Devoted they stand

December 3, 2017, 9:46 pm

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The Maharajas of Mysuru are known for their contribution to diverse fields. The welfare of their subjects was their priority. Apart from being benevolent, they and their queens were great devotees of gods and goddesses. They not only constructed new temples, but also restored and expanded the old ones.

Some of the rulers who contributed in this direction include: Raja Wadiyar, Kanthirava Narasaraja Wadiyar, Dodda Devaraja Wadiyar, Chikka Devaraja Wadiyar, Krishnaraja Wadiyar III, Chamaraja Wadiyar, Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV and Jayachamaraja Wadiyar.

Expressing their devotion

After conserving, expanding and making grants to the temples, the Maharajas stood before the deities as their humble devotees. The bhakta vigrahas (idols of devotion) found in the temples of Mysuru region demonstrate the devotion of the members of royal family.

One such bhakta vigraha is seen in the Lakshmiramana Swamy Temple in the Mysore Palace courtyard. An old temple, where Raja Wadiyar is standing with folded hands before Lakshmiramana, the chief deity of the temple. The sculpture is about two feet high. An inscription there states that Raja Wadiyar built the tower over the mahadwara, the outer gate of this temple.

Another bhakta vigraha of the same ruler is in the Narayanaswamy Temple in Melukote. This is a small figure of about one and a half feet high. The bas-relief statue is placed on a pillar in the navaranga of the temple. Raja Wadiyar is standing with folded hands with his name written at the base.

An ardent devotee of Narayanaswamy, he visited the temple regularly and presented the famous Rajamudi, a golden crown set with jewels to the deity. A similar statue of his is seen in the right of the prakara of the Prasanna Krishnaswamy Temple in Mysuru.

Kanthirava Narasaraja Wadiyar also stands life-like in the Narasimhaswamy Temple at Srirangapattana. His name is inscribed on the pedestal of this three-and-half-foot-high sculpture. He stands on a high pedestal with folded hands, wearing a long robe, with a sword, shield and dagger on the left side. He is also wearing large earrings and vira pendeya (heros insignia) on the right foot. Kanthirava Narasaraja is depicted as a warrior-devotee here. The statue is in a room to the left of the ranga mantapa of the temple.

He was responsible for its expansion, including a lofty enclosure wall. He installed the image of Narasimha with nachayars and other deities. A similar statue of his is seen in a pavilion of the Trineswaraswamy Temple in the Mysore Palace.

Dodda Devaraja Wadiyar succeeded Kanthirava Narasaraja Wadiyar. He expanded the Trineswaraswamy Temple, adding a stone mantapa, a stone pillar and a seven-storeyed tower over the mahadwara, and placed the images of 25 Shaiva deities on the pavilion of the temple. He stands beside his predecessor at the pavilion of the temple. His name is inscribed below his statue.

Chikka Devaraja Wadiyars bhakta vigraha is to be seen in the Para Vasudeva Temple in Gundlupet. His image is carved on a pillar in the temple that he built in honour of Para Vasudeva. He renovated the temple and added the images of Lord Para Vasudeva and Goddess Kamalavalli. He also gifted the images of the god with two goddesses, which were brought from Shivanasamudra, along with other gifts to the temple.

Krishnaraja Wadiyar III was a devoted and religious king. He restored and renovated temples, arranged for regular worship in them and made generous contributions towards them. To mark his and his wives devotion, he installed their bhakta vigrahas in about half a dozen temples in Mysuru and other places.

In tandem with tradition

Krishnarajas statue is seen in the Prasanna Krishnaswamy Temple close to the palace. In the larger statue, he is standing with his four wives, namely Chaluvajammanni, Devajammanni, Krishnajammanni and Muddu Krishnajammanni. In the smaller copper idols in the temple, he is standing with his three wives. The idols are placed in a cell on the right side of the navaranga.

At Chamundi Hills, there are statues of the Maharaja and his three queens, in a cell adjacent to the sanctum. Their names are engraved on the pedestals of the stone images. In Chamarajanagar, in a shrine within the enclosure of the Sri Chamarajeshwara Swamy Temple are statues of the king and his four queens. We can also see the statue of Prince Nanjaraja Bahadur alongside these statues. Their metallic figures are also placed in the temple but without the prince.

In Narayanaswamy Temple, Melukote, the wives statues are placed beside the Maharaja, while his statue is placed in the centre, in a cell opposite the entrance towards the sanctum. His statue is also erected in a pilgrim centre in Nanjangud. The image is in a cell in the navaranga of the Nanjundeshwara Temple.

We find a statue of Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV erected in the Chennakeshava Temple at Belur. His successor Maharaja Jayachamaraja Wadiyar continued the restoration and renovation work of this temple.

An inscription in a cell near the kalyani reveals that the Panchaloha image was erected by Jayachamaraja Wadiyar after completing the renovations of the Chennakeshava Temple in Belur and the Hoysaleswara Temple in Halebidu. These statues stand as symbols of the devotion of the Mysore rulers and their queens to the deities in those temples.

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The liferafts of invasive species

December 3, 2017, 9:18 pm

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Two years after a tsunami devastated parts of Japan, a small black-and-white-striped fish washed ashore in Long Beach Peninsula, Washington, USA. The barred knifejaw (Oplegnathus fasciatus), which is native to Asian waters, had made the 7,000-km trip in the stern well of a deserted fishing vessel set adrift by the giant wave. The knifejaw found in 2013 is just one of the hundreds of species carried across the Pacific Ocean to North America by debris - estimated to weigh a total of nearly 1.5 million tonnes - that was swept out to sea after the Tohoku earthquake in March 2011.

As extreme coastal weather events such as hurricanes, typhoons and tsunamis become more intense and frequent as a result of climate change, researchers warn that such mass migration events could also become more common. James Carlton, a marine ecologist at the Maritime Studies Programme of Williams College and Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut, USA, and his colleagues worked with more than 100 volunteers to look for tsunami debris along North American shores, including the west coast of the United States and Canada, as well as Hawaii.

Over almost five years starting in 2012, they intercepted 634 objects that could be traced back to the tsunami, ranging in size from small fragments of plastic to fishing vessels and mooring docks. Between them, they carried from Japan 289 species of living invertebrates and fish, the researchers report in Science. Some of the creatures had survived adrift for several years.

Migration concerns

Thats just a fraction of the "thousands or tens of thousands" of objects estimated to have landed in North America, says James. And he suspects there are more to come. "Many of these can subsist in the ocean for longer than we could imagine," he says. "We had no idea this would last into 2017."

The team began its search when a 165-tonne dock - made of concrete, steel and polystyrene foam - washed up on the coast of Oregon, 15 months after the disaster. This megaraft was coated with almost 100 different species. It was a harbinger, James says, of the need to monitor what else might be coming. More recent debris has not been so species-rich; only one object hosting more than 20 species has been found since summer 2015.

The teams finds included gooseneck barnacles (Lepas sp.) that blanketed the bottom of a wrecked fishing boat and a Japanese limpet (Siphonuria sirius) that had hitched a ride on a buoy. Most of the creatures arriving were invertebrates: mollusks, annelid worms, cnidarians (jellyfish and their relatives), crustaceans and moss-like marine invertebrates called bryozoans. It is unusual for vertebrates such as the knifejaw fish to be carried so far, says Gail Ashton, a marine ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Centre in Tiburon, California, USA.

The mass migration raises the concern that some of these trans-Pacific passengers might establish invasive populations on the North American coast. None of the species has been spotted doing so yet. But "the fact that theyve lasted in the ocean for four or five years shows theyre pretty hardy," says Gail. And by the time any species do settle, says James, it could be too late to do anything about it. Once a population is common enough to see, he says, "it becomes harder to manage eradication."

Such a huge rafting event is unprecedented, say the researchers. Japan has seen only two other earthquakes with magnitudes comparable to Tohoku in the last few centuries; they occurred in 1896 and in 1933. "If you look at photos of the same coasts in those years, there are small villages with wood houses," says James. "Back then, a tsunami could not generate this sea of plastic we saw in 2011."

Biodegradable objects such as wood would rarely survive such a long trip. The study underscores the far-reaching consequences of plastic in the environment, says Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineer at the University of Georgia, USA. "Once something enters the ocean, it becomes a global problem."

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Naturebites

December 3, 2017, 9:22 pm

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PREDATOR-PREY DYNAMICS

Reasons for the disappearance of tigers

The dwindling population of wild tigers has always been of great concern. While several efforts are being made to control the illegal poaching of tigers in India, the decline in the number of tigers is also strongly affected by other factors like the loss of habitat. Scientists from the Kalakkad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR), Tamil Nadu and the Salim Ali School of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Puducherry have studied the natural causes that led to the near complete absence of tigers in KMTR for over two decades. The scientists believe that such an absence is linked to the low numbers of large hoofed herbivores, which are the primary prey for tigers.

