Tushar Mangl Media

I am not someone who is quite comfortable with the hills, but mountains somehow always remind me of them. People say one should be careful during travelling to hills due to landslides etc. The penchant of destroying our environment is so ingrained in Indians that the mountains once so lovely are now bare and crumbling. Which causes problems during monsoons. Other than that I love the mountains during rains. In plains we have so much water logging and sewage overflow. In hills, the water just flows, reminding us to keep flowing. The weather chills down but the trees and the rest of the flora comes out so fresh, so clean, you can actually breathe the freshness in. The other reason is the humidity. Somehow the humidity associated with rains, in plains or near oceans is almost absent in the hills. All the more reason to enjoy the rains without worrying about the follow on of the humid weather.

Over the weekend I was browsing through some video book reviews of Six Degrees. My prime interest was to know how reader's felt about our story Entangled Lives.  As I surfed through the video streaming sites, I wondered whether the time has come for video reviews. We all know the benefits of video over text. But internet speeds are quite slow in India and access still limited. Also the quality might suffer due to inadequate or obsolete recording devices. On the flip side, video reviews are super cool. You get to relate to  your readers so much better. Will this trend be a hit? I can not be sure about it. You see when you check out reviews for a book, you just skim down a list of reviews, say on the shopping site or on a review website. You don't want to spend a lot of time researching and learning about the book.

A girl from a poor family is gang-raped in Haryana by five men. That was the year 2013. Happens all the time. We don't need to panic or do anything as it did not happen in Delhi or Mumbai. It happened in Bhiwani. Why bother? Circa 2016. The same men, again gang rape the same girl. No one is shocked. The glib, English-speaking middle class is not interested. No one wants to discuss a girl from a poor background who despite being a victim of a heinous crime, was trying to rebuild her life by shifting to Rohtak and studying for her masters. Nops, no one gives a damn, especially the police. Since society never expected them to do anything, remember the riots in Rohtak for reservation a few months ago? And by living up to its expectations, the police never did anything. You really can't police the will of the people, especially if that will is deep rooted in lawlessness. We saw it during the reservation stir when police allowed a free for all rioting for every frustrated f...

We have had a lot of discussion on this blog, in earlier days about   Kashmir   and the perennial problem it is for the Indian state.  Now that the central government is pumping in a INR 80,000 crore package for the Kashmiris, plus the usual flow of tax payers’ money for security reasons, they have received an excellent feedback from people of the state. By openly supporting the death of a commander of a terrorist organization, the people of Kashmir have clearly shown where their loyalties lay. And they do not look at all at par with the Indian state.  That leaves a very uncomfortable question for the Indian polity of the day. What to do with Kashmir at this stage? Is pumping money blindly and empowering the armed forced really going to work? This is plainly the strategy that everyone who has ruled in Delhi has followed. While militancy has weakened due to a strong army, hostility between the army and locals is only increasing. An ...

Finally the Prime Minister has shuffled his cabinet. He kept most of his council of ministers intact, just making minor changes here and there. Key takeaways - Former Karnataka CM Sadananda Gowda is moving down steadily in political circles. From Railways to Law and now to an obscure ministry his stars are not shining. PM Modi seems to have realized the need to induct more powerful females in his council of ministers. Hence two of them have been brought in, blunting the power of other formidable women leaders. Bihar still has the maximum representation in the PM's cabinet even though the people of the state have moved towards the RJD, Congress and JDU combine. The biggest gain has been for the law ministry with two senior Supreme Court lawyers taking charge of it. Talk about expertise there. Another big gainer is the environment ministry which has now got a known environmentalist to reign it in. The government now has two very well qualified doctors on board, none of t...

J Alchem's book A Road Not Traveled is an a mazing book by a debutant author. A unique plot with each character being endowed with bizzare sounding names. The book is brief yet all scenes are detailed and vividly described. The story moves at a good pace and ends with an unexpected twist. [No, I am not revealing the story].   Recieved a copy of the book through Goodreads Giveaway program from the author. 

Somewhere, someplace in the blogosphere lie blogs like Rummaging Through , with blogs so forgotten yet so beautiful. Pranita's blog is primarily about love and poetry. It probes deep into your heart and touches you deep within. The posts are quite few, just a handful of them and the blog does seem to reflect neglect. One of my favorites was Universe in Your Eyes.  Do check the blog out. 

Media is all going wild these days with speculations and support for a second term for RBI Governor. But many groups in social media are mobilizing support for him for gains that are totally contrary to interests of our nation. Under his stewardship, banks have had their worst performances, primarily for his policies to encourage loans to corporates with strong political connections. Loans were disbursed by banks without proper compliance and procedure, leading to huge losses. It is such forces which now want him to continue. So as to keep encouraging such practices. For those who feel, he being out of government is a good sign, look at how bank licenses have been issued. RBI still doles out licenses on a whim and in a very miserly fashion. A modern outlook demands that licenses should be offered on tap but no, the Governor didn't encourage that. Look at the overall customer service in the banking industry. Its pathetic, largely because RBI does not encourage banks to...

On Sunday, IndiBlogger organized a blogger's meet at The Lalit at New Delhi. It was supposed to be a networking event and a product launch. Need I say this? That IndiBlogger people are great at organizing such meets? It was the first time I saw them using the bar code kind system where we got the passes via email and the code was scanned by the guys at the even. Simple, innovative system to check you in. The even kicked off with lunch. The sumptuous feast was a good time to interact with old blogger buddies whom I had met at previous such meets. These included Pankaj, Gaurav, Tarun and others. Also meet a new blogger Rachit, a young blogger who blogs about content marketing. Post lunch Anoop opened up the session with a fun game. It was to introduce yourself and pick a number from 1 to 10. ( No.3 interestingly never came up, I was thinking if I got a chance, I would say no 3). The program continued with a session with experts on growth and nutrition issues. This was qu...

More than 90 lakh people in India have been affected by drought. Poor rainfall has been attributed to this condition. Of course, its easy to blame nature. The major effect it seems to be in one of the most prosperous states of India, Maharashtra. But the whole response to drought with long, meaning less notations of sympathy is suffocating. It almost makes you feel like puking listening to heroics of those who are pumping in crores of public money to ferry water to these regions. Here is why - The media is all gung -  ho about the drought and misery. It makes good story. It gives a nice PR opportunity for celebrities. In all this, the truth remains buried in plain sight. In the year 2002, in an economic survey stated that 70,000 crore rupees were spent in Maharashtra in ten years. Shockingly however the irrigation potential of state rose only 0.1%.  The people of Maharashtra it seems spent 70,000 crore plus on irrigation and still don't have a sound irrigation system to t...

Punjab is gearing for assembly polls. The ruling Akali - BJP alliance faces a strong incumbency factor as it has had a ten year run of the state politics. The media of course favors AAP as the coffers of the Delhi government have been too generous to the media. It continues to highlight the success of AAP in Lok Sabha elections some time ago. But what it does not feel like informing the citizens is that most of those MPs have faded away already. Only Bhagwant Mann remains party's face in Punjab. Of course, relations between AAP and Congress are nice and comfy and that seems to be the way these elections might go. An alliance between the Congress and AAP. The Akali Dal is financially sound and well organized as well. Whatever allegations of corruption people might hurl, they have tried to push the state forward. The BJP it seems has already decided to grab the post of the biggest loser. Its fate now lies in the border district of Amritsar where the Navjot factor will decide ab...