First a labourer in Lahore, followed by a stint at a jihadi camp, then shooting his way into becoming India’s most-reviled terrorist, and now supposedly a journalist. Google News has given Mohammed Ajmal Amir Qasab the status of a BBC correspondent reporting out of Mumbai, albeit mistakenly.

The ubiquitous Internet utility, which is used by millions daily to find and view up-to-the-minute news headlines and related photos, has erroneously attributed three BBC News articles to the Pakistani national — the lone 26/11 gunman alive — who has been charged on 86 counts.

A search given for ‘author:"Mohammed Ajmal Amir Qasab" on Google News on Independence Day-Eve, threw up three stories dated July 20, July 27 and August 12, 2009, attributed to Qasab. The terrorist’s name appears alongside ‘BBC News’ — the same author-line format that Google News places media houses and journalists in. It even adds a link to Qasab’s name, which leads to the three stories.

To add to the irony of the situation, the blunder makes it appear that Qasab is reporting for BBC News about his own trial.

In its functioning, Google News is similar to the Google search engine in that it collects all the web information it can find, creates an index with that information, and serves it to users via a simple web search interface in less than half a second. It continuously ‘crawls’ thousands of English-language news sites and thousands more news sites from around the world to throw up results for a search.

The Google ‘search by author’ feature — which has credited Qasab with his three BBC News stories — allows anyone to find more articles by individual reporters.

"We look at patterns in different articles to identify where author bylines are usually placed. We also do named entity extraction to find names in the articles. By putting those two together, we usually get author names with a high degree of accuracy," a Google spokesperson told TOI.

In this instance, though, Google seems to have picked up Qasab’s name from the caption below his photographs — all three showing the AK-47 wielding terrorist during the bloodbath at Mumbai CST on November 26, 2008.

 A telescope scanning the Kolkata skyline early on Wednesday (Photo: Devjyot Ghoshal)

The dichotomy that rests within a modernizing city with an ancient heart came out of the shadows early on Wednesday as thousands strove to catch a glimpse of India’s final total solar eclipse for another century to come. Science and superstition held their own across their respective constituencies in Kolkata, though there was a shared animosity towards the weather gods for dispatching an errant cloud cover that hid the sun through much of the eclipse.

Atop the Birla Industrial and Technological Museum, a small army of school students stared intently at the skyline through their instruments. Chaperoned by teachers and museum personnel, there was little enthusiasm lost throughout the dawn vigil, despite only occasional viewing of the celestial spectacle. Amidst instructions to use protective gear and short discourses on the specific phases of the eclipse, applause erupted every time the shadowed sun made an appearance.

Completely enveloped by scientific conversations, the cultural and religious manifestations of a solar eclipse were lost on this gathering of stargazers. "The superstitions surrounding eclipses are completely rubbish. Not only do they lack any scientific validation, but I wouldn’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for anything in the world," class XII student Pranik Basu asserted.

Alongside him, Swagato Roy, another final-year school student, casually added: "All of those myths are bogus."

Of the older generation present, too, there were few takers for the ancient traditions that are connected with such specific celestial occurrences. "When I was pregnant with my daughter, my family wouldn’t allow me to watch the eclipse for the fear of harming the fetus. Despite their best efforts to keep me indoors, I sneaked out and saw it. As it happened, my daughter was born just fine," school-teacher Ranu Datta revealed.

A few kilometers away from the scientific citadel, at Chandpal Ghat by the Hoogly river, myth and ritual dominated all else. Between chanting, bathing and rites, the spiritual gravity of the eclipse lay bared.

"This is a time of great significance and shouldn’t be easily disregarded. My family and I haven’t eaten anything since last evening. We’ll break our fast after bathing in the river and praying," D A Sharma, from Chennai, explained.

Standing by the clay coated stairs of the ghat, housewife Laxmi Saha spoke of certain traditions that she continues to strictly follow.

"I don’t cook anything during an eclipse and I always leave a tulsi (holy basil) leaf in the leftovers, as the food spoils otherwise. We also don’t eat during this time and the clothes worn now must be washed properly before being used again," she asserted.

"And pregnant women, especially, should ensure that no sunlight touches their body during a solar eclipse. It can deform the child," she added after a short pause.

Under a darkened sky, one city told two very different tales about a single shadowed sun.

India's media houses, including the one I'm currently attached with, are on forecasting overdrive. However, even if their predictions come true, the final decision of who will become Prime Minister is hardly in the hands of the electorate. In a country known for coalition politics, it is horse-trading which will eventually decide India's leader.

Here is a rough guide to the situation as it stands presently.