They looked at how the banning of cattle grazing in the KMTR plateau affected the populations of large carnivores and their prey. They argued that ban would leave more vegetation for the prey and lead to an increase in their population. This would mean that the tiger population would increase too.

However, while there were improvements in the prey population, their density was still low. The scientists found that the plateau had large herbivores enough to only sustain around 11 tigers per 100 square km area. This study might help us better understand the complex dynamics between predators and preys in a forest.

LONG NECKS

Similar prey, but two very different necks

It was a question that dogged biologists: Why the neck? Imperial cormorants, lanky, long-necked creatures that live on the southern coasts of Argentina and Chile, spend much of their time immersed in the frigid waters of the ocean. They dive to chilly depths to hunt fish.

But the cormorants have neighbours: Magellanic penguins. Their stout, well-insulated bodies seem like a much better choice for hunting in this unforgiving environment, while the slender, exposed necks of cormorants are like gloveless hands in January. "They would lose heat," says Agustina, a researcher at the Instituto de Biologia de Organismos Marinos in Argentina. "So whats the advantage?" As it turns out, that long, flexible necks offer real benefits when you hunt like a cormorant, according to a paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

While cormorants shed heat in the ocean, this energy loss may be offset by being able to move only their head, not their whole body, when they snap up prey. Cormorants prowl among the rocks and see their prey only when they are very close, their heads shooting out to grab it. Researchers found that a cormorant uses half as much energy by just moving her head and not her whole body.

A long neck does mean a certain amount of heat is lost, and the cormorants gawky profile is not as streamlined as a penguins form. But in a species that moves a bit slower than penguins, the benefit of being able to hunt more efficiently may outweigh these downsides.

GENETIC EVIDENCE

Developing in two generations

A study of Darwins finches, which live on the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean, has revealed direct genetic evidence that new species can arise in just two generations. The arrival of a strange bird to a remote island in the Galapagos archipelago 36 years ago has provided direct genetic evidence of a novel way in which new species arise.

In a recent issue of the journal Science, researchers from Princeton University, USA and Uppsala University, Sweden report that the newcomer belonging to one species mated with a member of another species resident on the island, giving rise to a new species that today consists of roughly 30 individuals.

The study comes from work conducted on Darwins finches, which live on the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The remote location has enabled researchers to study the evolution of biodiversity due to natural selection.

DOCUMENTARY

Anthropocene

In geological terms, were currently living in the Holocene stage of the Earths existence; a period of time when all the elements have proven most beneficial to our species. But our unfettered growth has left a massive footprint upon our planet, and its ramifications may soon usher in a new geological epoch. Anthropocene, a short documentary produced by the ABC-TV Catalyst series, examines the characteristics and the consequences of this oncoming age.

From singular events such as the first nuclear weapons test of 1945 to the unprecedented industrialisation thats occurred in nearly every region of the world, our Earth has undergone more rampant change in recent times than any other period in its history. Geologists call this period the anthropocene.

In the midst of the climate change debate, Anthropocene examines the crisis our planet faces from a fresh perspective that is not often considered by the mainstream. To watch the documentary, visit
www.bit.ly/2jPqwuF.

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Saving our coastlines

December 3, 2017, 9:24 pm

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Searching for a lovely romantic spot on sandy shores, far from the maddening crowd? Your search has just been made harder by a complex process called erosion. This is not the physical process of sand being eroded, although that is the unfortunate outcome. What is pertinent here is an erosion of legislation. Beaches, the outpouring of longing for stasis between land, rivers and oceans, are the epitome of change. Change has never been faster than today, with about half of our countrys coastline under threat of disappearing forever.

Chipping away at the rock of our environmental legislation, are small tweaks, amendments that slipped past public scrutiny; one affecting rivers, another affecting industry, a third affecting coastlines. No one could see what it was all adding up to, perhaps not the amenders themselves. Indias disappearing beaches reveal the cumulative impact of complex processes involving dams on rivers, construction and mining along the coast, falling groundwater levels and impacts of climate change.

Without public scrutiny

As the rich monsoon claims the land every year, the land relinquishes bits of herself as the sediment that fertilises the shallow ocean. Rivers race to erase this relationship, scouring the rock to create sand and delivering it to the coast at their estuaries. The ocean then steps in to layer this sand and sediment along the coast, and the water currents shape these formations into beaches.

But various little safeguards that were put in place to keep our rivers fresh and flowing and our oceans clear and bountiful have disappeared. The most recent was the October 2017 amendment to the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification (CRZ), 2011, to allow mining of atomic minerals like uranium and thorium. More significant than the actual removal of sand and sediment for mining in fragile coastal ecosystems is the fact that there was no opportunity provided for public scrutiny or feedback on the proposed amendment.

According to an article by researchers from the Namati Environmental Justice Programme, this is just the latest in a series of such amendments that have been notified without public scrutiny. Another important amendment that bypassed public opinion was the serious issue of lifting regulations on groundwater withdrawal along the coast, near urban areas.

The 2016 report of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Water Resources states that Indias groundwater is already severely depleted. With urban areas already facing issues of saltwater intrusion into groundwater, the impact of allowing further groundwater withdrawal, could seriously impact drinking water supplies of coastal regions.

A more insidious threat is the gradual loss of public spaces to private property that serves commercial interests. One aspect of this involves the definition of the coast, or more specifically, the High-Tide Line (HTL). Under the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification, 1991, areas within the first 500 metres of the high tide are protected from development by law. However, the HTL itself was not defined until a recent coastal zone mapping exercise, by the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management, which controversially left out ecologically sensitive areas and wetlands in Tamil Nadu.

Further, fishermen suggest that the real HTL is actually further inland than that marked on the map. Marking the HTL further out to sea opens up more area close to the sea for construction and development. At the same time, another amendment does away with the requirement of coastal tourism infrastructure to provide a pathway outside their premises allowing public access to the beach. Not only does this physically restrict public access to the remaining beaches, but it also allows for more dense development along the coast.

The construction of hard, cement structures on beaches that are made of shifting sand produces unusual patterns of erosion along the shore. This is most starkly visible as a consequence of the construction of ports with breakwaters and other hard structures in the sea. The most famous example is that of the beach in Puducherry, which was eroded after the construction of the port, just south of the beach.

According to a report by PondyCAN, a non-profit organisation that works on coastal erosion, natural sand deposition flows from south to north along the Puducherry coast, but this was blocked by the jetty, breakwaters and other hard structures built by the port. Consequently, beaches to the south of this construction received all the sand, and beaches to the north received no sand. The regular erosion continued on both sides of the port, with the result that sand from the Puducherry beach was only eroded and not replaced causing total loss of the beach.

Coastal development, along with other industrial development, was also enabled by amendments to the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification, 2006. In March 2017, for a period of six months, proposers of development that violated norms set by the Environment Protection Act were allowed to apply for post-facto clearance - a process that renders the already controversial impact assessment process completely useless. In light of all these changes, an overall picture emerges, of the very land we live on being eroded from under our feet.

The standard response to such visible erosion has been to artificially deposit sand in order to create beaches. This is not a new idea. The Marina Beach in Chennai was actually just a sand ridge formed in the estuary of River Cooum. It was turned into a beach through active modification and artificial deposits of sand by the British.

Karnatakas plight

The coasts along Udupi and Dakshina Kannada districts have already been earmarked for extensive tourism development. Currently, tourism infrastructure is interspersed with fishing villages, but with the new CRZ amendment, tourism projects could cordon off all access to the beaches.

The implications of added human pressure on the delicate coastal ecosystem and the requirement of additional groundwater are compounded by the Union Governments Startup Coast initiative, intended to ease pressure on Bengaluru and develop coastal Karnataka as a supportive environment for startups. This raises issues that currently plague Bengalurus startup-friendly environment, including groundwater depletion and pollution, extensive construction and lack of area for rainwater seepage. All these would have been subject to extensive scrutiny under the previous CRZ laws, but will now be considered legal forms of development.

The Mangaluru-Malpe area is particularly threatened, not only by extensive coastal construction in the form of existing ports and harbours, but also in the form of the proposed harbour at Kulai. In addition, the Yettinahole project and the Paschima Vahini project threaten the loss of freshwater inputs into Dakshina Kannadas waters, threatening to completely destroy the coastal fisheries. The fishermen had a sneak preview of the impacts of reduced freshwater inflow in the years of 2016-17 when monsoons were weaker than usual, and therefore fish catches had greatly declined.

Environmental legislation has myriad consequences because natural processes in the environment are so interconnected. Public awareness that there is no issue too small to slip unnoticed is the first step to restoring Indias coast. Environmental governance requires public participation rather than apathy. Safeguarding Indias beaches requires constant vigilance, regarding even small amendments to Indias environmental laws.

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Colonial surveyors of southern India

December 3, 2017, 9:52 pm

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Colin Mackenzie was a colonial surveyor of southern India in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He later went on to become the first Surveyor-General of India. If Mackenzie is rightly remembered as a true pioneer in his field, I was certain there were others, contemporaries of Mackenzie, whose tales needed to be told, for never can such an arduous enterprise be the sweat-and-blood of a single man.

