Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Not even wrong. Here’s what that phrase means : “The phrase implies that not only is someone not making a valid point in a discussion, but they don't even understand the nature of the discussion itself, or the things that need to be understood in order to participate.” The phrase perfectly describes Aatish Taseer’s apocalyptically titled article in TIME magazine, “Can the World’s Largest Democracy Endure Another Five Years of a Modi Government?” . Here’s why: 1)         It applies Western norms of what is politically acceptable, Western norms of what cannot be said by politicians and so on. But of course, this is India and the rules of political discourse are very different here. a)      Taseer talks of Modi’s “deafening silences after more recent atrocities” (aka Godhra). But in India, Rajiv Gandhi’s widow and son have shown the same deafening silence wrt the 1984 killing of Sikhs. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but this is a reflection of Indian citizens who, depend

After his rock star like reception at Madison Square Garden last time, it sounds like Narendra Modi is ready to take Silicon Valley by storm when he visits the US later this month: the 19,000 seat community reception venue is already over-booked. The planned townhall-style question-and-answer session at Facebook’s headquarters is the one getting all the limelight; but Modi will also be meeting a lot of other Silicon Valley CEO’s. Like those of Adobe, Apple, Google and Tesla. But why the focus on Silicon Valley? Is it just because Modi is Internet savvy (After all, he was on Time magazine’s list of “30 most influential people in the Internet” )? Or is it because the Valley has so many Indian origin folks? Sure, there may be a bit of those things; but it’s also to do with driving forward his government’s Digital India initiative. The intent of that is to make available government services electronically (and via the Net), thereby reducing delays, paperwork, bureaucracy and cor