After B Tech, what?

This is the question that stares at IT grads fresh out of college. IT companies that have suspended campus recruitment suggest that leading educational institutions introduce a one-year post-graduate programme for students on loose ends; that is, those passing out of colleges this year. The suggestion is reported to have come from the communications manager of a leading IT company.

This way colleges could hold graduates in class-rooms for one more year, by which time IT industry would hopefully recover from the current recession. The suggestion has not evoked response from any leading educational institution. What is there in it for them ? Besides, students are looking for jobs, not parking space till the industry is ready to take them. And where is the guarantee that they would get jobs after the stop-gap post-graduate programme ?

The suggestion would, perhaps, be acceptible if 1)IT companies come forward to sponser students for the stop-gap programme; and 2) if the sponsored candidates can be sure of employment after successful course completion.

Newspaper industry in Britain used to have a sponsorship scheme,in which school-leavers recruited by newspapers were put through a proficiency course in the National Council for Training of Journalists. Curriculum, designed with guidance from the media, focused on working experience and hands-on training. And the graduating candidates get a proficiency certificate and job in the nespapers that sponsored them.Their course is paid for by the newspapers that also provide a stipend to students.

Would IT majors consider such a model for eligible IT graduates, now on hold for possible employment in 2010? Corporate India is used to cherry-picking recruits from leading Tech and B-schools.

Cross-posted from  Giving It A Shot

Of Obama and his BlackBerry

Reading about the US presidential right to keep his  BlackBerry, with certain restrictions on access,   I wondered  if  Joe the Plumber  would get  on Obama’s e-mail list. If  he doesn’t,  I don’t see how else can the  ’people’s president’   stay in touch with folks at the grass-roots level .  Of course,  he  gets   feedback from his trusted Chicago friends  who are security-cleared for inclusion in President’s BlackBerry contacts list.  But it would not  be quite the same for Mr Obama as getting an e-mail from the man on the street.  MOTS,  on their part,  can no longer shoot a mail addressed  barack.obama dot com ,  giving vent to their concerns  on the bailout of General Motors or  the fallout of Gauntanamo closure;  and offering advice to their president on the pedigree that fits in with the White House protocol. 

A NYT article  says  Mr Obama has won the BlackBerry battle he has been waging with his  ’handlers’.  Was amused by the newsaper reporter’s use of the word  ’handlers’.  We tend to associate it with handling pets .   The  word may give a handle to newspaper cartoonists.   While on the subject I wonder what the latest is on the search for a puppy  for the Obama White House.  Such is the train of thoughts the use of the word  ’handlers’ can evoke.

The media in the US,  tracking  the race for the title of  ‘First Dog’ at the  Obama White House,  has now  another Obama  story to chase.  Wouldn’t we all want to be kept informed as to  who makes it to the President’s BlackBerry list, and who doesn’t ? And the story would  not go away so long as there are people lobbying for inclusion. And then there may be some with whom Mr Obama would  want to be in e-mail touch, but can’t, because  they may have problem getting  BlackBerry clearance from the Obama handlers.

Google and greenhouse gases

Did you ever wonder how much greenhouse gases Internet  users generate? I didn’t,couldn’t care, till I happened  by this post by blogger James Crabtree.  He says he is  confused by what he read in the media – that two Google  searches from your desktop could generate as much carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea. 

Interesting thought.  But could that be true ?  And blogger Crabtree,  presumably,   put the kettle on  as he e-mailed his friend at Google.  This blogger believes in getting to the bottom of  it.  And the British usually use up a cuppa or two as they get on with it.  If Googling was environmnetally  problematic,  what about CO2 emissions from loads of other online activites? 

Thus, rose a  storm in the tea cup.  Set   off by a report in The  Sunday Times, London;  stirred up by  blogger Crabtree ,  it  gathered velocity as  Google’s rapid rebuttal team   got  into the act.   Their response – One Google search emits 0.2 grams of  CO2.

Putting it in perspective, an average car driven for a km generates as much greenhouse gases as a thousand Google searches. Other interesting,  if widely ignored,  data Google  trotted out are:

A typical Google search takes less than  0.2 seconds.  In terms of greenhouse emission one G-search equals 0.2 grams of CO2.

Google data centres process 200 million searches daily.  A search query goes to Google servers in the US,  Europe, Japan and China.

The EU standard for tailpipe emission is 140gms. CO2 per km. But most cars don’t reach this level.

Viewing a web page we generate 0.02gm. CO2 per second; keeping the PC on produces 40 to 80 gm. per hour.

An industry analyst cited in the media   says  the IT sector generates as much gas  as world airlines industry – 2 percent of global CO2 emission. Google, they say,  has every search sent simultaneously to all its servers, instead of routing it to the nearest one. The idea is to be the fastest with results – 0.2 second per search.