Two Englishmen are of note alongside this Scotsman. Both have a connection with Nandi Hills through this famous aquatint, N W View of Nandydroog, published in July 1793 in London. It is inscribed: Drawn by R H Colebrooke from a sketch by Ensign Caldwell. It is strikingly similar to Mackenzies work, sketched from almost the same location as the latter, history records that Colebrooke and Mackenzie were colleagues.

Robert Hyde Colebrooke was a British infantry officer who conducted early surveys in Bengal and Mysore before becoming the Surveyor-General of Bengal in 1794; a post he held until his death.

Many years junior to Mackenzie, Colebrooke joined the Bengal Infantry in 1778, still in his teens. He was skilled in topographical illustration (as this aquatint demonstrates), Colebrooke is well-known for his collection of aquatints, Twelve views of places in the Kingdom of Mysore, of which this sketch is one. Another famous sketch of his is of Sewandroog (Savandurga), based on his work in Mysore during the same Third Anglo-Mysore War that Mackenzie so famously participated in. He also surveyed the Andaman Islands, Colebrooke Island in the north of Port Blair is named after him. He died in Bhagalpur in 1808.

We can hazard a historical guess that both Mackenzie and Colebrooke probably produced their impressions of Nandi Hills at around the same time of the Third Anglo-Mysore War, from the same sketch by Ensign Caldwell as the similarities are striking.

Jennifer Howes in her book Illustrating India: The Early Colonial Investigations of Colin Mackenzie, notes that James Lillyman Caldwell became an ensign, a junior commissioned officer who would carry his regiments ensign flag in the Madras Engineers in 1789.

He was present at the first siege of Seringapatam in 1792 and was wounded at its second siege and captured in 1799. Caldwell took part in the Baramahal, Krishna and Godavari surveys of the 1790s, as part of the survey of the dominions of the Nizam of Hyderabad led by Mackenzie. In his later career, Caldwell was appointed the chief engineer on an expedition to survey Mauritius in 1810-11, after completing a survey of Tirunelveli in 1810.

He designed the St. Georges Cathedral in Madras, which was constructed by his colleague, Thomas Fiotte De Havilland. Unlike his superiors Mackenzie and Colebrooke, who never saw their respective homelands again after venturing to India, Caldwell returned to England in 1837 and died at the ripe old age of 93 in the Isle of Wight.

This English assistant was given his due by recording his contribution (writing his name) on the sketch itself. However, history does not give any real space to Mackenzies Indian assistants, in particular, the brothers Cavelly Venkata Boria and Lecmiah. It is quite common that in the colonial narrative, the Indian tales are absent. An account of these two Indians and their contributions, in particular, are outstanding. Until then we must content ourselves with the intriguing stories of these two Englishmen surveyors and artists, Colebrooke and his assistant, Caldwell.

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Top 10 FinTech trends to influence the banking industry in 2018

November 26, 2017, 1:30 am

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Through 2017, we have seen technological advancements, new regulatory policies, and ever-demanding customers reshape the banking industry landscape.

For some time now, incumbents of the financial sector have been under pressure to address the demands of the well-informed millennial customer, while staying relevant and profitable at the same time.

Gone are the days when banks viewed FinTech companies as disruptors; today, they are partners that are pairing up to take on the challenges of a digital first world.

The Indian FinTech scene comes with an added extra; new initiatives by the government to boost financial inclusion and promote a cashless society have opened windows of opportunities for FinTech companies, where first-mover advantages are tremendous. As a result of the governments initiatives, there has been a sharp increase in consumer adoption of FinTech.

EY, in its FinTech Adoption Index for 2017, states that 52% of Indias digitally active consumers are adopting FinTech; a figure that is only second to Chinas 69%, which is the global highest.

In these times of uncertainty, only one thing is certain â€" change. Below are some of the FinTech trends that could become major game-changers in 2018.

Next-Gen Chatbots: 2017 saw several major banks in India such as HDFC Bank, ICICI bank, and YES Bank, amongst others, adopting chatbots for supporting customer interactions. Currently, these chatbots are said to possess the intelligence of a 2-3-year old. However, as machines do not suffer from physical or learning fatigue, the evolution of a chatbot could be best described as more exponential than linear. So, in 2018, we could expect more chatbots to be deployed with improved quality of interactions, speed of responses, and accuracy in decision-making.
Machine Learning: Banks in 2018 will start adopting new regression models powered by machine learning to deliver better offerings. The brightest data scientists will be involved in this delivery and they will be aided by insights into customer behaviour, expectations and responses. These insights will be gained by adopting big data tools and will enable banks to predict customer needs and meet them in a customised manner.
Blockchain: As Niti Aayog is creating IndiaChain to reduce fraud, speed up contract enforcement, and increase transparency, its clear that blockchain is no more the elephant in the room that no one is willing to address.

Several major players have already begun pilot projects to measure the feasibility of adopting blockchain into their ecosystems. As blockchain is virtually unhackable due to time stamps that mark a data entry in a distributed ledger, banks will explore options to leverage the power of blockchain to transform back-end operations.
Smart Workflows: With the help of embedded AI aiding the back-end operations of banks, they will be able to quickly identify bottlenecks in their operational workflows and bring in significant improvements in process efficiencies.
Automated Personalisation: Banks will leverage the power of FinTech to personalise the offerings that users see on all their devices. Banks will change the appearance of apps based on actual usage. This will make users feel more connected with banks and it will also set the stage for efficient self-service. There will also be advancements in providing pre-filled data to users, based on their previous interaction history, preferences and banking habits.
Open Banking: With initiatives such as UPI and AEPS, banking will become more open in 2018. With more APIs exposed by banks, the process of carrying out payments and other banking transactions would be greatly quickened as well as simplified.
Physical and Digital Merger: FinTech has made it possible for banks to reach customers who are data-rich but credit-poor. In a country like India, where so many people still dont have access to banking facilities, FinTech works better by offering a phygital (a combination of physical and digital) experience. The objective here is effective self-service that enables customers to walk into a branch and make use of basic automated services.
Extended Digital Coverage: Until now, most digital banking solutions have been primarily targeted at retail customers. In 2018, banks will extend digital coverage to other areas such as corporate banking and SME banking and also transform their internal operations to derive the best out of digital transformation initiatives.
Agile Architecture: Digital solutions are here to stay and as timelines shrink, budgets tighten, and lifecycles shorten, banks will follow new architecture paradigms such as micro apps, micro services and more. These will enable banks to introduce changes significantly faster with minimal impact on existing deployments and services.
Security: Data is the new oil and with so much data being generated every second, hackers are constantly devising ways to acquire it. As most cyber security measures up till now have been reactive rather than preventive in nature, banks will now begin to adopt additional measures to ensure data security at all stages using a combination of encryption, OTPs, biometric authentication and more.

As the Indian FinTech space grows to reach an expected $2.4 billion by 2020, 2018 will be a critical year in that journey. Customers are increasingly open to banking innovations driven by technology, government regulations are leading the charge, and private players are making major investments. This is leading to greater financial inclusion as everyone gets access to advanced banking services and a wide range of financial offerings. These trends are sure to play a key role in this transition.

(The writer is Executive Director at
i-exceed Technology Solutions)

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Toyota's slow and steady race in India

November 26, 2017, 1:32 am

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Japanese car major Toyota completes two decades in India this year, scripting a journey that was fast-paced with quicker gear shifts at some points, with a few slower turns at others, while at few points, it encountered roadblocks. But the Japanese carmaker has grown with the times in India, and hopes to tag along with the market environment.

In 1997, the Indian market had just begun opening to foreign car brands. Toyota formed its Indian subsidiary Toyota Kirloskar Motor Private Limited with Kirloskar Group, which took 11% stake in the JV, to set its course in the utility vehicle arena, with the Qualis which came in 2000. Toyota has since commanded a significant share of a few UV segments, adopting a wait-and-watch approach, as it carefully makes its moves in a chequered Indian car market, governed by an uncertain regulatory environment.

"Our journey has been punctuated by happiness. We have customers whore reluctant to leave us. We have sold over a million vehicles in the market. Our Fortuner sees 60% segment share, Innova sees 35% share; segment-by-segment, we enjoy double-digit share across. From the beginning of TKM sales operations until October 2017, the cumulative sales share of Fortuner (including the new Fortuner), Innova, Innova Crysta, and Qualis, contributed to 56% of our total sales," says Shekar Viswanathan, Wholetime Director and Vice Chairman of Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM), who is an old hand at the company.

Sharing vignettes of Toyotas Indian years gone by with DH, Viswanthan mentions, "We havent completed our journey yet. We feel that we are still good to go for another 100 years and more. We intend capturing more of the Indian market and make good products available."

