New Delhi Times

Cait Murphy has written a scathing article in Fortune deriding India’s claims of self proclaimed superpower status. Murphy mentions the oft repeated statistics around poverty, illiteracy and unemployment to argue that India’s ambitions of becoming a superpower are misguided. I don’t argue with Murphy on that part. We need to take care of our problems. What I didn’t like, and in fact actually found offensive, is the tone of the article. The “first world” has an incomprehensible viewpoint that every developing country must first solve its poverty problem before attempting to make progress in any other sphere. I just can not understand why it should be assumed that if India is progressing in some ways, it must be because we are ignoring or *gasp* unaware of our other problems. Each time India rejoices on the success of a local business going global, of making advancement in space technology, of shining in the software services sector, the so called (and self proclaimed) developed world tells us that “half of world’s poor live in India”. Well, I ask, so what? Yes we have many serious problems that need to solve. And general economic prosperity is one way to alleviate the situation. Are we expected to stop all work and wait until every single of our teeming billions is well fed and disease free? Is that how America progressed? Did it wait to abolish slavery before they made any technological progress? Did America get rid of apartheid before launching their space program? Are there no homeless in America today? Of course not!

Progress can not happen in linear fashion. We can’t solve our poverty problem without strengthening our economy. We can’t generate employment without developing our services sector. We can’t make progress if we don’t get a chance to feel good about ourselves.

I am sick and tired of this first world attitude and it is really disappointing to see such cliched drivel coming from Fortune.

Mohammad Afzal was handed a death sentence for helping execute a terrorist attack at the Indian parliament. Several people were killed in the incident which was a direct attack at the seat of country’s democracy. So you would think that this heinous crime deserves no mercy. However, in typical desi manner, we have politicized the issue in the most disgusting manner. Afzal’s family was well within its rights to file a mercy petition with the President. But it is beyond my comprehension that we are witnessing widespread protests in Kashmir supporting Afzal. How can any case be made for defending a terrorist? Others like Geelani (who was himself suspected in the same incident and got away on a technicality) are making veiled threats of violence should Afzal be hanged

Speaking for Afzal, Geelani (formerly an accused in the 2001 attack that rocked the nation) recalled that when Maqbool Bhat was hanged in 1984, it resulted in thousands of Kashmiris taking to violence.
“Do you want the same thing to happen again,” he asked. The dire warning was accompanied by a disclaimer that Afzal was not innocent. “I am not saying he (Afzal) is innocent. But he has not got justice.
We are questioning the quantum of punishment… Death penalty is not the proper sentence,” Geelani said

This of course has become a good oppurtunity for gaining political mileage as well. Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad spoke in support of Afzal. It is shameful that chief minister of a state that has suffered so much at the hands of terrorism should speak in support of a terrorist.

Hindustan Times editorial carried an absurd argument in favor of showing mercy on Afzal:

There are two reasons why Mohammed Afzal should not be sentenced to death. First, while Afzal deserves the strictest punishment for the part he played in the attack on Parliament House in December 2001, we think he does not fit into the “rarest of rare” category. Afzal was neither the main planner of the attack nor its perpetrator. In other words, he was not, unlike Nathuram Godse, Harjinder Singh Jinda and Beant Singh, personally involved in killing anyone. His role was that of helping the main accused, who are either dead or are yet to be arrested. Second, we need to pay heed to the near-unanimous view in  Kashmir
Valley that Afzal should not be executed. That both Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and Farooq Abdullah  agree on this is because they understand that, like the execution of Maqbool Butt in 1984, the action could further alienate the state from the rest of India and create yet another ‘martyr’ for the separatist movement.

If executing a proven terrorist will further alienate the state from rest of India (which is a gross exaggeration), then we need to really think again the willingness of that state to become one with India. I am sure most Kashmiris would not condone such violence and would not support showing leniency towards terrorism. Besides, this argument suggests that had the terrorist been a Gujarati or a Marathi, it was OK to execute him because those states are anyway well integrated with rest of the country. In fact, if the mercy appeal is accepted then it will be a victory for the seperatist movement.

Incidents like this just reiterate our “soft state” image across the world. They also expose how low we can stoop to politicize even issues of national security and integrity. Shame on us!

