Indian Nationalism -> Profits

We Indians tend to think of ourselves as really patriotic and nationalistic in general. This feeling has been instilled in us since we were little. Whether or not we really are any bit more patriotic than are western counterparts is a story for another day as we do not hesitate a lot when it comes to taking another country's passport if it provides better visa prospects. I am not making any judgements on whether or not it is the right thing to do. I am just stating a fact that taking another passport comes with the binding that if there is a war between India and the current nation of which the person is holding the new passport of, the said person's allegiance will side with the new country and not with India. Not very patriotic but then again, does it matter so much?

Coming to the matter of the topic, there is a growing trend of making money out of this nationalism because of the large middle class population of India. The trend had already caught on with Youtube where a large number of channels put "India" in the title and along with comes millions of views from India. 

Large number of channels are reaction videos to Indian movies or songs or ads or just about everything. They make a lot of money out of it. Again, not passing judgements here. It's the wise thing for them to do. One shouldn't pass on opportunities. It's one basic rule. 

Similar thing goes on with businesses like Amazon, Google and what not where the CEOs or upper management regularly use "21st century is India's century" when they come to India to entice their audience and one can tell by the look at the audience's faces that the speechwriter is getting a raise soon. 

Jeff Bezos to Indian audience

Indians too do the same. Companies like Micromaxx, Trell, etc have utilised this psychological resource to their advantage and rightfully so, have gained a lot from this endeavour. 

I guess everyone should move towards this new way of making money. India's digital audience is growing stronger by the minute. Internet prices are going down day by day and the youth has more time than ever which only got exacerbated by Coronavirus job cuts. 

Well, my reason for writing this post is simple. 

A request to all fellow Indians around the world. 

"Maybe it is time to accept the reality that we are no better than other people across the world who look for their own benefits. And there is nothing wrong in it. Give up the idea of ultra-nationalism. We all love our country as much as any foreigner loves their's. Let's focus on making our lives happier and better."

Pranav Mistry in TechFest

Hell yeah! We got Pranav Mistry in IIT-B for an interactive session. It was pleasant on the eyes to witness a man of that formidable skills and vision. He started by saying how he was standing in a line outside of the Convocation Hall 10 years ago to listen to one of the lecture series of TechFest and now he is on that part of the Convo. He is currently the head of Think Tank Team and Director of Research of Samsung. 

He talked about his approach for the various products he has designed. He then displayed one of them to us for real. He took out his android phone, opened his YouTube app and searched for TechFest, opened the video and did some gesture on the screen with his hand and put the device away. Now, he took his android tablet and made another similar gesture on this device and the same YouTube video started to play here. We were all amazed. He joked that his fingers were like his pen-drive and that he transferred the link and similar sorts. Later, he revealed that it was actually the mixed effort of camera and cloud storage. Camera detects face and as per the gesture, it sends the YouTube link to the person's cloud storage and later retrieves it back. 

He told about his other achievements, his IIT-B days and how he spent a good time with A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the then President of India, and how he managed to develop stuff right from scratch. It was all amazing to hear to him out. Thank You TechFest.

FRIENDS

It is no alien to anyone that all of us have many friends but good friends, very few. When these good friends move away from our life and are not that easily accessible as they used to be, we tend to get bulged with sorrow. It is just that most of us are not that good at handling the separation from social binds. I would call it INERTIA of society which often accepts an intrusion of an outsider but never wants to let any member escape. I have seen many of them in my lifetime till now and I must admit that I am very bad at handling them. I spent most of my childhood in Kolkata and had great friends there.Then I moved from Kolkata to Vijayawada(A.P.) and made many good friends there too. Then I moved from there as well and came to Mumbai. These transitions have been very difficult for me as I knew I won't be seeing many of those friends anymore soon. It has taken a while for me to adjust in Mumbai and I am again in the same condition. 

After having spent almost 2 and  a half years in IIT, I suddenly realized yesterday that some of my friends in the final year are nearing their end in IIT and will be here for merely 5-6 months. I am trying to avoid this fact but I seem to have gotten into the thought. It's getting very difficult for me to take away my mind from this. I know that we can't be permanent anywhere but it is the beauty of bonding that makes us believe that friends are permanent. I wonder how troubled I would feel once I am in my final year and all of us would move out of the campus. 

Friends are like the most vital part of life in the institute. We discuss everything from Politics, Studies, TV Series, Movies, Bollywood, Hollywood and "Comedy Nights with Kapil". We fight with one another, yet hold each other's back. We crack joke on a friend and then follows the epic one liner "Babaji ka thullu". The importance of a friend is realized in almost every thing we do here like proxy, gaming and TREAT. The random chit chats at room, Counter Strike, night whatsapp-ing, morning "gm" messages, Gmail texts and fb messenger are an important part of us. Mann, we know how to make use of all the gadgets and techies we are surrounded by as long as we have the backing of the strong godfather NETMON. We share a look when a hot girl passes in front of us and the short discussion that follows is what charges us. We all have that friend who studies everything for the quiz beforehand but when asked about the syllabus, he contracts his eyebrows and exclaims "Kal quiz hai??". We are never gonna get this kind of fraternity anywhere else and as life goes on, we get incorporated in our own worlds and gradually all of these are just available in our sweet memories to cherish. I don't know how to end this post so, I would go with the trial and tested method, a quote.

