All Action

This is a photograph from today's Times of India (courtesy AFP, it says) and must be the most frequently used image of the incident that newspapers around the world went with. It depicts a Pakistani commando carrying away an injured victim of yesterday's Lahore mosque attack.

A uniformed man running with a gun in one hand and a whole person under the other while in the midst of a hostile situation - action movie posters need to catch up.


http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/05/29/massacre-as-70-die-and-2-000-held-hostage-in-pakistan-mosques-115875-22294051/

Horizontal, Vertical and Diagonal

Here is a Schematic Map of the Indian Railway Network. Keeping with the purpose of schematics, the scale, the locations and the boundaries on the map have been altered to present the railway's point of view of India. Having seen the actual railway maps of India over the years, this depiction makes sense like none before.

The format was first made famous by the iconic Tube Map of London Underground designed by Harry Beck in the 1930s. To understand something complex for oneself is a skill. But to come up with a scheme to unclutter a mess not just in one's own mind but in the minds of the untrained needs a high degree of clairvoyance. The Tube Map's simplicity and utility is so great that it is considered a piece of design art.

Unlike in electronic circuit design, the use of schematics in rail and road lines result in a warping of the geographical reality experienced by the commuters. On these maps the only locations that matter are the destinations. All the places between these destinations are shown as having no significance and are either stretched out or fused together in the aid of a better understanding of the mesh.

Extending this design typology to the Indian socio-political context can help understand the paradox of growth alongside inequity that results in the existence of pockets of prosperity surrounded by oceans of misery. These pockets mingle among themselves exclusively, creating a network of exclusion. To explain this structure, a different schematic representation of India is needed, a political and economic schematic map which omits or skips-over the downtrodden and the less fortunate.

To an extent this neglect can also be seen in the railway network map - the sparsest presence of railway activity on the map (East Central Railways) corresponds to the poverty-stricken Chhattisgarh state which has seen the greatest amount of naxal violence. So when the naxalites blow up a bus on the road lines as they did yesterday, they also attack the schematic vision of India.

Links:
http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/310/IN_CRAIL0310.pdf
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/standard-tube-map.pdf
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/article432488.ece

Thank You for Calling Cherlapally

On May 11th, Radiant Info Systems announced that prisoners from the central jail at Cherlapally, Hyderabad were to be trained to handle BPO operations. The jail authorities finally had some positive news to share.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-to-get-first-BPO-behind-bars/articleshow/5919218.cms

What is probably either a CSR initiative or a cost-cutting move for the BPO company is seen by the British media as confirming something more sinister that they have kept alluding to from time to time. The British tabloids have reported for years that their citizens' information is not safe in the hands of Indian BPO workers and this adds to that narrative.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7124634.ece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/7715365/Call-centre-firm-to-employ-Indian-prisoners.html

In the quest for the least operating costs, the condemned possess a USP that can only be topped by slavery.

Doggone

Times of India, Page 12 (Hyderabad Edition), May 11th 2010:

Puppy's (alias Canny) "family" has placed this message in the Business section of Times of India today. So as not to mislead the readers, the family has been kind enough to mention Puppy's lineage/breed (Dachshund) and the precise date of birth.

Next they also inform the general public of some other items missing from their home since Canny's demise last year - they have apparently lost one light fixture from the house, someone has turned mute in the family and they have given up on finding good domestic help.

Petty All Around

How do you pat yourself for a job you didn't do? That's how:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/237413

If ever there was an urgent need for spin, this was it. After missing their beat, the US security authorities quickly got Newsweek's Christopher Dickey to reassure their public that what they infact successfully did is "psych out" the terrorists thus neutralizing the threat beforehand. Once psyched, any terrorist-at-large is of no further harm and can be trusted to plant bombs that can only fizzle. The suspect, Faisal Shahzad's Times Square car-bombing attempt must then be a demonstration of the mind-control powers the US agencies posses over such hapless terrorist wannabes.


Meanwhile the Indian media's own juvenile India vs. Pakistan one-up-man-ship innuendo contest has spilled into this case too. The US Federal Attorney prosecuting the case against Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistan-born US citizen will be the Indian-born US citizen Preet Bharara. Will it be Gadar all over again?

http://www.hindustantimes.com/americas/Indian-American-Bharara-to-lead-prosecution-of-Faisal-Shahzad/539647/H1-Article1-539715.aspx



Update, 6th May 3:30 PM:
Continuing in the spirit of taking credit for events that are out of our control: A few hours after I put up the original post I see that Newsweek Magazine has been put out for sale by Washington Post Co. - its owner for the past 39 years. US agencies aren't the only ones with powers!
http://www.newsweek.com/id/237401