Karnataka ULB poll results in graphics

Results of the elections to urban local bodies in Karnataka have just been announced.

And with loads of data at my disposal, seemed like a good time to play around with graphics and some of the online tools I've chanced upon recently.

Given that the BJP government has been in power in the State for the last five years, its lacklustre performance and the good showing by the opposition Congress is being read as the tide turning. Especially with State elections just a couple of months away.

Yes, there's a mandate for the Congress, but this graphic seems to suggest a more drastic loss for the BJP and the Janata Dal (S), the BJP's ex-alliance partner.

The total number of seats up for grabs is 4976. Results have been declared for 4952 (Tardal with 23 seats boycotted the elections; no nominations were filed for one seat in Chickballapur).

Among the seven city corporations that went to polls:


No party has got a majority in the Mysore City Corporation council. (This one was easy, I don't get bragging rights.)


More to follow as I get around to doing it!

Update: Some more elections visualisations (definitely more expert-like!)

• Congress tipped for major gains in forthcoming Assembly elections.
• Visualising Karnataka ULB polls (love the map!)

Just an experiment

Fooling around with maps. What fun.
View Larger Map

When a newspaper joke gets lost online

Every newspaper worth its salt has an online presence. Which is fantastic. And probably obligatory. But a print media company is doing more harm than good to itself if its system automatically uploads print articles to the internet.

Because print simply doesn't translate well online.

The art to page layout - using large headline fonts and pictures, and top to bottom positioning to denote news prioritisation - is lost when even the tiny 8-inch long story buried in the bottom left corner of the page gets its own web address.

And missing context can ruin what the paper stands for.

Take the example of this unfortunate article on The Hindu.  It appeared, presumably as a small column with a thumbnail in the lifestyle supplement of the paper, part of a regular 'how to' section, which is usually formatted to indicate that it's a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek, humorous column.

While the humour in this piece is admittedly questionable for any medium, the point is completely lost on online visitors, who see an absurd, grammatically incorrect headline ("...get any girl to go out with you") amidst stories of drought and politicking.

Isn't that shooting yourself in the foot when the whole point of your recent marketing campaign was about how The Hindu "stays ahead of the times" without dumbing down news?

Being part of the team that's put in a lot of work into the print edition, it's a real pity to see the message lost in translation.

Election funding (just thinking aloud really)

Free TVs for votes, free fans for no votes, flip-flop politics and missing polity - there's little about recent politics that isn't greeted with cynicism or disgust.

At a recent debate on NDTV's We The People about an increasingly dysfunctional Parliament, one of the suggestions made to end the mammoth quibbles and get things done, was to allow MPs to vote on (most) policy matters independently.

The argument was that allowing an MP to vote against his party on a policy matter would enable him to better represent the interests of his immediate constituency. The electorate too would have something definite by which to judge the performance of their representative.

It's an idea that's almost perfect on paper.

In anything other than theory, it's terrifying.

The Election Commission of India allows a candidate to spend Rs. 25 lakh on his/her campaign for the General Election. A widely reported study by the Centre for Media Studies, however, suggests that as much as Rs.10,000 crore was spent during the 2009 elections (pdf), with "conservative estimates" putting the figure at Rs. 3 crore per candidate.

This picture definitely has a lobbyist waiting to make sure that the candidate turns into an MP, that too one with a valuable independent vote.

Yes, we have our Radias, the farm and fertilizer lobbies, but I'd hate to see it reach the hysteric proportions it is wont to.

At a time when corruption is the dirtiest word in the country, it was interesting to see something a little related to this discussion pan out on the other side of the globe.  Lawrence Lessig, once free culture advocate and now anti-corruption crusader in Washington DC (and all-round awesome guy) talks to Jon Stewart.

Election vouchers? Hmm.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Snooker noob!

Got to watch about three hours of top class snooker at the World Snooker Championship 2011 finals in Bangalore.

It's been a while since doing something new has been so much fun.

