The current unrest in Pakistan won’t end gracefully.  Nor will it end soon.  People are calling for the restoration of democracy as if there was one functioning before.  Their history doesn’t exactly portray one of a harmonious, mountainous nation thriving by the will of the people.  Frankly, democracy isn’t what we should be concerned with at the moment.  It’s the power vacuum about to be created with radicals waiting in the wings that the world should focus on.

Further, Pakistan’s friends and foes alike will need to intervene when Musharraf loses power.  There’s an assumption in the previous statement:  I don’t think he’ll make it through this unscathed.   His time as come — and his opponents will use this current weakness as an opportunity to seize power and convert Pakistan into our greatest nightmare:  extremists with nuclear weapons.

Even with a relatively stable regime, the Pakistanis managed to proliferate nuclear weapons to every known offender worldwide who possessed a little cash.  Iran and North Korea only have their nuclear capabilities because of these fellows who are now regarded as national heroes.  Iran in particular looks like a walk in the park compared to the situation in Pakistan.  So Ahmadinejad questions the Jewish holocaust — who cares at the moment when there might be another one but on a much larger scale?

There’s no easy answer to the current situation.  Propping up Musharraf’s regime with billions of US dollars has not proven useful.  US troops on the ground won’t work as a force to keep things from completely disintegrating — the Pakistani people would revolt in a violent way.   A puppet government also would prove ineffective as it has so many times in the past.

Our main mission, however covert it might be, should be to secure the nuclear weapons — or just destroy them before it gets into the wrong hands.  India might be forced to react to this before the US has a chance.  We’re not next door to Pakistan and don’t have the urgency that India has.  And I wouldn’t blame her either.

I was doing some work late one evening with the lights turned down low in the room and I happened to glance outside of the window and fixated upon a strange, dark object.  It was a bat —- at the same height as the floor I was on!  I quickly grabbed my camera and sprang into action. 

It eventually flew away.  I suppose it was annoyed with the flash from my camera, but it was a little crazy to see one so close up.

Then the next morning, in the same exact set of trees, I see a wild parrot staring back at me much like the bat was.  I have only seen the bat once, but the parrots can be seen regularly. 

I often find myself trying to explain things about India — to myself even.  Similar metaphors associated with bats and parrots can be found amongst many other contrasting aspects of life here.  India seems a little like a mashup —– different parts fused together or placed side-by-side. 

But one of the most obvious disparities is between India’s rich and poor.  And it’s a gulf that only seems to be getting worse — at least in the short term.  But my fear is that India’s extremely poor will get left behind in the current technology boom.  But that’s what happens in democratic societies with free markets —– things aren’t necessarily fair.  And they’re certainly not balanced.

One could opine and muse all day long about the problems in India, particularly when it comes to infrastructure.  Let’s face it — India’s infrastructure is a mess.  One cannot even classify it as being in disrepair —– because that implies that it worked properly once upon a time.  But the problems are and will get better over time.  But still, each time I visit India, it’s apparent how chaotic things are here because of it.

“Load shedding” happens frequently.  It’s a way of forcing people off the electrical grid when it needs to, well, shed some load.  A very small, lightweight storm came through Pune a few days ago.  We lost power at the house for a brief period.  I lost Blackberry data service for the rest of the evening.  It was the sort of storm that would be a blip on the radar in the States in terms of fear of power loss.  But small storms can amount to large disruptions here because of the infrastructure.

But, just before the storm was starting to set in, I was wandering around on foot (getting a break from my startup) and realized that democracies are chaotic by definition.  Competing interests, capital markets, free flow of information and ideas all have a mysterious way of being chaotic yet somehow manage to work out in seemingly the most challenging situations. 

As people continue to describe India as the “counter-weight” to China, I am reminded that infrastructure in Shanghai is brilliant, but at the cost of slave labor, censorship and basic freedoms.  Give me poor, ailing infrastructure any day along with the ability to speak my mind, read from the free press, and travel freely —– compared to living under a merciless regime with well paved roads. 

I spent a couple of days at BarCampBangalore3 last weekend on the lovely campus of the highly reputed Indian Institute of Management (IIM).  I spoke about BigSwerve, my startup, and the Semantic Web in reference to such.  People get it and the reaction was great —– and I think they’re starting to understand the Semantic Web as well.  There wasn’t much time to really try to explain what the Semantic Web was all about, so I stuck to simple examples of being able to make inferences over data to explain one large difference between the “uppercase” SemWeb and its “lowercase” comrads consisting of things like microformats. 