Bangalore beginnings

In 1997, scouting for a credible partner for its India foray, the Toyota Motor Corporation entered into joint venture with Kirloskar Systems, headed by Vikram Kirloskar, in an 89:11 partnership.

Setting up shop through JVs and partnerships is a strategy Toyota adopts globally. "While Toyota has all the expertise in making cars, for knowledge about local conditions, dealing with local governments, and with the public at large, we need someone known from the community. In India, we found an excellent partner in Kirloskar," Viswanathan says.

Almost every foreign carmaker in India went to Sanand or Halol in Gujarat, Talegaon or Chakan in Maharashtra, Oragadam or Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, and Gurugram and Manesar in Haryana. Toyota, as TKM, found an encouraging safe haven in Karnataka, setting up its India headquarters in Bengaluru, along with a sprawling 432-acre manufacturing plant with a capacity of up to 3,10,000 units at nearby Bidadi.

"When selecting a place, its the decision of the intending investors and JV partners, who study the availability of land, water, electricity, talent, skills, and labour laws at a particular market. Bengaluruhas always had the advantage of technical skills, on which TKM imparted further knowhow. The Karnataka government has always provided us with great support," says Viswanathan.

In 20 years, in terms of production and shipping quality audit (the number of cars that go out to the yard before being shipped to dealerships, and the defects that are detected then), Toyotas India factory is top-notch when compared with the 42 manufacturing facilities it operates worldwide. Also, the facility employs over 90% of its workforce from within the state and has attracted many of its ancillaries and suppliers to come within range â€" further developing the vicinity.

In December 2010, it set up a second 2,10,000-capacity plant to produce the Corolla Altis, Etios, Etios Liva, Etios Cross, Camry and Camry Hybrid, while in 2016, Toyota Industries Engine India opened a plant to make diesel engines for the Innova and Fortuner, thus adding a fillip to localisation.

Toyotas India

Around 70% of the Indian car market is dominated by small cars, which in definition refer to vehicles with sub-4 metre bodies and driving on engines of 1,500 cc or lesser capacities. The Etios and Liva have been termed as Toyotas small cars, but only the latter has passed the test in this regard. Also, the Etios, which is a hit with fleet operators and has seen fewer sales from private buyers, holds a 4% share in its respective segment.

"Thereve been questions like, In every other segment, youve been doing consistently well. But why is it a different story with small cars?," relates Viswanathan.

The small car segment is extremely competitive, with Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai, Tata, Renault, Datsun, Nissan, Ford, Honda, and Volkswagen, asking for a slice. "We have a crowded market, with the A-B segments dominating customer sentiment. We need to be realistic about what we can achieve in the small car space," he reflects.

Is Toyota giving India its pride of place? Toyota has invested over Rs 6,400 crore till date in the country. The company, which boasts of 130 models in its international stable, is among the top-three players globally, with industry estimates claiming its global sales to increase to around 10.23 million vehicles this year, across 170 countries. The Corolla is one of the worlds highest-selling vehicles of all time.

So where does India fit into Toyotas world map? "Toyota has always placed India on a very high pedestal, simply because of its demographic architecture. But it must be noted that Toyota has one of its largest footprints in the US. It has a presence in countries which had policies welcoming foreign investment much before India. Those are developed markets for Toyota, and must not be neglected," Viswanathan says.

Slow start, power on

TKM enjoys a modest 5% market share in India, but it does not want to chase competition.

For the fiscal 2016-17, TKM posted a growth of 11% at 1,42,500 units as against 1,28,500 units in the previous fiscal.

Observing the market with a keen sense of judgement and acumen amassed over the years from global experiences, the company is looking at the path the government is building â€" the mobility of tomorrow.

The Centre is bullish on alternate fuels, and by 2030, it has envisioned an all-electric mobility push. Today, however, there are very few players in the market who are looking in this direction, let alone planning products.

Five years ago, Toyota articulated its 2050 Global Vision, by when it envisages a market teeming with electric cars, hybrids and hydrogen vehicles. "We must be technology-agnostic. The government must encourage all technologies, as there is no surity on which technology will succeed," Viswanathan says, adding that the path to adopt new technologies is transitional.

"The Department of Heavy Industries has been at it for a while now. Through the National Electric Mobility Mission Plan (NEMMP), and in pursuance to the encouragement given to EVs, pure hybrids, and mild hybrids, we were very happy with that roadmap which supported a gradual shift from internal combustion engine vehicles to minimising the use of fossil fuels. We believe that 100% use of EVs will be achieved by 2050, even if 30% of the total population use EVs around the world," he says, ruing, "However, you cannot have discriminatory treatment. Today, (under GST) EVs are taxed at 12%, while hybrids are taxed at 43%."

EVs will typically be used over short distances for city commutes. For longer distances, hybrids are seen as the logical stepping stone for faster adoption of full electrics, clamouring for the need of charging infrastructure.

Just last week, Toyota signed a crucial agreement with compatriot Suzuki to manufacture and sell electric vehicles in India by the turn of this decade. The pact will have Toyota providing technical knowledge for the project, while Suzuki will manufacture the vehicles for India, and also supply to Toyota.

"We look to revolve around the regulatory environment. Toyota is one of the most advanced players in EV technology. But due to a lack of charging infrastructure, weve brought in hybrids, as they offer the advantage of an internal combustion engine for longer drives," reiterates Viswanathan. Is the government ready for the powerplay?

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FB founder's favour comes with hurdles

November 26, 2017, 3:16 am

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Adrian Bonilla lived in a shared house in this Silicon Valley town with his wife and two grandchildren until earlier this year, when the rent for their bedroom jumped to $1,200 from $900 a month. Bonilla attributed that rise to Facebook, which is based nearby and was growing.

So Bonilla, a 43-year-old mechanic and Uber driver, bought a 1991 recreational vehicle and joined a family-oriented RV community on a quiet cul-de-sac. They lived there until last week, when Bonilla received an eviction notice.

This time, Bonilla said, the reason he had to move was because the city wanted to clear the way for "the Facebook school." That school is funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a limited liability company set up by Facebooks co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, to work on social change endeavors. Chan is a co-founder of the school, a private institution for low-income children called the Primary School.

Despite the goodwill behind the school, it has been met with opposition.

"The school is a Facebook school. Its not a city school," Bonilla said, adding that he knew he would have to move again when he heard about it. "When Facebook comes, everybody moves everywhere."

Zuckerberg is already facing plenty of troubles across the globe, including questions about Russian interference on Facebook during the 2016 election. The skirmish between the couples initiative and the RV community, which city officials said was becoming a flood hazard, is a reminder of how the billionaire also faces difficulties on his own doorstep.

For many in East Palo Alto, which is just blocks from Facebooks headquarters in Menlo Park, California, no CEO and company have come to embody the anxieties of the modern tech boom more than Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. At a meeting last Wednesday at East Palo Altos City Hall, about 100 residents and protesters gathered with city staff to discuss their housing and some invoked Zuckerbergs name.

"I want to talk about the elephant in the room," said Zach Kirk, 20, a Stanford University student who grew up in Palo Alto. "Actually, hes not in the room, hes in some mansion: Mark Zuckerberg."

Wherever Zuckerberg goes in Silicon Valley, he seems to generate a housing problem. In 2014, after the tech mogul bought a house in San Francisco, neighbors complained about construction, his security detail, the parking and how his presence would inflate prices. Earlier this year, protesters marched in East Palo Alto to denounce the displacement of residents because of big tech companies like Facebook.

The battles are likely to grow as Facebook continues its expansion in Menlo Park, with 1.75 million square feet of new office space expected to be built. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has also been growing, staffing up as it prepares to invest Zuckerbergs enormous fortune in efforts like his stated goal to "cure, prevent, and manage all disease."

Community members expect more tension later this month at an East Palo Alto town hall hosted by Real Community Coalition, a local citizens group, and featuring Facebook. At the meeting, residents will have the opportunity to ask Facebook executives questions about the companys role in the community.

"Connections are at the core of everything we do at Facebook and our relationship with residents of East Palo Alto is no different," Juan Salazar, a public policy manager for Facebook, said in a statement.

The social network has been lobbying to build more housing in the region, which Silicon Valley cities, worried about traffic and preferring a commercial over residential tax base, have fought against. In East Palo Alto, Facebook has invested $18.5 million into the Catalyst Housing Fund, an affordable housing initiative; the company has set a goal to grow the fund to $75 million.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which is also writing grants for affordable housing, said working side by side with local communities was "core to our work." In a statement, the Primary School said the episode with the RV residents was "frustrating and emblematic of larger housing issues in the Bay Area," but that it was not aware of East Palo Altos action to evict those residents and had not engaged with city officials on the matter.

East Palo Altos residents have long felt disempowered against change brought by tech leaders like Zuckerberg. A 2.6-square-mile town where one-third of the schoolchildren are homeless, it has stood as a sign that Silicon Valleys wealth might not spread to those beyond its tech campuses. And so even as Zuckerbergs limited liability company seeks to build a school here, many of its residents are skeptical.

