Right to Information

I spent an extremely engaging couple of hours yesterday hearing Shailesh Gandhi talk about the Right to Information Act and the impact that single act could have on governance and civic issues. What impressed me most, other than Gandhi’s enthusiasm and energy was the fact that we have, for once, a system in place that forces the faceless, big-brotherly bureaucracy to listen and respond to each of us as individuals.
Though it may be Pol Science 101, I found it extremely interesting to think of the system of elective democracy as an exchange between the state and the individual – the individual giving up a part of his / her sovereignty for services rendered by the government.
The RTI is a simple and very powerful tool to put pressure on the system by individuals seeking public information which otherwise gets obfuscated by the vast tangle that passes for bureaucracy. And it’s so simple that I still am trying to figure out if there’s a catch; after all I too am a part of generation that has grown up learning to fear ability of the mai-baap system to run circles around me. I haven’t yet been able to find that catch. The more important thing, I guess if for us to use the tool to participate and engage with the state. Check out the site Satyamevajayate.info for simple information on how.

Economics of Marriage

"So what drives modern marriage? We believe that the answer lies in a shift from the family as a forum for shared production, to shared consumption...the key today is consumption complementarities . . .Today, it is more important that we share similar values, enjoy similar activities, and find each other intellectually stimulating" - contentious (some may say simplistic), but an interesting idea on the new economics of marriage. The writers go on to say it's no longer about the old adage of "opposites attract" because of which it made sense for the husband and wife to have different interests in different spheres of life.

Check the full piece here (Link via Marginal Revolution).

And the Winner is . . .

Who is the NDTV Indian of the Year? Who is the CNN-IBN Person of the Year? Which will be the CNBC Car of the Year? What about the BS Motoring Car of the Year? Which will be the AutoCar Magazine’s 2-Wheeler of the Year? The Filmfare Actor of the Year? The Screen Awards Movie of the Year? Which programme will be the Telly Awards Soap of the Year? The PC-World Magazine’s Gadget of the Year? Pets & More Magazine’s Pet Cat of the Year? Ok, I just made that one up. But, what a conundrum!

The Brave New World

Somebody once said that all new ideas are first dismissed as laughable, then spurned as impossible and finally accepted as obvious. Two days before Tata Motors unveils what is being popularly dubbed the People’s Car, I sense the transition already happening from the second to the third state. In that context, read this interview with Rajiv Bajaj on making affordable cars- coherent and extremely sharp. Without being jingoistic, it really makes me feel good about our industry and the companies leading the charge towards a new order.

Shame!!

I wonder which is worse. This incident at Juhu, Mumbai; or the Police Commissioner saying that everybody is making a “mountain of a molehill”.

Of Rights and Wrongs

A couple of years back, I remember one of our American Creative Directors being aghast at my defending the pirated books sold on our streets. My point was (and is) that trying to curb piracy by cracking down on the peddlers and printers is simply not practical – and more importantly goes against the grain of free business.

Firstly, the principle of copyrights itself is a recent phenomena ushered in by agents and publishers. Neither Mozart not Shakespeare copyrighted their works. And for a good reason; there is an argument that the more a piece of work gets transmitted to more people, the greater the respect for the author which in turn leads to more lucrative assignments. This argument gets even more pronounced in the age of instant sharing of ideas. Not only are restrictions difficult to administer, they are also barriers to new mash ups. As Seth Godin says, he could possibly earn some money by getting people to pay to read his blog; but he gets much more by seeding his ideas in the public domain, getting people to talk about it and growing his reputation as a thinker / speaker.

The notion of copyrights is also a lawyers’ delight – for instance, am I violating laws if I lend my book to a friend? What if I lend it to 10 friends? 1000 friends? What if I write the text of a book, post it on my blog and send the link to those friends? David Pogue illustrates how gray this subject is on his post here where he quizzes students about the ethics of digital piracy. Their responses are telling.

But I read the best one on this topic by Suketu Mehta some months back. While traveling in a Mumbai cab, he was accosted by a street kid selling a pirated of “Maximum City”. When told he was the author of the book, the kid offered him a discount. A bit like Mario the postman in “Il Postino”, who having read Pablo Neruda’s romantic poetry narrates it to a village girl as his own – he insists that having read and internalised it, the poetry is no longer Neruda’s but his own. How can you argue against that?
UPDATE: This post by Chris Anderson adds one more interesting perspective to this subject.