BCB3 was fun — and it was one of the more thought provoking technology gatherings since it incorporated more than just a pure tech focused discussion.  There was a lively discussion about India’s future as a provider in a services economy or one in a product economy.  I get the feeling that many folks believe a product based approach is more prestigious than that of a service or outsourcer economy. 

I interjected, from a somewhat outsider perspective, that the source of innovation is typically close in physical proximity to the source of the need.  In other words, the western world typically innovates for the western world itself.  And mobile phone are way more ubiquitous compared to personal computer use in India, especially in homes.  Until such a time when Indians can innovate for India, it will continue to predominantly be a services based economy. 

And it’s not a bad place to be either in my opinion —– some people during the discussion raised the age old argument that all the profits from companies like Nokia get returned to Finland, the respective shareholders, and people outside of India.  But they quickly forget the valuable benefits brought on with employment in the local economy and the tremendous wealth being recirculated by such. 

I’m back in India for six weeks as we try to push to reach the next level of our beta release. We’re going to open it up to a wider audience in the coming weeks.

I’m also going to be at BarCampBangalore3 this coming weekend being held on India’s prestigious IIM campus to discuss some thoughts on the Semantic web and how we fit into it.

On another note, I chose to take the direct, non-stop flight to India from the States rather than making the connection in Europe as I previously had in the past. The trip can be painful, but it’s the best way to minimize fatigue. And the prices — at the moment at least — are less than the cost of making the connection in Europe. 15 hours on a plane can be rough though.

BusineekWeek has an article about the spread of Linux in India.  It’s a great read for anyone interested in the philosophical spread of open source software and the inherent challenges of proprietary wares in the developing world. 

“We’re using something called Linux,” says 12-year-old Arya VM as she plays with Tux Paint, a Linux drawing and painting application. And Windows? “Never heard of it,” she says.

I am determined to visit Wagha, the Indian border town that meets Pakistan, on my next visit to India.  It’s a great opportunity to visit Amritsar, about 30km away, which is home to the Golden Temple, a Sikh holy site.

Everyday at 4:30PM guards on both sides of the border perform shadowed goosestepping (bizarrely exaggerated) in a ceremony marking the closing of the border gates for the day.  It’s an orchestrated event that is performed with such nationalistic fervor that makes it so intriguing to me.

Here’s a brief video clip: Wagha Border Ceremony

I received an email from the engineers on my team in India that ISPs have started allowing access to the blocked typepad.com and blogspot.com domains after the Bombay attacks.  Apparently, they weren’t able to selectively block certain blogs (for whatever reason), but have realized how insanely ineffective it was to attempt to block anything at all.  There are numerous ways to get around the block considering RSS aggregators, email notification, and anonymous proxies amongst other things.

Apparently, the basis for the blocking was related to content on 18 blogs that the government deemed to contain “extremely derogatory references to Islam.”  Regardless of the precise content, I find it appalling that the world’s largest democracy would implement such far reaching acts of censorship even in the face of possible sectarian violence.  I’m also quite surprised that the government thinks that it can possibly manage the process of censoring the sites that might contain questionable content.  Only the Chinese are that good.

Thanks to all those people who emailed or called asking if we had any relatives who were affected by the attacks in Bombay. I don’t have immediate relatives there, but I have plenty of distributed family members living in the area. None were directly involved in the train bombings, but they will surely be affected by having their city attacked. I am always touched by the level of personal attention we receive on the off chance that someone we know was involved in such horrendous man-made or natural disasters when they occur on the Indian subcontinent.
My disappointment lies with the media. Four times the number of people died in Bombay and hundreds more were injured compared to the attacks in London almost exactly a year ago, but the media attention to the Bombay situation is commensurate to a shark attack in Florida. The same thing happened when Delhi was attacked on Halloween in 2005. Hundreds of thousands of people in Sudan and neigboring states have died in recent years, but very few people seem to care.
Instead, we’re getting a blow-by-blow of the situation of Israel pouncing on Beirut in their quest to wipe Hezbollah off the face of the Earth. Not that the situations are comparable in terms of importance, but we can unequivocally predict the outcome of the latter: hundreds of innocent people will die soon, suicide bombings will continue in the name of martyrdom, and Israel will take an offensive posture in the name of security. Rinse and repeat.