"CZIs just walking into something with a lot of baggage," said Daniel Saver, a lawyer with the Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto, which receives funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. "People here have been pushed around by very big interests and have been taken advantage of for decades. "

Sean Charpentier, East Palo Altos assistant city manager, said the region had been squeezed by the wealth around it and that the homeless population had grown. "Were a receptacle for the externalities around us," he said. "Its felt more deeply here because this city was formed to provide safe and affordable housing."

Patricia Lopez, 48, who owns a home on the street where the RVs were parked, said the trouble for the RV residents began after a community meeting that Facebook executives attended.

"They didnt introduce themselves, but the organizer said, Facebook is in the house, and they waved. And ever since then, its been heavy harassment, heavy policing," she said, which ultimately led to the evictions.

At last weeks City Hall meeting, residents and protesters expressed support for the school but anxiety over the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

By 11 p.m., protesters and city staff were getting agitated and tired. Eventually, the Public Works and Transportation Commission recommended that city staff pursue a long-term solution for the RV community by working with nonprofit organizations and by looking into a ban on oversize vehicles parking overnight.

Facebook said a senior executive attended the meeting. Nearly 50 community members spoke that night. The Facebook executive did not.

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Using logarithms in the real world

December 4, 2017, 4:47 am

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The English mathematician, Henry Briggs, in 1617, was responsible for the introduction of the so-called common logarithms (with the base 10). This was earlier called Briggsian logarithms. Following the pioneering publication of tables of logarithms by mathematician John Napier, Briggs consulted with him to propose an alternative definition of logarithms using a base of 10. In 1617, shortly after Napier's death, Briggs published a logarithm table of the first 1000 numbers.

The beginnings

When Napier introduced logarithms, it simplified the task of many astronomers and others who spent much of their time doing tedious numerical computations. His mathematical interests, which were pursued in his spare time from church and state affairs, were in spherical trigonometry and in computation. It is not clear how he stumbled on the idea, but he probably took the hint from the well-known result that the product of two trigonometric expressions (such as two sines) can be found by finding the sum and difference of other expressions (involving cosines). As it is easier to add and subtract than to multiply and divide, these formulae produced a system of relation.

Again, he perhaps noticed that there exists a simple relationship between successive terms of a geometric progression and the corresponding exponents of the common ratio. He, at first, called the exponent of each power its 'artificial number' but later decided on the term logarithm, which means ratio number. The modern definition was introduced by Leonhard Euler, that is, if a number N equals b to the power of L (where b is affixed positive number other than one), then L is the logarithm (to the base b) of N.

Although Napier is presumed to have discovered the base E (called Naperian base), this is not true. It turns out that he came close to discovering the number 1/E, that is, the inverse of E. The number E is again universal number like N. It occurs universally in the laws of growth and decay of all physical systems. The mean life (of growth and decay) is defined as the time taken for the system to grow or diminish by a factor of E.

The concept of a base clearly took shape only with the introduction of 'common' (base 10) logarithms by Briggs in 1617. When Briggs met Napier, he proposed two modifications to make Napier's tables more convenient, that is, to have the logarithm of one equal to zero and after considering many possibilities, Log 10 = 1 = 10 to the power of zero. In modern phrasing, this implies that if a positive number N is written N equals 10 to the power of L, then L is the common logarithm of N, written simply as log N. Thus, the logarithm of one billion is 9, one trillion is 12.

The words characteristic and mantissa were also suggested by Briggs. Thus, the logarithm of 200 is 2.3010, 2 being the characteristic and 0.3010 the mantissa. The logarithm of a product of several numbers A, B, C, etc is just the sum of logs of A, B, C, etc. Again, the logarithm of A raised to the power of N is just N log A. This simplifies tedious calculations. High powers or exponents can simply be converted to logs. Thus, Y equals log X to base A, if and only if X equals A to the power of Y. Thus, log X is the index to which a must be raised in order to get X. Logs to different bases can be related (logs to base E are called natural logarithms). Taking logarithms gives a sum of terms from a product of terms.

As Pierre-Simon Laplace, a scholar who worked in the fields of mathematics, statistics, physics and astronomy, remarked, "By shortening the labour, the invention of logarithms doubled the life of astronomers". The invention of logarithms as far as dealing with complex calculation is concerned is second only in importance to the invention of the decimal and place value system (including the zero concept) pioneered by Indian and Arab mathematicians. As Lord Moulton said, "The invention of logarithms came to the world as a bolt from the blue. No previous work led to it or heralded its arrival. It stands isolated breaking in on human thought abruptly."

Logarithms around us

It is remarkable that many phenomena in nature universally follow logarithmic laws. Measurement of sound intensity in decibels and size of earthquakes using Richter scale are some examples. Generally, this is quantified by the so called Weber-Fechner law, which states that the response (of the perceiving system) is proportional to the logarithm of the intensity of the stimulus. It is generalised to include any kind of physiological sensation, like perception of brightness caused by a source of light, or perception of loudness from a source of sound.

Our eye can see a candle 10 km away. The intensity of moonlight is a billion times higher, but the eye perceives it as only nine times higher (log billion is 9), so that moonlight does not scorch our eye. A 90-decibel loud conversation is a billion times greater than the very sensitive noise threshold of the ear, but the eardrum does not burst as the ear perceives it as only nine times more intense. The human ear is extremely sensitive to notice a change in pitch caused by a frequency change of only 0.2%. As a result, the musical notes that are written follow logarithmic scale on which the vertical distance (pitch) is proportional to the logarithm of the frequency.

Power laws are also ubiquitous in nature. The spectrum of high energy cosmic rays, radiation given off by charged particles at high velocities in a magnetic field, all follow power laws. Sights, sounds, smells, quakes, tsunamis, high energy radiation, growths, decays and many phenomena follow a logarithmic law. Entropy is a very fundamental concept underlying thermodynamics. It is defined by the Boltzmann formula, where entropy is the logarithm of total number of microstates of the system.

Logarithms are also involved in rocket dynamics in various forms. For a multistage rocket, the velocity and distance reached involve the logarithm of the mass ratio, that is, the ratio of the initial and final masses carried. The trajectory of a falling rocket is again a logarithmic spiral. In pure mathematics, again, logarithms are ubiquitous. The number of primes present below a given large number N is proportional to N divided by log N. Numerous examples can be given, underlying the universality of logarithms. Additionally, all our measurement scales are also based on logarithms.

With so many uses and applications in the natural world, it is hard to not notice that logarithmic laws universally govern nature.

(The author is with Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru)

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An interstellar visitor both familiar and alien

December 4, 2017, 4:48 am

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Visit the galaxy before the galaxy visits you. This fall, the galaxy came calling in the form of a small reddish cigar-shaped object named Oumuamua by astronomers in Hawaii, USA. They discovered it in October, careening through the solar system at 40,000 mph, an interstellar emissary from points unknown. Oumuamua, Hawaiian for 'scout' or 'messenger', was not here long. It was first noticed zooming out of the constellation Lyra on October 19, about 20 million miles from Earth.

Mysterious shape

The discovery set off a worldwide scramble for telescope time to observe the object. Astronomers from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute even got into the act, swinging into action to look for alien radio signals. For now, however, those are just science fiction thrills.

"Our observations are entirely consistent with it being a natural object," said Karen Meech of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, USA and leader of the international collaboration that discovered Oumuamua with the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Haleakala, Maui.

Karen's team has now published the first report of their observations in Nature. The paper describes the interstellar visitor as both reassuringly familiar and utterly alien. "We don't see anything like that in our solar system," Karen said. In its colour and other imputed properties, Oumuamua resembles the asteroids we already know and fear will one day smash the Earth to smithereens. But asteroid's shape is weird. It is extremely elongated, at least 10 times as long as it is wide, perhaps 800 yards by 80 yards.

Though the mysterious object is nearly gone, thousands like it probably lurk undetected in our solar system, according to the scientists. The Pan-STARRS telescope was built to patrol the sky for dangerous asteroids in our own system, not interlopers from beyond. But astronomers got a surprise. Karen learned that her colleagues had found one whose path seemed to originate beyond the solar system altogether.

Astronomers had long surmised that interstellar debris might invade the solar system from time to time, in the form of icy chunks spit from the rocky disks forming faraway planets. Such wanderers would manifest themselves as comets when they got close to our sun, vaporising and lighting up; however, they have not been seen.

Oumuamua showed no such cometary brightening. It is so dark and faint that it could only have been detected by a powerful telescope with a wide field of view, like Pan-STARRS. Oumuamua brightens and dims dramatically every 7.3 hours, which suggests that it is rotating about its short axis.

Spectral measurements have revealed that Oumuamua is dark red. Iron can also contribute that colour, Karen said. How Oumuamua got its shape is a mystery for now. Perhaps, Karen said, it was shot away from its home star by a supernova explosion. Or perhaps it was formed by a pair of objects that collided and stuck together.

