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I think the models of protection, be it law or technology, are fast dying and we need to move from protection to sharing. That solitary consumption of content will move to group and shared experiences. And what's tremendously powerful there is that you then have the ability to influence not only what other people will watch and hear and listen to, but also the kinds of content that are being created. That the content industry needs to move from being gatekeepers of content to curators of content, and that top-down models of content creation will go the way of the dinosaur very soon because (a) we have the Internet to distribute content and (b) tools are available to everyone. So the high priest model of content creation will very soon be challenged, as we saw in the case of Encyclopaedia Britannica, by the community models of content creation.

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All voices need to be heard. Silence some, you silence others; silence many, and you are left with only a few safe subjects, as the late Behram Contractor, or Busybee, noted about the emergency—cricket and mangoes.
...At a time when prosecutors are considering charges against four authors and the organizers of the Jaipur Literature Festival, after the four read from The Satanic Verses, it is important for the government to remember the kind of state it is—letting writers speak, or letting rioters silence others.
This profound conversation needs to begin. Our being able to express ideas, challenge one another and question beliefs establishes our humanity. Our ability to settle differences by talking through things, by moving away from conversations we don’t like, by being sceptical about claims we disagree with, and by letting others have their say so that we can have ours creates that virtuous circle that restores our dignity. Do away with that, and we belong to the Land of Chup, or silence, as Rushdie points out in Haroun and the Sea of Stories: “All those arguments and debates, all that openness, had created powerful bonds of fellowship… the Chupwalas (those from the silent land) turned out to be a disunited rabble, suspicious and distrustful of one another. The Land of Gup (talk) is bathed in endless sunshine, while over in Chup, it is always the middle of the night.”
That afternoon it felt like dawn. It was the beginning for all of us to speak what we think, read what we want, and shut the book if it is not interesting. The choice should be ours, not of the state, or men (almost always men) who claim to speak in the name of gods.

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What is clear from these incidents is the role of the state: it has been glaringly absent or regrettably passive. The government has abandoned the people. Give up the idea that the state will protect you when some thugs say they are offended because you buy a book they don’t like. If you persist in reading it, they will threaten to turn violent. And instead of preventing them, the state asks you to restrain yourself...
So afraid have we become of the mob, and so attuned do we have to be of others’ sensitivities, that virtually no topic is safe any more...
There is peace in the graveyard, but there is no life. When they chill speech, they kill creativity, leaving an acquiescent state, an aggressive mob, and abandoned writers. Where is the poet who will “name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep”?
Not in India, which they won’t let him visit, where they won’t let him speak, even via a video-link, and where you won’t find the book in which that line appears.

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Ever since I watched that documentary, I’m afraid for my son. All parents are concerned for their children at some level. But I now feel this overwhelming sense of fear and the need to control my son’s actions. Ironically, this fear is what I feared for a long time. I want to be the dad who understands risks, makes his child aware of those risks but places an implicit trust in his child’s ability and judgment. Now, I find those beliefs shaken by an irrational need to cloister him against the world.
I know despite my apprehensions, I will not stand in the way of his legitimate pursuits but I don’t want to live the rest of my life battling what-ifs. It’s a pathetic existence and many times, unfair on your child who will start to notice the signs as he/she grows older.
How can I beat this? How can I pit my protective parental instincts against an innate need to see my children succeed? For starters, I know from personal experience that a sheltered existence benefits no one, least of all the person being sheltered. I know he needs to try, fall, get hurt, try again and figure it out for himself. It will start with the time-tested tradition of teaching him how to ride a bicycle and using that visual as a cliched metaphor for every other challenge in his life. Hey, I’m not selling insurance. I tell myself that my faith and maturity are stronger than having to rely on such tropes for guidance. But that gnawing insecurity….

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With politicians offering questionable placebos which have expired use-by dates, and clerics misdiagnosing the disease, is it any wonder that the patient’s condition remains grave?
In Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Iff tells Haroun how certain things are P2C2E, (process-too-complicated-to-explain). But this process is simple: politicians and clerics gain by keeping the population uninformed. They fight chimeric battles and offer illusory benefits to Muslims, who want education and jobs. Instead they get quotas, and not skills, with the added bonus: to protest Rushdie.

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By demanding that Rushdie should not be allowed to enter India, fundamentalists are seeking to set the terms under which dialogue can occur in India. Muslims have been vocal in protesting against material they find offensive, with the Bangladesh-born novelist Tasleema Nasreen a frequent target.
But in the past quarter century, other groups have also joined in, increasing the clamor against free thought, and narrowing public discourse...
The inevitable result is deadened polity. While the People’s Union of Civil Liberties has admirably spoken out in defence of Rushdie, other Indian civil society groups have been reticent, unwilling to take on the intolerant, who respond not with argument, but with violence. A few columnists and Bollywood personalities have also criticised the fundamentalists. But no politician of consequence has done so.
We watch as India hovers over that precipice; it must decide what kind of society it wishes to be — where, as India’s greatest poet wrote, where the mind is without fear, or where words are swallowed, lest they offend somebody.