While we in Delhi took the lead in organizing the first Barcamp in India, Chennai has really taken the ball and is running with it. After their own Barcamp, they organized the much publicized BlogCamp. And now Vijay informs me that they will be conducting a unique event (definitely a first in India) similar to the DEMO conference that happens in the US. In Vijay’s words:

Proto is a platform. It is a showcase of the new age india, and the spirit of technological innovation in this country. We are a team of 20-so technological enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs-turning-VCs who are creating a list of the best technological innovations by startups here in India, bringing all the best VCs in and around the country (including from the Silicon Valley) and giving the entrepreneurs a chance to share their vision and dream. If it resonates with the technological community, who in the end of the day will be their end-consumers, the VCs have a better scale to evaluate the degree of pain point they are addressing. The slogan is simple: We are going to make every minute of the VC worthwhile, and hence will be putting the best of the breed companies on stage. The basic criteria is that they have something very innovative. In simple terms patentable technology, which will put the age old question of “Name me a company in India that builds products” to rest, for good, and they need to have a working prototype or version one of their product – as it helps everyone to better understand the idea, and also alleviates the fear of the idea being stolen.
We are looking for companies working on cutting edge products from and around India, to be a part of this. We have tenatively planned for this event three months down the lane, so that companies do get a chance to put together their concept into a working product, and everybody will get a chance to plan their schedules accordingly. This, we believe is going to be the beginning of a new revolution in India, when the youth rise up to define their own future, when India is showcased as more than a services destination.

I think this is a great idea. My only objection is to link innovation with “patentable” technology. Patents are such hairy beasts that if anything they often thwart innovation. Besides getting a patent is a long winded process. It is unlikely that a small little startup would have actually received any patents. But I am sure Proto will feature non-patented but innovative products as well. More information will be soon available at http://www.proto.in
And I think its about we had another event in Delhi! I am really interested in seeing something similar to Startup School Any takers?

Usability is my new obsession. Even after over three decades of the beginning of the personal computing revolution, we are completely inept at producing usable software. What is worst is that inspite of this, we – the engineers – simply refuse to acknowledge the importance of interaction design. No sir! What we care about is new progamming languages, code optimizations, scalable software and fancy terms like AJAX, RIA and RoR. User interface ranks right at the bottom, just below writing readable code and just above remembering to take a bath.

The perception amongst engineers that user interface is unimportant is a worrying trend. I think this attitude is a little bit more prevalent in India because traditionally Indian services companies have primarily been involved in building server side enterprise software. This is the kind of software that often runs without any interface or has an interface that is visible to very few technically savvy people. So historically, all the important development was handed off to the best engineers while the newbies were consigned to building the UI. The after effects of this linger on even today when we are working more and more on consumer facing products. The user interface is the single most important reason for success or failure of any product in this domain. Take, for example, this article about the increase in sales a travel site saw after they redesigned their site (http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3330.asp):

Following major site redesign work, MyTravel, one of the UK’s leading holiday and leisure groups with brands including Airtours, Going Places and Mytravel.com, is reaping significant improvements in online sales.

The three-phase redesign, developed in partnership with Foviance, has already resulted in a 20% increase in online booking conversion following the completion of the first two phases. Work on the third phase is to commence later this month.

The first phase, which went live in December, reduced booking times by up to 40% by simplifying the number of steps needed to book from eight to five. This resulted in a 10% improvement in conversion levels across all MyTravel’s websites.

So far most software companies in India have been reluctant to invest in developing interaction design expertise. This has in turn, meant that interaction design is a profession few understand and even fewer choose to pursue. This is unforuntate because we lose all the creative talent to other disciplines like advertising, toy design, corporate branding etc. If we want to build truly world class products, we must start to understand the importance of usability. We must make a concerted effort to make it a glamorous, high paying career oppurtunity. Just like we work hard to attract technical talent, we need to work hard to attract creative talent. Believe me, the “creative types” are scared of us engineers. They think we dont understand them and dont appreicate them. We have to tell them its not true! We love you guys! Please come work with us!

Bonus link: So you want to be an interaction designer?

Entrepreneurship is about defying odds. And if you think that odds are stacked against you, then wait till you read this amazing story of Sharathbabu who rose from the slums of Chennai to become a successful entrepreneur.

When you constantly worry about the next square meal, you do not dream of becoming a doctor or an engineer. The only thing that was on my mind was to get a good job because my mother was struggling a lot.

We bitch a lot about our education system and how flawed it is (I am actually writing a seperate blog post on it!). But inspite of its flaws, occasionally it manages to support and produce gems like Sharathbabu. Without all the scholarships, education of many such deserving people would be impossible. For once, taxpayer money is being put to good use!

