari ad
of the Telangana government’s
achievements, the media team has
randomly photoshopped various
photos—Vrindavan widows, protest-
ing farmers at Jantar Mantar, vil-
lagers of Coimbatore and so on. Of
course, none beats Censor Board
chief Pankaj Nihalani, whose video
eulogizing Prime Minister Narendra
Modi has caused much embarrass-
ment to the government.
Even as the magni-
tude of the Chennai
floods was unfolding,
senior BJP leader Sub-
ramanian Swamy took
the opportunity to take
a jibe at his bete noire,
former finance minister
P Chidambaram.
Swamy approached his
followers via Twitter
and made an objec-
tionable post saying:
“Chennai rain water
flooding is actually due
to PC’s Uzbekis tears
at the loss of their
business. Blame ED
and IT for it.” He was
referring to the legal
cases he has filed
against Chidambaram.
PhotoshopWoes
Illustrations: UdayShankar
—Compiled by Roshni Seth
RecordTransfers
Babus of central and
state governments are
used to being shunted
around on the whims and
fancies of their political
bosses. But this time, a
record has been created.
Beating Ashok Khemka of
the “Haryana land deals”
fame, 2000-batch IAS
officer Amit Gupta has
entered the Limca Book of
Records for having served
as a district magistrate in
14 districts of Uttar
Pradesh, (excluding repe-
titions), the most by an
Indian civil servant.
Between March 8, 2005,
and February 10, 2014,
Gupta had served in
Hamirpur, Lalitpur,
Jalaun, Kannauj,
Pratapgarh, Etawah,
Maharajganj, Firozabad,
Shravasti, Lakhimpur-
Kheri, Badaun, Bijnor,
Pilibhit and Rae Bareli.
Some of the terms lasted
barely a few days.
Politicsinthe
TimeofDeluge

U O T E S
Arvind Kejriwal,
chief minister of
Delhi
A CBI officer told me yest that
CBI has been asked to target
all opp parties n finish those
who don't fall in line.
Amish Tripathi,
author
#AryanInvasionTheory is d
greatest piece of fiction
cooked up by Europeans since
Shakespearean plays.
Shekhar Gupta,
senior journalist
UPA handed over policy-mak-
ing to publicity-crazed NGOs
with no accountability & paid
for it. AAP is doing so now
with the #OddEvenPolicy.
Chitra
Subramaniam,
senior journalist
Which Indian politician isn’t
afraid of Sonia Gandhi?Tele-
vision debates and legal fi-
nesse don’t count.
Minhaz Merchant,
journalist and
author
If Sonia can make India’s
highest paid lawyers like
@DrAMSinghvi & @KapilSibal
run around court like errand
boys, imagine her money
power.
Suhel Seth,
author, columnist
Utter rubbish. But nothing
about AAP surprises me any
more (on what the AAP is
saying about Arun Jaitley in
the raid case).
I do not think there is intolerance…
the question that was asked, for
which people pounced on me, was
‘what would you say to the future
generation?’ because I now fall
under the seniority zone... Every-
thing is very nice in our country.
God bless India, long live us, long
live us Indians.
—Shah Rukh Khan, a day before the release
of his recent film, Dilwale, to ABP News
If you feel insecure working
with people who are better
than you, it pushes you to do
better. If you’re comfortable,
you don’t push yourself.
—Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, at Shri
Ram College of Commerce, Delhi
I really like how this will upset Delhi’s
neatly arranged pecking order. Imagine,
on any given Wednesday, an even-num-
bered Nano is more desirable than an
odd-numbered BMW! I like that two
rich kids will have to share the backseat
of a BMW instead of racing one another
to school in two.
— Anuja Chauhan, author, on the forthcoming
odd-even car scheme in Delhi, in The Week
The Congress is a private limited com-
pany in which the shares are held by
one family. In the Congress, no matter
how talented the individual, he or she
must be resigned to the fact that the top
two jobs will never be open to anybody
other than the family members.
—Aakar Patel, in Outlook

EDIA-GO-ROUND
The year 2015 was all-and-all about
comedy. This is evident as 5 out of the top
10 most-viewed videos on YouTube were
comedy, reports Bestmediainfo.com.
Grabbing the first spot is the amusing
comic music video by AIB called Every Bolly-
wood Party Song Feat. Irrfan.
Amongst the other top trending comedy
videos are AIB’s Honest Indian Weddings (Part
1), PK movie spoof, TVF’s Barely Speaking
with Arnub - Arvind Kejriwal and Baahubali 2-
The Ending Spoof by Srikanth Reddy. The
other videos in the list are Chhota Bheem Aur
Krishna Jodi No. #1, Crime Patrol – Sting Op-
eration 3, Sujoy Ghosh’s epic thriller Ahalya,
Kapil Sharma Rocks in Star Guild Award with
his Anchoring, and Splitsvilla.
Taking the lead in the list of top 10 music
videos on YouTube is Dheere Se Meri Zindagi,
followed by Chittiyaan Kalaiyaan.
BJP PR drive
turns costly
–Compiled by Shailaja Paramathma
The BJP government in Haryana
spent a whopping ` 17 crore
within a fortnight on advertise-
ments highlighting its achieve-
ments on completion of a year in
office. The information was pro-
cured by Panipat-based RTI ac-
tivist PP Kapoor, reports The Indian
Express. The Haryana government
defended the spending, saying the
intention behind the advertise-
ments was to inform people about
schemes that are for their benefit.
Kapoor’s query on the number of
new jobs created during the year
yielded no result. He was quoted
by the newspaper as saying: “The
government did not provide any
details of the employment provided
in the last one year. It shows that
the government did not make any
recruitment.”
In an international media conference
organized in Moscow to commemo-
rate the 10th anniversary of news
channel Russia Today’s launch, Times
Now editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami
surprised his audience by openly
challenging what he perceived as the
hegemony of western media.
While 90 percent of Indians follow
cross-border news, in the US and the
UK, this figure is 44-46 percent.
But the US and the UK together
contribute to 74 percent of the source
of global news even while all of
Asia contributes only 3 percent.
“Indians are the least insular people,
(and) the most open-minded.
Americans are the most insular,”
Goswami concluded. “India will be the
next media capital in the world,” he
went on to assert, adding that “it will
be from countries like India which
speak English, which have
democracies, that the challenge to
the global news hegemony is about
to come.”
Arnab snubs
western
media
Journalist KG Suresh
may become
DG,IIMC
Journalist KG Suresh, an authority on
right wing politics, could replace Sunit
Tandon as the next director-general of the
prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Com-
munication. Suresh’s name has been pro-
posed by the Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting to the Department of Per-
sonnel as the next DG, The Indian Express
said, quoting sources.
KG Suresh is serving as an editor for
the website and in-house publications of
the Delhi-based think-tank Vivekananda
International Foundation.
What did India
watch in 2015?

Pakistan jointly issued a statement saying that they
had “agreed to a Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue
and directed the foreign secretaries to work out the
modalities and schedule of the meetings”. Peace
talks were first suspended in the aftermath of the
26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai and a second time
in 2013 after the beheading of an Indian soldier fol-
lowing tensions along the border. The December 9
decision was agreed upon at a meeting between
Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj
andPakistan PrimeMinisterNawazSharif’s foreign
AS the recent decision
to resume a compre-
hensive bilateral dia-
logue between India
and Pakistan a sudden
and dramatic step as
the government would have us believe? While any
resumption of talks must be welcomed, it must be
seen as a well-thought-out move and not as a spon-
taneous flow of diplomatic emotions.
Here are the facts. On December 9, India and
WSTATEMENT OF INTENT?
(Above) External Affairs
Minister Sushma Swaraj
addresses the media along
with Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan
prime minister’s foreign
affairs adviser, in
Islamabad
The recent decision to
resume a comprehensive
bilateral dialogue
with our “belligerent”
neighbor was not as
spontaneous as it
was made out to be. It
was a carefully
choreographed and
calibrated move
BY RAMESH RAMACHANDRAN
Modi’s
Pakistan
Gamble
Lede
Indo-Pak talks
Diplomacy

channel negotiations had taken place (with a little
help from the US and some European powers) be-
fore calibrated steps towards resuming the stalled
peace talks were taken. That the series of meetings
followed a script is all the more remarkable because
the public discourse in both countries had begun
degenerating into mutual recriminations within
months of Modi’s invitation to Sharif for the for-
mer’s swearing in as PM on May 22, 2014.
An appreciation of the outcome of the Ufa talks
in July this year is the key to understanding the evo-
lution of Modi’s Pakistan policy in general and the
December 6 meeting between the NSAs and the
December 9 decision to resume bilateral peace
talks, in particular. The joint statement issued at Ufa
committed India and Pakistan to a meeting in New
Delhi between the two NSAs to discuss all issues
connected to terrorism, among others. Equally sig-
nificant was Sharif’s reiteration of his invitation to
Modi to visit Pakistan for the SAARC summit in
2016. It was subsequently decided that the NSAs —
Aziz and Doval—would meet in New Delhi on Au-
gust 23. However, India’s insistence that the talks
would be confined to terrorism and that Aziz
affairs adviser Sartaj Aziz in Islamabad.
The joint statement read that both Swaraj and
Aziz “condemned terrorism and resolved to coop-
erate to eliminate it. They noted the successful talks
on terrorism and security related issues in Bangkok
by the two national security advisers (NSA) and de-
cided that the NSAs will continue to address all is-
sues connected to terrorism. The Indian side was
assured of the steps being taken to expedite the
early conclusion of the Mumbai trial.”
“Both sides,” it continued, “accordingly, agreed
to a Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue and di-
rected the foreign secretaries to work out the
modalities and schedule of the meetings under the
Dialogue including peace and security, CBMs
(Confidence Building Measures), Jammu and
Kashmir, Siachen, Sir Creek, Wullar Barrage/Tul-
bul Navigation Project, economic and commercial
cooperation, counter-terrorism, narcotics control,
humanitarian issues, people to people exchanges
and religious tourism.”
H
ow the announcement came about was
supposedly dramatic. If the official In-
dian narrative is to be believed, all it took
was a two-odd-minute meeting between Prime
Ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif in
Paris on November 30 to break the ice. And in less
than a week, both countries sprung a surprise on
their unsuspecting peoples by letting it be known
that NSA AK Doval and his Pakistan counterpart
Lt Gen Nasser Khan Janjua (Retd) had met in
Bangkok. A joint press release issued on December
6 said that the two NSAs, accompanied by their for-
eign secretaries, had concluded discussions which
“covered peace and security, terrorism, Jammu and
Kashmir, and other issues, including tranquility
along the LoC (Line of Control).”
That neither government acknowledged that
the move was choreographed in detail and the
meetings were carefully planned after high-level de-
liberations was diplomatic secrecy at work. They
were indeed not chance encounters. A lot of back-
BOLD INITIATIVE
It is believed that the
Modi-Sharif meeting
during the Paris climate
summit triggered
Indo-Pak talks at
various levels