The Major Political Players:

Congress: The incumbent which has managed to stay in power for the full duration of a five-year term. The party came into power on the back of a significant anti-incumbency sentiment during the last elections, the Congress has pumped in money into the country's hinterland. But the real results are yet to be seen. Economically, although it did nothing radical, it's image has taken a beating with the global economic slowdown hitting India's growth rate. The sentiment in the Industry is divided, but many feel it could have done more to help the country's infrastructure. Another major factor that might go against the Congress is the perception that it is soft on terror. The yet-unsolved Mumbai terror attack was a case in point. All said, though, it is still seen as secular; a distinct advantage when its major opposition has been branded as right-leaning. The Congress, which has projected the incumbent Manmohan Singh as the next PM, leads the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).

Bharatiya Janta Party(BJP): The BJP is the mainstay of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a grand coalition which was defeated by the Congress-led UPA at the hustings in 2004. The BJP exit from power was unexpected for many as the party had worked substantially to ramp up the country's infrastructure — seen as a prerequisite for growth — during its term. On foreign policy, however, the party had a mixed performance; India's then-PM A.B. Vajpayee made a state visit to Pakistan, only to later take on the Islamic Republic militarily during the Kargil conflict. It was on BJP's watch that Pakistani terrorists hijacked an Indian Airlines flight and parked it at Kandahar (under Taleban control), as well as the attack on the Indian parliament. Internationally, the Godhra Hindu-Muslim riots in Gujarat dented the party's image more than any other single incident. Regardless, the L.K. Advani-led outfit has stuck to its right wing fundamentals and the party has rather objectively projected itself as a Hindu-friendly organisation. Playing to India's largest vote-bank (the Hindu's) could, however, lessen its chances of finding enough allies, post-elections.

Communist Part of India (Marxist)/The Left/ The Third Front: In 2004, India's Left was not the King. Rather, it was the King-Maker. It provided crucial support to the Congress thereby, giving the UPA the required majority to form the government. However, the two fell apart after the Congress vehemently backed the Indo-US nuclear deal, while the Left even more vehemently opposed it. Although the Congress managed to retain its majority after a few backroom dealings with other parties, the Left has remained a staunch critic. After this elections, the Left will be in a bind. It cannot ideologically support the BJP, and backing the Congress will mean that it will have to go back on its post-nuclear deal stance. Also, the band of political parties that the Left has been able to put together — The Third Front — is unlikely to get enough votes to come into power by itself. That means, unless the Left aligns with someone, it could lose substantial political gravity.

The Fourth Front: These are India's undecided. And their final decision could make or break the political future of the country. Primarily consisting of Laloo Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Samajwadi Party and Ram Vilas Pawan's Lok Janshakti Party, the newly-branded Fourth Front has significantly added to the speculation. The big two — UPA and NDA — will have to woo them in order to get a majority. If the Left Front delivers a phenomenal performance, it, too, could look at getting The Fourth Front to back it.

The Prediction:

First things first. Since it is unlikely that any single political party will emerge with a clear majority, any alliance will need to win in 272 out of the 543 parliamentary constituencies.

Now, although a fair number of exit polls are throwing up possible numbers, not to mention the millions of political analysts abound, news channel NDTV's exit polls seems credible.

This is what NDTV is saying:                                                                                                         

• UPA is projected to emerge as the largest alliance with 216 seats
• NDA is expected to get 177 seats
• The Third Front is expected to get 105 seats
• The Fourth Front is expected to get 30 seats
• The remaining parties would get 15 seats  

The Final Word:

The results for the entire elections, nationwide, will be out by 1400 hours (IST) on Saturday. But that is when the real action will begin.

If you think you aren't sure about who will eventually govern India, don't worry. A billion people, too, feel exactly the same way.

I have wanted to write about Sonagacchi since I moved back to Kolkata for one reason: in a country where morality is all pervasive, here exists an isolated world, centuries old, which has lived and grown with India’s democracy.

In the beginning, Sonagacchi — literally ‘The Golden Tree’ in Bengali — was where the city’s well-to-do gentlemen housed their mistresses during the days of the British Raj. Today, it has transformed into a massive red-light district; the once grand mansions converted into tiny flats which are rented out to the women who ply their trade there.

I went to Sonagacchi last week, with my colleague Sumati Yengkhom of The Times of India as my guide and guardian, to see for myself what life there is like. More significantly, though, I went there to try and understand what matters to the women there, a week before the district, along with large parts of the country, went to the hustings.

This elections, the electoral discussions in West Bengal has been dominated by the withdrawal of the Tata project from Singur — where the cheapest car in the world was to be produced — and the violence over land acquisition that rocked Nandigram in 2007.

In Sonagacchi, I discovered that very little influences the women there except for the trials and tribulations of their daily lives.

Filth and feces that line the narrow lanes of Asia’s largest red light district come close to overpowering the senses. But with a mere handful of sex-workers wandering about this early in the afternoon, it is the poll paraphernalia that squarely catches one’s attention in Sonagacchi.