It was a pleasure to watch the two players be so precise, patient and meticulous. The angles and straight lines their bodies formed with the table and cue made for a stunning sight.

Beautiful.

More photos if I can get 'em.

Every holiday has a story

A torn backpack even before I boarded the connecting flight was the extent of my worries when on holiday to Sikkim. Then the earthquake hit.

Yes, I felt it and yes, things shook.

Shopping in Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, that Sunday evening, I later learnt that I was just 64 km from the epicentre of the earthquake that measured 6.8 on the Richter scale. A day later and we might have been at the very same spot.

Someone said later that it went on for about 35s. It felt like a minute.

It was loud. A-cement-mixer-outside-your-window loud. Even if you ignored the screaming.

I wasn't screaming. I was being dragged out of a souvenir store by an alert friend - the best person I could have shared a quake experience with, thanks B! - while saying something about not having paid for the pretty coin purses that I seemed to have run out with.


Mobile phone networks died before the world even stopped shaking, but data services stayed reliable, tweets, IMs and emails were dispatched. "All fine."

People ask me if I was afraid. After the fraction of a second it took to realise that I wasn't going to be buried in rubble (yet), I really wasn't. Adrenalin, a boringly practical instinct, the remarkable - if misguided - conviction of one's invincibility, and a pocketful of cash are perfect for situations like this.

Expunge oneself of the souvenirs that never were: check.
Call Dad, ping friends, email editor with an offer to be available for information: check.
Stock up on water, a torch, biscuits and chocolate: check.
Get ready to spend the night out on the road: sure, can do.

Running through this mental checklist, all I could think of was how when I got home, I should blog about the pressing need for universal mobile phone charging stations and public telephone booths. With time to readjust my personal lines of right and wrong, I was convinced I would be justified in breaking into an electronics store if the situation got any worse.

It didn't, and I met too many nice people in Gangtok to be guilty of misdemeanor or have to to live on the street.

A couple of hours later, safe inside a new friend's home that was warm in so many ways, I realised just how shaken we all were. (I blame two aftershocks, a dying phone and the sight of broken photo frames.) I felt I ought to be reporting this, but wasn't sure I wanted to. I found my legs unusually unsteady, clutching onto a water bottle was stupidly comforting, and I wasn't sure I wanted to take off my shoes and jacket just yet. What if we had to run out again? Even two days later at the airport, the sound of every plane taking off made me jump.  

Surprisingly, maybe because I was watching much of it unfolding with a sense of distance, I ate and slept very well that night. It was as if I hadn't a concern in the world.

M.G. Marg, Gangtok, the morning after. 

Maybe I didn't. Things could have been so much worse.

Saying something and nothing at all

All news these days seems bad and sad and personal.

And here I am sitting warm and far away from everywhere the things are falling apart. Emotions and opinions forming and changing with every text/tweet/IM/update that hits closer to home, all the while switching tabs to watch the hottest new DJ cat.

No, there's never a numbness; just a feeling of helplessness at the inability to find the words or the oneness to be able to show family or friends, even those from another day, another life, another home, that I hear their pain, their fear and relief at their own close shaves.

I wouldn't dare claiming to understand; sympathy just seems noisy.

I quote a significant chunk from A Literal Girl, because she says so eloquently what I still can't:

[We] say our thoughts are with people in places we aren’t. There’s a certain futility to this. Everybody has something to say, but is it always worth saying something?

I don’t mean that people should not speak, that we should censor ourselves or limit our reactions. But when I sit down to write about this, I feel distant and impotent. I think: I should have said something sooner, I should have reacted instantly, already the time for speech of the sort I want to make has passed, already we are moving on, collectively, talking about it in new or different ways. But part of me, the part of me that doesn’t move at internet speed, that moves at human speed, is still back there, still formulating thoughts and opinions based on what I’ve seen, even if it’s secondhand, thirdhand.

The most reassuring text/note I see these days is the forlorn and whimsical x.

So x.