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the question Rushdie asked many years ago, when he wrote Satanic Verses.
Question: What is the opposite of faith?
Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself a kind of belief.
Doubt.
This brief meditation lies at the heart of the controversy over the Satanic Verses, which has extended into the present and ridiculous debate over whether Rushdie should be “allowed” to attend Jaipur. The real question is why the Deobandis, who rarely come to literary festivals, should want to stop others from listening to Rushdie’s views.
In the two decades since the Satanic Verses were banned, it has become increasingly hard to discuss the idea Rushdie puts forward in his work, which is the idea that doubt is necessary and valuable. But in that time, India has also moved closer to accepting, blindly and without much fuss, a worryingly widespread belief. This is the belief that at worst, questioning any faith or religion is in itself a kind of blasphemy—and at best, it’s an esoteric activity that the majority can safely ignore.

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But what bothers me is this: what next? What happens when the country goes to polls again? Who do you vote for? Who do I vote for? Why do I vote for them?...
Growing up, sporadically, in this politically charged, fairly well-informed environment means that I like to think before voting.
And the more I think about the next Lok Sabha polls the more… I am left thinking...
if I had to make a decision, I am going to do it on the basis of a wishlist. So here I am going to put out a list of things I’d like to see the next government do. Some of them may be impossible due to constitutional process. And some of them may seem irrelevant to the vast majority of readers. But it is my wishlist. And these are issues that I care about. I am pretty sure not one politician will read this blogpost. But at least the process of writing it down will help me as we get closer to the ballot box. It will help me take a call.

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"To you, my dear average reader of this column, I sincerely wish you short working days, long vacations and rewards commensurate—plus 5-10% extra—with the efforts you put in at work. I hope your commute is seldom longer than you plan, and your plans seldom wrecked by your commute. I hope you never have to work in teams; but if you do, I hope your teammates match their enthusiasm for summoning meetings with their alacrity to shut up and do something."

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"Another year — and a spectacular journey coming to an end. We’ve had some very good books, films and music albums making 2011 special. From experimental to populist to downright intriguing — they have kept us entertained through many evenings. Let’s take a walk down recap lane with Jai Arjun Singh as he talks about the books and films that he personally loved this year. And Avirook Sen gives his take on the music albums of 2011 that, he feels, rocked. We wish you a very Happy New Year!"

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Friend running for IAHV in London 10K marathon

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some good tips here, esp.
5. Sometimes people say, “I want to have a few close, real friends, not a bunch of superficial friends.” But that’s a false choice. There are all kinds of friends. I have intimate friends and casual friends. I have work friends w

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Menon chronicled the last day of Shiok for Lounge in a candid, heartfelt piece...
The restaurateur on the day he closed Shiok—from preparing for the last party and paying his staff to the time the music actually stopped...
And as everyone heads out, they

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Sometimes, suddenly when aloneness swamps Kedar, “He’ll run up, hug us and say, ‘Why didn’t you marry earlier so we’d all have had more time together?’” says Premila. While there’s no staving off those fears in his little mind, his parents have been tryin

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There is no reason why my peers and I (the over-40s) cannot use the same methods to keep in touch, the way our children do so easily. We do, of course, use email, IM and also Twitter, FB, Skype, etc., and value the ways in which they’ve improved productiv

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IDFC Project Equity, a leading infrastructure equity investment manager, has elevated Aditya Aggarwal to the post of managing director incharge of investments. Aggarwal was previously a senior member in the energy team at IDFC.

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he team of World Championship challenger Veselin Topalov reportedly spent a large sum of money to secure a 112 core computer cluster running at mind boggling speed. "How did the reigning champion counter this awesome hardware advantage," we asked. Anand a

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Just before the start of the World Championship match in Sofia Vishy Anand learnt that his opponent, Veselin Topalov, had access to a computer cluster, running the latest Rybka program, which was being held back for exclusive use by the Bulgarians...Topal

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Suddenly “what shall I take today” does not seem like a trivial decision. A book is many things. It helps fill time between appointments, on trains. It may spark an idea or help consolidate one. It enables a solitary experience inside one’s head while one

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Latter-day friendships are difficult. The stakes are too high. First, there is the time involved in making friends, which needs to be prioritized over family, children, work and other commitments. Who has the time to simply do lunch to nurture a friendshi

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