The ITeMs of Bangalore
Its time to take a break from Communist theory, and analyze some realities. I work in an IT company in Bangalore (Yes, I know.. I'm a hypocrite.. :-) ), often referred to as the "Technology hub of India" or "India's Silicon valley" (Silicon Plateau is more accurate, as Bangalore lie right on top of the Deccan plateau) and is in many ways the "United States" in India. On the outset, it is probably one of the most Westernized of Indian cities and is the melting pot for people from across India. You can see Biharis, Maharashtrians, Bengalis, Gujaratis, Punjabis, Oriyas, Tamils, Telugus, Malayalees and a large number of Tibetans, Nepalese and people from the Seven Sisters of North-east. Sadly, we have everyone here except the native Kannadigas. I do understand why they become violent sometimes. How would I feel when all these refugees from across India (myself included) come and flock to Thiruvananthapuram, with scant regard for the local language, culture, customs and traditions, and take our capital city away from us?
I'm not trying to describe the wonderful diversity of India or starting a flame war on regional chauvinism here. India is truly a nation of nations, where each State is in all practical terms a nation with their distinct language, culture, food and dress. Nevertheless, Indian states needs to forge national unity while accepting differences, in order to progress.
My focus in this article is about a particular class of people I have seen here.. a class of people I haven't encountered much in my home state of Kerala so far.
You can see them on streets, corporate office, pubs ... practically everywhere. You can recognize them by the following characteristics:
They constitute the council of wise who knows exactly what is good for this country and this world.
Who are these new species of Human race? Where did they come from all of a sudden?
These are the off-springs of Corporate Capitalism and its spin-off, Consumerism. They were created here by the 'IT boom' (an accurate phrase, as it is susceptible to go KA-BOOM at anytime..) and liberalization of the economy. They detest politics and seldom have any interest in History or the Social Sciences. Their GK is pathetic (except in Sports, Cinema or 'Celebrity' stuff) and are more interested in making Big Dollars than anything else. Their cultural skills are restricted to Pub dancing and singing Bollywood crap. The only culture that they are experts in is that of the United States. Their knowledge in religion are by and large restricted to those propagated by the great "Rich Man's Gurus" or Evangelists.
I heard that a few of them recently did a 'candle-vigil' (that's the fashion nowadays) near MG Road, Bangalore (that's their haven) on the eve of Bhagat Singh's execution. There were lengthy talks inspiring today's youth to emulate Bhagat Singh. Wait a minute. Emulating Bhagat Singh's ideals? Which one? Bhagat Singh was India's first famous Communist. He wanted to emulate the Russian Revolution here. The last book he read in jail before he was executed was "The State and the Revolution" written by Lenin. He was the first one who shouted "Inquilab Zindabad" (Long Live Revolution) in India as a salute to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Maybe these ITeMs were seeing too much of 'historical' Bollywood movies. Of course, Bollywood makes great patriotic movies. The only problem is that they make ones with too little of history, too much of fiction and too much of sensationalism thrown in to make Indians stand up and shout "Jai Hind" and make them feel patriotic for an hour (after which its back to business, of course). The 'history' shown in these movies probably made the inncoent ITeMs believe that Bhagat Singh was a nationalist who sang and danced with his girlfriend, shouted "Jai Hind", and went on to fight the British imperialists. In fact, before he died, Bhagat Singh wrote a letter to his mother expressing his anguish that if a Socialist revolution do not happen, India would be ruled by our own "Brown Sahibs" after "White Sahibs" leave. Interesting observation indeed!
