A Mint colleague forwarded a note from Rahul Joshi to the editorial staff of The Economic Times. I don’t know Mr Joshi but have little reason to believe it isn’t from him because it is fundamentally the right message for any editor to constantly send out and reinforce. And I am glad India’s largest selling business newspaper is reiterating some fundamentals of sound journalism to its staff in this way because it is good for ET’s readers as well as Indian journalism and newspapers when such practices are actually adhered to. Here is what the memo... (more...)

A lot of ink, digital or otherwise, has been devoted in recent years to comparing India and China, especially in terms of infrastructure–or lack of and their abundance of wide roads, large airports… But what is less talked about is how both countries are taking very different approaches to customer service, especially in terms of government services and how they are delivered to citizens. Take a simple example of airports. At most Chinese airports, immigration counters have what I consider a very effective way of providing feedback to the government. This is... (more...)

I love India’s large private airlines, especially Jet Airways, which I have been a loyal fan of since it started. In Jet, and also Kingfisher (though, unlike many, I have steadfastly stuck to my first love–the why being a matter one day soon of another blog posting,) I see a truly great example of an Indian company/industry that gives most global airlines a run for their money when it comes to onboard service, treatment of passengers and overall efficiency. Given a good connection, I would fly Jet any day over American, Continental, Delta, and often... (more...)

It is turning out to be quite the momentous year for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. And I am not talking about his well chronicled and quite remarkable resurrection of the India-US nuclear deal, which, early this year, was all but dead. The only Indian Prime Minister to have actually earned his PhD, the erudite Singh and his wife, Gursharan Kaur, are about to score a rare trifecta as proud parents. They are set to see, within a space of some 12 months, all three of their daughters turn into published authors. It began with youngest daughter Amrit Singh’s... (more...)

Since the 13 September bombings in New Delhi, there has been a lot written and said in the media about the challenges faced and lapses by police and other government officials in dealing with domestic terrorism. Much of it has focused on what steps ought to be taken in public places. A 17 September Agence France-Press article raises questions about whether such a diverse and complex country such as India can ever get its act together, noting that “A spate of bombings in India has fuelled calls for stronger counter-terrorist measures, but duplicating US or ... (more...)

Two emails since Saturday’s New Delhi bombings and a story in 16 September Financial Express on Indian hotels hiking “tariffs despite slowdown, competition” have me thinking about the medium-term impact of the bomb blasts in New Delhi on 13 September on the Indian economy. While ascertaining that we were okay, Shefali, a friend from California, wrote in an email that while the Duggal family was set to come to India in Nov/December for a couple of weddings in Jammu and some R&R in what was once home, recent events in Amarnath had given her some... (more...)

Woke up the other day to an email from Nikhil Pahwa of Medianama who asked what I thought about a New York Times article on SpinSpotter, a start-up that claims to have come up with a tool that “exposes news spin and bias, misuse of sources, and suspect factual support.” Here is what the NYT article says: Users download Spinoculars, a toolbar that sits atop the browser and lets readers know if the story they are reading has any phrases or words that indicate bias. (It works only in Firefox now and will work in Internet Explorer in a couple weeks.) It highlights... (more...)

A recent post on Indian prisons (read it here) got this interesting, tangential response from Arvind Kumar, a regular commentator on A Romantic Realist (see his comments on the Words Mean Little When It Comes to Gay Rights in India post here). Kumar’s views on Indian journalists may or may not reflect conventional wisdom but do raise interesting questions, don’t they? “Most likely, there was some article in the US media about how private companies were profiting from prisons and so the Indian hacks must have come up with similar reports. Indian journalism... (more...)

I don’t particularly care of Bollywood or Hollywood stars other than watching the occasional movie on the back of an airplane seat, but I have been a regular reader and fan of director Shekhar Kapur’s blog (read it here). I discovered it relatively recently, when both of us happened to be on a panel about Indian media at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management earlier this year. What was interesting about the blog was that unlike what I heard of most celebrity blogs, this one is rarely about him and more often about interesting... (more...)

I didn’t know this until now but, for nearly 10 years, the Paris Metro train system has had its own smell–thanks to Madeline, a scent based on lemons, oranges and lavender. Every month, about 1.5 tons of Madeline are mixed into cleaning fluids and spread on station floors every month. A recent train trip from New Delhi to Haridwar–my first on an Indian train in little over 20 years–had me thinking about this (no points for guessing why!) and then I happened to read that Berlin’s S-Bahn, which apparently smells of “stale... (more...)