On the Bharti Airtel network, the device is going to cost between $730 and $830 dollars, depending on the device you buy. Furthermore, the device is locked to Bharti’s special network. So for a family of three (mom, dad and a kid), the 3G iPhones will cost around the same as Tata Nano, the $2,300 people’s car that launched earlier this year.
The high cost isn’t stopping people from wanting the device. About 200,000 phones have been pre-ordered

I did a quick price check which confirms a Sony Vaio laptop (approximately $2800-$3000) will financially set you back more than a Tata Nano. Plane tickets between India and the US for a family of 2 or more, easily surpass a Tata Nano’s cost.

What other consumer products can you think of in India that cost more than a Tata Nano car?

Indians choose between iPhones or family car - Über Desi

The campaign is produced by the BBC World Service Trust and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. The basic goal is to make condoms more socially acceptable.

I’ve talked about the power of cell phones as low-overhead high-impact information tools [UD Link] and this one to me seems to be a step in that direction.

The question is will it catch on? My take is that as conservative as the Indian society is, so long as the mainstream media projects it in the right manner, campaigns like these actually stand a chance. I can already see some rebellious college kids downloading the tune for kicks. As for whether it will catch or not, depends on how catchy the tune turns out to be.

What do you think?

Condom Ringtone - Über Desi

It’ll house soothsayers: astrologers, numerologists, palmists, tarot-card readers, horoscope specialists - all under one roof…..The supermarket will also have astro-related materials like Rudraksha beads, gems and stones, yantras, puja materials and books relating to astrology.

Two points to note:

- The mall will be called “Star and Planet” which gets my award for best no- BS name ( probably the only thing about the mall that is *not* BS)

- Budding fortune tellers will have to pass a test and selection by a panel. Now wouldn’t that make an interesting reality TV show : India’s next top Jyotish.

I predict that a lot of well -meaning and credulous people are going to lose their money there!

When charlatans meet capitalism … - Über Desi

Silent killer, as described by his father, he is the one who spotted his son’s talent when Abhinav was 5 years old. “He kept a water balloon on our maid’s head and began shooting, knowing little that a slight mistake could have proved fatal. But his aim was so perfect that I couldn’t think about anything else but make him a pro,” says AS Bindra.

While one cannot fault a 5 year old for indulging in above activity, Abhinav’s old man is either exaggerating or is a modern day Herman Gessler.

Either way, I guess the maid should be thankful Abhinav was not practicing to be a boxing champ.

Abhinav Bindra, a modern day William Tell? - Über Desi

We do not have a specific individual in a specific group to point to, like the world sees in Bin Laden, the chief of an organization named Al-Qaeda. One group, one name, one enemy and yes, one major tragic event - 9/11/2001/. What would be the date of India’s tragic events? One too many-
March 7 2006, Varanasi.
July 11 2006, Mumbai.
September 8 2006, Malegaon.
May 18 2007, Hyderabad.
August 25 2007, Hyderabad.
May 13 2008, Jaipur.
July 25 2008, Bangalore
July 26 2008, Ahmedabad.

These are just the list of bombings only, not all attacks, and that too in the past 2-3 years in temples, mosques, markets, trains, hospitals and you name it. Any place where people throng, there’s a chance that it’s a probable place for a terror attack in any major city in India. And the perpetrators? It’s a meaningless list of names. We keep hearing about organizations backed by Pakistan’s ISI - Huji, LET, and ‘homegrown’ SIMI. Except which, every other organization is a combination of Arabic origin Urdu names branded as organizations by the media, even though we are never sure of the existence of an operational structure. And the name SIMI also stands out. Student’s Islamic movement of India - almost nothing about the name is accurate today, irrespective of how it was started way back in 1977, by Dr. M.A. Siddiqui. The terrorists may/may not be students – we do not know, but are definitely violent, criminal minded terrorists. They are generally perceived to be extremist Islamists, but bomb Hindu temples and Muslim mosques with the same violent vigour. And there’s no ‘movement’ either, the organization is banned and its leaders are in jail. They care two pence about the victim’s religion, ethnicity or race. Of course, almost all victims are Indian. And before I stop short of branding them as fools for not coming up even with a proper name for themselves, they are doing exactly what they want – create terror and fear. And from what I hear from the media – they have a new name - Indian Mujahideen. Stressing every time in clear letters, they are Indian based. Can you name one other terrorist organization in India that stresses the country of their base in their name? A handful as I can see here, with CPI(Maoist) the only well known one in the list. And before long, all media outlets, especially out of India, have come up with headlines about Indian Mujahideen, focus slightly off from any names linked to Pakistan’s ISI.

