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Awesome photos of Colourful India.

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Today India celebrates its 60th independence from the British Raj – Happy Birthday! So 5 more years to retirement? . Over the last 6 decades has had quite a ride. There has been a lot of talk about it lately here in the local media in UK along with many celebrations in London (mostly to woo Indian business, Bollywood, etc).

The BBC showed a very interesting documentary called "Partition: The Day India Burned" on the partition of India from the British colonial days in two states – India and Pakistan. I knew the partition was very painful with both my grandparents (maternal and paternal) having to move from Lahore (now in Pakistan) to India and the loss they had to entail – both financial and emotional. Over the years they had talked to me about it – but never in detail and watching this documentary brought tears to my eyes. Never has there been such a mass movement of refugees in the history of mankind – ever! One example which sticks to mind is the solid 50 mile long line of people – walking. If you can watch it I highly recommend the documentary.

The Guardian has been running some interesting stories about the two countries after 60 years and had their complete G2 pullout section dedicated to India. And with headlines such as "India is seen as a success story, while Pakistan is written off as a failed state and the hiding place of Osama bin Laden. What went wrong?" and "India: This is the best place in the world to be born right now?" make it an interesting read. The also cover what the neighbors think of India – both Pakistan and Bangladesh. They also have a story on the best and worst times from families across the social divide. And incase you were curious, no, they have not forgotten the cult of the sex goddess.

Guardian has more stories here.

Tags: .desh

Don’t get me wrong – I love Italy – the country (whatever little I have seen), the food, the  language, the people but all this is also true for India

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If you are like me, and your Hindi is crap, what better way to learn it by reading the news via Google News Hindi?

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While this story is a few months old, I just came across it. Seems like China has accurate reproductions of the disputed Indo/China border down to scale – including accurate geographical features. Take a look below – the image on top is from China’s reproduction and while on the bottom is on Google earth.

Tags: .desh

Interesting story by the NYTimes on how American graduates are joining Indian companies and going to India for initial training before going back to their offices. They also talk a little about their experiences in a developing country and how some of the most basic things are different.

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BBC has this very inspiring story about how a few people give Indians from the poorest rung of society a chance to get into IIT (Indian Institute of Technology). Those of you are familiar with IIT, know how huge an achievement this is. Those who are not familiar with IIT – they are looked at IIT = MIT + Harvard + Princeton to give you an idea. There are many rankings and depends on what you believe as comparing apples and oranges is always difficult.

Santosh’s (the guy in the BBC’s story) brothers along with the rest of his family are illiterate, and I just cannot get over the quote from one of his brother:

We don’t know what my brother Santosh has passed, but people say he will get a respectful job and earn good money when he starts working.

Of course, there are people who are not happy about the whole situation. And before you ask, no, I did not go to IIT – I am not in the same league.

Tags: .desh

Thanks to Rohit for sending me this – I have been just too busy (as you can probably tell), to even blog about this. There is an awesome letter to the Pakistani people (from Indian bloggers), which is worth a read! If you have not been involved or know some of the Indian culture, you might not get the full context, but still worth a shot.

Tags: .desh

Although I keep to my geeky side of things, every now and then I do come across a political story that I find intriguing for various reasons which I post here. This is one of them, reported by BBC about Nixon’s dislike of ‘witch’ Indira as he called Indira Gandhi, India’s Prime Minister from 1966 – 77 and then 1980 – 84.

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I stumbled across an interesting blog – all written in Hindi – and boy is my Hindi rusty! But this is an excellent example of the usage (and limitations) of a UNICODE implementation. Not sure of the content of the blog itself as it will …. ahem …. take me a little while reading up and understanding. Flame mails awaited eagerly.

Tags: .desh

This has to fall in the wacky-ideas’ category. Dian has an interesting post (cross posted here) about Roger Green and David Cook seem like your run-of-the-mill high tech execs — well dressed, well spoken, bright guys. That is, until they tell you their business plan. Dian heard it at a party at the Gartner conference, then did a quick interview with them. And then you have to wonder, are these guys whacked?

Their basic idea is to take a used cruise ship, plant it in international waters three miles off the coast of El Segundo, near LA, people it with 600 of the brightest software engineers they can find around the world (both men and women), and run a 24-hour-a-day programming shop, thereby avoiding H-1B visa hassles while still exploiting offshore labor cost arbitrage and completing development projects in half the time they’d take onshore or offshore.

“As more people have run the [offshore] gauntlet and found the joys of traveling to India coach class and having three weeks of stuff on their desk when they come back, [they discover] it’s much more disruptive than they ever imagined it would be,” explains Mr. Green.

I would one might want a list of those engineers and try and find out what they have been smoking? What do you think?

Tags: .desh