Nandan Nilekani on The Daily Show

One would imagine that a visit to the CNBC studios would have been an obvious port of call on Nandan Nilekani's US book tour. But after the events of last week, I guess Jon Stewart is suddenly more important to the potential readers of NN's book!

In case you're on a slow connection, and can't see the video below, the funniest parts are 1) When NN mentions a million electronic voting machines and Stewart asks him whether we call someone in the US when they break down and 2) When NN mentions that Tom Friedman's 'World Is Flat" was inspired by a conversation in his office and Stewart wonders why NN didn't walk across the flat world and kick TF on his a** for some royalties!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Nandan Nilekani
comedycentral.com
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Flags & Anthems

I thought the Supreme Court verdict passed on Republic Day, five years ago, in the famous Naveen Jindal case would put an end to our hypocrisy on flags, anthems and such. However, the two 'controversies' of the past week surrounding SRT and NRN quickly burst that bubble!

The "anthem" controversy has hypocrisy built into it. Pray, can someone explain to me what an 'instrumental version' of a national anthem is, in the first place? Logically, if the instrument starts playing, the crowd starts singing - without any prompting! It's only in India where people are either too embarassed or ignorant, that we need to arrange for a choir of school children to sing, while the rest mumble or just ... stay mum! Whether it's a movie theatre or a stadium, a function or a felicitation, one never hears a thundering anthem being rendered with gusto. Infy had arranged for a five person choir and then apparently dropped the idea because "foreigners might be embarassed". I think the foreigners would have been rather puzzled to see no one on stage or in the crowd singing! We just don't like singing our own anthem for some strange reason.

While the Infy incident raised some hackles because of Chairman Co-Chairman Narayana Murthy's explanation (which he has since apologised for), the Sachin incident is just downright comical. Agreed, whoever decided on the theme for that cake had poor taste (seriously, saffron icing?), but why blame Tendulkar when the Indian High Commissioner himself was looking on approvingly? In any case, when it's quite clear that the intentions are not malafide in any way, why resort to grandstanding and jingoism?

I am loathe to admit that I draw intellectual inspiration from mainstream Hollywood but a few lines from an otherwise trite scene in The American President, sum up my thoughts perfectly:

"You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free."