Sparsh

1- Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Social CRM and the Social Enterprise - The reality of Social CRM is that many enterprises aren’t finding what they need with existing vendors. So they are quietly building their own CRM systems. It’s all about using technology to support and streamline relationships not control them. 2- Prof. Cornel West on the moral obligations of living in a democratic society . 3- Information Bureau For Microfinance by C.P.Mohan and Simanchal Sahu 4- Is Micro Finance leading to a Macro Mess - The AP Ordinance by Aloysius P. Fernandez 5- Rockstar of Financial Inclusion: Business Correspondent Model of India . 6- Death by Indifference : AIDS and Heroin Addiction in Russia 7- What Social Sector Needs to Learn from the Private Sector 8- Vakrangee Finserve becomes Common Banking Correspondent for Gujarat - The bid is the outcome of a "suggestion" from the Department of Financial Services which basically told public sector banks to divide I...

1- Retuning Alha Udal : The lustrous versatility of film music, and change wrought by time. Gulzar knows our culture more than anybody in music industry. 2- Evaluating responses to India's macroeconomic crisis by Shubho Roy and Ajay Shah. 3- Not an April Fool : We are encouraged to over-share, for commercial reasons (just as we are encouraged to over-consume, but that's an issue for another time). 4- वक्‍त की छलनी में चेहरे गुम हो जाते हैं, गीत अमर रहता है ♦ जावेद अख्‍तर - पिछले दिनों जावेद अख्‍तर को राष्‍ट्रपति ने राज्‍यसभा की सदस्‍यता दी। 17 मई 2012 को जावेद साहब ने संसद में अपना पहला भाषण दिया। 5- Sheryl Sandberg’s Inspiring Speech At Harvard Business School . Sandberg urged the new graduates to think of their careers as a “jungle gym,” jumping around instead of following a preordained progression. She urged her listeners to take similar leaps, perhaps accepting a job that’s a step down from what one is currently doing if it offers the chance to learn something ...

1- Banning middlemen from oil trade could drive down price of crude by 40% : These middlemen add little value and lots of cost as they bid up the price of oil in pursuit of financial gain. They are "pure" speculators - investors who buy and sell oil futures but never take physical possession of actual barrels of oil. 2- Daron Acemoglu on Inequality - The US, the UK and many other countries have become far less equal over the past 30 years. The MIT economics professor says it's important we understand how and why this happened, and what it means for our societies. He also review Five Books. 3- The Emperor Uncrowned - A complete reportage on the rise of Narendra Modi. 4- The new think tank by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha:- Dry intellectual pursuits such as neuroscience and auction theory are solving problems on the ground. We met four people whose models prove how. 5- December 1984 By Sathyu Sarangi : Many of the battles begun 25 years ago, in the aftermath of catast...

1- Barefoot - The other side of life Harsh Mander -: Can anyone really live on Rs. 26 a day, the income of the officially poor in rural India? Two youngsters try it out. 2- Powerhouse on your plate! - Easily accessible and affordable, millets are making a comeback to Indian kitchens, says Shonali Muthalaly. 3- The everyday embrace of inequality :The institution of paid domestic labour produces cleanliness, meals and childcare, but it also produces and reproduces an unequal home and society. 4- Salman Rushdie & India's new theocracy :-India's secular state is in a state of slow-motion collapse. The contours of a new theocratic dystopia are already evident. 5- BCCI: Billionaires Control Cricket in India by P. SAINATH 6- 42 per cent of Indian children are underweight - Hunger and Malnutrition (HUNGaMA) report by the Naandi Foundation – were described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a “national shame” at a release function here on Tuesday. 7- The complex co...

1- Food Politics : How the present National Food Security Bill will deepen Food Insecurity by Dr Vandana Shiva. 2- How To Learn the Language of Evil - Alan Wolfe's Political Evil offers lessons liberals especially need. A review By Michael Ignatieff. 3- Five Things You Should Stop Doing in 2012 by Dorie Clark who is a strategy consultant who has worked with clients including Google, Yale University, and the National Park Service. [HBR] 4- Why I Hire People Who Fail by Jeff Stibel who is Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. [HBR] 5- On Public Funding of Colleges and Towards a General Theory of Public Options : If we want to wonder why public education is becoming expensive it is in part because we aren’t supporting it as much as we were in the past. 6- Why Software Is Eating The World : Instead of constantly questioning their valuations, let's seek to understand how the new generation of technology companies are doing what they do, what ...

