The Bored Engineer

India being a socialist democracy committed to equitable growth of our citizens has always had a set of strong welfare policies aim at various problems namely poverty, malnutrition, infant mortality rates etc. These policies have often been a target of a section of society that is wary of the amount we spend on subsidies and the welfare programs; and when these schemes fails to meet the desired objectives they are quick to point out at their failure and how this is an ill use of our tax rupees. We often forget that it is imperative for us as a nation to ensure that the fruits of development are shared equally by all sections of the society if we are to progress into becoming a developed nation. You can’t underpay your domestic help, the homely maid and then complain about her children’s contributions to the malnutrition statistic. India’s educated elite have failed this nation (and the blame squarely goes on our political leadership especially the Grand Indian Political party...

A couple of years back, Facebook launched a new feature titled “See First” which basically meant that if you interact with certain people more than others on Facebook, these ‘preferred’ people would get a precedence. Couple this with the change in Facebook’s algorithms wherein this change was internalized making your ‘interactive’ contacts appear first, the entire social media experience was polarized. I have about 350 friends but after these features were implemented my interaction was limited with a selected group of 5-7 people basically turning Facebook into a Stalking Machine. Moving on from Facebook, this feature was rapidly embraced by other platforms as well including many news outlets and apps which show you the tailor made news feed, specially customized for you. The drawbacks of this system were soon realized as people found – just as in the case of Facebook – that this had led to shrinking of their online reach and they were now getting a lot of stories related to a same...

A common theme that binds the growth story of all the nations that are on a developmental path is the cropping up of imperialism. The 20 th century poses the greatest and the most horrifying evidence of the premise but it’s not a singular example and all modern developed nations have a history of imperialism in some form or the other. Every century has its villains and victims, the actors change but the plot doesn’t deviate much. While the 20 th century showcased its brutality in the form of major world wars and some other wars, the 21 st century does not seem to a have a very promising start either. The wars may not have played themselves out yet but that does not mean the lack of underlying tensions. Resources are strained and the economies wishing to expand are fighting off till the last piece is up for grabs. In such a scenario, what does the upcoming world order hold for the retiring powers like America and Russia as well as the emergent ones like India and China? Wil...

Disappointment and disillusionment are the virtues of the pessimists who love to bask in them to reaffirm their sadistic outlook of life. So when I as a self-proclaimed Optimistic–General of World Optimism Council tell you that the book “ Neither A Hawk Nor A Dove ” by Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri was a major disappointment for me, you know I’m not just saying it for the sake of saying it, I have been tormented by something painful that must have hurt my soul. Enough of the theatrics, I picked up the book because of two primary reasons:       It promised to give an insider’s view of the backchannel settlement of the Kashmir agreed upon by India and Pakistan around 2006-07.    The drama that unfurled in India when Mr. Kasuri was here to promote his book and his subsequent appeal that his book was not a Pakistani propaganda, rather an attempt to bridge the gap in the Indian and Pakistani narratives about our shared history. The books starts with Mr. ...

‘Kashmir’ - an issue so volatile it can polarize the sanest of the minds into mind numbing extremism. Whenever Kashmir is on the boil or in the headline for any reason even the most liberal sounding people on my Facebook friend-list suddenly tear apart all their identities and fall into two categories: Kashmiris (mostly living outside the state and in other parts of India) who suddenly feel the need to highlight the ‘human right abuses’ which may or may not have been happening and people from rest of India who feel the need to thump their chest and abuse Kashmiris. While the silent majority looks on, occasionally expressing its dismay over the human right abuses and occasionally supporting the anti-terror operations of our armed forces (anti –terror not anti-protestors). I have been a part of the silent majority as well, looking around at people from both sides calling each other names and ‘highlighting’ facts which in their view are suppressed by ‘vested interests’. I do not ...

In the Times of India editorial DIGITAL INDIA IS DYING dated(July 4, 2016) the author has made a pitch for some sort of protectionist policies being implementing to ‘save’ the digital start-ups in India which are in a nascent stage from their international or more importantly American competitors with deep pockets. The author makes a compelling case for Flipkart, Snapdeal and OLA which are facing stiff competition from Amazon and Uber. The author airs his fears of India becoming the digital colony of America just like Europe has been while praising china for it closed market which have given it a home grown versions of google and Facebook. While I don’t dispute the writers claims about Indian digital companies facing an uphill task against their American rivals but I doubt if we should ever take sides. We had a closed economy for a good 40 years simply because we felt so burnt and exploited of foreign colonial exploitation that had just ended that we missed the global growth...

What is the one thing that defines most of us Indians and still is inherently devoid of any logic? You may well be tempted to mention our quest for getting our children enrolled in an Engineering/Medical college (irrespective of their abilities and aptitude, of course. Where is the fun otherwise?), but no. The one thing that connects us all, that one trait fostering our unity in diversity is our inability to not get offended or simple ignore things that really don’t matter to us (and about the things that truly matter; well who has the time for that! More on that later) and consequentially ban things arbitrarily. Take for example the recent controversy surrounding a video by comedian Tanmay Bhat, impersonating Bharat Ratan Sachin Tendulkar and Bharat Ratan Lata Mangeshkar. Now the video may seem a bit derogatory and in bad humour to many (including me) but why can’t we simply ignore a comedian who is just doing his job. He may not be up to our expected standards (although ...

The Ikea Play Report 2014 suggests that Indian parents are concerned that their children are obsessed with social networking and the traditional family system is falling apart with 59% agreeing that “sometimes in my family everyone is using their mobile devices and not talking to each other”. With growth of internet services and more inexpensive devices hitting markets every day the trend is surely going upwards and does possess some serious challenges as to how family structures are going to evolve against this new threat of virtualization that eliminates the need for a face-to-face conversation with family. Although this may seem a bit depressing but it’s not all bad out there. With social networks getting stronger we see people collaborating and teaming up to solve various problems from suggesting ideas at national level (using mygov.in etc.) to coming together to protest a new regulation or an archaic law, online Indian is connected like never before. A recent example that ca...

In the run-up to the recently concluded Delhi Assembly Elections many personal allegations made their way onto national media. Some of them utterly nonsensical while others made a little sense although their relevance in an election campaign was questionable. Once such issue that cropped up was that Arvind Kejriwal who always made a hue and cry about being an Aam Aadmi and denounced other politicians for being Elitist and pro-capitalists totally ignoring the majority population and favouring the few Khaas Aadmi . To make his point he even travelled in Delhi Metro on the way to his inauguration ceremony, refused security cover and to a certain extent endorsed a somewhat messed-up ‘fashion- statement’ resembling more of a rickshawala (although I don’t mean to imply that dressing like that is deplorable, but well at certain times it didn’t meet the dress code of the event he was attending). But all things aside, he made his version of Aam Aadmi into a very successful brand, su...