Can you delete dog videos? My 5-year-old asked me the other day. She was showing YouTube on the phone which had dogs in videos after another. She is only seeing dog videos and she wants me to delete them and see something of her taste. My 9-year-old is fond of pets and keeps watching dogs and other pets on the same YoutTube and phone. The YouTube algorithm was yet to recognise that a different user with different interests is now using it! The same phone is used by my mother as well. She watches “Big Boss” videos one after another. There is something for all of us to understand here about how the algorithms behind YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and such, work and how that can shape our beliefs and action. Before that, let me share a true story from my extended family. Two sisters, one a housewife and the other working for the government live nearby. Gardening is a passion for the latter and does that as a small business. She goes on YouTube only to check videos related to gardening. The

The Malayalam film industry got national attention again with a woman (Y) accusing a man (X) of rape . The very same day, X revealed the identity of Y through Facebook. Quite naturally, supporters of X endorsed his illegal act. I do not support X or his act. But there is something here that needs our attention. Let it be made very clear that women and their concerns are something that I identify with very often. Let me share a recent observation by a bench in Karnataka High Court in a case “A man is a man; an act is an act; rape is a rape, be it performed by a man the ‘husband’ on the woman ‘wife’,”. That quite sums up my take on rape. In a rape case, the woman is identified as a victim or survivor. Because of the social prejudices, victimization and ostracization, special rights are granted to victims by law. ‘Noone should reveal the identity of the victim or survivor’ is one such right. It is a right that intends to secure the life of the victim or survivor. But, what if a woman dec

Kerala Rail Development Corporation Limited ( K-Rail ) is a Joint Venture Company under the Government of Kerala and Ministry of Railways, Government of India. SilverLine is their “ Thiruvananthapuram – Kasaragod Semi High-Speed Rail Project ”. The 529.45 km SilverLine corridor connecting Kasaragod and Thiruvananthapuram, with an operating speed of 200kmph, eases the transport between North and South ends of the state and reduces the total travel time to less than 4 hours, compared with the present 10 to 12 hours. The intermediate stations include Kollam, Chengannur, Kottayam, Ernakulam, Kochi Airport, Thrissur, Tirur, Kozhikode and Kannur. Most of you would be knowing all this and more as it is a hot discussion across Kerala. Some are for development and others are against development. Everyone has a point to make and so do I! Having decided to give part of the land for infrastructure development, what would a common man prefer on his land - a road or a railway line? A road means bett

That’s my 4-year-old daughter asking me one morning. It was not a silly question. It provoked me to think deep. I was sweeping my front yard that day. It is usually my wife or mother who does this, while I would be reading the newspaper. It is not that I don’t know sweeping. I just choose not to do it. If I remember right, the last time I swept the front yard was when I was a kid playfully helping my grandmother. It was her daily routine then. My mother started doing and now my wife does it. My wife fell sick and I was forced to share the workload of my ageing mother. There I started sweeping and the little one got up in the morning seeing me on the job instead of her grandma or mother. “Are you a girl?”, she asked and started smiling. I have not seen my father or grandfather sweeping the front yard. I think I know only one person who has been sweeping for years, not letting her wife do it. Who should sweep, that is not the subject here. We should know that we all have grown up with su