was not welcome to meet the Kashmiri separatists
led to the cancellation of the talks.
Here the subtext becomes important. One rea-
son why the Aziz-Doval talks failed to materialize
was the protocol mismatch between Aziz, who en-
joys a cabinet minister’s rank, and Doval, who
started out as a secretary-rank official but has since
been elevated to the rank of a minister of state like
his immediate predecessors. While Aziz had the
mandate to discuss political issues such as Jammu
and Kashmir, Modi felt that Doval, by virtue of hav-
ing been a career intelligence officer with an envi-
able reputation, was ideally suited to discuss
counter-terrorism. Two months later, on October
22, Pakistan announced the appointment of Lt Gen
Naseer Khan Janjua (Retd) as the national security
adviser “with the status of minister of state” (on a
par with Doval) who will be “based at the prime
minister’s secretariat” (like Doval who functions
from the PMO).
With this asymmetry out of the way, India and
Pakistan came good on their Ufa commitment of
holding a meeting between the two NSAs to discuss
TheExpressTribune
“TheIndiandecisiontoresumethecompositedialogueisacleardeparturefromitsearlier
stancethatitwillnotenterintomeaningfultalkswithPakistanonKashmirandother
issuesunlessitsconcernsonterrorismareaddressed.”
Dawn
“IndiaispartoftheHeartofAsiaprocess,butMsSwaraj’svisitwasmadepossiblebecauseofan
ice-breakingmeetingbetweenPrimeMinisterSharifandhisIndiancounterpartNarendraModi
inParisonthesidelinesoftheClimateChangesummit.Thebriefmeetingwasfacilitatedby
theUK.”
PakistanToday
“AdoptingacautiousapproachovertheagendaoftalksbetweenSwarajandAziz,Indian
officialssaidtheywillseehowthemeetinggoesandiftherewillbeanypointofconvergence.”
PakistanObserver
“IndianExternalAffairsMinisterSushmaSwarajlandedinIslamabadonTuesdayeveningwith
amessageofgoodwillandhopetoimprovePak-Indiarelations.Though,apparentlyhervisit
istoattendHeartofAsiaConference,butdiplomaticsourceshavetermeditamajor
breakthroughintension-riddenties.”
TheNation
“Thevisitingministersaidthetwocountriesweretalkingtoeachotheronthewaystoimprove
theirtiesandmoveforward.WhenaskedwhatmessageshehadbroughtfromIndia,Swaraj
saidhercountrywantedgoodrelationswithPakistan.”
TheNews
“ImranKhansaidthatModiwasafraidofhis“ownrightwingers”andSharifwasworriedabout
Pakistan’sarmy,whichholdsswayovermattersofinternalsecurityandforeignaffairs.Hecalled
fortheendof“thisstupidityofharkingbackandrilingupangerandhatredtowardeachother.”
DailyTimes
“IndiaislookingforasubstantiveengagementwithPakistanduringSwaraj’svisitto
Islamabad.TheIndiangovernmenthadofficiallyconfirmedonMondaythatshewouldvisit
PakistantoattendtheHeartofAsiaconference.”
Pakistani media on Sushma’s visit
THE
DECISION
MAKER?
Pakistan
Army Chief
General
Raheel
Sharif
Lede
Indo-Pak talks
Diplomacy
— Complied by Sherien Kaul, Priyvrat Singh Chouhan

all issues connected to terrorism when Doval and
Janjua met in Bangkok. Their meeting marked a
departure from the previous practice of mandating
the home secretary of India and the interior secre-
tary of Pakistan to discuss terrorism. Now, not only
have the talks about “all issues connected to terror-
ism” been elevated to the level of the NSA (minister
of state) but New Delhi could open a line of com-
munication with the military establishment and by
extension its chief of army staff, currently held by
the Pakistan prime minister’s namesake General
Raheel Sharif.
A
new architecture of the India-Pakistan
talks, rechristened as Comprehensive Bi-
lateral Dialogue, as opposed to the ear-
lier labels of Resumed Dialogue (2011 to 2013) or
Composite Dialogue (1997 to 2008), was slowly
emerging. India and Pakistan could be expected
to hold parallel or simultaneous talks, one be-
tween the NSAs (the Pakistani military establish-
ment will be on its board) about terrorism and the
other between their respective foreign ministers
or diplomats.
While the semantically different Comprehen-
sive Bilateral Dialogue will retain the flavour of its
previousavatars(What’sinaname,youmight won-
der? A lot, if India and Pakistan are in question),
what Modi and Sharif have done is to unbundle the
eight subjects under the erstwhile Composite Dia-
logue and bring some more issues under the ambit
of the bilateral talks. So in addition to the twin pil-
lars of peace and security including CBMs and
Jammu and Kashmir, terrorism and drug traffick-
ing, commercial and economic cooperation and
promotion of friendly exchanges will now be dis-
cussed. Humanitarian issues, people-to-people ex-
changes programmes and religious tourism have
also been included in the ambit.
While it indicates that the two countries have
reached a modus vivendi, it is not clear whether
under the new terms of engagement Pakistani in-
terlocutors would be welcome to hold talks with the
Hurriyat as before. (Pakistan High Commissioner
to New Delhi Abdul Basit says, “there is no change
in our policy towards them.”) It is also not clear
whether the leaders of India and Pakistan will meet
in each other’s countries or will go back to the old
pattern of meeting in neutral venues.
For its part, India maintains that implicit in the
December 9 joint statement is that the talks are
being resumed on the basis of Pakistan’s assurance
that steps are being taken to expedite the early con-
clusion of the Mumbai trial. At the same time, it
It is not
clear whether
under the new
terms of
engagement
Pakistani
interlocutors
would be
welcome to
hold talks
with the
Hurriyat as
before.
LEADERSHIP SKILLS
Modi's Pakistan visit in 2016
will give him a chance to pick
up the threads in Indo-Pak
ties from where former PMs
Manmohan Singh and
Vajpayee had left them

echoes that of some others in the Indian strategic
community who insist that India ought to develop
an effective asymmetric defence doctrine and im-
pose costs on Pakistan for sponsoring terrorism di-
rected at India.
Modi would become the first Indian prime
minister after Vajpayee in 2004 to visit Pakistan for
the 2016 SAARC summit. Although Sushma
Swaraj told parliament that the peace talks have
been resumed with the modest objectives of explor-
ing cooperative ties and promoting better under-
standing and mutual trust, it could offer Modi an
opportunity to pick up the threads from where
Manmohan and Vajpayee had left them. As former
Pakistan foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Ka-
suri told this writer last year during a visit to New
Delhi, India and Pakistan had come very close to
an agreed framework on the Kashmir issue during
the tenures of Manmohan Singh and Gen Pervez
Musharraf . It remains to be seen whether Modi is
able and willing to get the backing of the BJP and
the RSS to forge the broadest possible consensus on
reconciliation with Pakistan. For Sharif, the chal-
lenge would be not to squander the handsome
mandate that swept Modi to power. But the ques-
tion is: Will Pakistan play ball?
cannot be said with any degree of certainty that the
latest round of talks would survive another 26/11.
India is proceeding on the assumption that with
Rawalpindi becoming a stakeholder in the NSA-
level talks, the Pakistani army and its affiliates
would tread that much more cautiously.
While Mani Shankar Aiyar of the Congress
party reiterates his oft-quoted position of “uninter-
rupted and uninterruptible dialogue”, some such as
Rajesh Rajagopalan take a nuanced position. The
professor of international politics at Jawaharlal
Nehru University believes that although the re-
sumption of talks are only to be welcomed but one
would do well not to expect much by way of out-
comes, particularly a halt to the terrorism emanat-
ing from Pakistan. Rajagopalan maintains that
India should seek to develop its military options to
counter terrorism. Rajagopalan’s formulation
The meetings were not chance
encounters, but carefully planned after
high-level deliberations. A lot of
back-channel negotiations took place
before the peace talks were resumed.
THE KASHMIRTANGLE
Military operations in J&K
continue to be one of the
main agendas in bilateral
talks. But, other issues need
to be discussed now
Lede
Indo-Pak talks
Diplomacy