The ubiquitous wall graffiti, custom-designed flex posters and an array of party flags breathe life into the squalid dank alleyways. Under tall, dilapidated buildings that come together crowding the narrow sliver of sky above, a group of sex workers sit nonchalantly. With her back against a bright poll graffiti, a middle-aged woman talks after a little persuasion.

"We have no interest in party politics. All I care about is who will do the most for the women who ply their trade here, their children and families. My vote will go not to those who merely hear our demands, but those who do something about them," she says. The unfulfilled promises of many an election evident in her terse tone.

Squatting beside the dark fetid waters that rise out of ancient drains, another woman, with a sharp streak of vermilion on her forehead, speaks in clearer terms. " Nandigram and Singur have little resonance here. We are women who live and work here. We need to think about our lives. No other issue will dominate the voting," she declares through her betel-stained teeth. Those that sit around her nod in agreement.

Singur might not sway the votes of the scarlet women of Sonagacchi, but they are anything but reluctant to exit the electoral loop. Indeed, it is this determination to honorably cast their ballots that has driven ‘Durbar’ — the local sex workers forum — to procure voters identity cards.

"There are 9,000 sex workers in Sonagacchi. Although most of them have their names on the voter list, barely 10% have voter identity cards. That is why we approached the Election Commission and, so far, we have been able to get about 300 new cards issued for sex workers residing here," Durbar’s project director Bharati Dey revealed.

The number of new voter identity cards might yet be disproportional to the actual population here, but the very fact that sex workers — who have little or nothing in the way of legal documents to prove their identity — are been officially given the mandate to vote, is igniting interest in the hustings.

But mere interest will not be enough to avoid illegitimate voting on May 13, when the approximately 11,000 adult franchise holders of Sonagacchi will queue up to vote. The red light district, unfortunately, has a history of unregistered voters casting their ballot in large numbers.

"During every election, the party cadres come and take our girls to vote even though they don’t have voter cards. Sometimes their names aren’t even on the list. Yes, more girls have cards this time, but this will still happen. We are just asking them not to vote more than once this time," a sex worker at Durbar disclosed, while labouring on her Bengali alphabets.

Outside, the narrow lanes begin to fill as the twilight deepens. As numerous gaudily-painted women descend for a night of work, few are in the mood to answer questions. "I am a citizen of this country too. Card or no card, I will vote. There’s nothing more I have to say," one dispatches sharply. The neighbor shouts loudly in agreement through a grilled window. Now is not the time for talk.

Here in Sonagacchi, where the world’s oldest profession will shortly confront the world’s largest democracy, the poll rhetoric that has engulfed Bengal holds little weight. It is the local ground realities that matter here, not the small car which never drove out of Singur.

This story appeared in The Times of India, Kolkata edition, on May 11, 2009.

Well-educated, city-dwelling, young adults — widely considered as the finest products of the Indian social loom — just beyond the cusp of the national suffrage age, exhibit a certain disdain for the ballot that draws deeply from their demography.

From their perch, many young Indians associate better with US President Barack Obama rather than domestic politicians who front the country’s political parties. Not just that, there is also a recurrent demand to see these Indian lawmakers verbally fight it out on TV just like their American counterparts.

For some, the exit from the domestic political loop is so complete that their first intimation of impending polls come from physical changes that they see around them.

"I didn’t know that the elections were about to happen until I saw roads being dug up. It was almost instinctive, that when I saw perfectly fine streets being re-done, I asked my friends if the elections were around the corner. My guess was right," Opashona Ghosh, a 21 year-old mass communication student of a city college, claimed nonchalantly.

Others, though, perceive the issues tabled by political parties as having little relevance with their lives.

"I’m not sure how land reforms will affect my life. Unlike my college elections, where we vote for things like a broken lift or bad food at the canteen, the changes that this the general election can bring will hardly be tangible," first-year Jadavpur University student Arijit Sett said.

The disconnect, however, is much deeper. The country’s urban young feel substantially little, in the way of relating to the majority of those who occupy the lower house of the Indian parliament.

"I see most politicians with contempt. These are not people who I can look up to, rather I look down upon them. I would want to vote for those who can be role-models for us and I don’t see that happening. I refuse to vote for antiquated people who disrupt our lives," says 18 year-old Gaurav Guha, a possible first-time voter.

It is, therefore, hardly ironic that these aware young adults were significantly more attentive when Barack Obama and John McCain were slugging it out in the US presidential elections late last year.

"I could relate to Obama. He is young and speaks a language that I understand. He was someone I could connect with. Unlike an old Tollywood actor who is standing for the elections this time. In India, the way political parties market and campaign is clearly aimed at the rural population, not the educated middle class. We are a minority," Sett adds.

Interestingly, another factor that had many plugged into the Obama-McCain contest was the four presidential debates that directly pitted each contestant against the other.