Anyway,  such knowledge about Internet usage and  greenhouse gas emission is unlikely to change the way we  use the Net.  If anything, computer and broadband usage can  be said to be next in line  for  exponential growth in India (after the cell phone revolution that is).

Speaking of an Inconvenient Truth  ,  I wonder if  anyone keeping count  of CO2 emissions from the Israeli bombardment in Gaza ?

Reporting Gaza

Martha Gellhorn,  American war correspondent of  Spanish Civil war vintage,  was  quoted as saying,  “If a journalist can do nothing positive, to make the world more liveable or less cruel or stupid, he can at least record truly, and that is something no one else will do”.

And that is the thing -  ‘reporting truly’ -  that Israel doesn’t want done,  in respect of its current offensive in Gaza. Israel’s refusal to allow foreign correspondents inside Gaza prevents media scrutiny of the plight of civilians there.  And the world media appears to have accepted the situation.  BBC telecasts occasionally brief reports from its Gaza-based producer Rushdi Abulaouf, but much of its war coverage is done by reporters looking in on Gaza  from the Israel end.

Rushdi, functioning under severe limitations and a constant threat to his personal safety, comes on ‘live’ on BBC, usually during the daily three-hour truce in Israel bombing.  And there isn’t much he can do by way of reporting Gaza on his own.

There are other Arab journalists inside Gaza, notably from Al-Jazeera. But then their coverage is seen mainly in the Middle-East.  Al-Jazeera telecast has been banned in most parts of the US.  Besides,  people in the US,  and even in India,  are led to believe that Al-jazeera is Osama’s mouth-piece.

Had Martha Gellhorn  been around  (she died in 1998, aged 89)  I wonder what she would have done. Or could have done.  Refusal of entry to foreign media is not the only unacceptable act of  Israel in  its war on Gaza. World media,  the press freedom and human rights activists  appear to have accepted the unacceptable.

It was Slumdog’s day at LA

Four Golden Globes – the best picture, director, screenplay and music score. Danny Boyle’s  Slumdog Millionaire  has drawn global attention to Mumbai slums and their grim reality,  as depicted by an orphan boy struggling to make it in life.  A  Kaun-banega-carorpati  type TV show  gives  him that chance to make it.  And the millionaire slumboy,  reunited with his girl, walks into the sunset to the music set by the Golden Globe winner A R Rahman.   Slumdog  (haven’t seen it yet),  they say,  is Oscar-class movie with a Bollywood ending.

At the award-presentation ceremony  telecast the world over from  Los Angeles   Bollywood presence was perceptible.   Shah Rukh Khan got a chance to lead Slumdog’s female interest -  Freida Pinto -  to the centre stage and introduce her to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association,   sponsors of  the Golden Globe awards,  and  an   audience   comprising  virtually a  ’who’s who’ of the US movie and televison.

Bollywood’s  Anil kapoor  was seen springing out of his chair on hearing actor-presenter  Tom Cruise announce   the best picture award for Slumdog Millionaire.       

Simon Beaufoy  was the first of the four  Slumdog  winners to be called on to the stage to accept his Golden Globe for making a screenplay out of  Vikas Swarup’s  novel -  ‘Q and A’ .  A Bollywood director  Mahesh Manjrekar is quoted in  The Hindu as saying that it was ironical no desi production house (Chopra,  Johar,  Screwwalla,  are you reading?)  took up this subject.  “I wanted to do it but by then the rights were sold,” says Mahesh to The Hindu’s Ziya Us Salam.  Irony was Manjrekar wound up playing gangster Javed in Danny Boyle’s  Slumdog.

The director (centre),  with the producer and  the female lead,  making a thank-you speech.  And the film-maker brought on to the stage rest of his Slumdog gang,  represented at the award-presentation ceremony.

The Slumdog theme and the acclaim the movie has received reminds me of Satyajit Ray’s  Pathar Panchali. Both films dwell  on poverty.  Pathar Panchali made waves gobally in the 50s , but was no box-office hit in India. And he film came in for flak from many in mainstream cinema in Bombay. A leading actress of her times and MP,  Nargis Dutt,  had taken a swipe at Satyajit Ray for glorifying India’s poverty.

Where’s ‘Satyam’ Raju ?

It is a question to which no one appears to have an  answer. CNBC-TV 18 reporter in Hyderabad who raised the  question with the police was told that in the absence of  anyone filing an FIR they weren’t really looking for Sri Ramalinga Raju of Satyam.  On the morning after the newsbreak on the Rs.7,000 crore scam a media report quoting PTI said  Mr Raju is believed to have left for the US in connection with a court case.