S THE WORLD TURNS
—Compiled by Anuj Raina
Anewspaper cartoon in Australia
showing starving Indians attempt-
ing to eat solar panels with mango
chutney has been criticized as racist
and drawing on “a stereotype from the
1950s”, reported The Sydney Morning
Herald.
The cartoon by Bill Leak, one of
the nation’s best-known cartoonists,
appeared in The Australian, a daily
broadsheet published by Rupert Mur-
doch’s News Corp, which has taken a
skeptical approach to action on
climate change.
The cartoon prompted a tirade of
criticism on social media as well as in
the Indian press. A comment piece by
Adita Iyer in The Hindustan Times at-
tacked the cartoon for “focusing on a
stereotype of Indian poverty straight
out of the 1950s”.
“It’s plausible that the emaciated,
rag-clad villagers from his cartoon
would be able to teach Leak a thing or
two about solar energy,” Iyer wrote.
Alibabato buy South
China Morning Post
MTV helicoptercrash kills two
Ahelicopter which was being used for
filming an MTV reality show crashed
into a reservoir in Argentina, killing the pilot
and a technician, reported NBC Chicago.
The aircraft came down at the
Potrerillos de Mendoza dam in western
Argentina. MTV said the helicopter was fly-
ing to a shooting location for the
show The Challenge. Neither of those killed
was part of the cast or the film’s crew,
the US channel said. The wreckage lay at a
depth of 60 metres. This is the second
helicopter accident this year in Argentina
involving a reality show.
Chinese internet
giant Alibaba will
pay HK$2.06bn for the
takeover of Hong Kong
newspaper South
China Morning Post.
The newspaper
group revealed the sale
price in a statement
filed to the Hong Kong
Stock Exchange.
Besides the English
language newspaper,
Alibaba will also own
sister publications,
websites and maga-
zines of the
paper.
Questions
have been
raised regard-
ing the editorial
independence
under the new
dispensation. Asked
about critics who
say Alibaba would feel
the pressure from
Chinese leaders to
change the newspa-
per’s coverage,
Alibaba Group Holding
Limited executive
chairman Jack Ma
said: “I think those
people think too little of
us.”Alibaba has said it
could leverage on its
technology expertise to
develop the paper.
Cartoon
on India
labeled“racist”
Egypt’s bestselling author Alaa al-Aswany has said
that the authorities put pressure on a cultural
center to cancel an event where he was scheduled to
talk about how the Egyptian government manipulates
the public with theories that the world is conspiring
against Egypt.
The Guardian reported that Al-Aswany said the
cancellation of his event in Alexandria follows other
measures in the past year, which have prevented him
from appearing on TV channels or getting published
in Egyptian newspapers.
Al-Aswany has been quoted by the media as say-
ing that “freedom of expression is at its lowest point,
worse than in the days of Hosni Mubarak.”
Egypt clamps
down on author’s event

Lost in
Translation?
HE fact is cruel. India did not
rally around Chennai and
understand or register how
bad the situation was. Not
until it was far too late. For
some reason, “torrential rain”
does not have the same resonance as a hurricane
with a female name or a typhoon or a tsunami.
So, it was unfairly underplayed in the mind
and certainly the media suffered from the same
myopia and did diddly to emphasize the terrifying
onslaught by the weather. As a nation we made a
“hmmmmm, how sad” sort of acknowledgment
and carried on with our lives.
I’d like to think the flaw in the first few days
was not one of indifference. And then, a well-
known Indian-born Australian, now an expert on
media, writes to me and articulates what I had
squeezed away into the attic of my mind and
locked the door.
Having read my indictment of the Indian
media thoughtlessly allowing itself to carry stories
T
FLOOD OF DISTRESS
Residents wade through a
flooded street in Chennai
The media as well as the government were slow in responding to
the cataclysmic floods in the city.Was it dismissed initially because
of a gross misreading of the situation or did it reflect inherent
north-south apathy and prejudices?
BY BIKRAM VOHRA
Ground Zero Chennai Floods
Media coverage

be one of the most beautiful places on earth
but is juxtaposed with some of the largest
social boundaries.
“Let me explain, one of the things I hear Indi-
ans ask other Indians is ‘where are you from?’ To
the untrained ear, this might sound like a seem-
ingly innocent question. But it is laden with an
agenda to reduce your existence to a stereotype,
the shallowest depth of field and to create another
point of difference between one Indian and an-
other. From state to province to village to tehsil to
district to which side of the street.
“In Australia, no one really gives a bee’s behind
where someone from Australia really comes from
because if you’re Aussie, you’re Aussie—true blue.”
Sadly in India it is different; it is sad that these
walls exist and are so deeply ingrained in our psy-
che. Is it that someone from Delhi or Mumbai is
superior than someone from Chennai or
through audio-visual and in writing that India and
Goa were off the “safe destination” list in Russia
(irrelevant that Moscow rescinded the official
statement), Ivor Vaz is not surprised that no one
thought to say, “Hey, wait a minute, Goa is part of
India”. In fact, it has been since 1960.
The same analogy goes for seeding the
Chennai cloud.
It is the way we think that catches us out so pa-
thetically. Hear Vaz on it: “I think that the problem
stems from something far more sinister. I’m cur-
rently on a tour of south-central India. Visiting
places that were at one point or another colonized
or occupied by Chinese, Dutch, French, Por-
tuguese and eventually by the British. This has to
TOO LITTLE,
TOO LATE
Flood-affected
people scamper
for free food
being distributed
by the
Indian Navy
The Chennai deluge was underplayed in the
mind and the media suffered from the same
myopia. As a nation, we made a “hmmmm,
how sad” sort of acknowledgment and
carried on with our lives.

Kochi? You even hear them gasp and look at you
like you're backward if you assume that they are
from somewhere else. The truth is that, yes, you
are from Goa, or you are from Bengaluru—but
you are Indian. This sense of national identity is
yet to be established with a significant sense
of togetherness.
How often we have been told, “Oh you don’t
look like a typical Bengali or Malayalee or what-
ever”, the word “typical” soaked in derision.
This sense of national identity is what existed
during the 19-20th colonial centuries under the
“divide and rule” regimes but unfortunately this
split has been further eroded by our tendency to
BLINKEREDVIEW
Indian media was quick to
carry stories that the tourist
haven Goa was off the “safe
destination” list in Russia
exclude and discriminate or, by that token, to con-
gregate, club and become a cadre. This love for di-
vision is ruining any further potential that India
as a country might have to truly grow and subse-
quently prosper.
So, we come to the big question. If it had
rained in Mumbai or in Punjab, would the nation
have been more involved? Did the great North-
South socio-cultural divide really manifest itself
even during the worst floods in memory in Chen-
nai? Did we need Nature to come and indict us for
our parochial prejudices?
WHAT CAME INTO PLAY?
Could it be the historical northern state arrogance
towards the southern states?
It is the attitude that everything and everyone
below the Hindi belt belongs to Madras or are
Madrasi. The parodies of cinematic characteriza-
tion and the “aye aye yo” mockery reflects the
great Aryan-Dravidian debate.
Does the fact that northerners are relatively
fairer in skin and, therefore, by some foolish
chemistry, contributing to this thinking? Or is it a
response to the reactive South Indian “cliquish-
ness” and their intellectual snobbery that makes
them see the northern brethren as crude and
unrefined?
Slivers of all these elements makes Chennai a
bridge too far to really bother. It is worth more
than a think because if we fail each other, what
price is the future? It is time to take the prejudices
of the past and throw them out with the
flood waters.
The first reaction to all this would be one of
furrowed annoyance. Don’t be so silly, it is not like
it was cataclysmic from Day One, like an earth-
quake. It was just rain. The drainage system failed
the city—no one thought it was going to be
a crisis.
Partly true. Rain didn’t make for much of a
story on the TRP Richter scale. Not in the first 72
hours. Oops, it’s raining in Chennai, oh okay, fine.
How often we have been told: “Oh
you don’t look like a typical Bengali
or Malayalee or whatever”,
the word “typical” soaked
in derision.
Media coverage

Even the print media put it on the inside pages.
It was much later when the death toll crossed
300 and the rains did not let up that there was a
national realization, albeit a little slow off the
mark, that the city was reeling. The morphed
Modi shot of deep introspection from a helicopter
port window did little to underscore the
seriousness. How desperate can it really be if
pictures have to be photo-shopped to underscore
the devastation?
Even the NRI community, so swift to wave
flags and fling clods of patriotic fervor, seemed
mired in inertia. Did the Tamil Nadu government
fail so miserably to send out the right messages
or did the northern and central belts not under-
stand the language of the message and lost it
in translation?
On two fronts, the analysis demands to be
studied. In anthropological terms the North-
South equation has to be placed under scrutiny. It
is awry and needs to be corrected. If we allow the
chasm to widen further, there may be no bridge
long enough to span it.
In the second instance, it is necessary to make
amends for the slackness in the rebuilding of
Chennai. Shashi Tharoor writes: “The city, home
to five million people, has virtually shut down,
with roads flooded and nearly 5,000 homes under
water. More than 450 people have died. Air and
rail services have been suspended, power and
phone lines have been disrupted.”
I am not privy to his facts but I believe they are
far more horrific. A 10-minute documentary
shows all of the high-end Defence Colony in
Chennai submerged to the level of the first floor.
There was debris of garbage, floating animal
carcasses and stagnant pools which will breed dis-
ease. The need for water and food and medical
supplies and aid became paramount. As it was to
stave cholera, dysentery and malaria, the unholy
horsemen of the crisis.
There is no count yet of how many are home-
less but it will be several hundred thousand. The
aftermath is often more damaging than the actual
flooding. Now is the time to get there and lend a
hand, to provide technical and skilled support, to
look after the children who have lost their homes,
to be Indian for Indians.
POSTSCRIPT
I studied in Chennai and worked there and, un-
fortunately, have no skill sets to offer except to
send out these signals that you are needed pro
bono as doctors, nurses, engineers, electricians,
plumbers... and if you need our time or help to
sponsor a family in dire straits, let us know... thou-
sands of us would stand up and be counted, we
just wallow in ignorance and good intentions and
time passes and we end up doing nothing.
“The city, home to five million people, has
virtually shut down, with roads flooded and
nearly 5,000 homes under water. Over 450
people have died. Air and rail services have
been suspended.”
—Former minister Shashi Tharoor