As for individuals, first it was Shahid Bilal a resident of Hyderabad, India. Whose origin is somewhat known, but his current place of existence or state - alive or dead has been a big question mark for more than an year. B. Raman, a leading writer about terrorism in India predicts the trend to shift towards killing Americans and Jews (from Israel) in India, and in a different article, he names one Abu Abdel Aziz as the possible perpetrator whose details are little known to the Indian intelligence agencies. And there are reports pouring in about a Abdul Halim’s arrest.

This faceless terrorist has no clear objectives apart from - strike to kill, instill fear, and prove their twisted bent of mind.

We have suffered in terms of failing every time to flush out the real persons and organizations behind every terrorist attack, and our politicians busy issuing, almost false assurances of fighting back and getting highly involved in politics about inefficiency of each other, repealing of laws (like POTA) which are highly controversial and abused by police in India. And intelligence inputs are way below acceptable, assuming the attacks in Bangalore and Ahmedabad are linked, about 30 blasts in two cities in different parts of the country. In no way is it a small operation, yet nothing was heard, known or anticipated even though it should have involved anything more than 30 people at the minimum just for carrying the explosion. Planning, procuring and instigating these 30 people could be done by a lot more number of terrorists, yet intelligence inputs have totally failed in all aspects, given the complexity of gathering intelligence-what could be made easier , is for the government and the opposition to stop slinging dung at each other (we surpassed mud long ago). And for criminal minded politicians to take advantage of the situation like they have done in the past. Violence breeds violence, and its high time our political system cleanse itself of the extremist zealots - be they Hindus, Muslims or communists or any other school of thought. Without good leaders and a system in place, such attacks will continue to take place and the faceless terrorist will keep appearing in different forms throughout the country mercilessly killing and instigating mutual hatred.

The only positive thing being, they haven’t been successful this time, in instigating any communal riots.

The faceless terrorist - Über Desi

There is also an ad campaign to go hand in hand with the product that hits a new low in terms of discriminating women based on skin color. The ad campaign is an elaborate one featuring Saif Ali Khan and Priyanka Chopra. The story goes something like this:
Saif dumps Priyanka for her dark skin and goes with a pale white girl. Priyanka starts using pink white fairness cream. Saif sees “the change” and realizes he still has feelings for her. Apparently pink white is better than pale white. If you had not seen similar ads in the past, one could be forgiven for thinking all this was an elaborate hoax.

Hard to describe in words but watch the first 4 episodes of the ad campaign yourself after the jump and leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section.

Episode1: Dark girl loses guy


Episode 2: Dark girl starts using fairness cream

Episode 3: Dark girl undergoes transformation, changes hero’s mind

Episode 4: Dark girl becomes “pinkish white” and hero dumps “pale white” girl for “pinkish white” girl

Excuse me while I go throw up.

Kabhi kabhi “fair” mein: Fairness products hit a new low - Über Desi

Trick question: Which is the one of the most (if not the most) expensive coffee blends in the world that India exports?

Chances are you have never heard of R. Miguel Coffee. Founded in 2007, coffee Roastmaster R. Miguel Meza imports exotic blends for serious coffee lovers. Among the truly exotic blends this coffee maestro serves up is monkey parchment coffee. Never heard of monkey parchment coffee? It’s served on tree branches in Chikmagular in India.

It all begins with the Rhesus Monkeys in Chikmagular, India. “The Monkey Parchment coffee comes from coffee beans that have been chewed on by Rhesus Monkeys that have enjoyed the sweet flavor of the coffee cherries throughout its existence in time.”

Apparently, those sneaky macacas have been enjoying “a cup of joe” way before us. An expensive one, at that!!

An exotic novelty unmatched without comparables in a category of its own, the Monkey Parchment is respectively the most expensive coffee currently sold in the US.

At $250 a pound, it’s pretty hard to argue with the “most expensive tag”.

All this money is for coffee whose beans have chewed up and spit up by monkeys.

“After chewing on the fruit for several minutes, they spit the coffee parchment covered seed out onto the forest floor. The next step is less leisurely and becomes trickier. Trained workers search the forest floors of Chikmagular to find the few seeds that the monkeys have chewed on.” Those preciously left-over seeds are then thoroughly rinsed, washed, processed and dried.
The resulting raw coffee after the intricate sequence is a set of grey beans, embedded with occasional tooth marks, unlike the typical green color of regular raw beans. The Monkey Parchment is also quite distinct from other Indian Arabica coffee in taste, considering the specific enzymatic breakdown of the fruit that occurs in the monkeys’ mouth.

Meza who discovered this coffee on a recent trip to India sums up the taste as “the sweetest and most complex Indian Arabica coffee I have ever tasted” and describes the coffee as “coffee is extremely heavy bodied with a pleasant rounded acidity and seemingly no bitterness“. Being a computer programmer by profession (big surprise there), who is regularly faced with long hours and short deadlines, I’m an avid coffee drinker myself but of the commercial Starbucks variety only, so I’ll take an expert’s word for reviews of exotic brands. Besides I’m way too cheap to pay $250 for a pound of coffee.