A different picture

But where did it come from? Karen said the astronomers were initially excited when the orbit appeared to point to the brightest star in Lyra, Vega, which is known to have a debris disk. It would have taken the object about 6,00,000 years to get here from there, astronomers estimated. But further refinements in the trajectory have made it less likely that Vega actually was the source.

The fact that Oumuamua was travelling at about the same speed relative to the sun suggests that this is the asteroid's first encounter with a new star system. Still, the authors write in Nature, "The possibility that Oumuamua has been orbiting the galaxy for billions of years cannot be ruled out." Where it's going is equally in the dark.

The adventures of this asteroid and its ilk paint a very different picture of the galaxy than you might imagine while gazing up at a sky in which the stars seem separate and sovereign, beaming away in solitude.

We now know that meteorites sprung by asteroid impacts on Mars land on Earth all the time. Otherwise respectable astronomers speculate that one of them might have seeded Earth with life that started on Mars when it was warm and wet long ago. But we can look even further out and backward in time for our connection to the cosmos. Consider the hundreds of thousands of years that Oumuamua might have taken to get here. While that might sound like a long time, it is a blink of cosmic time.

The Milky Way galaxy is 10 billion years old. Which means that over the course of our galaxy's lifetime so far, Oumuamua might have cruised through some 20,000 star systems. Oumuamua would have trailed behind bits of dust and debris, and so the stars and the worlds of the galaxy mix it up. It may be that the universe is a small place after all.

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Snippets - Science

December 4, 2017, 4:53 am

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Of Fuels and Chemicals

Making carbon emissions useful

Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA have developed a new system that could potentially be used for converting power plant emissions of carbon dioxide into useful fuels for cars, trucks and planes, as well as into chemical feedstocks for a wide variety of products. The new membrane-based system is described in a paper in the journal ChemSusChem. The membrane — made of a compound of lanthanum, calcium, and iron oxide — allows oxygen from a stream of carbon dioxide to migrate through to the other side, leaving carbon monoxide behind.

Carbon monoxide produced during this process can be used as a fuel by itself or combined with hydrogen and/or water to make many other liquid hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals including methanol. This process could become part of the suite of technologies known as carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS), which if applied to electricity production could reduce the impact of fossil fuel use on global warming.

Monitoring Cancer

Molecular smoke alert

If it burns in a house smoke detectors alert us, thus protecting life. A molecular smoke alert has now been developed by Dresden researchers for the TP53 gene, the most important human cancer gene. The alert goes on if the TP53 gene is mutated in cells. The molecular smoke detector works like a TP53 sensor, which monitors the correct function of the gene. A non-functional TP53 gene is going to activate the sensor, which initiates cell death. Results from this study from the research team of Professor Frank Buchholz are now published in the journal Nature Communications. They concluded that the formation of a TP53 sensor could suppress tumour formation at a very early stage.

Documentary

Strange Matters

Strange Matters shows how some discoveries made by scientists may destroy us all. One such discovery was made in August 2014, when researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA uncovered the means to manufacture strange matter, a quark liquid which existed billions of years ago and is thought to have played a key role in the Big Bang. When properly manipulated, this liquid quark serves as the most explosive element in the known universe, and can consume and destroy all planetary mass.

The documentary argues that current research involving particle manipulation and man-made black holes carry the threat of even greater devastation. To watch the documentary, visit www.bit.ly/2n7VmVm.

Global Problem

Fighting antibiotic resistance

Antibiotics are commonly used around the world to cure diseases caused by bacteria. But as the World Health Organisation and other international bodies have pointed out, the global increase of antibiotic resistance is a rapidly worsening problem. And since antibiotics are also an essential part of modern medicine, like prophylactic treatment during surgeries and cancer therapy, rising resistance of bacteria presents even more of a danger. That's why researchers are busy devising strategies to address this threat to human health and Université de Montréal (UdeM) is at the forefront of the fight.

One of the ways antibiotic resistance genes are spread in hospitals and in the environment is that the genes are coded on plasmids that transfer between bacteria. A plasmid is a DNA fragment found in bacteria or yeasts. It carries genes useful for bacteria, especially when these genes encode proteins that can make bacteria resistant to antibiotics. Now a team of scientists at UdeM has come up with a novel approach to block the transfer of resistance genes. The study was published in Scientific Reports.

Molecular Activities

Herbicide protection

A research team led by Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, USA has harnessed metabolomics technologies to unravel the molecular activities of a key protein that can enable plants to withstand a common herbicide. Their findings reveal how the protein can sometimes act imprecisely, and how it can be re-engineered to be more precise. The new study appears online in the journal Nature Plants.

Plants provide an extraordinary model for scientists to study how metabolism changes over time. Because they cannot escape from predators or search for new food sources, plants must often grapple with an array of environmental insults using what is readily available — their own internal biochemistry.

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'We've learned to go easy on your spicy food'

December 4, 2017, 10:50 pm

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Hailing from the city of Strasbourg, French rock band Colt Silvers are making a mark across India with their tour to promote their new album. As part of the Bonjour India Rock Tour, the rock band performed at The Humming Tree recently.

Comprising vocalist Tristan, bass player Nicolas, guitarist Florian and drummer Julien, the members of the band produce intense indie electro-rock music inspired by pop culture.

They started gaining popularity beyond France within a year of the release of their debut album Night of the Living Robots in 2009. And their latest album,Swords, co-produced and mixed by Grammy-nominated Fab Dupont, is filled with danceable and feel-good tracks.

Bassist Nicholas Lietaert spoke to Anila Kurian about their exciting India tour.

Its your first trip to India. Hows it going so far?

It was a surprise! Since India is so far away, we really didnt expect to come here one day. Weve been to many places but this was a real surprise.

Youre here to promote your new music. Tell us more about it...

We will be playing songs from our latest album Swords. We are changing a couple of songs, depending on the mood of the night. We just decide on the spot as to what to play next. I know this sounds random but thats how we like it, a little dangerous. The general vibe of the set is to stay the same but we mix it up depending on the city.

Whats your set usually like?

We like to start very darkly, then add more upbeat grooves, switch to instrumental electro in the middle and end with upbeat numbers. Many genres and phases collide in our performance, but it seems to be working so far.

Which has been your most special gig so far?

Playing the main stage at MIDI festival in China last year was a blast. Also, we made an unforgettable small tour in New York before recording Swords, which is where we got most of our inspiration.

Have you heard any Indian music?

No, actually were not familiar with Indian music yet, but we are looking forward to discovering it. We have played with an Indian band in each city and they totally delivered live. The guys were nice after the show.

What have been some interesting discoveries on your trip to India?

Weve had a few days off now in Puducherry after our first four gigs and finally had time to chill, visit, rent bikes, meet people - all that makes for a great experience. Weve learned to go easy on your spicy food. Were looking forward to discovering more cities and more people here.

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Reading the trends

December 4, 2017, 10:56 pm

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Much has been written about the pleasures of shutting yourself away from the world and sitting down with a good book and a cup of coffee. But what was initially touted to be a solitary activity has now spread its wings and is taking on different forms and hues.

People, clubs, businesses - there is an entire fraternity that is working on making reading a more fun and interactive activity. From book fairies who drop books off in public places for you to find to startups that curate the perfect gift box for any bookworm, it is a Santas world out there!

One of the elves in this world is Aamina Shabeer, a student of Christ University and a book fairy. "I always wanted to be engaged in an activity related to literature. My classmate became a book fairy a couple of months back and kept posting pictures on Instagram So I decided to give it a try," she says.

"I decided on my first book - Dracula by Bram Stoker - and dropped it off at Christ University itself. I saw someone pick up the book after some time and that brought me immense joy. I feel such initiatives will bring about an important change because though the next generation is reading, I feel they are not reading good books."

Aamina may have a point there. In a recent survey among 30 major countries, the NOP World Culture Score Index ranks India as the country that loves reading the most! Indians clocked 10.4 hours of weekly reading. Thats around one and a half hours of reading in a day. The data is purely based on the time spent in doing so and has no connection with literacy rates. So are we reading or not reading?

"I think the younger generation is doing a great job. For all their Snapchat and Facebook, they have read books and know what they are talking about. It is somewhat surprising that they are reading so much. Youd think they are always stuck on their phones but thats not true," says Nidhi Srivastava.

And she should know. Nidhi is one of the founders of BYOB - Bring Your Own Book; a book club which has become something of a phenomenon in the countrys literary space now.

"I started BYOB in 2015 with my friends because we wanted to meet more people with whom we could discuss our passion with. And it was not limited to friends. I share a fondness for books with my grandparents, so I envisaged this as a common platform for grandparents and grandchildren to come together and discuss books" she says with a smile.

If you are one of those who abhor human contact when you have a good book in your hand, then RedPaper.in has got you covered.