Bridge where the Adyar river had overflowed, in-
forming viewers that the city was under water. Yes,
there were shots of a few flooded localities such as
Kotturpuram, of residents trying to reach safety, of
submerged cars and rescue boats ferrying people.
An image that was shown repeatedly was of a fam-
ily using drums to ferry their son to safety.
LITTLE INFORMATION
For two days, those outside Chennai did not know
how much of the city was under water. Nor how
OR three days—from
December 1 to 3—Chen-
nai was marooned, and
there were heroic efforts
by residents, NGOs and
absolute strangers to res-
cue people in trouble. But did you see any of this
on national TV?
More importantly, did you get a sense of the
flooding or the scale of the disaster? You only saw
reporters standing near the airport and Saidapet
After Chennai Floods…
the Media Deluge
Social Media Coverage
While national
media was deficient
in its coverage of
flood-ravaged
Chennai, its place
was taken over by
social media which
became a tool for
information and
rescue efforts
BY SUNIL SAXENA
F

deep the flooding was. We were repeatedly told that
the streets were flooded, that lakes were overflow-
ing, that water had entered homes. But the images
did not give a sense of how bad the situation was.
Was the entire city flooded or was the flooding lim-
ited to areas located on the banks of the Adyar river?
Reporters and camera crew seemed to be shooting
from select locations and not across the city. There
was little effort to venture into localities that faced
the main brunt of the flooding.
It was only on the afternoon of December 3 that
we got a real sense of the calamity. TV crews boar-
ded IAF choppers that were pressed into service to
drop food packets. The aerial shots shook viewers.
Street after street was under water. One could only
wonder how people were coping. Most single-sto-
ried homes were submerged. There were no roads,
only sheets of water.
Later in the evening, one saw TV crews piggy-
backing on army boats. On one boat, the TV re-
porter raised his hand to touch overhead electricity
wires to show how deep the water was. Why were
the reporters avoiding the heavily flooded areas ear-
lier? How well are TV teams anyway equipped to
cover such calamities?
Some of the questions that come to mind are:
Why were there no maps to show which parts of
Chennai were flooded? And why couldn’t the TV
crews interact with the administration and prepare
a map that showed how deep the water was in dif-
ferent localities?
Why didn’t cameramen climb buildings and take
aerial views of the flooding? Or venture deep into
areas that were heavily flooded?
Viewers were informed that water had entered a
government hospital and that patients had to be
Chennai would have suffered many more
deaths had it not been for social media. It
gave the marooned a voice, a platform
where they could tweet their appeals for
help. The tweets did not go in vain.

In those crucial three days—December 1 to 3—
the nature of the tweets changed as flood waters
rose, giving a scary picture of the sheer terror
Chennaites underwent:
Twitter as a warning board: As the clouds
opened up and streets got submerged on De-
cember 1, alarmed residents tweeted pictures
and videos. These tweets acted as warnings to
fellow citizens to avoid places where the water
had started collecting. December 2 saw more
such photographs being tweeted—submerged
cars, fallen trees, Saidapet bridge under water,
flooded railway tracks…. These images pro-
vided the first clues of how parts of Chennai
went under water.
First offers of help: Images of stranded cars
brought immediate offers of help. Volunteers
tweeted phone numbers, offering help to repair
cars or tow them to safety. As the flooding had
not sunk in fully, the offers were limited to res-
cuing people who had got stuck on roads.
evacuated. But barring one picture of a woman in a
wheelchair, there were no shots to show the state of
the hospital or places where the patients had been
taken.
There was considerable coverage of the airport.
But what about the railway station? Thousands
must have been stranded there.
There were no shots of homes or schools or shel-
ters where the rescued had been taken.
What about officials or NGOs who were working
to reduce the misery of the people? Why were they
ignored?
Why were there so few interviews of people who
had been rescued? Or of the rescuers?
There were so many gaps in the coverage. To
make matters worse, the TV channels, instead of
pushing their reporters and cameramen to report
better, were busy asking their internet desks to
report how social media was covering the tragedy.
And that is where social media scored over national
media channels.
TWITTER’S APPEAL
In fact, Chennai would have suffered many
more deaths had it not been for social media
which connected people in their hour of need.
It gave the marooned a voice, a platform where
they could tweet their appeals for help. The
tweets did not go in vain. Each message on
Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp was read,
retweeted and shared, and people responded.
The most powerful SOS helpline was Twitter
with its 140-character one-liners. Some of the
hashtags that relayed the woes and needs of
Chennai were: #chennairains, #chennaifloods,
#chennarainshelp and #chennaifloodsairport.
The tweets for help had an instant
response. Some Chennaites in fact
offered to accommodate many people.
Marriage halls, community centers and
schools also opened their doors.

First tweets for information: By the after-
noon of December 2, the situation had changed.
There was now worry and concern. People in
Chennai as well as outside wanted to know if
their near and dear ones were safe or not. There
were tweets requesting information on hashtags
built around Chennai rains and floods.
First appeals for food, water, material, emer-
gency supplies: With every passing hour,
people’s woes mounted. There was no electricity
and water had started entering homes by the
afternoon of December 2. People were forced
to move to higher floors or to safer places.
They were also running out of food, water
and emergency supplies. The nature of tweets
changed; they now asked for food and water and
this continued for the next few days.
Call for volunteers: The scale of the tragedy
required more hands. Volunteers were getting
stretched. They also needed transport and emer-
gency supplies. Tweets were now put out seeking
more volunteers and information regarding food
and water. Surprisingly, there were no tweets from
the administration asking people to come out
and help. The government seemed to be avoiding
social media.
Chennaites tweet to open doors for needy:
The tweets for help produced an immediate re-
sponse. Some offered one room, some two,
some willing to accommodate many people.
There were tweets about marriage halls, com-
munity centers and schools that could accom-
modate flood victims. There were also offers
to provide food. Nothing could have been more
heart-warming than seeing a whole city rise
to help.
Acts of heroism: There was one video that stood
out. It was tweeted to show how people joined
hands on a flooded street to save a man from being
washed away. There was another first-day tweet
Facebook
activated its
Safety Check
feature on
December 3,
making it
possible for
its users in
Chennai to
reach out to
friends,
relatives and
loved ones
with one click.

friends, relatives and loved ones with one click. All
that they needed to do was to click the “Safe” button
that appeared on their Facebook page. Facebook in-
stantly notified the individual’s network that their
friend or relative was safe.
Google too used its search expertise to deploy
the Crisis Response page, and its robots roamed the
net to pick up all rescue-related information and
put them up on a single page. The page also con-
nected the latest tweets by Chennaites.
The net-savvy people of Chennai also showed
how crowd sourcing could be a great way to pool
information. Chennairains.org was started as a
Google spreadsheet where people were asked to put
in helpline numbers, offers of accommodation,
food, etc. Forms were provided so that people could
provide full and complete information. The spread-
sheet was soon upgraded to a full website.
Compare this to the way social media was used
during the Srinagar floods last year. One key differ-
ence was the lack of organized effort in Srinagar.
While there were tweets and Facebook pages, these
were individual posts where pictures of flooded
streets, submerged homes and army boats rescuing
people were shown. The people of Srinagar did not
turn to the web to provide help in an organized way.
There were only a few tweets of people inquiring
about the well-being of their loved ones. In fact,
Twitter did not turn into a helpline as in Chennai.
Even coverage by TV channels during the Sri-
nagar floods had a patriotic spin. National anchors
baited Kashmiris saying that they must at least now
realize how soldiers were putting their lives at risk
to rescue the flood-hit. The question that was re-
peatedly raised was: Will this be a turning point in
the way the Kashmiris view the Indian army?
It seems like the location of a calamity and the
net savviness of people residing there have a lot to
do with the way rescue efforts are conducted. And
social media will become a vital platform for relief
in future.
Thewriterisdean,SchoolofCommunication,
GDGoenkaUniversity,Gurgaon
of a policeman directing traffic at a flooded under-
pass, though he himself seemed to be in danger of
going under water.
Companies offer help: Private companies too
took to Twitter to broadcast messages of free serv-
ices and support. Airtel offered free talk-time credit
up to `30 to all prepaid customers in Chennai, while
Paytm launched a Stay Safe initiative. Vodafone of-
fered to reach out to all its customers. Food delivery
app Zomato came out with a customized offer,
“Meal for Flood Relief”, where, if a customer buys a
meal for the people of Chennai, the company will
add another to it.
Too many retweets: There was a flip side too.
There were several good-hearted citizens who
retweeted each tweet for help. These retweets
foxed volunteers and often led them to areas
where help had already been provided. This led
to a call to remove all those tweets that had al-
ready been catered to. Not an easy task. To avoid
confusion, Twitter India put out a message as to
how the Twitterati should be using Twitter.
SAFE BUTTON
Facebook, on its part, activated its Safety Check fea-
ture on December 3. With this, it became possible
for Facebook users in Chennai to reach out to
Why were
reporters
avoiding the
heavily
flooded areas
earlier? How
well are TV
teams anyway
equipped to
cover such
calamities?
HOWTHEVALLEY
RESPONDED
When large parts of
Jammu and Kashmir
were flooded in 2014,
social media was used
sporadically for
organizing help