But the whole of the Indian industry from Media to Automobile, increasingly cater to ITeMs specifically. Moronic industries that thrive on Morons. Its the media thats most distressing. Take a look at the newspaper Times of India. Its not safe for a sane person to believe what is written on it. They sensationalize everything, knowing that it is sensationalism, not facts, that the ITeMs need most. Compare the quality of news reporting in "Times of India" to that in "The Hindu". Or compare the content of their supplements. No wonder that most people recommend one to read "The Hindu" and "Frontline" if they are aspiring for Civil Service exams (that's something ITeMs have little hope of ever achieving). Heard anyone recommending Times of India for this? Then we have the news channels like CNN-IBN who believe that the pressing issue that this country faces to day is that of Rakhi Sawant's legal suit against Mikha Singh for smooching her, or what Virendar Sehwag needs to do to get back to form in Cricket. Well, it true. These are the crucial things happening in the world of ITeMs. I once even had the previlege of watching the CNN-IBN reporting on GSLV's failed launch of the satellite INSAT-4C this July. One agitated reporter (undoubtedly an ITeM) was ranting about how the "spaceship" INSAT-4C (nice name for a satellite) fell into the sea. He prophetically predicted that this was a disaster of epic proportions for India and that India's ambitious space program has been ruined beyond any hope. I was following the launch updates minute by minute at office on The Hindu's internet edition. (I was, in fact, hitting the refresh button every minute to see if some update has appeared on the page). At around 7 PM, I was disappointed to know that India's string of successful launches in PSLV and GSLV has been broken when the news of failure appeared on the web page, especially since Agni-III test failed the previous day. But I knew that ISRO would soon figure out what went wrong, (which was probably something trivial on appearance, but trivial faults can mean a lot on risky, high-tech ventures like SLVs), make corrections and relaunch the SLV. Since three previous launches were successful, it was evident that there was nothing inherently wrong with the vehicle design as such. But I was very much amused to see the report on CNN-IBN on TV when I reached home after work. That guy's agitated rant on screen was really entertaining. But I really admired the ISRO chairman, Mr Madhavan Nair, when he calmly told reporters that they will go over the flight data to see what went wrong and that they will get the GSLV back up soon. That's how ISRO dealt with the failure. The Moronic media reported it as a catastrophe. Maybe ITeMs do not that when the Chinese (who are more advanced than us in the space program) tried to launch their brand-new 'Chang Zheng-3B' (Long March-3B) booster in 1996 (carrying Intelsat 708 as payload), it weered off-course immediately after clearing launch tower and flew horizontally like an aircraft and crashed on top of a neighbouring village killing many (Chinese officially say six, but most others feel it was much, much higher). The third attempt of the budding Brazilian space program to make Brazil a space faring nation received a setback in 2003 when their space booster VLS-1 exploded on launchpad killing many scientists and engineers. This was after the two first and second launches of VLS-1 ended in failure with the rocket crashing into the sea. Even they didn't contemplate an end to their space programs. But our dear ITeM at CNN-IBN did.
I am not singling out TOI or CNN-IBN for extolling the virtues of some other newspapers or channels. They were merely chosen as two cases to describe a larger Moronic trend that I see nowadays around me.
All this makes me wonder.. Are the ITeMs going to inherit Earth?
I'm not trying to describe the wonderful diversity of India or starting a flame war on regional chauvinism here. India is truly a nation of nations, where each State is in all practical terms a nation with their distinct language, culture, food and dress. Nevertheless, Indian states needs to forge national unity while accepting differences, in order to progress.
My focus in this article is about a particular class of people I have seen here.. a class of people I haven't encountered much in my home state of Kerala so far.
You can see them on streets, corporate office, pubs ... practically everywhere. You can recognize them by the following characteristics:
- They speak English with American accent or Hindi with Bollywood tone.
- They look as if they have jumped out of an American rock band or a Bollywood movie.
- They prefer to read newspapers like Times of India (if they read newspapers at all), which carry information relevant to them like who attended which party where, where did Paris Hilton hang out this time, and the latest paparazzi scoops about Hollywood and Bollywood "celebrities".
- They will probably shudder at the sight of boring papers like The Hindu or magazines like Frontline.
- Guys (who prefer to wears jeans, T-shirts and sunglasses) prefer to "hang out" or "chill out" with their girlfriends (who prefer to wear... you know what).
- Many have exceptional general knowledge in such important and relevant topics as Cricket, Football and Bollywood cinema.
- They prefer nutritious, local foods like burgers and healthy, rejuvenating drinks like Cola.
- They watch such informative channels like CNN-IBN where people actively debate for 8 hours at a stretch on topics of national and international importance like why Tendulkar was bowled in India's cricket match against Australia, who should be the next captain of the Indian team for the World Cup, and who is Aishwarya Rai's new boyfriend.
- Their heroes are social activists like Mahendra Dhoni, Salman Khan, Sanjay Dutt, Mallika Sherawat, Bipasha Basu and Rakhi Sawant.
- The ones you meet in offices read Economic Times and discuss about the latest fiscal situation in the country and the quarterly profit report just published by a multi-national. Their heroes are founding fathers of Modern India like N.R.Narayana Murthy, Vijay Mallya and the Ambani brothers.
- They are experts in such things as Corporate values, Quality control, Optimum Resource (these "resources" happen to have the obscure scientific name of Homo Sapiens Sapiens) utilization and Value-adds in careers.
- They know very well that Liechtenstein is the brother of Frankenstein who was the son of Einstein, that humans have landed on Jupiter, that China has an excellent political system that India should emulate for unhindered, all around development and that all Indians speak Hindi.
They constitute the council of wise who knows exactly what is good for this country and this world.
Who are these new species of Human race? Where did they come from all of a sudden?
These are the off-springs of Corporate Capitalism and its spin-off, Consumerism. They were created here by the 'IT boom' (an accurate phrase, as it is susceptible to go KA-BOOM at anytime..) and liberalization of the economy. They detest politics and seldom have any interest in History or the Social Sciences. Their GK is pathetic (except in Sports, Cinema or 'Celebrity' stuff) and are more interested in making Big Dollars than anything else. Their cultural skills are restricted to Pub dancing and singing Bollywood crap. The only culture that they are experts in is that of the United States. Their knowledge in religion are by and large restricted to those propagated by the great "Rich Man's Gurus" or Evangelists.