So what makes this coffee so expensive?

RMiguel Coffee has made the Monkey Parchment available in America for the first time, but in very limited quantities. Due to the lengthiness in time that it takes to collect any substantial amount of coffee, only a few hundred defined pounds were produced.

Have anyone of our readers from that area of India ever heard of this method of coffee production? Have you ever tasted coffee made this way or, rather, what is the most exotic coffee blend you ever had?

*This is part 1 of a two post series. In the second part, we will have a short Q&A with the man who introduced this coffee to the world, R. Miguel Meza. We will talk about the lack of Indian coffee blends in major American coffee producers like Starbucks and Folgers and also briefly delve on how “Monkey Parchment Coffee” is doing its bit in helping the local economy of Chikmagular*

Macaca Coffee - Über Desi

“So this is democracy??”, Ghandi (sic) seems to be saying
img: via Reuters

With a vote of confidence (or one of no-confidence) looming large on the horizon, the UPA-led coalition seems to have no option but to ride this one out.

The vote, due on Tuesday, is so close that several MPs who are ill may be flown or wheeled in from hospital, and others, in jail for crimes such as murder and extortion, have been granted temporary release.

The legacy of Manmohan Singh seems to be riding on whether his government has one more year in office or not.

If the Congress party-led government falls there will almost certainly be an election this year. It would also likely lead to the scrapping of the civilian nuclear agreement and throw economic policy into limbo just as inflation rises dangerously.

Speaking of which, the nuclear deal seems to be the focal point of this vote.

The vote essentially pits the Congress-led coalition in favour of the deal against the communists and a coalition led by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP says the nuclear deal limits India’s ability to test nuclear weapons.

In this game of high stakes, smaller regional parties have been brought into play. With smaller parties like Samajwadi Party (SP) - for, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) - against, Shiv Sena - against, JD(S) - against, RLD - against, holding the cards to the end game, the members of these parties are being wooed openly by all and sundry.
Things have gotten so ridiculous, unicorn sightings are not out of question - the UPA government renamed an entire airport to woo the leader of the RLD party, Ajit Singh. [Rediff]

With an eye to make the Rashtriya Lok Dal president Ajit Singh happy, the Union Cabinet in a crucial meeting decided to rename the Lucknow airport after his father Chaudhary Charan Singh. This was disclosed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram while briefing media-persons on the developments that took place in Thursday’s meeting.

Reports are now surfacing that 3 of the 12 Shiv Sena members could potentially vote against the party line, after reportedly receiving minor tokens of appreciation - Rs. 50 crore each (around $12.5 million), not only by members of opposing parties but also from bookies, who have a lot of money riding on the survival of the Congress led UPA government [TOI]

It’s learnt that at least three of its (Shiv Sena’s) MPs have been approached not only by the Congress and NCP, but also by bookies. It appears that the bookies led by Hitesh Samrat and Ajay Maheshwari — they consider UPA government as the odds-on favourite to survive the trust vote — have developed huge stakes in the continuance of the UPA government and are going all out to try and fix the outcome of the trust vote.
“The going rate for an MP has shot up to a mind-boggling Rs 50 crore with 50% being the down payment,” said a senior Maharashtra intelligence official on Sunday. More attention is being paid to those MPs who have lost their constituencies in the delimitation exercise. “The reasoning is that since these MPs have no constituency to fight from, they’ll be more vulnerable to allurements,” a Sena leader admitted.

Which brings us to our man-of-the-hour, not the Prime Minister, leader of the opposition or any of these horse-trading members of parliaments. It’s none other than the man who made changing parties, cool. Ladies and gentlemen, presenting Gaya Lal. [TOI]

Surely anyone who is familiar with the national politics of India has heard the term “Aya Ram, Gaya Ram” to describe the incessant and widespread shifting of politics, parties and morals. Gaya Lal, is the politician in honor of whom this phrase was coined.

Gaya Lal, now 76, was an independent state legislator in newly-formed Haryana when dissent broke out in 1967 against chief minister Rao Birendra Singh.
As an independent MLA from Hassanpur, Gaya Lal was known to be a backer of the government, but discovered he may have a quick opportunity in joining some MLAs who had raised the banner of mutiny under Chand Ram. But within days he returned to Rao’s fold.

Three parties in literally as many days. If Budweiser had a desi version of its “Real Men of Genius” series of ads, Gaya Ram…. errr… Gaya Lal would surely deserve a segment of his own as Mr. Way-too-many-parties-changer.
“So crack open an ice-cold Bud Light, Gaya Lal. For when the going gets tough, the tough change parties.”

