The Revolt of 1857

[Disclaimer: All characters, places, institutes, organizations and incidents appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to any real persons (living or dead), places (not even India, Tunisia and Egypt), institutes, organizations and incidents is purely coincidental. ]


Flitter and Chasebook, two information sharing tools, were developed in the early 1850 in the USA. In no time they had become immensely popular throughout the world. By 1852, almost 3% of the Indian subcontinent had access to Flitter or Chasebook.

In 1854 Royal Small Arms Factory started producing a new, long rifle which would help the British Army in a bayonet fight. The rifle was extensively used in the Crimean war and was later introduced in the British colonies. Mangal, a soldier in the Bengal Native Infantry heard that the cartridges used in these rifles were greased with pork or beef fat. He started fleeting (messages updated through ‘Flitter’ are called ‘fleets’ and the act is called ‘fleeting’) against the East India Company on Flitter and created a page on Chasebook to protest against the introduction of such rifle. His messages were read by his fellow soldiers in Bengal and started getting agitated. His family and friends back home in Uttar Pradesh also joined the Chasebook page. Soon, the soldiers of all the regiments under the East India Company became aware of the insensitivity of the East India Company towards the Indian sensibilities. The soldiers in all the regiments started protesting against the use of the Enfield Rifles. Bakht Khan developed a training routine and videos for the sepoys in Meerut and shared it through Chasebook with the other regiments. The Madras Army and the Bombay army were also facing racism as the soldiers were not given higher ranks despite their qualifications.

In the civil society, Fleets and Chasebook feeds had been floating around about the Company’s attempt to convert the population of India which was then predominantly Hindu and Muslim into Christian. In fact, the few progressive measures taken by the Company – like abolishing Sati system and widow-remarriage – were looked upon with suspicion by the people.

The Company, in the name of ‘taxes’ started looting India of its gold, jewels, silk, cotton, etc. A Zamindari system was introduced which burdened the farmers with unprecedented taxes. A lot of them were forced to switch to farming commercial crops like indigo, jute, coffee and tea. This reduced the supply of food crops and hence there was a scarcity of food which led to price rise of the food crop. The poor could no longer afford food. Thousands of workers lost job when the handlooms closed down due to competition from the cheap factory made goods. Essentially, everyone in India was directly impacted by the oppression of the Company.

Let’s come back to the rebelling sepoys. Mangal was preparing to revolt against the Company and tried teaching a couple of Europeans a lesson. He was however arrested and sentence to death. Sohan in Kolkata got the fleet about Mangal’s death and re-fleeted it. Soon the incident became viral on the social media. Laxmi, the queen of Jhansi, who was ousted by the Company also created mass awareness through her Chasebook notes. Nana Sahib, Tantia Tope, Jwala Pershad organized protests in Cawnpore.

People in all parts of the country – in Lahore, in Madras, in Dhaka, in Oudh, in Jodhpur - took to the street. Hridayanath, a resident of Shyambazar, Bengal Presidency, created a Chasebook event to assemble at the Chandni Chauk to protest against the Company. All his friends and their friends and their friend’s friends joined the cause. Several other ‘squares’ were identified in the country where people would assemble for their ‘liberation’. There was a mass uprising. Ajmal, from Faridkot, took a rifle and open fired at the Company officials until he was arrested. Baanya, who stayed in Mizoram had his Chasebook wall flooded with updates form friends who were “showing off” by sharing the news of their heroic deeds in chasing the Company out. ‘Fleets’ of the news of Lakshmi’s, Tantia and others success started becoming viral and a Baanya, a Raghunathan, and an Ajmal started drawing motivation from them and joined the protest against the Company.

By the time the Company realized the intensity of the protest and blocked Chasebook and Flitter, the uprising had moved out of the hand and had spiral out. Mass protests in every nook and corner of the country eventually led to an end of Company’s close to 100 years of exploitation. India became one of the first few countries in the world to be free.

Getting live updates about the development in India, people from Sri Lanka, Hongkong and a host of other colonies started their protest movements. The freedom movement by India had a domino effect and by 1867, 10 years after Mangal's first ‘fleeted’ about the Enfield Rifles, all the colonies directly or indirectly under the Great Britain got freedom

Ms. Meena: After-thoughts

There are somethings that money can't buy. But is justice one of them? Or, can it be bought? What is the price of a person's life? of his lie? What all can credit/loan do?

These are some of the questions which the play, Ms. Meena, revolves around. Ms Meena, a play by Chennai based Perch group, written by Rashmi Ruth Devadasan and directed by Rajiv Krishnan, is inspired by Der Besuch der alten Dame (The Visit) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The play revolved around Ms Meena, the protagonist of the play.

Ms. Meena, is a very successful film star who has made a fortune in her 20 years career. The play starts with the news that Ms Meena is visiting Pichampuram, the village where she hails from. The village is under abject poverty. The villagers are hopeful that she would be able to bring in money to the village. The villagers are convincing Ravi, her Pichampuram day's lover, to talk Ms. Meena out into helping the village.