Here is wishing all fellow Indians a very happy independence day. In Delhi, there is a (fast dying) tradition of flying kites on this day. Unlike in the US, where flying kites is a purely recreational beach activity, we fly figher kites with special glass laden thread called manjha. I used to be an ardent kite fier in school and college days. Even then, there used to be a lot more kites in the sky. But in the last 10 years, we have almost completely lost this art form. For example, today there were hardly 10 kites in the sky where I live. So when I went up on the terrace, there wasn’t much competition for a kite flying pro like me (even if I say so myself ) We ended up cutting 7 kites and lost just 1 kite in return. There was a strong breeze and since I prefer heavy fighter kites, two of my fingers got bruised from the manjha. But bruised fingers are mark of a true kite flier.
Flying fighter kites is an art. There is lot of strategy involved in a kite fight. The weight of your kite, its stability, the sharpnes and strength of your thread and your own skill all matter. In general, heavier the kite, the better it is. Contrary to common perception, very stable kites are not very suitable for kite fights. Stable kites simply keep going up in altitude. So its hard to get your kite to swoop down quickly for attack. There was a time when I used to spend hours on the terrace flying kites. I used to actually go to old Delhi to a place called Lal Kuan to buy special manjha. I even made some kites of my own. Looking back, I think kite flying is the only thing that I had been truly passionate about before Tekriti. It is unfortunate that I dont get enough chances to pursue it more. But at least, it is good to know that I still haven’t lost all of my old touch

We just added a new feature to Venturewoods.org. The idea is to create an online job exchange targeted at startups in India. The Venturewoods group blog is focussed on discussing the startup/VC ecosystem in the country. So this job board nicely complements the blog and should interest the Venturewoods readers. If there is sufficient interest then we will think about setting up a more elaborate system. For now, we have kept it simple, by creating two posting areas:
1. VentureJobs Please feel free to post your company profile and jobs here
2. VentureTalent If you want to become part of a startup team, please post your brief bio here
Do check it out!

The Indian blogosphere is getting all worked up because blogpsot has been blocked off in India. (not giving any links – its flying all over the place anyway) Yes, it is a move that doesn’t make much sense. Yes it is a form of censorship. Yes, the government is moronic enough to not realize that you cant really censor the internet.But for heaven’s sake, just stop for a moment and try to understand what the government was intending to do. Government was not attempting to curtail anybody’s freedom of speech. There was credible information that certain blogs were being used to pass on sensitive information amongst terrorists. Since a serious terrorist attack happened just a few days back and 100s of lives were lost, it is not unimaginable that in a panic knee jerk reaction, they just blocked off everything. I don’t see how comparisons with China are relevant. A lot of folks in the blogosphere are tech savvy and they realize that nothing can really be blocked off (proxies et al) but your average government official is not that tech. savvy. In his/her effort to make sure that terrorist communication could be cut off, somebody ordered a blanket ban (or the ISPs interpreted it that way). Either way, it was an attempt to thwart terrorism. So it’s OK if we can’t get our dose of blogs for a few days. The terrorist attack itself didn’t evoke such a strong response in the blogosphere but we can’t access blogspot for a couple of days and suddenly it is the end of the world. Geez.
UPDATE: wow, what a response! Thanks everybody for the great discussion in the comments to this post. Looks like the ban is going to get lifted and it was indeed the ISPs who screwed up. Looking at the list of blocked sites, I must admit that this appears to have been politically motivated. But my original stand remains – we must be willing to put up with whatever inconveniences for the sake of fighting terrorism (though this particular instance apparently didn’t have anything to do with that!).

Off to Chennai for a business trip over the weekend. I never ever imagined that I could actually get tired of travelling! I love travelling! But lately there has been so much of it that I am completely exhausted! I just hope there are no long queues at the airport due to the heightened security!

Jatin asks how long are we going to put up with this terrorism that our friendly neighbor inflicts upon us. Yesterday’s terrorist attack was sickening and it caused lot of grief and pain across the country. There is perception amongst us that as a nation we are not aggressive enough. Why are we not like Israel? Or America? Well, I thank God that we are not like them. Unfortunately violence rarely, if ever, suppresses violence. If offense could end terrorism then why is Israel still blood soaked? And why are American soldiers still dying in Iraq? Does anybody seriously think that world is a safer place now that Iraq is no longer run by Saddam?
Even though it sounds pessimisitc, the fact is that there is no effective way to curb terrorism. It has never been done in the history of man kind. When you kill a terrorist, you create a martyr in the eyes of many who will grow up to emulate him. So each terrorist annhiliated means 3 more in the making. Its a vicious circle and at the root of it always is a strong (and often irrational) belief that injustice was meted out to a certain section of the society. I guess the best bet is to just let a generation of terrorists to grow old and die. That would make the next generation see the futility of terrorism. You gain nothing – not even martyrdom.
So even though we are sad, disturbed and enraged, we must resist the urge to fight terrorism with violence. It has never worked before and it wont this time as well.