Alrite, so lets layout some bets, 100% free - desi ishtyle, of course.
A. The UPA government wins the vote.
B. The UPA government crashes and burns.

I’m going with A. As I commented on another blog, the lure of instant power will win over promised power.

Thought? Opinions?

An ode to Aya Ram, Gaya Ram - Über Desi

Switching the sehra for sky diving helmets
img: via BBC

Shishir Mishra, an Indian airforce sky diver, not only arrived in a chopper but actually jumped off the chopper to parachute into his own wedding.

Mr Mishra jumped at around 7,000 feet from a helicopter and landed in a crowded sports ground just a short distance away from his bride’s home. He and three fellow skydivers freefell before opening their parachutes a few hundred feet from the ground.

And why would anyone do such a risky stunt on the day of his wedding?

Mr Mishra said that his novel way of arriving was not done solely to impress his future bride - he wanted to promote and popularise skydiving in the state. “I have been thinking of a skydiving demonstration in Orissa for some time now. But the idea of doing something on the occasion of my marriage struck me after I read about a couple in Maharashtra getting married in a hot air balloon recently,” he said.

Shishir Mishra is an accomplished sky diver with over 22,000 free falls including one with a national flag in hand.

Unfortunately, our yet-to-be-married bloggers turned down this idea for a grand entrance at their future weddings, whenever that may be. The overriding factor seems to be not fear of heights but fear of exposure - they’ll most likely be wearing veshtis for the wedding ceremony.

Grand wedding entrance - desi ishtyle - Über Desi

You can now buy a deluxe lota with your sh!t
img: via Wiki

Anyone who lives in India or has visited knows that often, hygiene is not among the top priorities particularly in the rural areas and slums. When traveling by rail or bus, particularly in the mornings, you can often see a host of people, mostly males, relieving themselves along the side of the tracks or roads with the dutiful “lota” serving as sidekick to this sordid daily ritual. The dawn of the pay-an-use toilets of the Sulabh era, has somewhat alleviated this problems particularly in urban areas but a lot of rural areas are still beyond the reach of Sulabh and/or too poor to afford even that.

In true desi ishtyle, a non-profit organization Society for Community Organisation and People’s Education (SCOPE) has come up with an unique scheme to stop people from going in public.

The remote town of Musiri in the Tamil Nadu state has hit upon a unique idea to teach its residents proper hygiene: Pay them money each time they use the toilet.

Users can make up to $0.14 a month to relieve themselves in a specially constructed toilet. Not a princely sum, but it’s extra cash flow that low-income residents can make just for answering nature’s call.

When I heard this news, my initial reaction was something along the lines of “you must be sh!tting me!. Paying people to sh!t?? That’s a load of cr@p!! What’s to prevent people and the babus from misusing this scheme?? Besides why must people be paid to do something they would do anyway??”.

Another line of thought was: “I missed the boat!! All my life I’ve literally been flushing away thousands of rupees down the drain.”

But on reading the proposed economics and methodology of this scheme, it started to make more sense. If this scheme succeeds it may be because of the simplicity more than anything else. People in the rural areas and shanties in urban areas, are used to relieving themselves in public. It’s more second nature. If anything the money provides them with an incentive to use the toilets. This in itself, is probably more effective than any cheesy slogans or campaigns the government can come up with. The plan is simple - pay people to use the public toilets, keep it to small amounts and put some guidelines in place to prevent some common forms of misuse.

Also the amount of money involved seems to be thought through.

Subburaman arrived at the amount by calculating that an average person will need to relieve himself two times for each of the 30 days and make 10 paisas per visit.

At Rs. 6 (10 paisa * 2 * 30) a month per person, the amount is too small for greedy government babus to worry about but for a family of 4 or 5 in the rural areas could quickly add up to a small handy amount for the month.

What about sh!tting by proxy …..

For now, residents queue up twice a day. They are given cards on which each trip is marked off.

…. or over sh!tting?

“If they ask to go three, four times a day, then something’s wrong,” he said. “We ask them to go to a doctor.”

Another brilliant facet to this plan is the use of, pardon the pun, the by-products.

… the waste products go into research to test their effectiveness as fertilizers.

“The urine that is collected goes into fields for paddy crops, and of course the feces becomes good compost in a matter of months.”

Initial efforts show encouraging results.

The Musiri plan seems to be working, Subburaman said. About 150 residents use the eco-sanitation toilet daily. It has special chambers that collect the fecal matter that researchers then use as fertilizer.

Economics, eco-friendliness, sanitation and hygiene all-in-one, truly desi ishtyle. We’ve been unable to confirm rumors that these toilets will have piped music playing Gwen Stefani:
“Let me hear you say this sh!t is bananas
B-A-N-A-N-A-S”

Worth sh!t - Über Desi