1- Who Represents the Poor? by Pranab Bardhan - The Limits of the NGO Movement in Global Development 2- Why the Fight against Poverty Is Failing: A Contrarian View - Abraham George is the founder of The George Foundation, an NGO engaged in humanitarian work in India, and the author of India Untouched: The Forgotten Face of Rural Poverty. In this contrarian essay, he explores why the current strategies that governments and development agencies are employing to reduce poverty are not working the way they should. Among his arguments: Microcredit programs, as they are now practiced in India, do little to help the poor. 3- The great land grab : India's war on farmers - Land is a valuable asset that should be used to better humanity through farming and ecology. An article by Vandana Shiva. 4- Right to Food Campaign's opposition to replacement of PDS with cash transfers : A Google group for interaction and discussion. 5- In Free India I Was Denied Entry ' : - Interview...

Harvard professor Larry Lessig is one of our foremost authorities on copyright issues, with a vision for reconciling creative freedom with marketplace competition. 1- The Indian state of Bihar has long been a byword for bad governance. It was however governed particularly badly between 1990 and 2005, and has since experienced something of a ‘governance miracle’. How can we account for the 1990–2005 deterioration? Through this working paper - State Incapacity by Design: Understanding the Bihar Story , we will understand that the low state capacity is often a political choice . 2- La Grande Revolution, Encore? A comparison between France of 1787 with present USA as both had financed an overseas war with borrowed money. 3- The War Dogma : This article appears in the July issue of Agenda/Infochange for the theme on the ‘Limits of Freedom’. An insight on Dantewada and Operation Green Hunt. 4- Playing fast and loose by Pratap Bhanu Mehta : A overview of tussle on Janlokpal Bill ...

1- Great compilation of cultural article at BBC Hindi : Enjoy Reading about Hindustani Tahzeeb 2- ऑन स्‍क्रीन ऑफ स्‍क्रीन : बहुरुपिया का माडर्न अवतार आमिर खान 3- Death by Dialogue By Trisha Gupta : What does it mean for the future of Hindi cinema if most films are now in fact conceived, thrashed out and largely executed not in Hindi but in English? Will filmmakers only tell the stories of a minuscule section of the population? 4- National Film Awards : The absurdity of censorship - An open letter to Hon’ble Minister for Information & Broadcasting on July 14, 2005 by Rakesh Sharma , a prominent Indian documentary film-maker. 5- Paradoxes of memory by Helmut König : Lasting peace agreements after wars and civil wars were for a long time considered to be conditional upon damnatio memoriae – the deliberate and reciprocal forgetting of violence and injustice. However, the established amnesty clause is only realistic where certain rules were not broken during war. The First...

1- Why Pandits aren't returning to roots ? : The Pandits, though, will tell you another story: of murders and village loudspeakers issuing threats. Jagmohan is rarely the central figure that Kashmiri Muslim makes him out to be. 2- Will Pakistanis put their national interest first? by Harini Calamur :If there is any country in the world that is a poster child for dictatorship, it is Pakistan. Over the last two and half decades at least, Pakistan seems to have been more stable and more prosperous under its military dictators than its “democratically” elected leaders. 3- Islamic Banking System: Threats and Opportunities --- The Islamic banking system is an important component of Islamic finance. Islamic finance has unique features because its foundation is laid on the principles and rules of Islamic law (sharia), which states that everything is owned by Allah and man has only been permitted to use it. 4- The predicament of the Islamic Republic by Hamid Dabashi. Green Movement...

1- How China reports the Arab world :- In a post made to his Chinese-language weblog on April 15, Ezzat Shahrour, chief correspondent for al-Jazeera Arabic in Beijing, voiced his frustration with Chinese state media reporting on the upheaval in the Arab world this year. 2- The rules of entrapment :- The noise against Tehelka after last week’s cover story was to be expected. Much more surprising was the confusion over the ethics of political baiting. 3- Haaretz prides itself on being the conscience of Israel. Does it have a future? :- by David Remnick 4- James Gosling joins Google, what can startups learn? :- Cultivating talent is not about hiring only those people who will work on assignments or wait on benches for projects that are in the sales pipeline. You also require people who are not in the thick of daily grind; those who can think up new paradigms and new ways to doing things without the pressure of how it will impact the company's next quarter's bottom-line. ...