I heard that a few of them recently did a 'candle-vigil' (that's the fashion nowadays) near MG Road, Bangalore (that's their haven) on the eve of Bhagat Singh's execution. There were lengthy talks inspiring today's youth to emulate Bhagat Singh. Wait a minute. Emulating Bhagat Singh's ideals? Which one? Bhagat Singh was India's first famous Communist. He wanted to emulate the Russian Revolution here. The last book he read in jail before he was executed was "The State and the Revolution" written by Lenin. He was the first one who shouted "Inquilab Zindabad" (Long Live Revolution) in India as a salute to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Maybe these ITeMs were seeing too much of 'historical' Bollywood movies. Of course, Bollywood makes great patriotic movies. The only problem is that they make ones with too little of history, too much of fiction and too much of sensationalism thrown in to make Indians stand up and shout "Jai Hind" and make them feel patriotic for an hour (after which its back to business, of course). The 'history' shown in these movies probably made the inncoent ITeMs believe that Bhagat Singh was a nationalist who sang and danced with his girlfriend, shouted "Jai Hind", and went on to fight the British imperialists. In fact, before he died, Bhagat Singh wrote a letter to his mother expressing his anguish that if a Socialist revolution do not happen, India would be ruled by our own "Brown Sahibs" after "White Sahibs" leave. Interesting observation indeed!
But the whole of the Indian industry from Media to Automobile, increasingly cater to ITeMs specifically. Moronic industries that thrive on Morons. Its the media thats most distressing. Take a look at the newspaper Times of India. Its not safe for a sane person to believe what is written on it. They sensationalize everything, knowing that it is sensationalism, not facts, that the ITeMs need most. Compare the quality of news reporting in "Times of India" to that in "The Hindu". Or compare the content of their supplements. No wonder that most people recommend one to read "The Hindu" and "Frontline" if they are aspiring for Civil Service exams (that's something ITeMs have little hope of ever achieving). Heard anyone recommending Times of India for this? Then we have the news channels like CNN-IBN who believe that the pressing issue that this country faces to day is that of Rakhi Sawant's legal suit against Mikha Singh for smooching her, or what Virendar Sehwag needs to do to get back to form in Cricket. Well, it true. These are the crucial things happening in the world of ITeMs. I once even had the previlege of watching the CNN-IBN reporting on GSLV's failed launch of the satellite INSAT-4C this July. One agitated reporter (undoubtedly an ITeM) was ranting about how the "spaceship" INSAT-4C (nice name for a satellite) fell into the sea. He prophetically predicted that this was a disaster of epic proportions for India and that India's ambitious space program has been ruined beyond any hope. I was following the launch updates minute by minute at office on The Hindu's internet edition. (I was, in fact, hitting the refresh button every minute to see if some update has appeared on the page). At around 7 PM, I was disappointed to know that India's string of successful launches in PSLV and GSLV has been broken when the news of failure appeared on the web page, especially since Agni-III test failed the previous day. But I knew that ISRO would soon figure out what went wrong, (which was probably something trivial on appearance, but trivial faults can mean a lot on risky, high-tech ventures like SLVs), make corrections and relaunch the SLV. Since three previous launches were successful, it was evident that there was nothing inherently wrong with the vehicle design as such. But I was very much amused to see the report on CNN-IBN on TV when I reached home after work. That guy's agitated rant on screen was really entertaining. But I really admired the ISRO chairman, Mr Madhavan Nair, when he calmly told reporters that they will go over the flight data to see what went wrong and that they will get the GSLV back up soon. That's how ISRO dealt with the failure. The Moronic media reported it as a catastrophe. Maybe ITeMs do not that when the Chinese (who are more advanced than us in the space program) tried to launch their brand-new 'Chang Zheng-3B' (Long March-3B) booster in 1996 (carrying Intelsat 708 as payload), it weered off-course immediately after clearing launch tower and flew horizontally like an aircraft and crashed on top of a neighbouring village killing many (Chinese officially say six, but most others feel it was much, much higher). The third attempt of the budding Brazilian space program to make Brazil a space faring nation received a setback in 2003 when their space booster VLS-1 exploded on launchpad killing many scientists and engineers. This was after the two first and second launches of VLS-1 ended in failure with the rocket crashing into the sea. Even they didn't contemplate an end to their space programs. But our dear ITeM at CNN-IBN did.
I am not singling out TOI or CNN-IBN for extolling the virtues of some other newspapers or channels. They were merely chosen as two cases to describe a larger Moronic trend that I see nowadays around me.
All this makes me wonder.. Are the ITeMs going to inherit Earth?
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posted by Maedhros at 9:51 AM
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