"The overall media coverage of the American elections was great. The debates, in particular, were extremely interesting and provided an insight into the real characters of the candidates. I think it would be useful to have similar debates here, with the main prime-ministerial candidates putting across their points of views on a single forum," Guha suggests.

Ironically, though, Guha’s suggestions have been pre-empted by one of the candidates in the fray. Last week, BJP's prime ministerial candidate LK Advani mooted the idea of holding US-style TV debates before the country went to the polls.

The predominant feeling of derision notwithstanding, there are still those interested in taking a plunge into the occasionally murky waters of Indian politics.

"Although the issue of earning a livelihood dissuades me from pursuing politics as my primary career choice, this is something I would want to be involved in. Party offices should involve young people to help mobilise public opinion. There should be the option of being part of the political establishment and continuing with our careers. That way, making a full-time commitment to politics in the future won’t be very difficult," St Xavier’s College student Utsav Nath says.

This article was originally written for the Times of India. An edited version of the same appeared in the newspaper's Kolkata edition on March 16, 2009.

On Thursday, leading media-industry monitor contentSutra announced that the country’s largest newspaper The Times of India has mooted pay-cuts for its approximately 8,000 employees. What the article has noted may yet to be verified, but the pressures of the economic downturn on India’s newspapers has been evident for a few months now.

From November last year, close to every English-daily in the country has enacted a recruitment freeze across their editorial sections and from most indicators, the ban is expected to stay in place till at least the third quarter of the next financial year.

However, these observations fly in the face of statistics, which continue to define the Indian media (and entertainment) industry as amongst the most robust in the world. According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report, the country’s print media is projected to grow at a CAGR of 14 per cent from US$ 3. 06 billion to US$ 5.77 billion by 2012.

This, the report notes, will be on the back of growing literacy that has resulted in India emerging as the second largest newspaper market in the world. Further, newspaper sales in the country increased 11.2 per cent in 2007 and 35.51 per cent in the five year period and newspaper advertising revenues in India were up 64.8 per cent over the previous 5 years.

But what the statistics fail to divulge is the sentiment of insecurity that is flooding the country’s newspaper offices. In the last few years, banking on the economic boom that was washing over India, many newspapers attempted to extend beyond their traditional reach by establishing new editions in the country’s smaller towns and cities. Though these editions, as stand alone entities, are self-sustainable, the diminishing rates of return on many of these investments are sending newspaper owners into a tizzy.

The money isn't coming-in not just for the newspapers but also those who advertise in their pages. Advertisers, who, too, have benefited from the healthy growth of the Indian economy, are now cash-strapped. Not only are their businesses flagging but the credit crunch has translated into quickly diminishing liquidity pools for many. The crisis might not be all-pervasive yet, but the noose is slowly tightening.

Foreign newspaper, might now, reconsider entering into the subcontinent. If indeed, they have had any such thoughts in the recent months.

More importantly though, these results come at a time when India is reeling from the Mumbai 26/11 incident and needs some sort of a 'show-piece' event to reassert its democratic foundations. The Jammu & Kashmir elections might well be that reaffirming factor, because after-all India's most fought-over region has finally shown some signs of conclusively entering the democratic process.

Interestingly, despite these seemingly positive developments in the region, especially against the backdrop of growing tension between India and Pakistan, the fact that India is a multi-party democracy defined by unwieldy coalition governments might put the future of the state in jeopardy. The last government in the state - a coalition between the People's Democratic Party and the Congress - came crashing down earlier this year as regional tensions flared due to the Amarnath Shrine land transfer dispute between Hindus and Muslims in the state.

According to reports within the last few hours, the National Conference - Kashmir's oldest political outfit - will join hands with the Congress to form the next state government; the same Congress that had sided with another party previously. And although the state is slated to have its youngest Chief Minister ever, these elections too have clearly exposed India's perennial ailment of the 'coalition government'.

There can be no fundamental objection to such governments, but in the context of Jammu & Kashmir at least, there needs to be the realisation that despite ideological differences, political parties need to work across the aisle if the secessionist movement is to be contained. Specifically, it was due to the recent Amarnath Shrine dispute that the secessionist movement in the state was given a fillip, thereby allowing it to occupy the political vacuum that warring political parties had created in their effort to lead at the one-upmanship game.

However, now that the real-time political impact of the secessionist movement has been shown to be next to nothing, there should be a concerted effort by the Indian government and the new government of Jammu & Kashmir to not isolate those seeking nationhood. Rather, the new paradigm should seek to coax these factions into the mainstream political process, and allow the people of the region to exercise their mandate in actuality.

Because the statistics surrounding the voter turn-out are only being co-related with the reduction of secessionist tendencies; there is no causation involved. Just because more people have voted, possibly out of sheer frustration with the current governing majority, doesn't mean that secessionism in Jammu & Kashmir is in its final throes.