Says Prachi Saxena, "RedPaper.in is a content website which sees crowdsourced content in the form of short stories, poems and so on. Once while going through the comments, I came across one which said Nice story; I just need a cup of tea with it. It was an old yet popular notion - the concept of tea and books - but I realised people still want to do this. So I decided to curate some things from my end for the book lovers out there."

The startup then came out with a box that puts together two books, a months supply of a beverage, 5-6 bookish goodies, a D-I-Y kit and a postcard with some of their unpublished original content. The box, which can be availed using a monthly subscription, is a bookworms treasure trove!

So what are... no, how are you reading today?

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A home away from home

December 4, 2017, 10:56 pm

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A few weeks after I came to the city, I was travelling to Majestic, which was then an unfamiliar place to me. Not knowing how to reach there, I asked a passerby for help. He guided me to take a certain bus. However, as I was about to get on it, he realised that it was a wrong bus and that person came running to me to tell me that this was not the bus I had to board. I was quite surprised by the persons thoughtful gesture to a stranger like me," recalls a grateful Dhananjoy Chutia.

Dhananjoy, who is a staff software engineer at Spirent Communications, says that there are more such experiences and he is extremely appreciative of them. Dhananjoy, who came to the city in 2008, relocated to Bengaluru with his family in 2015. He and his wife Kabita Dowari Chutia from Dhemaji, Assam are today blessed with two children, Suvashini, who is five and Narayan, who is a year old.

"Bengaluru was the first city I chose as our base because of the ample opportunities it had to offer. My wife used to work as a lecturer back in our hometown but, she had to leave her job to join me here. She is now a homemaker, which is a much bigger and responsible job," says Dhananjoy.

The family is often seen exploring different places in and around Bengaluru as they all love to travel. Be it Nandi Hills or Mysuru, they are always on the go and spend their weekend in a fruitful way. If not travelling, the couple makes sure to take their kids out to a park or shopping mall every weekend.

"Cooking together is another way we like to spend quality time with each other, and weekends are the best time for that. I not only help my wife in the kitchen but also try my hand at cooking sometimes. She is, of course, a better cook," he adds.

Hailing from Assam, the couple misses their traditional food the most.
They also miss the vegetables and fruits grown in their hometown like ou tenga (elephant apple), dhekia xaak (fiddlehead fern) and robab tenga (pomelo).

"Most of the time, we make Assamese food at home. I know to cook a few items and we manage with that. There are a few shops here that sell fish local to our region, thats how we satiate our cravings. Also, there are many Assamese restaurants in the city which we go to regularly," says Kabita.

Talking about home, Kabita says the couple misses their families, school and college friends in their hometown.

Throwing light on the work culture here, Dhananjoy says, "People in Bengaluru are extremely professional as compared to people in Assam, who are a bit laid back. Also, there are a lot of holidays and bandhs every other day which hampers the functioning of ones everyday life. Shifting to Bengaluru has been a blessing that way."

"Our stay in the city has been an excellent one. We look forward to staying here for many more years to come," he adds.

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On holiday road

December 4, 2017, 10:58 pm

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Its December! And if you are among the majority of Earthlings who cant figure out where 2017 vanished to and are cribbing about how time flies, pack your bags and head out! There is no better way to ring out the old and ring in the new than being at a new place and with the holiday season officially here, many people are looking forward to well-deserved vacations.

Says Nayan Basu, an instructional designer with Accenture, "Its that time of the year when most roads lead to either hilltops or seashores. While places like Gokarna, Goa, Visakhapatnam and the Andaman Islands remain the top choices for travellers, states like Kerala and Pondicherry attract a lot of foot-fall during the Christmas and New Year season as well."

Nayan does not wish to be a part of the crowd this year though. "During Christmas, I will be away from the hustle and bustle of the city. I will be going to a tribal village in West Medinipur, West Bengal. I want to explore the local history of the place and surrounding attractions like a palace, a fort and an old terracotta temple."

Advance planning is the key when it comes to making your December plans, points out Ami Bhat, a travel blogger who doles out travel advice and tips through her portal thrilling travel. "I look at the cost before I decide to travel anywhere during this time. It is the peak season the world over and all the popular places are extremely costly and extremely crowded. So you have to book well in advance, ideally by September or so. But even then, they have special rates for December. Or the other option is to go on a road trip which is what I am doing with my friends this time."

Flying out is no more an impossible dream and more and more travellers are heading to foreign locales to soak in the merriment. Says Ami, "Winter in Europe is a huge thing, I know a lot of people who go there. I also get a lot of queries about Indonesia, typically Bali, and Mauritius. Within India, beach destinations seem to be the trend. There are some people who love the extreme winters and even head for the Himachal region and surrounding areas during this time."

Shruthi Gowda swears by Christmas in Sri Lanka, an unlikely combination but a magical one at that! "Sri Lanka is beautiful; the locals are helpful and the place is pristine and not too crowded. The country is lit up for Christmas and there is wonderful bonhomie in the air. The water is crystalline, warm and inviting and the white sand beaches are a great way to spend a different kind of white Christmas. And the spicy cuisine is fantastic."

Having been to Mysuru and Gokarna during December over the past few years, Shruthi has now set her sights farther away. "I wish to hit the beaches in Seychelles or Mauritius during Christmas next," she says.

Putting things in perspective, Amit Taneja, Chief Revenue Officer at Cleartrip says, "When it comes to the winter travel trends, the top domestic destinations are Goa, Lucknow, Udaipur and Jaipur while preferred international destinations are Dubai, Bangkok, Singapore, Colombo, London and Hongkong. Adventure tourism also has caught on in the country and skiing is the most sought-after activity by adventure travellers in the season. Shimla, Auli and Kathmandu are places that are gaining the fancy of such people."

Forget Christmas goodies, it is a world of Christmas getaways out there. Seasons greetings are in order then!

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Roads to an unhealthy life

December 4, 2017, 10:58 pm

≫ Next: 'I can flow with any beat'

≪ Previous: On holiday road

Air pollution has become the hallmark of Outer Ring Roads (ORRs) in Bengaluru. Of late, many infrastructure projects are coming up on these roads and are adding to the current problem. People living in and around the area, corporate employees and even traffic cops are facing the ill-effects of this.

Shalinee, an equity expert working in Ecospace says, "It has become an ordeal to travel to work on this route. It is highly polluted. During the rains, it gets even more difficult to travel as the road in front of my office submerges in drainage water, which is an outflow of the Bellandur stormwater drain. People find it difficult to step on the road. We have to enter our offices through this water."

Says Ravi Kumar, a resident of Bellandur, "People in my apartment get paid water tankers for drinking as we cannot consume the water here. Not only that, at times the stormwater drain stinks badly. Last year, a multi-storey building collapsed next to our apartment. Kids had to suffer a lot due to the dust from that and for months, it was not cleared."

Indudhar Chandrappa, a corporate communications manager, says, "I travel from Nagasandra to Bellandur for my work. Despite the work-from-home option, I feel as if my throat is burning every time I come this way. I have started to commute in cabs but when I return through Yemlur, I can feel the toxicity of the stormwater drain. I wonder about the state of those people staying in the area."

"Let alone Bellandur, even if I take the Inner Ring Road via Indiranagar to Marathahalli, I see a similar situation. This is probably because of the companies that are right in the city. Earlier, all the industries used to be on the outskirts of the city. If the town planning had been done in such a way that these companies were on the outskirts as a separate structure, we might not have faced such a condition," he says.

When asked if there are rising cases of respiratory issues among people working and living in these areas, Dr Anoo Chengappa, a general physician at Dr Chengappa M M Clinic, says, "There is definitely an increase in people coming in with respiratory issues to our clinics. Traffic pollution is the main cause of it. Students are more affected than elders. Those commuting on these roads and living near Ring Roads are in a bad shape."

"From the last three to five years there has been an increase in such cases. Though water contamination is also high in these areas, it is still a solvable issue. We can ask people to boil the water and drink. But what are we going to do about the air?" she asks

At present, she is advising people to use anti-pollution masks as the air quality has gone down in such areas. The issue is similar on Goraguntepalya-Hebbal stretch.

Dr Radhakrishna T R of Kusuma Clinic blames it on the traffic and rapid development on ORRs. According to him, even anti-pollution masks are not feasible because people in this part are open to very fine dust and this cannot be solved by using masks.

"Even school children cannot be protected. This is something that the government has to discuss with the industrialists," he says.

"Not only this, many play schools and creches that have tie-ups with the corporates are located on the ORRs. The kids in these playschools or creches are getting affected by asthma and bronchitis infection, thanks to the commute on these polluted roads. Instead, companies can allow employees to place children at the nearby daycare and reimburse the money. This would definitely be a great option," he adds.

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'I can flow with any beat'

December 4, 2017, 10:58 pm

≫ Next: Just beat it!