1- Dark side of giving: The rise of philanthro-capitalism --- Large philanthropic resources are being utilised to further the interests of business. 2- Noam Chomsky interviewed by Ajaz Ashraf and Anuradha Raman in Outlook magazine, November 1, 2010. The man NYT called “arguably the most important intellectual alive” finds the media in Pakistan more vibrant than it is in India. 3- Elections come and go. But the immigrant issue goes on forever [PDF]: A quarter century post the Assam Accord, political parties in the state still seek votes on the issue of illegal Bangladeshi immigration, reports Tehelka Reporter Kunal Majumdar. 4- Stan Ovshinsky’s Solar Revolution : His inventions from 50 years ago enabled cell phones, laptops, and flat-screen TVs. Now, at age 88, he’s aiming to make solar power cheaper than coal. 5- Why Do Some Countries Win More Olympic Medals? Lessons for Social Mobility and Poverty Reduction :- Not everyone in our country has equal access to competitive s...

1- Why We Have More Sympathy for Baby Jessica Than for Darfur by Dan Ariely. VIDEO Focusing on the struggles of an individual appeals to our emotions and makes us care. As the numbers of people suffering get bigger, our cognition, calculation, and thoughtfulness are activated—and we care less ; A NGO on this concept is Rangde; 2- The danger of Being good : - The miracle of individual choice may be what is keeping us safe as a society. Some people just choose to be good, no matter what. This is the story of what happens to them 3- Freedom of speech and expression and the law of sedition in India : Text of keynote address delivered by Colin Gonsalves at the inauguration of Persistence Resistance 2011, New Delhi 4- Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talks bluntly about politics and diplomacy, making the case that women's issues deserve a place at the center of foreign policy. Far from being a "soft" issue, she says, women's issues are often the very...

1- State legitimacy and resistance : State derives its legitimacy from its institutions. Its these institutions that give State credibility and roots to live in the society of hostile crowds. 2- The ‘Viral’ Revolutions of Our Times – Post national Reflections by Aditya Nigam 3- Interview to Devinder Sharma :- On Food Crisis and Corruption. An Interview with One World South Asia: "Corruption has fuelled India's economic growth. 4- Growth and other concerns by Amartya Sen 5- Comments and Responses by the author : Socialism of 21st Century : Author Sunil 6-  An Interview with Guernica Magazine . In the wake of sedition charges by the Indian government, Arundhati Roy describes the stupidest question she gets asked, the cuss-word that made her respect the power of language, and the limits of preaching nonviolence. 7- The multi-individual society By Pratap Bhanu Mehta - An look on liberalism and multiculturalism. 8- Reluctant heroes : International recognition o...

1- Let a thousand heretics bloom : Liberal education is a sustained and controlled matter, where practicality is directly related to searching analyses and the fecundity of thought processes. Sadly, the flag-bearers of a new India have no clue about such a pedigree of liberalism. 2- A Case of Conscience : Shiv Viswanathan writes to Manmohan Singh on the conviction of Binayak Sen. 3- Our phony economy By Jonathan Rowe : From testimony delivered March 12 before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Subcommittee on Interstate Commerce. Rowe is codirector of West Marin Commons, a community-organizing group, in California. 4- Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 11, 1974 by Friedrich August von Hayek . The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1974 was awarded jointly to Gunnar Myrdal and Friedrich August von Hayek "for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetr...

1- India's Telecom Scam: How Can a Corrupt System Be Cleaned? : The telecom scam that recently forced the resignation of telecom minister A. Raja defrauded the country to the tune of nearly US$40 billion. Since telecom is an industry that links backward and forward to several others, the total economic cost could well be hundreds of billions of dollars. This scandal shows that corruption has deep roots in Indian society, but informed voters and the democratic process can help eradicate it, argues Rajesh Jain, managing director of Mumbai-based Netcore Solutions, in this opinion piece. 2- Audre Lorde’s quote “anger is loaded with information” ; When you are at the wrong end of the unjust societies, many truths that are clear to you come out loaded with information. Read complete 6 page essay on Uses of Anger . Thanks to Anu . 3- The narcissism of the neurotic by P Sainath : The Commonwealth Games were no showcase, but a mirror of India 2010. If they presented anything, it was ...

