If you are wondering what this is about, read Gaurav Sabnis to know how it all started. And then hop on over to DesiPundit for the most extensive coverage. If you would like to know my thoughts go here.

And this is their latest ad. Surprising that their so called founder director has to publish his article as a paid advertisement. And of course you see ponytail baba there too.

Its a thumbnail. Click to see entire ad and read with clarity.

A lot of venom was spewed, investigative journalism ensued, people expressed their opinions, and it made news in the international blogosphere.

DesiPundit, the clearinghouse for all blogs Indian, became the central rally point. The sustained campaign, made IIPM backtrack a little and their ludicrous claims in the press seemed to have subsided for a while. But just when u think that they would have learnt a lesson, they are back to their old tricks.

This is the season of results. Engineering results, HSC results, medical results, all results will be out in the month or two ahead. This is the time students start thinking about the next step in their professional and academic careers. IIPM puts big ads in newspapers and the students start believing them. But somewhere in the back of their minds they remember hearing something about the said institution. Checking old newspapers or their sites does not help because no mainstream media covered the story with the importance it needed. So the student turns to the biggest media of them all, the internet.

Google a query IIPM and within the first 10 results, 7 are very positive nice, peachy-kleen, results. But 3 of them stand out as something not good. Rashmi Bansal edited JAM Mag’s original article, DesiPundits sticky post and Gaurav’s original post.

They somehow spoil the rosy picture of a fantastic center of learning, a one of a kind experience in India. An institution led by a visionary [sic !!], someone the world will never see again.

The one real place that IIPM got hammered for what it really is was on the blogs. Every blogger worth his salt and then somre more wrote about the IIPM fiasco.

And now what I am about to point out is my hypothesis about the power of the blog. Young people today read or write on blogs. They get a lot of information on blogs. Search engines specially catered to search blogs are big players in the search phenomenon. Technorati searches millions of blogs every single day, so does google blog search.

Therefore this aspiring student will also search on these platforms about IIPM. And that is where the true colors of IIPM will show up.

So what does IIPM do to cover that up ?? Operate in stealth mode, under the radar.

It starts a series of fictitious blogs all containing the same information and linking to each other, on every possible free blogging platform.

A search on Technorati for the tag IIPM brings up these four blogs…

IIPM World | IIPM: The future is here | IIPM Education | IIPM Business School | IIPM

Why in the world would a “world class” institute resort to putting up its own blogs on free blogging services. What does it achieve ??

Even a cursory glance at the homepage of each of the 5 blogs above will show you that a lot of the content is repeated on more than one of them.

According to me there can be only one reason. They want to sanitize blogsearch results such that all the bad publicity they got gets pushed to the back of the search pages, and prospective students searching on blogs will see the “great institute” that IIPM claims.

A weird way of sanitizing the internet.

What do you think ?? Why cant they just get their act together and run a decent average business school. No one ever going to IIPM wishes they would have chosen IIM instead. The reason IIPM exists is because all of its students did not get into IIM and still want MBA degrees.

Firstly the reason for my move. If you remember, in the past I had commented about how all WordPress blogs look the same. Two of my favorite bloggers were mentioned and they duly showed their dissent, here and here. And of course I run my other blog Parsi Khabar on WP from the get go.

The move from Movable Type was forced by economics. A few entries of mine got “Dugg” and “Farked” and that brought around a huge surge in traffic. Infact so huge that my site hogged about 99% of the resources on the shared server at Lunarpages. For those who know how shared servers work, you realize that its a complete no no. General resource usage is supposed to be in 1-3% range. Around the same time I had a massive trackback spam attack and the cgi script all but went bananas.

Lunarpages gave me two options. Either upgrade to a dedicated server at about $ 99 a month, or move to WP which they install and support. I chose the latter. I blog as a hobby and therefore cannot afford or sustain the cost of a dedicated server.

Therefore the choice of moving platforms was not one of choice per se.

I still feel that Movable Type offers a lot more flexibility in design. I remember reading on some discussion forum that Movable Type was designed by designers and WordPress by techies. And so in that regard WP is solid strong on the tech front with great spam filtering etc. But very difficult to completely customise. Unless you are a hard core PHP coder.