A person who truly believes that copying in an exam is wrong and yet agrees to show his answers to a friend, is a true friend. :P

- HARSH ANKUR

Indian Defence Power and Missile Systems

Some mind-blowing facts about Indian army :-

• Indian Army is the 3rd biggest military contingent in the World next to USA and China.
• India's indigenous nuclear-capable ICBM(Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) AGNI-V puts India into the Elite Club consisting of USA, China, France and Russia.
• The famous missile series AGNI's first missile AGNI I failed in its first two tests and was made fun off by other countries like USA, UK, Pakistan, etc.
• It was successful in the third try but USA claimed that the project head A.P.J. Abdul Kalam( who happened to have visited Long Island, USA for some other work) had learnt the technology from their missiles. Now AGNI is one of the best missile systems in the world.
• Agni and Prithvi both are Nuclear capable basaltic  and are most accurate in the world in their respective categories. Prithvi will always hit within 50m of target coordinates thus making it devastating with even smaller payloads(explosives)
• India claims AGNI-V to have a reach of 5,000 kms to which Chinese and Australian delegates and experts suspect to have a range of 8,000 kms. and that India is hiding these facts just to avoid any concern from foreign countries.
• AGNI-VI(being built) will have a range of 10000 kms. which would give India the power to strike in any part of the world barring South America and very small parts of North America.
• India is also alleged to be secretly devloping Surya class missiles based on ISRO's PSLV model. Surya I and Surya II will have ranges around 10,000 and 20,000 Kms.
• India's cruise missile (being tested) NIRBHAY is a cruise nuclear-warhead missile which when blasted,moves in stealth mode and when the target is in nearby range, attacks it with a random procedure thus eliminating the probability of it getting stopped by any anti-missile system as its process is itself not defined. In other words-unstoppable.
• In the hilly terrains, it gives an advantage as the missile goes from the side of the mountains and attacks the target from the rear side.
• The missile BrahMos-2 (built in collaboration with Russia)(under development)(Brahmaputra+Moscow) is the fastest hypersonic missile in the world travelling at a speed of Mach-7 (7 times the speed of sound in air).
• BrahMos I is already devloped with 13 variants (ex air to ground, ground to ground, ground to sea, sea to sea etc) It is already in service of the Army, Navy and Air force. It is one of its kind because generally cruise misiles are Sea to Sea or Sea to Land.
  
  
  
  
  Coming to Navy-based missile systems
• India's INS-Vikrant(bought from UK) was the first aircraft carrier of India.
• The HMS Harriers(airplanes on INS VIRAAT) are one of its kind which has the ability of vertical landing and take-off.
  
  Shown below is INS VIRAAT
  
  
  
• India's statistics for aircraft carriers is like this
  Active:
  • INS Viraat: Centaur class carrier (ex-HMS Hermes) in service since 1987.
  • INS Vikramaditya : Modified Kiev class carrier (ex-Admiral Gorshkov) due in service October 2013.
  Under construction:
  • INS Vikrant: 40,000 ton Vikrant class carrier. It is being built at Cochin Shipyard and is expected to enter service in 2017.
  Planned
  • INS Vishal: 65,000 ton Vikrant-class carrier. Expected to enter service in 2022.
  Retired:
  • INS Vikrant : Majestic-class carrier, (ex-HMS Hercules), in service from 1961 to 1997 and currently a museum ship docked at Mumbai.
• The image below shows the countries which currently operates aircraft carriers in blue and the historic operators in light blue.
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  India's INS-ARIHANT is the first indeginious(built completely in India, by India) nuclear powered submarine in India. It has a capability to shoot missiles with nuclear war-heads even after being at half-a-kilometer beneath the water-level.
  
  
  Coming to the Air Based Power
• The Sukhoi Su-30MKI, Dassault Mirage 2000,  and MiG-29 serve in the Indian Air Force and are also seen as a means to deliver nuclear weapons.
  
  Shown below is Sukhoi Su-30MKI
  
• In addition India maintains SEPECAT Jaguar and MiG-27M which can be used to drop gravity bombs.
• Shown below is the mid-air refueling of two Mirage 2000 aircrafts.
  
  
  
• The new in queue for the indigenous aircraft  of India is HAL-Tejas
• It integrates technologies such as relaxed static stability, fly-by-wire flight control system, multi-mode radar, integrated digital avionics system, composite material structures, and a flat ratedengine.
• It is a tailless, compound delta-wing design powered by a single engine.
  