In a bid to create awareness about sexual
harassment among men and boys, human
rights organization Breakthrough has
launched a social media campaign “share
your story with your son”, reported TOI.
The campaign seeks to fight sexual ha-
rassment by inculcating empathic values in
young boys and men towards a harassed
woman and has been popularized with
hashtag #shareyourstory. It calls for moth-
ers to share their stories of sexual harass-
ment with their sons so that an
inter-generational dialogue can be built up.
Speaking about the campaign, Break-
through country director Sonali Khan said:
“Conversations about sexual harassment
don't happen within Indian families. I have
a 19-year-old son and I thought, did I ever
have such a conversation with him? If a
parent has such a conversation, what will
be the impact?”
Web Crawler What Went Viral
UK social media
wants Trump barred
Donald Trump’s claim that parts of
London are “so radicalized the police
are afraid for their lives” has sparked off
a social media storm.
While the Republican frontrunner was
roundly condemned by British politicians
cutting across party lines, there has been
a surge of signatures on the British par-
liament's petitions webpage calling for
him to be banned from entering the UK,
BBC reported.
A petition calling for Trump to be
banned attracted more than 1,00,000
signatures in about a day—a number that
climbed to more than 4,00,000 by mid-
week—making it eligible to be consid-
ered for debate in parliament. The petition
calls for Trump to be barred for “hate
speech”.
Labour home affairs spokesman
Jack Dromey and Green Party leader
Natalie Bennett have both backed the
petition. On Twitter, many mocked
Trump for his comments. The hashtag
#trumpfacts trended in London, with
30,000 messages.
—Compiled by Sucheta Dasgupta
California shooter Tash-
feen Malik sent at least
two private messages on
Facebook to a small group
of Pakistani friends in 2012
and 2014, pledging her
support for jihad and say-
ing she hoped to join the
fight one day, reported Los
Angeles Times.
The new info indicates
that US law enforcement
and intelligence agencies
missed warnings on social
media that Malik was a po-
tential threat before she en-
tered the US on a K-1
fiancee visa in July 2014.
The two Facebook mes-
sages were recovered by
FBI agents investigating
whether Malik and her hus-
band, Syed Rizwan Farook,
received any financial sup-
port or instructions from
foreign terrorist organiza-
tions before they carried
out the December 2
attacks.
State snooping,
beware: Twitter
Tashfeen
messaged
FB friends
“Tell your son
your story”
Twitter has warned a number of users that
they may have been the target of a state-
sponsored attack. The company has appar-
ently sent the warnings by email to more than
20 users, reported The Guardian.
The warning reads: “We are alerting you
that your Twitter account is one of a small
group of accounts that may have been tar-
geted by state-sponsored actors. We believe
these actors (possibly associated with a gov-
ernment) may have been trying to obtain in-
formation such as email addresses, IP
addresses and/or phone numbers.”
Among those who have publicly said that
they received the warning are: Winnipeg-
based information security nonprofit Cold-
hak, Minnesotan encryption activist
myriadmystic, privacy and security re-
searcher Runa Sandvik and Austrian com-
munications consultant Marco Schreuder.
Twitter is following both Google and Face-
book in sending out warnings to perceived
targets of state-sponsored hacking.

T WAS a bright and balmy Sunday morn-
ing on December 6. Goddesses and em-
presses chatted away on the Okhla National
Small Industries Corporation Exhibition
Ground, sharing puffs from slim, black cig-
arettes with villains and headless ghouls. A
little distance ahead, Gandalf, Hulk, Harry Potter, Hit-Girl
and Joker posed for a photograph before cheering fans.
Young, artistic and free-spirited, they came in groups and
pairs, many dressed as their favorite superheroes. By the
time the fifth edition of Comic Con Delhi had closed, there
had been around 35,000 visitors.
Started in 2011, Comic Con India travels to three
cities—Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru—annually, with
Hyderabad being the new addition. While footfalls
have doubled since its launch, the sale of merch—the
cool word for comics-related merchandise—has
risen manifold having crossed one crore two years
ago. What then are the various cultural elements
and trends driving this phenomenon?
Fandoms, cosplay: Fanfiction (fiction characters
used in different settings) writers, poets, artists and
cosplayers (those indulging in costume play which
is dressing up as in a fancy dress party or carnival)
together constitute a particular fandom. Members of
this subculture are united by a camaraderie born of
shared devotion to a particular comic strip, movie or tele-
I
The fifth edition of Comic Con showed the rising popularity of comics
among young and free-spirited souls and the boom in the graphic art form,
be it in comic strips, movies or television shows
BY SUCHETA DASGUPTA
Just for a
Spotlight
Comic Con Delhi
Laugh!
FEELTHE FORCE!
Superhero Hulk makes an
appearance at Delhi Comic Con

an instant hit and sparked off a wave of such work.
Successive Indian comic cons have seen a few of
these maverick writers, including Nicolas Wild of
Kabul Disco fame. This year, there were Ram Devi-
neni (Priya’s Shakti), Sumit Kumar (Amar Bari
Tomar Bari Naxalbari) and Dalbir Singh, all Indi-
ans. In their 40’s, the trio has a diverse set of prod-
ucts to offer and their subjects are the same —
politics and society — and they all have a message.
In Sikh Park, for instance, Singh has attempted
to start a dialogue on the issues faced by the Sikh
community in the US and Canada. Asked for his
vision show. Love for their hero often impinges on
their lifestyle.
Fans of Sherlock Holmes are said to have com-
prised the first modern fandom, publicly mourning
his “death” in 1893 and creating some of the first
fanfiction as early as 1897. Moving on to the here
and now, it is the lure of being photographed as
one’s fav hero that drew many a fanboy and fangirl
to the Delhi Comic Con.
A selfie with toons: With the amount of care and
intent that goes into their get-up, it is no wonder
that one handsome Smurf, who was mistaken for
Santa because of his red hat, got offended: “Chhee!
All my effort gone to waste!? Do I look like a Santa?
Santa blue hota hai kya? Come, take a selfie with
me by your side!” The person who erred complied
and so did many others.
Serious comics: In 2003, Iranian-French graphic
novelist Marjane Satrapi published the English
translation of her critically-acclaimed memoir,
Persepolis, where she chronicled her run-ins as a
child with society and the law in post-Revolution
Iran. Written in the 70s feminist style of under-
ground artists like Aline Kominsky-Crumb, it was
GEEKS AND
GODDESSES
(Clockwise, from
above left)
Cosplayers
dressed as
Cleopatra,
Neytiri and
Athena. ‘Hit-Girl’
and ‘Kick-Ass’.
Rob Denbleyker,
co-creator of
Cyanide And
Happiness
Photos: Siddhartha Samaddar

Spotlight
Comic Con Delhi
stance on the controversy surrounding Sardar
jokes, he said, confessionally: “One evolves. As a
child, I did find them offensive. Not anymore. I
could draw a parallel with the blacks in America.
Because they have integrated into mainstream so-
ciety, they can laugh at jokes about race today. So
this issue need not be taken seriously.”
Writers like the creator of Angry Maushi, Ab-
MORE POWERTO GRAPHIC ART
(Below right) Visitors to the
Con took time off to doodle
and paint on this wall. Don’t
mistake these Smurfs for
Santa Claus
hijeet Kini, felt the market must move on from re-
doing and overdoing mythology. “It’s been done to
death,” he said. If you ever thought comics are
meant for only children, think again.
Webcomics wave: Black humor is the foremost
characteristic of this no-holds-barred genre and
encompasses everything under the sun. Some
strips are character-driven like the absurdist
Achewood wherein the protagonists are talking an-
imals with personalities — “I am Middle Cat, not
Ray (Smuckles), not Pat (Reynolds)”. Others, like
the self-deprecating Oatmeal aren’t. Some have
story arcs, others don’t. But all are intellectual,
which is why geek is chic and their appeal
universal.
Take SMBC (Saturday Morning Breakfast Ce-
Fanfiction writers, poets, artists and
cosplayers are united by a camaraderie born
of shared devotion to a particular comic
strip, movie or television show. Love for
their hero often impinges on their lifestyle.

real) which, many say, is NSFW (not safe for work).
One of its gentler cartoons, which still does not
miss a dig at the Anti-Evolution League of Amer-
ica, consists of a picture of three newspapers run-
ning the headlines: “Will the world end in six
months? Is a universal cure round the corner? Was
Darwin wrong?” The caption says it all. “New rule
for Science Journalism. If your article can be sum-
marized as ‘no’, do not write it.”
Asked for a desi edition of his strip at the Delhi
Comic Con, Rob Denbleyker, co-creator of
Cyanide And Happiness, said to big applause: “It al-
ready exists. This version of Cyanide And Happi-
ness is already the Indian version of Cyanide And
Happiness.”
Star power: Would anyone let slip a chance to rub
shoulders with Rana Daggubati, Ayushman Khu-
rana, Baba Sehgal and Nawazuddin Siddiqui? Pass
up a chance to meet Sherlock creator Mark Gatiss?
Be cold to the prospects of shaking hands with
Kristian Nairn aka Hodor of Game of Thrones
renown? All of them as well as other eminent
celebs have attended India’s different comic cons.
Fun, games and merch: Other interesting facets
of this comic con included colorful coasters with
Bugs Bunny and Garfield pictures, “I Am Sher-
locked” T-shirts and purple, turquoise and pink ar-
tificial hair. Never mind if they cost a bomb. Sales
of posters, mugs and artwork hit a high at the con
this year and scores queued up to pick up designer
items signed by their idols. Meanwhile, those who
wanted to go easy on their pockets could volunteer
for a spot of boxing or participate in a pop quiz,
free of charge. All in good fun.
Other interesting facets of this comic
con included colorful coasters with Bugs
Bunny and Garfield pictures, “I Am
Sherlocked” T-shirts and purple,
turquoise and pink artificial hair.
MERCH MARCH!
Sales of
merchandise
at Comic Con
India have
crossed the
`1 crore mark