≪ Previous: Roads to an unhealthy life

Akhil Chandrashekar aka 2EM believes that he can change the world with his music. The young rapper who remembers writing music since the age of five is glad that he is steps closer to spreading strong messages through his music. He is excited about his new album The Debut which released recently. In a candid chat with Tini Sara Anien, he talks about the track and more.

What is the story behind 2EM?

Rap is a genre which always gives due credit to the people one idealises. My favourite artistes are 2pac and Eminem and Im paying them a tribute through my name.

How did music happen to you?

I always found that music pulled me out of any bad phase that I have been through. Seeing struggle and pain around, I always knew that this would be how I would be able to make a change. Music is my outlet for change. I believe that I am working with rap because it is a genre which depicts a revolution. My music shows my struggle.

What are you trying to explore through your music?

I want Indians to understand our roots and culture. I also stand strongly for causes like fighting women abuse and will be releasing a track in February based on it. My music will explore subjects based on politics, history, culture, human behaviour and also lyricism.

Tell us a bit about The Debut. Whats next?

I understand that the market I am dealing with is easily influenced. Talking about subjects like sexual abuse or drug abuse could easily get me typecast. I have tried to explore lyricism and boom-rap in The Debut, which would help me reach a larger audience. The next track is called Type People, which talks about the different type of people who exist. A Smile from Pain, the next one will be released at the end of December. Everyone hears a lot of happy music around this time of the year and this track will connect to those who have had a difficult year. It tries to reach to people who need music to cope.

Rap is connected to tempo. What is your Beats Per Minute (BPM)?

I can flow with any beat. I am comfortable with anything, varying from 80 to 144 BPM.

Your other favourites in music are...

I am also deeply influenced by Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley because of what they stood for through their music.

Music to you is...

Everything! Its the only reason I function. There is no other way I can put forward my existence other than through music. Music is the only way I can express.

Is there a strong rap scene in the country?

Our culture is such that it accepts music from all genres. The scene doesnt exist at the moment but it is picking up.

Just before a gig, what is the first thing you remind yourself?

I tell myself why I am at the event and not to get carried away.

What is your lucky charm?

My mind and my existence.

If you were not a musician, what would you have been?

A politician. I strongly believe that I have to make a change.

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Just beat it!

December 4, 2017, 10:58 pm

≫ Next: Remembering a legend

≪ Previous: 'I can flow with any beat'

I was always a foodie. Since my childhood, I had always liked food. My dad was my inspiration. I used to always go with him to all possible food outlets in Bengaluru. This connected us more and I started enjoying the process of exploring new cafes and shops with him. Together, we used to taste different kinds of food. You could say that the love for food is in my genes.

We had a catering business at home and I grew up seeing how it was done. Education wise, I never thought I would choose the culinary field. I went for the CET, but eventually, I felt that I wanted to do something in the creative field. I was also interested in photography. For quite a few years, the only thing I could cook was Maggi Noodles. Then I got my first oven and I tried my hands on baking a cake, which was a total disaster.

Until that day, baking was not my cup of tea and the oven was left untouched after that episode for almost a year. Then I decided to enter the culinary field and became proactive. I joined baking classes conducted by a home baker. What started as fun was becoming a serious affair.

When I started taking classes, I thought Damn! This is great fun.

I was at that time working as a manager in a music academy. But soon, I quit the job. I took a solid six-month break again to practise baking at home. My baking teacher asked me if I wanted to attend a workshop in Trivandrum. This was a huge opportunity for me and I agreed to it instantly. Here, I understood how home tutoring happens. This also made me realise that it is the culinary field that I wanted to be.

Initially, my brother was a bit apprehensive but he supported my decision as he saw that this was what I aspire to be. I decided to do a full-time diploma course with Lavonne.
Once I was good, I wanted to see how my products sold. I tried to sell few items like whole wheat bread and brownies on my BeLikeCake Facebook page, which was a huge hit.

This boosted my confidence further and I got motivated. I list out eateries and make sure that I go there and try out the food. My list keeps growing every day. This also helps me improve my cooking skills.

Food has been something I loved exploring since childhood but understood that this is what I wanted to do recently. My favourite dish is Biryani and chocolates and whenever I feel down, I still need chocolates.

I am sharing with you, one of my favourite recipes which is Banana-walnut cake with yoghurt-lime sorbet.

Chef Gnanakshi Ganesan

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Remembering a legend

December 4, 2017, 11:02 pm

≫ Next: Raising a stink

≪ Previous: Just beat it!

Actors across film industries are saddened by the passing away of legendary actor Shashi Kapoor. It was his strong personality and charming demeanour that impressed them all. The Deewar stars deep love for theatre and interest in every aspect of filmmaking set him apart from actors of his time. A few actors share with Metrolife their memories of him.

Raveena Tandon

"I have grown up watching Shashi Kapoors films and I have had the chance to observe him from close quarters because he worked with my father. I remember him as a stylish and classy gentleman. Shashi Kapoor had a house in Goa and we would visit him there once in a while. While the children would be busy playing in the sand and water, my father and Shashi Kapoor used to chat over a drink. His first love was his wife Jennifer. He was shattered after the passing away of Jennifer, and I dont think he ever overcame that
grief."

Ramesh Aravind

"There are stars and there are gentlemen. There are not many actors who have both these traits in equal measure but Shashi Kapoor was a combination of both. His love for theatre was palpable and his contributions to the world of cinema cannot be measured. His good looks and endearing ways made him a popular actor."

Boman Irani

"I have never worked with Shashi Kapoor but I met him once at a wedding almost 30 years ago. He came and sat right next to me and we talked about a variety of topics. He was surrounded by people who wanted to either take a picture or an autograph from him and he obliged them all without a frown. I was impressed with his humility. There was a lot to learn from him. I have always been a huge fan of his and I have grown up on a diet of his films."

Sumalatha Ambareesh

"Everybody who has watched Shashi Kapoors films will remember him to be a handsome and charming man. He had a distinct class and style of acting. He was also perhaps the most-loved actor on screen. An era has come to an end with the passing away of this veteran actor."

Juhi Chawla

"As a child, I managed to get the autograph of Shashi Kapoorji. As I grew older, whenever anybody asked who my favourite actor was, I would say Shashi Kapoor because I found him charming. I had never dreamt that I would join the film industry one day and when I finally got to meet Shashiji and spend some time with him, I found him to be a very kind and jovial person. He would tap me on my head and jokingly call me "silly girl". From 2010, I spent a lot of time at Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital because my brother had been admitted there in the ICU and I would see Shashiji being brought into the hospital on a wheelchair for dialysis. I felt sad. His memory was failing and he didnt recognise me. I am deeply saddened by his passing away."

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Raising a stink

December 4, 2017, 11:02 pm

≫ Next: That holiday look!

≪ Previous: Remembering a legend

Waste still continues to be a concern in the city in spite of many waste segregation campaigns. In a move to monitor garbage dumping in the city, the BBMP is planning to install CCTV cameras so that the civic body can identify corners where garbage is often piled up.

While many citizens are supportive of BBMPs plans, others say that this could be just another failed attempt to manage the garbage situation.

Sushma Kaushik, a homemaker from Nagarbhavi 2nd Stage, says that waste is often dumped near stormwater drains across the city.

"This is a common happening at night so that no one spots the perpetrator. Cameras will help identify those who frequently throw garbage in public spaces, including corners of the streets," she says.

One can spot factory waste to hazardous chemicals on the roads and this should be stopped, she points out. "From glass pieces to harmful liquid waste, anything could be lying on the road and footpath. A dynamic mechanism to spot these miscreants has to be worked out," she says.

Shreevalli Prasad, a resident of Sahakarnagar, rubbishes the idea entirely.

"While the intention is good, it looks like an entire scheme where a lot of money will be wasted. Once a spot is identified and a strict fine is levied for illegal garbage disposal, wont the perpetrators be on the lookout for a new place?" she asks.

She says that there should be other feasible options for this situation. "The BBMP should provide a mandatory dry and wet waste bin for every family and maintain strict collection services so that one doesnt have to step out to dump waste," she adds.

Mamatha Bharadwaj, an entrepreneur and resident of Rajarajeshwari Nagar, feels that this move will help create fear among citizens.

"Im not sure how successful the idea would be otherwise. In the long run, people might even mess with the camera. The best way to handle waste segregation and dumping is to cultivate civic sense in ones own locality. During the resident welfare association meetings, one could take mandatory steps for organised waste collection," she says.

The CCTV cameras could also support the law and order system and monitor all street corners, pitches in Archana Kamath, an IT professional, who stays in Malleswaram.

"This, in turn, will help better the total welfare of every region. There need to be regular interactions between the BBMP and residents of each area to identify blind spots and locate new ones," she says.

She adds that apart from cameras, big waste bins should also be installed in different localities so that people who are not able to dispose the waste to pourakarmikas, can dump the waste at an organised spot, where the collection agents can come and pick it up from.

"The public and civic bodies should work hand in hand for cleaner and healthier surroundings," she adds.

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