The real challenge was to set up my new blog such that all my permalinks from the older blog would work in the newer one. I also did not want to move my blog to another directory and loose my Google Page Rank and TTLB rating and Technorati Tags etc.

Thus WP was coaxed into accepting permalinks in a customized fashion and I daresay that it works seamlessly. This is from the few preliminary tests I have done. Of course I will monitor my logs for 404 errors and keep on tweaking in the near future.

I will miss Movable Type. I wish I did not have to make the change. But then so is life. You sometimes need to make hard choices and get on.

Here is the ad he is talking about. Read his entire post for the whole dissection.

IIPM Ad in Hindustan Times

Navroze falls on March 21st, which is also Spring Equinox. It is celebrated the world over in various manifestations. It heralds the coming of Spring. In Iran it is celebrated as a ten day celebration and is the one Zoroastrian festival celebrated in an otherwise Islamic country.

In India, it is another day for us Bawas to party and eat and drink….as if we ever need a reason. Since it is not a public holiday, most celebrations are reserved for the evening……Continue reading

Parsi Khabar has a series of post on the occassion of Navroze.

Navroze: Noruz: Nowroj: What’s in a name ??
Small yet big
Jamshedi Navroze….a festival to welcome Spring
Navroze: A great time to bond
Noruz in Iran

Besides being a group blogger on Metroblogging NYC, Metroblogging Mumbai and Naachgaana, I also run another blog titled Parsi Khabar.  

From time to time, I cross post article here on nVa and Parsi Khabar both.

The blog is an aggregator blog of news appearing in the online realm. From time to time, I write personal opinions on this site.

A big task in this blog is to update the numerous articles that appear in newspapers around the world, featuring something or the other about Parsis: The Zoroastrians of India.

So if you haven’t ever had time to check it out, do drop by and have a look. I promise you will like what you see. 

It is incessant. More like a national pastime, or as if its some involuntary action necessary, like breathing on the beating of your heart. Its as if your life depends on it.

Continue reading here

After the horrendous “Freedom Tower” monstrosity that is being designed by David Childs, this is a great boost for quality architecture in a city that somehow lacks the cutting edge design that one would expect in the greatest city in the world.

Continue reading at Metblogs NYC

Related posts: Diwali Parking Finally a Law in NYC, World’s Skyscrapers “Made in India”, One Bryant Park Exhibition opens in NYC

Bollywood and me….aaah !!! Yes, surprises do not cease to happen. And so I will be a regular contributor on Naachgaana.com, a blog on bollywood and everything that encompasses that insanity.

Since I dont see hindi movies…..or mostly any other movies, what you may ask, am I doing on a bollywood blog.

Well I am the Resident Pessimist on the blog.

Hop on there to read my first post.

Today, the Indian Express has an interesting article titled

“Did Nehru allow Corbusier what Hitler denied?

Architect had dreamt of building new Berlin, but was refused.

CHANDIGARH’S master architect Le Corbusier’s little known aspiration was to build the new Berlin in Germany in 1940s — as envisaged by Adolf Hitler. But, as his dream remained unfulfilled after Hitler refused to heed to Corbusier, the City Beautiful became a reality instead.

Architect-historian from Switzerland Prof Pierre Frey today revealed that the fascist links of the Swiss-French Corbusier came to light when his letters to his mother were published in France in the last decade.

”In one of the letters, Corbusier had written in the 1940s that Hitler will allow him to build the kind of city that he always wanted to. Corbusier was looking for commitment from Hitler, which never came. The architect also went to Italy to meet Mussolini, but was turned down again. He then migrated to the USA,” said Frey, while talking to Newsline today at Chandigarh College of Architecture”

And, if Frey is to be believed, the grid-based design of Chandigarh, which is a clear adaptation of the old Roman cities, has a semblance to the fascist forces through its clear north-south divide, besides the distance of the Capitol Complex and the Secretariat – the houses of governance – from the residential area.

”In fact, all planning for the poor and less-privileged of the city was done by fellow architect Pierre Jeanneret and not by Corbusier,” added Prof Frey, who minced no words in criticising Corbusier, even as Indian architects gathered at the college defended Corbusier’s healthy contribution to the city. Frey went on to add that Corbusier’s ”star image” might fade in the next 20 years and come down to a more deserving level. ”Corbusier had a rage to build. Though he tried to satiate it in Europe, he finally accomplished it here in Chandigarh,” summed up the professor.