Book Review
Rest in Peace
TRACING A LIFE
The book captures the
resilience and the
resignation of people living
in Mumbai’s chawls
The
Adventures of
Ravan and
EddieThis is the third book in the trilogy written
by Kiran Nagarkar and gives a close-up of
life in Mumbai’s chawls. It has everything—
drama, action, suspense, disbelief...
BY KRISH WARRIER
ATAN, said GK Chesterton,
fell by the force of gravity. So
it was with Ravan. He fell
from the arms of the volup-
tuous Parvatibai and got
caught by Eddie Coutinho
who died in the bargain. Parvatibai named the boy
Ravan to ward off the evil eye. So begins the first
book, Ravan and Eddie, in the trilogy of books by
Kiran Nagarkar about life in Mumbai’s CWD
Chawl 17. The second book, The Extras, traces the
parallel lives of Eddie and Ravan, who, at the con-
clusion of the book, collaborate to become ... don’t
want to be a spoiler! The third and final book in the
trilogy, Rest in Peace, which is being reviewed here,
is a sort of rencontres hasardeux (hazardous en-
counters) of Ravan and Eddie in the film world—
and a detour in their career.
Let me digress here and mention about the back
cover of the book. It has the bodies of Ravan and
Eddie, wrapped like corpses, laid on a cart. Ravan
S

is asking Eddie: “Are we dead, Eddie?” To which
Eddie replies: “If we are, Ravan, I promise we’ll take
that damned author with us.”
Sounds almost like an ad? Thereby hangs a tale.
TALES FROMADVERTISING
It must have been around 1982 when I was a rookie
copywriter at Mechanix Marketing Associates
(MMA), an advertising start-up (that word had not
yet entered the common parlance then) founded by
Gopal Balani (one of the nicest persons I have met
in advertising—may his soul rest in peace). We
were handling the Zenith Computers account then
and Balani had assigned me to the project. Zenith
Computers was launching a new computer and, sad
to say, my efforts in creating a concept for the cam-
paign and punning came to naught.
It was then that Gopal approached a copywriter
from Chaitra, one of the “creative” agencies in the
business. We met the copywriter who was clad in
kurta-pajama, and his art director at Kwality Res-
taurant in Worli. While I scalded my hand trying
to pour tea into my cup from a tea-cosy covered
pot, the copywriter had cracked the campaign in
his head.
Two days later, I saw an impactful,
photographic execution—a man with
his head on the guillotine and a head-
line in Eras typeface that said: “Zenith
Computers puts its neck on the block
with...” The pithy body copy went on
to extol the computer’s salient fea-
tures. The overall effect was mesmer-
izing. The client loved the ad. The
copywriter was Kiran Nagarkar (the
art director was Sunil Mahadik).
Cut to 2015 at the Tata Literature
Live panel discussion at Prithvi The-
atre in Mumbai. After the one-hour
session, I had my fan-boy moment. I
accosted Nagarkar and asked him to
autograph my copy of Rest in Peace.
He obliged happily.
CINEMATIC REFERENCE
(Below) Harold Robbins penned a
triology on the American
entertainment industry
(Bottom) A Bollywood movie set.
Nagarkar’s book takes off from
the point when the main
characters are discovered by the
film industry
So, the first time I met Nagarkar, he was a copy-
writer. The second time I met him, he was a Sahitya
Akademi Award-winning author (for Cuckold). It
was the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach
(DDB) which turned all the rules of advertising up-
side down to produce the brilliant Avis campaign
which said: “Avis is only number 2. So why go with
us? We try harder.” Just as DDB put forth its weak-
ness as a strong point, so too Na-
garkar names his protagonist
after a villain, Ravan challenging
the status quo.
AUDACIOUS CONCEPT
Nagarkar shows a similar bent of
mind when he dares to name the
protagonist of his book Ravan.
Ravan, as we all know, is the vil-
lain in the epic, Ramayana. To
name the protagonist of your
novel after a villain is audacious.
Having said that, to call the Ra-
van and Eddie books a trilogy
would be a misnomer. They are
more like a series—The

REST IN PEACE
ByKiranNagarkar
Publisher:HarperCollins
Price:`450,364pages
Adventures of Ravan and Eddie.
There have been other trilogies.
Harold Robbins’ three books—The
Dream Merchants, The Carpetbaggers,
and The Inheritors—could qualify as a
trilogy based on the American enter-
tainment industry. There is also Ami-
tav Ghosh’s The Ibis trilogy—Sea of
Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011)
and Flood of Fire (2015.)
Rest in Peace takes off from the
point when Ravan and Eddie are “dis-
covered” by the film industry. They
have arrived. Nagarkar grabs your eye-
balls from the first page itself. Savor
this description of opportunistic Bol-
lywood film producers and directors
who are making a beeline for Chawl
17: “The chauffeur got out, opened the
rear door on the right and a man in white, the size
of three polar bears, struggled to come out. It took
the driver and another helper to ease the triple
polar bear from the car.” (Baby boomers are sure to
be reminded of the classic James Hadley Chase line
from the book, No Business of Mine: “Go jump in a
lake,” I said, “Jump into two if one won’t hold you.”)
From here on, the book is a series of haps and
mishaps of the duo in the world of entertainment.
CHAWL LIFE
Nagarkar is at his best when he is irreverent and
sticks to the chawls. A scene when Ravan and Eddie
have to return to the chawl captures both the re-
silience and the resignation of those who live there:
“Ravan was discovering that when you have noth-
ing to do, one way of occupying yourself was to
scratch the stubble on your face or move south and
give the goods there a good jiggle, rub and scratch.
(Who can forget the famous scene from the movie,
Piya Ka Ghar when Keshto Mukherjee does a sim-
ilar number?) Still, I cannot say the same when he
writes about the hi-life (Nagarkar lives in one of the
tony parts of Mumbai).
Then, again, the shooting scene (pun unin-
tended) in the Chambal is pure kitsch. The corrupt
cop and the deviously scheming villager all add to
the comedy-quotient of the book. Take the chapter
when Ravan and Eddie discover a new career for
themselves. Again, Nagarkar gives you a close-up
of life in the chawls, redolent with black humor.
So, as they go from one risky encounter to an-
other, one feels sorry, angry, happy, for the duo.
Their innocence is their salvation. The book ends
in a Tom Sharpe-meets-Priyadarshan fashion.
There’s a little bit of drama, melodrama, action, sus-
pense, disbelief.... Nagarkar brings back all the im-
portant characters from his previous two books of
the trilogy in this finale. Each one is neatly tied up
and put in his or her place. Ravan and Eddie will
go down as two memorable characters symbolizing
the never-say-die attitude of the Mumbaikar.
The cover design of the book is by Nagarkar
(once an ad man, always an ad man) and the cover
photo and illustration are by Prashant Godbole.
Rest In Peace is a post-script to a post-script. How-
ever, if you like a rollicking romp through the lives
of Ravan and Eddie, pick it up.
As they
go from
one risky
encounter to
another, one
feels sorry,
angry, happy
for Ravan and
Eddie. Both
will go down
as characters
who mirror
the attitude
of the
Mumbaikar.
Book Review
Rest in Peace
HISTORICAL FICTION
Writer Amitav Ghosh
is known for his
Ibis trilogy

When did you start writing?
I started writing in 1967 or 1968. That’s when I
wrote my first book in Marathi, 7 Sixes are Forty
Three. I was trying to get into advertising being
unfit for anything else. I must have applied to at
least 12 ad agencies and all of them refused. One
of them asked me to come on a Monday. I turned
up early. I waited in the reception area but no one
turned up. At about 11.30 am, I told them, ‘I am
supposed to work from today.’ They went inside
and told the copy chief. He came out and said they
were very sorry as there was going to be a new tax
on advertising and so I was not going to get the
job. (Laughs) The entire government was conspir-
ing against me. I obviously must be a very impor-
tant person.
Then what happened?
Ultimately, I got a lucky break in MCM (Mass
Communication and Marketing) with Kersey Ka-
trak. Arun Kolatkar (the celebrated poet) was
working there. So that’s how we got together.
Working for MCM was not easy. It pitched for
every single thing…accounts that had been
with other agencies for 10-15 years. It was
sheer madness.
What about your first book?
In December 1974, my first novel, 7 Sixes
are Forty Three, was published in
Marathi. Then around 1977, I finished
my play, Bedtime Story. It is based on
“I am not an author
people know at all”
KIRAN NAGARKAR needs
no introduction. A novelist,
playwright, film and drama
critic and screenwriter, he
has written a trilogy of which
Rest in Peace is the last book.
In a conversation with
KRISH WARRIER, laced
with sardonic humor, he
speaks about his early
days of struggle in the
advertising world, his
forays into play writ-
ing, his troubles with
the Censor Board
and how he finally
won the Sahitya
Akademi award
Interview
Kiran Nagarkar

the Mahabharata and took 38 years to be pub-
lished. Initially, it was legally banned and then
extra-legally banned. As a play, it got 74 or so cuts
from the Censor Board. Around that time, a di-
rector asked me to write a screenplay, so I started
with Ravan and Eddie. He thought I would be
writing something melodramatic. By the second
meeting he must have realized that I wasn’t his
kind of writer. He didn’t even show up to tell me
he was not interested in my work. Fortunately, I
pursued it.
What was this period like?
Those were very difficult times. On rare occasions
when we got work and if it did not pass with the
client, we didn’t even get rejection fees. So earning
`1,500 every two or three months was very diffi-
cult. This went on for a very long time. I think
somewhere around the late eighties, I started get-
ting work. In 1995, Ravan and Eddie got published.
In 1997, Cuckold came out. Then I took a very long
time for God’s Little Soldier. Actually, Cuckold died
immediately the day it was published.
Why do you say that?
Because it just didn’t take off despite very good re-
views. I was fortunate that in 2000, I got the
Sahitya Akademi Award for Cuckold. It’s not a
bestseller at all. Even The Extras completely
flopped. No, I am not an author people know
at all.
Who were your early influences as far as
your reading is concerned?
As Coleridge has said so pithily, you have to be a
rock or someone dead not to be influenced by
books. I can tell you the books that were very im-
portant in my life but I can’t trace how they in-
fluenced me. I love Graham Greene, and Joseph
Heller’s Catch-22 was an important book for me.
The book that left an indelible impression on me
was The Plague by Albert Camus. Then there was
French author Louis-Ferdinand Celine. He was a
peculiar character, a doctor who practiced among
the poor in localities where you have small-time
thieves and prostitutes. He found that a Jewish
doctor had discovered that French women died
during childbirth because the midwives or the
doctors don’t wash their hands…so they got eas-
ily infected. Celine took up this message in his
books. There is dark humor, his style is so differ-
ent. It’s completely staccato, sometimes he doesn’t
finish his sentences…but he’s a remarkable au-
thor. Perhaps there’s black humor in my books
also but I can’t trace it directly to him. It’s impos-
sible not to be influenced at all. How can one not
be influenced by Tolstoy? There’s an Italian au-
thor called Curzio Malaparte whose book on
WRITER’S CORNER
A bouquet of books
written by Kiran
Nagarkar