Sounds a bit thick, doesn’t it? That someone who just dropped a ton of bricks on his company’s 50,000 emloyees and shareholders  should scoot off  to meet his  legal obigation to a court in the US.

 If  indeed Mr Raju  is such a respector of the legal process his primary obligation would have been to be on hand to help the authorities in investigating the mega-buck mess he has caused.   Anyway, I don’t think Mr Raju can afford to stay away for long.

A more pertinent point here is:  Shouldn’t the police have kept track of  Mr Raju,  even if no one had filed an FIR?  Surely, the police or the economic offences wing persons, aren’t that dim as not to see a cognizable offence in Mr Raju’s confessional  statement.  Isn’t there, or shouldn’t there be,  provision for anticipatory  custody of white-collar crime suspects ?

Gaza under ground attack.

After a week of pounding from air Israelis moved their troops into Gaza strip. TV channels,  notably CNN,  kept up  a running coverage,  but their reporting was from the Israel end,  for no foreign journalist has been allowed into  Gaza. TV doesn’t take us behind this picture of  smoking  Gaza.  It takes a  blogger to give us a sense of the misery and hardhip of ordinary Gazans,  whose most normal condition of life  today is its uncertainty.  A US-based blogger Laila El-Haddad,  who has, till now,  managed to stay in touch with her parents in  Gaza,  shares her thoughts on the plight of  Gazans, trapped in their homes and nowhere to go for safety.

Excerpts from Laila’s blog post,  after a call to her father,  a physician in Gaza, soon after the land offensive  started on Saturday night:  He said Israel destroyed 3 JAWAL  centers (the mobile  provider); so many mobile phones, including his own,  are  down,  but his landline is functional.. He tells me that a building behind my cousin’s house in Gaza City was destroyed,  and is now burning down in a voracious fire.  It had an orphanage in it.  My mother says she won’t lie..they are terrified. 

Flares and firebombs are being shot to light up the sky.  Propaganda fliers telling the people of Gaza that  ”they chose Hamas and Hamas has abandoned them”;  that “Hamas  will lead them to catastrophe”…and calling on them  (Gazans) to “take charge of their destiny” and to call a given phone number or email with tips and then a warning  to call  “in secrecy” (thanks for the tip). Israel is also  broadcasting on al-Aqsa TV station there.

A sampling of a spate of comments to Laila’s post:

It happened in Bosnia-Herzegovina,  it happened in  Rwanda,  it’s happening in Darfur and what exactly should  we call the mass murder of Palestinian civilians?  Surely not a “quest for peace”.

We are so frustrated,  we go to rallys,  we blog but we feel so helpless. We call our cousins and they sound so scared it frustrates us – Nadia Hammad

I just watched the CNN news interview with you (Laila) and your dad.  I can’t belive how your dad, mashallah,  controlled himself while under attack and you didn’t lose it either listening to him . 

I am a Canadian…non Arab, non Muslim…but a human being and a mother. I cry for the Palestinians just as I did for the people in Lebanon and the Iraqis.

Getting people to smile

It may be bit of a tall order – getting people to smile, and  spread  cheer,  in trouled times such as the present  economic meltdown.  But it hasn’t deterred Bren Bataclan from trying.  In fact he has made it one of his life’s social  missions to engage,  literally,  people on the street to spread a bit of cheer around their neighbourhoods.  And here is how he goes about doing it.

 Boston-based ‘smile artist’  Bren Bataclan  leaves his paintings  around in public places for the taking.  The catch is in the note stuck to his paintings, which says, ‘This  painting is yours,  if you promise  to smile at random  people,  more often’.

Folks who pick them up are asked to e-mail Bren how and where they found his painting and what they felt about his idea. The  Filipino-American calls his excercise Smile Boston Project.  In his website  Bren says he leaves his paintings  at employment agencies,  hospitals,   stores and commercial estabishments that are about to close down under recession.  Folks who frequent these places  need cheering up.  And the ones who pick up Bren’s paintings feel obliged to walk the extra mile to spread smiles around them.  Bren says the purpose of  his paintings, and rather the unique  way of their disposal, is to make people in Boston and beyond smile more. A graphics designer with masters degree in computer  animation Bren reportedly turns out 25 paintings every  week to be placed  at  sidewalks,  park benches, airport terminals, trains,  senior citizens’ centers etc. His cartoon-like paintings have found their way to many US cities and abroad.  It is said Bren has had his friends carry his paintings to be placed on  public space in New York,  San Francisco,  Djibouti,  Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and his native Manila.

It’s about giving,  sharing, and spreading smiles around, says Bren.  His  Smile Boston Project website  makes a cheerful read ,  of feedback from follks who picked up his paintings;  media reports, and  blog posts.  I reckon I am the 36th blogger to do a post on Bren Bataclan