India

Back in 2004, we used to have discussions on how to improve Indian language projects on Wikipedia and related projects. It was then that the discussions had also channeled towards a probable Indian Chapter that could provide support and backing for the local community and the local projects. At that time, there were just a few chapters worldwide.

We have since then had attempts almost every year to form an Indian Chapter. Most of us involved in each of these attempts were volunteers active in the Wikimedia community. I had coordinated most of the efforts except for the last one. Sadly though, we never had the resources or the backing needed to kick-start the formal process. So, the idea of an Indian Chapter never got realised. It was quite an ordeal to even arrange a meet-up back then.

Some of the earlier attempts failed either due to lack of consensus among the volunteers participating on varying issues or due to the natural processes of attenuation in the crowd that was interested. While the excitement was very much palpaple and the interest genuine among the people involved, we were unable to give the idea the time
and commitment it needed primarily because we lacked the critical mass.

Fortunately, things have changed for the better. Things changed drastically last year when Sunil from Center for Internet and Society brought several Wikimedians under one roof. Thanks to the invaluable efforts from Achala Prabhala in getting a few committed and responsible volunteers together back again to boot start the process during that time, we now are much closer in realising the Chapter idea than we were ever before. The team that had come together for this purpose has spent plenty of time towards this in the last one year.

People using Tata Indicom Broadband (and several other services here in India) seem to be affected by heavy packet loss in their Internet connections. When I called up the Tata Indicom Customer Care almost in what seemed to be the umpteenth time I was calling them in last two days, I was told about some "submarine cable damage", "main server issue" and few other such things. Earlier they had a reason to believe it was a local issue and they said they will get it rectified in "6 hours".

I don't know how many of us would remember the 501, Nirma and similar soap bars that had become so much a part of life back in those days when Rin, Surf Excel or the fancy German detergents had still not entered the market. I remember people taking those detergent bars with them to nearby water source to wash their clothes. Much has changed now, but I still remember the fragrance of 501 or even Nirma. It has been years since I last saw one, though.

Today, I stopped by a grocery store in a village on the way home. An auto driver was unloading his stock of "N S" bar. It was like glancing back at this historical, outdated soap but the shop owner and the auto driver had a different story to tell. In my curiosity, I ended up taking a photo of this while the auto driver, who looked pretty curious at my curiosity, went observing in pride - "This, saar, is still the best soap you can ever get! It used to cost just naalkaaNi" (25 paise).

And to my surprise, people in this village seem to have sticked to their brand for all these years and the shopkeeper confirmed that by telling me how people keep coming for more of this.

So much has been discussed about what happened in Mumbai. Local media has went overboard in reporting, deducing and also debating almost everything surrounding it. Politicians are getting booed all over, at last, and deservingly so. If the boo continues and sustains the intensity, anger till the elections, it could bring about a sea of change in India. But how much would Mumbai 26/11 aftermath really change India? Will India really 'wake up' to the situation?

Mark Tully has a bitter-truth insight to share with us all as he considers the prospect.

(Click above for full view)

Not as much take on the present situation as I'd hoped when I started sketching this, but its a take on the situation nevertheless. :-)

While Abhinav Bindra made those among the billion Indians who get a chance to bother about Olympics (enough to check it on the news) proud, it saved the same billion from what could have been a huge embarrassment of a much publicized event. But then, several things may go unnoticed or just shadowed.

This report for instance which asserts on, but never quite gets noticed when it says:

"And Sports Minister M S Gill had the last word.

I congratulate all including myself. This will boost the confidence of all other participants," he stated.

(emphasis mine)

Let us congratulate ourselves for being Indians, shall we?

Low intensity or not, would just condemning the terror attacks suffice? There has to be some serious rethinking of how media portrays acts like these, how we as people react to it and how much of it we remember enough to do something about it. What strikes blatantly though is how devastation and death becomes just the content for News Channels and withers away in the memory of the public.