or writing a book?
Everything.
What’s your method of working? Do
you have a schedule?
Most authors are disciplined. I am entirely lacking
in that, which is why I have no work to show re-
ally. And I am extremely ashamed of it. You need
two things…imagination and hard work.
How do you write… do you use a
computer?
The laptop is a recent thing. I wrote God’s Little
Soldier entirely by hand and revised it eight times.
The book didn’t catch on here, but in Germany,
it’s a bestseller. But my works don’t sell.
But you have a Sahitya Akademi Award.
Yes. The Akademi always had eminent personali-
ties and with integrity. The moral standing of writ-
ers like UR Ananthamurthy who got the award is
so great. As a writer, you have to be responsible.
What do you think of recent writing?
I don’t read much. At least four or five authors are
making crores. My problem is that I don’t read. So
if at all I want to read, shouldn’t I read the greats?
war was amazing—it’s called Kaputt.
How did you begin with the concept of
Ravan and Eddie?
I had an image of a boy falling down. When I was
in MCM, the copy department secretary called all
of us from her department for lunch at her place.
And without realizing it, I found that all the
Catholics lived on the top floor, which was the fifth
floor. All the others, Hindus, stayed from the first
floor upwards. And that was the case in all the
chawls there.
So when I was writing Ravan and Eddie, it must
have come back to me as I was trying to follow the
formula of that time. I had seen it like this in my
mind’s eye: the fall (of Ravan) was there, the titles
came and then you saw them as grown-ups.
Which do you find difficult—advertising
“Most authors are disciplined. I am
entirely lacking in that, which is why I
have no work to show really. And I am
extremely ashamed of it. You need two
things…imagination and hard work.”
PEN POWER
(L-R) Nagarkar has a special
liking for authors like Graham
Greene and Joseph Heller
Interview
Kiran Nagarkar

Whatever I say will be hindsight. So just don’t
trust it too much. It did bother me that they had
banned Satanic Verses. One of the pre-conditions
of censorship is that hardly anyone has read it. We
banned it and then the Ayatollah put a fatwa.
How can a religious head …a president of sort,
do something like this?
Which city do you consider home?
Bombay. I was born here. But it’s unfortunate that
the climate here has now changed. Why should
one be at odds with the powers that be? Many au-
thors have returned their awards because they are
worked up about atheists being murdered. I
would think that the center would at some time
ask, ‘What’s going on?’ After all, this is Bharat, the
home of Kalidasa and Vatsyayana who even ana-
lyzed sex.
INDELIBLE INFLUENCE
(L-R) The Plague by Albert
Camus left a deep
impression on Nagarkar; he
also liked French author
Louis-Ferdinand Celine’s
dark humor
I still remember your campaign for
retrofit machines for Pratibha, the
ad agency.
Is there life after death—I think that was the
headline.
You have a terrific memory.
No, no, I don’t. The nature of advertising has
changed. The same person sells 15 or 16 items si-
multaneously…there’s no creativity at all. Then
there’s testimonial advertising with celebrities…
so boring. I mean Kalyan jewellery? Amitabh
Bachchan’s whole family is selling it! But then it
must be working…otherwise why would they do
it over and over again. I am totally obsolete.
What’s your take on God?
I am an agnostic. I am clueless. There’s grace in
the Catholic sense, having been to a Catholic
school. I still don’t know “Our Father….” It’s a dis-
grace because it’s such a fine prayer. And
throughout my stay in the Catholic school, I
would mumble my way through.
Where did you get your inspiration for
God’s Little Soldier, a book on faith?
“The laptop is a recent thing. I wrote
God’s Little Soldier entirely by hand and
revised it eight times. The book didn’t
catch on here, but in Germany, it’s a
bestseller. But my works don’t sell.”

RE you experiencing impedi-
ments while logging in or surf-
ing your favorite websites on
your cell phone, tablet or com-
puter? Have you ever wondered
why? That’s because popular sites are replete with
advertisements for all kinds of goods and unso-
licited services that you neither need nor wish to
buy. Yet, these unwanted commercials engage our
attention, waste our time and consume our devices’
batteries, thereby increasing maintaining cost.
However, solutions are at hand to protect you
from these cumbersome ads—ad blockers. Though
they have been in existence for nearly a decade, it
was only in 2010 that their form and design was
perfected. They are now available widely.
Ad blocking is a technology which allows ads to
This could
well be what
publishers and
advertisers tell
digital users as
they block ads
on mobiles,
tablets and
computers.
Without ads,
the future of
free content on
the internet is
under threat
BY MR DUA
StopBeingaBlockhead!
A
be blocked before they are loaded by the browser,
thereby saving bandwidth and making the page load
faster. Ad blockers automatically block cookies, im-
ages, resources, pop-ups, and other content and are
fast and effective. According to Apple Inc.: “Once
installed, it’ll work continuously.” But the truth is
that despite all these newly-proffered technologies,
all ads can’t be effectively blocked or barred.
Currently, the most popular ad blocker tech-
nologies are: Purify, 1Blocker, Blockr, Crystal, Ad-
blocker, Adblock plus, Ghostery, Ad Muncher,
Peace and NoScript. In some sites, such as Facebook
and Google, ads can’t be blocked as these are inte-
grated in the webpage. In such cases, ads are tech-
nologically hidden but are being loaded and band-
width can’t be saved.
However, a newly designed technology by Ap-
ple, Adblock Plus, is the most popular. It’s available
for Firefox. It works to the satisfaction of internet
users. However, advertisers and publishers are un-
happy as it’s believed that there are over 200 million
monthly users of ad block software worldwide.
Some of the well-known anti-blocking compa-
nies are PageFair, StatCounter and Sourcepoint. Ac-
cording to a 2014 PageFair-Adobe company report,
these companies “provide off counter ad block so-
lutions to web publishers… help over 3,000 websites
free measures and recover revenue lost due to ad
block…offer technology solutions to enterprise
publishers to recover lost advertising inventory”.
Blocked ads generally include display, video, so-
cial and search ads. Their ranks are multiplying by
the day. On September 9, PageFair reported a 69
percent increase in ad block users in the last 12
months in the US. The company found that there
were over a billion ad blocking hits every month
Advertising
Amitava Sen
Mobile Medium

across some 3,000 of its client websites. Ad blocking
now poses a threat for the future of free content on
the internet.
I
n the UK also, ad blocking reportedly grew 82
percent to reach 12 million active users in 12
months up till June 2015. In Europe, ad block-
ing shot up by 35 percent during 2014-15. Mean-
while, by 2016, the global cost of ad blocking is
expected to touch $41.4 billion. And with the release
of Apple’s new device, iOS, ad blocking will become
more common, while its Safari—a smaller pro-
gram—will support smaller companies. It will block
cookies, images, pop-ups and other content—com-
mon tools for online advertising.
According to a June 2015 PageFair and Adobe
study, the ad blocker industry will hit online busi-
nesses, particularly publishing and advertising. The
report highlights some of the serious threats to the
global digital media industry whose mainstay is web
advertising. It estimates that if ad blocking becomes
the order of the day, the net loss to digital concerns
in the US alone could escalate to nearly $21.8 billion
by 2017. The revenue loss in 2014 was $5.8 billion.
Incidentally, Washington Post recently reported
that “companies that make money from ads have
complained about ad blockers”, but Google noted
recently that “it was looking for ways to make better,
less annoying ads to reduce customers” desire to get
rid of them. Google, incidentally, earns nearly 90
percent of its revenue from online ads, which stand
at $7 billion, followed by Facebook at $3.5 billion.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Apple earned
$487 million in mobile advertising in 2014. How-
ever, overall mobile earnings are likely to double in
value to $42 billion from 2014 to 2016, according to
eMarketer, a media researcher. The mobile share of
all digital ad revenue will grow to 62 percent from
38 percent. Incidentally, it’s estimated that print
media ad earnings will mop up only around $28 bil-
lion in 2016.
Commenting on the hazards of ad blocking, the
report adds: “It’s tragic that block users are inadver-
tently inflicting multi-billion dollar losses on the
very websites they most enjoy. With ad blocking
going mobile, there’s an imminent threat that the
business model that has supported the open web for
two decades is going to collapse.” Incidentally, nearly
71 percent of all users surveyed are said to be sup-
portive of ad blocking devices.
Almost all publishers and content providers en-
tirely depend on ad revenues from the digital indus-
try. But if ad blocking becomes pervasive, most of
the digital firms will wind up. With a view to saving
their businesses, they have been consistently urging
digital media device users to not to block ads, just
as print media establishments don’t. Publishers and
content providers had hoped that internet users
wouldsportinglyacceptonlineadsinthesamespirit
they had accepted ads on television or in the print
media. The Guardian newspaper has politely, albeit
sweetly, appealed to readers: “We notice you have
got an ad blocker switched on. Perhaps you’ll like to
support The Guardian in another way?” It directs
visitors to a link to become a “supporter” or donor
to The Guardian. Even though The Guardian has
urged: “Without ads, we will not survive”, the appeal
hasn’t really cut much ice. The newspaper has kept
reminding readers of its “high quality journalism”.
And, finally, it has realized that its efforts are futile.
“Given that the use of ad blockers comes down to
fairness than legality, the question is whether beg-
ging for mercy actually works,” it said. Perhaps not.
Until bold alternatives are found, the digital in-
dustrymayhavetorely on itsinherentstrengths.
NUISANCEVALUE?
Unwanted commercials
waste our time and
consume our devices’
batteries, jacking up
maintenance costs
Anil Shakya