  
  Shown below is HAL Tejas
  
  
  
  The entire list of the known missile types possessed by Indian Armed Forces can be found here
• India is also developing a fiftth generation stealth air superiority plane, that is it will not be seen on radar giving it an absolute advantage BVR(Beyond Visual Range) fights and bombing deep in to enemy territory.
• Below is an image of the plane... currently under trails
  
  
  List of missiles by country
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  Will update more information later.

Truth Alone Prevails

The very words that define India on the government bills and documents are the above-stated ones, SATYA MEVA JAYATE. This has been the national motto of INDIA for a long time now and anyone with any connection with India is aware of the words. This drags the interest of any individual towards the moral values and the ethnicity of our existence that builds up the Indian society which is however criticized to not being followed in the modern India.
The other area that our mind points to, on hearing the words “Satya Meva Jayate” is the popular talk show by the same name that aired on Star TV network and on Doordarshan last year. The program targeted many social problems and outcast the very importance of humanity and the abuse to it done by many citizens across India.
I got an opportunity to attend a lecture by Mrs. Swati Bhatkal, the co-director of “Satya Meva Jayate” organized by my team in IIT Bombay. She explained many difficulties which their team had to face while covering and planning the show which includes the security of the persons showing up on the TV and many more. She said that even the poorest of the people offered them tea and requested to have a meal at their inn. This showed that the notion of “Mehman Bhagwan Hota Hai” , i.e., “God resides inside Guests'” is still prevalent in our society India. She took us through the cases she dealt with which includes a bold woman by the name Manju. She had been a victim of attempt to murder in her infant age by her father just because she was a girl. She now runs an NGO in the Haryana and Punjab area of India which deals with fighting against female foeticide and creating awareness about the same.
Eagerly waiting for season 2 of Satya Meva Jayate.

The Land of Snake Charmers

“The Land of Snake-Charmers and ancient Maharajas” has been the most vivid description that every grandfather in the West would have given to their grandchildren about India and where they must visit only for the purpose of photography and buying some of the random artifacts. Well, this theory appears quite unrealistic , given the current scenario of India. India has seen drastic achievement in the past decade. Not only did it become the third richest country (third biggest GDP[by purchasing power parity]) in the world, but also became the home to the second biggest defense force. “The Biggest Democracy” is the current phrase which almost every magazine or newspaper and even the political leaders describe India in any part of the World.
The current pleasure which India enjoys is this 

Celebration on India’s Independence Day

India has become very reputed among other countries in the World. One of Pakistani news-reporter expressed his views that when an Indian film-artist is detained in New York airport for a couple of hours, Indian government warns USA for the same and an immediate apology is sent from America to India whereas they had been attacking Pakistani military forces since years and no apology sent even after Pakistan asked for it. So, there has been quite a significant status that India enjoys
                                                 

The above pictures show the U.S. President Barack Obama addressing his audience in St. Xavier College, Mumbai during his presidential tour to India in Nov 2010. While answering one of the questions from the students regarding foreign investments and F.D.I., he replied  that it didn’t matter to U.S. if India did not open its market for them a couple of decades ago, but now it does; given the fact that India being the third richest nation comprising a very vital percentage of potential buyers in the world is free to take the advantage of U.S. open markets but is not reciprocating the same. It would be unfair because both the countries have comparable national incomes which was not the case 20 years ago. He added that foreign investment would help in mutual benefit and development.

This certainly shows that the things aren’t that messy as they were in the near past. This country, India, has given homage to the call-centers of almost all multinationals and has important financial hubs in the cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi, Pune, etc. The last decade had been very fruitful for India. It has attracted many Hollywood films for shooting which it never did before five years. In the recent past, India has achieved like never before. It has developed the first ICBM AGNI-V making it to the ELITE NUCLEAR CLUB(which already has USA, China, UK, France and Germany), first nuclear powered submarine INS ARIHANT, world’s cheapest one lac car TATA NANO, hosted the first ever WWE match in Mumbai, first Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, first Formula One - Grand Prix, first Manchester United tour, first United Nations Conference on Biodiversity, first Oscar and many more. Many of the multinationals like Microsoft, Facebook, Google and many others find landing in India as a point of very high significance in their timeline. The MNCs like Cisco Systems, General Motors and Intel have located their only R&D center outside USA in Bangalore. Bangalore is the magnet to many IT based companies worldwide and is the undeclared IT capital of India.
India holds the chair of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa) which is an association of 5 countries which are expected to overpass the current finance group G7(USA, UK, Canada, France, West Germany, Japan and Italy) by 2027 and would have a leading edge in every sector worldwide.
The current process of REVERSE BRAIN DRAIN helps India in many aspects as we get highly qualified Indians with degrees from elite universities abroad and return India to help it prosper to greater heights. This has been possible only because India has become capable enough to please them with a good salary and their own feeling of alienation in other countries.
P.S. India is now declared non-POLIO endemic country in 2012 owing to the fact that there has been no Polio case registered since Feb 2011.