My flight from Paris was delayed 4+ hours because of a fuel pump problem that prevented carrying a full tank of fuel. They worked on it for hours but couldn’t resolve the issue.  The pilots opted to fly to Bangor, Maine where we refueled.  777 service from Paris, France to Bangor, Maine. (WTF, but whatevs!)  48 hours with no sleep gives one plenty of time to think about building a business.

I spent the last 5 days in Delhi before leaving for the States. The heat was brutal — a noticeable difference compared to Pune, but it somehow became secondary when I realized my purpose. That has been a general theme throughout my trip: sacrifice for the mission at hand, target the next milestone, concentrate on building a business but remain flexible at all times. Adapting the business is key to survival even if you have to iterate early on. (But that does not mean that Apple gets a pass for iterating their way out of India —- that was simply management gown awry.)

I am in Paris at the moment waiting for my flight back to ATL. There is a rather new, nonstop-direct flight from Delhi to Newark that I might try, if the price is right, for my next visit to India. Stopping in Europe is becoming quite tedious, but not nearly as painful as crossing over the Pacific when you originate on the East Coast. The Singapore and HK airports are considered world-class facilities, but I hate spending time in either place.

Speaking of world-class facilities, if the Delhi Metro is any indicator of what future infrastructure in India will be like: watch out! In all my years of travelling to India I have never seen such well run (and spotless) infrastructure. It has been a smashing success on all fronts. I cannot wait to see India transform into a juggernaut, but it will only come with two major changes in my opinion: adoption of civic duty amongst the people and upgraded infrastructure. Interestingly, the infrastructure part will be the easier of the two. Maintaining and respecting it for use by others is the difficult part.

I am openly a critic of the US government at various times on many fronts. I think it is part of my responsibility as an American citizen to dissent when I feel appropriate, but let me give some props where it is due as well. We are taught the value of civic responsibility early in life in the US and in many other Western countries, but that hasn’t historically been the case in India. The various governments in the US do public service announcements on a whole host of subjects that, in my opinion, have a slow yet assured positive impact on the behavior of the citizens. We see television campaigns on littering, drug abuse, AIDS, birth control, and racial tolerance. Some might argue that it’s common sense to cherish thy neighbor and not to litter, but it’s not —- it’s learned behavior. We’re taught in the US that with independence comes individual responsibility for the greater good of society.

From my observations and the agreement of several family members, survivial mentality in India breeds a level of selfish behavior that focuses on one’s immediate surroundings. Look no further than the “society” or neighborhood in which one lives. Their house and neighborhood will be spotless, but immediately outside those four walls could be a completely different place. I’m not assigning any blame — just commenting on an observation. My own relatives are plagued by this: survival mentality, even in middle to upper-class tiers of wealth, fails to breed civic responsibility. This exists everywhere, but is just more distinct in India.

Some of my friends were curious about the house where I’m staying here in Pune.  It’s quite nice with several hints of European design.  Granite and marble are in great supply here in India, thus used extensively.  Even the bathrooms at the airport use granite everywhere. 

More photos here.

Expect the unexpected in India. It’s not a place for weak hearts or closed minds. It’s a place for believers in free markets and freedom of speech. It’s a place where innovation and entrepreneurship are in the very fabric of the people. It’s a place that teaches competition at an early age. This is a place where they always consider the upside and thus are eternal optimists by nature. This is a country of risk takers because they value reward. India is about contrasts — from Indian food to everyday life to their art, India is a place that values the product of contrasting disparate elements. Pictured above is a herd of goats in front of the office today. 

More pictures here.

Apple has announced that it has released all 30 employees in their Bangalore office who were supposed to end up comprising 600 support and development staff in total. Offshore product development and support is not a model that works for all companies and environments, but surely the ramifications were known by Apple’s due diligence.  They did their due diligence, no?
The fact that Apple pulled the plug so soon into their offshore development and support efforts really says something about the management or the lack thereof. Did they learn something in the short two months that they were in operation that justified a show-stopper? There should have been no surprises going into this endeavor from an operational perspective. The numbers are clear and the factors of production are known.

It’s not like they didn’t have years of case studies available from high priced consultants to gauge customer reaction (and every other metric for that matter) if that was the reason for pulling out. It’s simply irresponsible to make such far reaching initiatives and then bail on the entire effort before really getting past the starting line. Shareholders should be inflamed for such high-school like management practices.

I was in New Delhi this past weekend and returned to Pune on Sunday. At 14M people strong, it’s easily one of India’s most populated cities. It’s also the home of India’s central government. I get the same goosebumps in Delhi that I get in Washington, DC. The monuments adorning both cities are truly spectacular.