]]> http://wadias.in/site/arzan/blog/corbusier-snubbed-by-hitler-blessed-by-nehru/feed/ 2 http://wadias.in/site/arzan/blog/charles-correa-design-opens-at-mit/ http://wadias.in/site/arzan/blog/charles-correa-design-opens-at-mit/#comments Tue, 08 Nov 2005 21:04:31 +0000 arZan http://wadias.in/site/arzan/blog/?p=306 Last friday marked a very important and momentuous day for Indian architecture. Veteran Indian architect and urban planner Charles Correa designed yet another marvel, the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, opened at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Charles Correa is one of the greatest Indian architects alive today, and his body of work encompassing four decades is outstanding. He has built all over the world, and his work has become the de rigeur since Independance, 57 years ago. He along with Kanvinde, Doshi, Raj Rewal, Stein, and Raje, helped form the vocabulary for a post colonial Indian architecture.

This is not his first building in the US. That honour goes to his design for the Permanent Mission of India to the U.N. here in New York City. In a city where there are more skyscrapers than arguably anywhere else in the world, this building stands out on its own. Having seen it first hand, I would say that it is a great design, that brings the essence of India, but fits in perfectly with its surroundings in New York. Built on a very difficult site, it does justice to its surroundings.

Correa has over the years pushed the boundary of Indian architecture beyond the ordinary. His juxtaposition of colour, material and context into a very engaging composition and the clarity of spatial movement are a class act.

Secunderabad-born and Mumbai-based Correa, 75, who studied architecture at the MIT and the University of Michigan, is known for a wide-range of his architectural work in India and on urbanisation and low-cost shelter in the Third World, which he articulated in his 1985 publication, “The New Landscape”.

His architectural designs have been internationally acclaimed and he has received many awards, including Padma Shri in 1972, the Royal Institute of British Architects Gold Medal in 1984 and the International Union of Architects Gold Medal in 1990….[link]

Correa’s work covers a wide range, from the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial at the Sabarmati Ashram, to the Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur, and the State Assembly for Madhya Pradesh — as well as townships and housings projects in Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and other cities in India. The McGovern Center at MIT is one of a series of new buildings that have opened at MIT in the past few years. Along with the Stata Center by Gehry and the student housing by Steven Holl, this building becomes an important part of MIT’s commitment to quality architecture.

MIT’s new 411,000-square-ft brain and cognitive sciences complex, to be dedicated on December 2, will be the largest neuroscience centre in the world.

The breathtaking architectural design for the entire state-of-the-art research facility, which will house the laboratories of 16 global leaders in neuroscience, is a collaborative effort of Boston-based Goody, Clancy and Associates, and the Charles Correa Associates of Mumbai

The centre, which would house the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, was created by the largest philanthropic gift in MIT history — $350 million over 20 years — courtesy Patrick J McGovern and his wife, Lore Harp McGovern. Patrick McGovern is the founder of International Data Group, the publisher of Bio-IT World, and an MIT alumnus…..[link]

In a global world where continents are coming closer and closer in the virtual and real sense, this instance of an architect from desiging at one of the world’s premier institutions is truly a proud moment for Indians and for Indian architecture.

Sadly Correa today is not the most famous architect in India today. That dubious distinction would go to one Hafeez Contractor. However it is a case in point that you do not need to be the best to be famous.

More on architecture in India over here.

More reviews and comments on this building when I get a chance to see it first hand.

Some thumbnails of the McGovern Center at MIT.

Behram Dastur is one such person.

The Indian Express informs us that

“Chief executive of Bombay Parsi Punchayet sets world record for writing maximum number of letters to the editor”

This achievement is stupenduous, if you take this into consideration

Behram Dastur has more newspaper bylines than most journalists. Over the past 50 years, he’s written 2,493 letters to various publications in the city and recently, secured a place in the latest edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.

Behram wrote his “first letter in November 1955, pointing out that a number of luminaries had been omitted from a list of historical figures.”