MISPLACED
PRIORITIES
A bullet train will
be exorbitantly
costly and will
serve only a small
segment of the
population
Incredibly,the government of India will spend more
on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad line than it does on rail
safety,Swachh Bharat,schools,highways or health
VON brings in each issue,
the best written commentary
on any subject.The following
write-up, from scroll.in has
been picked by our team of
editors and reproduced for
our readers as the best in the
fortnight
a Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train link.
Politicians overpromising things while campaigning
is a fine Indian tradition but the enormous cost of just
this one line should serve as a shock: the estimated project
expenditure has come to `98,000 crore.
To put that in perspective, here’s a chart of how this
figure compares to other expenditure by the government
of India on absolutely vital sectors such as rail safety,
health, roads and schools (see the chart on facing page).
Narendra Modi has made cleanliness a key part of his
government’s message. And indeed, India desperately
needs it being one of the countries with the worst rates of
N every which way, Narendra Modi’s
2014 campaign was spectacular.
From communication to ground
management, the Bharatiya Janata
Party electoral machine, it is widely
acknowledged, got it right. However,
a year and a half after Modi took office, one aspect of his
campaign seems to have been a bit too spectacular alto-
gether. As part of its manifesto, the BJP promised what it
called a diamond quadrilateral: a network of bullet trains
crisscrossing the country. The first step in that plan has
gone through. India just signed a deal with Japan to build
I
Editors’ Pick
Shoaib Daniyal
BulletTrain,Necessity
orAccessory?

open defecation on the planet. 44% of Indi-
ans do not use what is probably the most
basic marker of modernity: a toilet. Even
Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh beat big
brother India with corresponding figures of
32%, 13% and 1%, respectively.
India should be on a toilet overdrive, yet
the government of India is going to spend
41X of its Swachh Bharat Mission outlay for
2014-’15 on building a somewhat fast train
line between two cities already superbly
connected by road, rail and air.
BULLET TRAIN > HEALTH, SAFETY
OR SCHOOLS
There’s more: the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train cost
is almost 4X the amount the Centre is going to invest in
rail safety in 2015-16. Just a week ago, India saw two train
accidents claim 14 lives and the Indian rail system is one
of the most unsafe in the world. Yet, precious money is
being diverted from safety to needless luxuries like a bullet
train. In fact, shockingly, the bullet train budget is 2.4X
the entire amount the government of India is going to
spend on the Indian Railways in 2015-’16.
The Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train budget is also
2.3X the entire spend of the Centre on schools. The cor-
responding figure for health and highways is 3.3 and 2.3,
respectively.
There is an interesting contrast here with healthcare.
Like bullet trains, the BJP manifesto had also promised a
plan for universal healthcare. This is much needed. India’s
healthcare system is shambolic and according to a World
Health Organisation study, ranks 112th in the world (for
context, eastern neighbour Bangladesh ranks in at 88, a
good 24 places ahead). Yet, in March 2015, the Modi gov-
ernment decided to scrap plans for a universal healthcare
scheme due to a “constraint on India's financial resources”.
This plan, which could have changed India dramatically,
had a budget which was just 25% more than the Mum-
bai-Ahmedabad bullet train link.
The razzmatazz of a bullet train might help him
politically but can Prime Minister Narendra Modi justify
reducing the Mumbai-Ahmedabad commute by two
hours as a more important public goal than rail safety,
ending open defecation, schooling, building highways
across the country or public health?
Shoaib Daniyal is a Mumbai-based writer and
a political commentator
Theabsurdlywastefulbullettrainline
Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train
Centre spend on highways, 2015-16
Centre spend on schools, 2015-16
Centre spend on railways, 2015-16
Centre spend on health, 2015-16
Safety investment in railways, 2015-16
Centre spend on Swachh Bharat, 2015-16
All figures in ` ’000 crore Amount
Data: Government of India budgetsScroll.in
98
43
42
42
30
25
2.4
LET’S MASTER
BASICS FIRST
Can Indians
first get access
to housing,
health and
education?

DESIGNSTHATMADEIMAGINATIVE
USEOFPHOTOGRAPHS,FONTS,
COLORANDWHITESPACESTO
LEAVEANIMPRESSION
By ANTHONY LAWRENCE
Design
Earth is in emergency ward. Is anyone taking a
cue from this illustration?
These politicians not only play with fear, they prey on it. US pres-
idential candidate Donald Trump, French National Front leader
Marine Le Pen and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, with
their hawkish postures on the refugee crisis and terrorism con-
cerns, project themselves as the best bet for their countrymen’s
safety. Quite subtly captured by illustrator David Parkins
Even as she mulls tightening norms for refugees in
the face of growing opposition at home,
German Chancellor Angela Merkel finds herself pro-
jected as the “Chancellor of the Free World” by Time
magazine. Will this soften her heart once again?

Installation artists are
getting ambitious by
the day. In this case,
Chiharu Shiota uses a
boat, red wool and
50,000 keys to cast a
web. Part of the Venice
Art Biennale, 2015, this
was titled “The Key in
the Hand”. The keys
were collected from
people across the world
symbolizing access to
memories of day-to-day
living.
What are these shoes doing amid stones from
the river? These are an artist’s footprints on
nature, done in acrylic, with great attention to
every minute detail.
There’s no limit to human creativity and imagination as this photograph by
Lou Blanc shows. The photographer does wonders with the human body,
capturing it in various forms. It’s not just depth of field in photography parl-
ance, it’s depth of understanding of anatomy and aesthetics.

NEWSDATE NEWS CHANNEL TIME
6/12/15
7/12/15
7/12/15
8/12/15
9/12/15
9/12/15
PMreleasescommemorativecoinsof
`10and`125onthe125thbirth
anniversaryofDrBhimraoAmbedkar.
NSAsofIndiaandPakistan—Ajith
DovalandNaseerKhanJanjua—meet
inBangkok.
Terrorists strike in Anantnag; were
dressed in army fatigue. Five CRPF
men injured.
SoniaandRahulGandhidirectedtoappear
inPatialaHouseCourtonDecember19in
theNationalHeraldcase.
9/12/15
8:00 AM8:00 AM7:57 AM
11:00 AM10:59 AM
11:09 AM 11:09 AM
11:00 AM 11:01 AM
11:10 AM 11:11AM
1:00 AM
9:03 AM
12:59 PM 1:02 AM 1:02 AM
6/12/15
There’snointoleranceagainstanycom-
munityinthecountry;therearepolitical
issuesinvolvedinthisdebate,saysChief
JusticeTSThakur. 10:30 AM10:29 AM 10:31 AM 10:32 AM
ExternalAffairsMinisterSushmaSwaraj
meetsNawazSharifinIslamabadduring
theHeartofAsiaconference.
10:51 AM10:51 AM 10:50 AM 10:52 AM 10.54 AM
BedlaminRajyaSabhaoverSonia
Gandhi’sappearanceinNational
Heraldcase 11:04 AM11:03 AM 11:04 AM 11:04 AM 11:05 AM
RahulGandhiclaimsNationalHerald
caseis100percentpoliticalvendetta
againsthim.
11:31 AM 11:3 2AM11:30 AM 11:30 AM

Here are some of the major news items aired on television
channels, recorded by our unique 24x7 dedicated media
monitoring unit that scrutinizes more than 130 TV channels in
different Indian languages and looks at who breaks the news first.
DATE NEWS CHANNEL TIME
NEWS
12/12/15
12/12/15
13/12/15
15/12/15
JapanPMShinzoAbeattheBusiness
LeaderForum;hailsModi’spoliciesas
reliableandsafelikebullettrains.
9:45 AM 9:45 AM 9:46 AM 9:46 AM
11:00 AM 11:01 AM
Abeannounceshigh-speedtraindeal
withIndia,alongwithdefenseand
nuclearagreements.
11:01 AM 11:01 AM
Railwaysdemolishes500jhuggisin
ShakurBastislumcluster;Railwayland
hadbeenencroachedupon.
10:00 AM 10:00 AM 10:01 AM9:59 AM
10:02 AM 10:02 AM 10:03 AM
11:31 AM11:30 AM 11:31 AM 11:32 AM
DhonipickedupbySanjivGoenka’s
Punefranchiseefor`12.5crore.Suresh
RainajoinsRajkotteamforthesame
amount.
15/12/15
PoliticalcontroversyoverCBIraidontheof-
ficeofRajendraKumar,principalSecretary
toDelhiChiefMinister.Kejriwalcallsitan
undeclaredemergency.
14/12/15
PoliticsoverShakurBastidemolitionand
deathofababygirl.CMArvindKejriwal
callsRahulGandhiakidforquestioning
AAPoveritsprotestagainstdemolition.
10:32 AM10:30 AM 10:31AM
13/12/15
VetaranactorDilipKumarconferred
PadmaVibhushanAward.HomeMinister
RajnathSinghpresentstheawardathis
residenceinMumbai. 2:07 AM2:06 AM 2:06 AM
13/12/15
NationremembersmartyrsofParliament
attack14yearsago;SoniaGandhi,Man-
mohanSinghpaytributes. 10:54 AM10:52 AM 10:53 AM 10:54 AM
2:07 AM

Media Monitoring Year-ender
TMM Survey
2015ataGlanceIssues that media covered in the year gone by
TMM surveyed seven major channels, Aaj Tak, ABP News, India TV, Zee
News, IBN7, India Today and Times Now, to determine which
issues dominated news space on the electronic media. Of course M&M (Modi
and Peter Mukerjea) figured prominently

Views on news 07 january 2016

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