1- Media and mobs – Arundhati Roy versus the terrorists by Razarumi. 2- Fables of Nationalism by Razarumi. 3- Why Marxism Has Failed , And Why Zombie-Marxism Cannot Die & Zombie-Marxism : What Marx Got Right by Alex Knight. What Marx Got Right : Class Analysis, Base and Superstructure, Alienation of Labor, Need for Growth, Inevitability of Crisis and A Counter-Hegemonic World-view. What Marx Got Wrong: Linear March of History, Europe as Liberator, Mysticism of the Proletariat, The State and A Secular Dogma. 4- Copyleft and the theory of property : A bitter battle is underway between the supporters of intellectual property and those who defend the notion of the commons. Legal historian Mikhail Xifaras traces the history of the concept of "exclusive rights" and evaluates the emancipatory claims of the copyleft movement today. 5- Unlikely Stories, or the Making of an Afghan News Agency :Reporting is a challenge in Afghanistan, where power brokers are skill...

1- How America Can Rise Again : The simplest measure of whether a culture is dominant is whether outsiders want to be part of it Any great nation can be judged on two parameters : continued openness to immigration, and a continued concentration of universities that people around the world want to attend. 2- (Hi)Story, Truth and Nation : South Africa is facing the process of developing a new identity for itself and its people, and to deal with its past. Jyoti Mistry looks at the meaning of nations and the nation state in examining this process of creation of a national identity. Story-telling, history and memory play vital parts, particularly in South Africa, in building this "whole". In a story that has no end in sight, she looks at how a country is dealing with its past and stepping into its future. 3- A virtual counter-revolution : The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it. The future...

1- Transparency and Poverty in India :  It is interview of Aruna Roy a prominent leader of the Right to Information movement and and Nikhil Dey. 2- Indian Culture : How does one define “Indian Culture”? And more importantly, why is “Indian Culture” always defined in terms of what women should and should not do? 3- A World Split Apart by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn : Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University published June 1978. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a writer and Through his writings he helped to make the world aware of the Gulag , the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich , two of his best-known works. 4- Food security - of APL, BPL and IPL : The official line is simple. Since we cannot afford to feed all the hungry, there must only be as many hungry as we can afford to feed. The truth is the government seeks ways to spend less and less on the very food security it talks about, ...

1- Who pays the price for paid news? : In mid-June, the Election Commission of India directed Chief Electoral Officers of all states and Union Territories to enforce the law against "paid news" during elections. The institutionalised racket has been running into hundreds of crores of rupees. Ammu Joseph brings you up to speed. 2- Lokayukta stand on illegal Bellary mining has put Government of Karnataka in trouble. Santosh Hegde, the Lokayukta (ombudsman) for Karnataka gives first hand account to Tehelka Magazine . 3- Why you must read this censored chapter : Raman Kirpal reports, When the truth about the flouting of tribal rights in the Red Corridor struck home, the government dropped a whole chunk of damning material from a report it had itself commissioned. 4- Living with the Enemy : Applying the ideas of Holocaust survivor Jean Améry to present day Rwanda, our author argues that reconciliation after genocide is just another form of torture. 5- How Goldman gambled ...

1- Half-life of the Coal Child : Not many know that the dangerous and suffocating rat mines of Meghalaya are worked by 70,000 child miners. Following them into hellish pits, Kunal Majumder exposes the dark veins of an exploitative industry. 2- Glory, piety and politics : With Pakistan’s two main political parties looking exhausted by being made to play a continuous game of cat and mouse with the establishment, the new generation of young Pakistanis began to look elsewhere. 3- A Short History of Rebellion" : TSI discovers that most fade away or come back ‘home’. Some do make history–for better or worse. 4- Interview of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad given to the famous journalist Shorish Kashmiri for a Lahore based Urdu magazine, Chattan, in April 1946. 5- Of grids and groups : An alternative view of "open" and "closed" societies. 6- Over 200,000 Narmada Dam oustees still to be rehabilitated ; A crime that goes unpunished for 25 years. 7- Killings of Ahm...