Since then nearly 2500 (and counting) have followed.

What is even more interesting is that some of the letters are collectibles, having appeared in publications that have long since ceased to exist…..viz. he Daily, The Commerce, Kaiser-e-Hind and Sunday Standard..

It seems we Indians have a penchant for writing letters. Coincidentally, the previous record holder was also Indian, Delhi’s Subhash Chandra Agrawal, whose tally was about 1,600.

Way to go Behram. You make India proud !!

[cross posted on Parsi Khabar]

One Bryant Park, the project I have been working on for the past 2.5 years and will for the next 2.5 is going to be presented on two fronts at this conference. Our structural engineers are going to present it in a panel discussion on innovative structures, and my boss Richard Cook heads a panel on Green Design in Tall Buildings.

Tall buildings are coming up all over the world, despite people’s inhibitions, post 9/11. The biggest thrust is in Asia, where nations are embarking on a race to see who has the world’s tallest totem pole. Currently Taiwan leads the pack with its Taipei 101 building which opened last year, but by 2009, the mantle of the tallest building shall go to Dubai

India, it seems is also in the race with a huge ugly monstrosity planned by none other than Hafeez Contractor in NOIDA, outside of Delhi. Another castle in the air is something that some godman wants to build.

On the eve of the congress, the Chairperson answered some very pertinent questions about how this race will go in the future years.

Q: Taipei 101 is just one of many super-tall structures either recently completed or under construction in Asia. What accounts for the surge?

RK: A lot of it has to do with the local governments wanting to put their flag in the ground and say, “We have arrived as an economy.” China, Malaysia, and Taiwan are really trying to establish themselves on the skyscraper playing field. They want to make a statement that they have arrived.

Q: Some would argue the Middle East is racing to overtake Asia.

RK: Yes, the race to build super-tall structures has reached epic proportions in Asia and the Middle East. Some insiders say that the Burj Dubai, which is now underway in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, will reach almost a half-mile high. Construction of super-tall buildings is more realistic in those regions where there is no defined street lay-out that can limit floor plate size. You can just build it in the middle of the desert.

Continue reading the entire interview here

Toronto was not the only international center that IIPM has. According to their website they also have contacts in Belgium. It is at The International Management Institute listed as both in Antwerp and Brussels.

A quick call (bless technology and cheap calling cards!!) brought out some interesting facts.

On calling Antwerp, the operator at IMI directed my call to one Mr. Sanket.

I told him that I was calling to find out more about IIPM because they have advertised on their website that they have contacts in Antwerp and Brussels, and from the Toronto experience, I could not take them on their word. On enquiring on the nature of IIPM’s role in Belgium, he basically said that IMI awards degrees to students who graduate from IIPM. They have a monitoring committee which visits IIPM regularly and makes sure “standards” are met. I told him I was calling because of all the bad publicity in the press and the media, and asked him if he was aware. He said no….and sounded genuine.

He said that there are some exchange programs that happen from time to time. He could not offer more info and pointed me to IMI’s website.

I asked him about the recognition of degrees issued by IMI and whether these were issued by IMI directly or another larger institute like the Univ of Antwerp or some such. He said that IMI is recognized by the regional Flanders government, but the degrees are awarded by IMI. I did not further question him to elaborate what that was supposed to mean.

The IMI  website is very ambiguous. It does not give any detailed information about the courses offered. Their about us page lists four institutions with which they have academic collaborations. All four have websites which are equally dubious and ambiguous. And IMI’s research and publication pages prominently show books by ….who else but Arindam Chaudhari.

A little googling on IMI and its academic collaborators, makes one thing for sure. Academic institutions of dubious nature and veracity are not only India’s prerogative. They are all over the world. And sadly there are suckers everywhere who get duped into paying a hand and a foot for education that is not accredited.

Here and here is more on the web about IMI……all “ambiguous, feel good, dupe people, gimme your money,” kinda stuff.

My previous posts on this topic are here and here. DesiPundit’s constantly updating sticky is here, for the latest updates.

UPDATE # 1: Curious Gawker @ The Renegade of Junk follows the URL from the IMI site and has some really fascination analysis and discovery. Jump right there to catch the scoop