Ms. Meena, finally, arrives. The village is overwhelmed and hopeful. Ms. Meena announces that she would make a movie on her life and will shoot it at Pichampuram. This would bring in a lot of tourists to Pichampuram, thus, making it prosperous. However, she, has a condition. She wants Ravi to be dead in return.

The audience then discovers that Ravi had ditched Asha (who later one went on becoming the uber-successful Ms. Meena). He had refused to marry her even after finding that she was carrying his child. He went on to marry the daughter of a Kirana store as that would boost his career. So, Asha had come back to the village to take the revenge.

The whole village, initially, supports Ravi and says that he has nothing to worry about. However, the expectation of fortune led the villagers buy a lot of things on credit and they were soon under debts. Also, their personal ambition of working in a movie made them take Ms. Meena's side. Finally, the movie is made. The villagers kill Ravi and his life-size statue is put of at the entrance of the village.

The story of the play is not unusual. It has an expected ending and an expected flow. What made this play different is the way the artists created the sound and the landscapes. We get the first glimpse of this when the artists made sound of a helicopter heralding the arrival of Ms. Meena. The artists, throughout the play, seamlessly transforms from human characters to the elements of the surroundings - like waterfall, birds, trees, etc. The first time i had heard of artists becoming non-human characters was in the sitcom Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai. [This is one topic - review of Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai - which i have been thinking of writing on from a long time]. My second, and first-hand encounter was with the theatre workshop i attended conducted by "Yours Truly" Group, of which yours truly is a part. There we became basin, commode, wax in the ear, etc. I found it very funny and strange until later i figured how it fell in place. Anyway, The perch of the birds, the gushing of the wind, the sound of a moving bus, the sound of a moving train were all done by the artists. Their transformation from a bus to a train to normal villagers was something i saw as an audience for the first time.

The one thing that struck me the most about the play was the vulnerability of humans beings. The fact that Ms. Meena was successful in giving her own justice outside of the legal system is due to the gullibility of the villagers. This reminds of the recession and the sub-prime crises that started from Sept 2008. People had easy availability of loan. This made them buy things which they couldn't afford. But the math needs to be worked out. The money had to come form somewhere. Unfortunately, there was no such source. This eventually led to the recession*. Imagine, if some Ms. Meena would have offered to create wealth in the market in lieu of someone's life - i wonder how many people would have denied. Essentially, Ms. Meena took advantage of the poverty of the people (for which she was responsible) to serve her own purpose. I guess, a lot of politicians do this. Ms. Meena, in principle, bought justice - regardless of whether or not Ravi 'deserved' punishment.

If I were to remake this play, I would remake it from Ravi's perspective. I find Ravi's character very interesting. What would have gone through him when he ditched Asha for career advancement, when Ms. Meean enunciated 'her justice' and when the villagers were after his life? These are complex feelings and would be interesting to develop and portray.

Overall, it was a good play. I was hoping for a 'heavier' play and hence the light-hearted treatment of the play couldn't strike a chord with me. But the different style of presentation was good to watch.

Cheers!

*A very simplified/crude description

Bus Day - Bangalore

It's an era of publicity and creating awareness. There are thousands of awareness campaigns going on - from "save tigers" to "sev puri". One tool of creating awareness is commemorating a "Day" for that occasion. And so, we have the Earth day, the World Environment Day, etc to create awareness about environmental issues. The newest one in this series of "Days" is Bus Day.

Bus Day, is observed on the 4th of every month to get more people to use public transport - which not only reduces traffic but also reduces carbon emission. I think it's a very noble cause - and i am sure there must be some study done by someone to show how many more people used the public transport and how many liters of petrol/diesel got saved and by what degree the carbon footprint reduced. And I am sure that these numbers would be very encouraging.

But, on the 3rd and 5th of the month, the situations goes back to where it always were. It, essentially, implies that due to the awareness, publicity and hype created on the name of the Bus Day the pollution reduced. This indeed marks the success of the Bus Day as a campaign.

Let's look at the bigger picture. The reason for having the Bus Day is, to put in simple terms, reduce pollution and traffic And the act to achieve this is to create awareness among people to use public transport. It's like giving them a test-drive and telling them that it's not that bad to use buses.

I would like to take a step back and try to answer a more pertinent question - Why do people use private vehicles in the first place. There could be multiple factors - status symbol, convenience, hobby-ist riding/driving, etc. I think, a lot of people are buying entry level cars and bikes because there isn't a good public transit system in place.

The condition of buses are good. The fares are reasonable. But the problem is  that the buses are very infrequent. I thought that it is to do with the last mile problem. Maybe, the place where I stay is cut out from the city despite hosting an IT park. I later figured that there are a lot of places facing the "last mile" problem. Even the main roads - the one connecting Koramangala to Indiranagar - has very infrequent buses. Not only the buses are infrequent, there are high chances that you would need to change 2-3 buses if you want to go to a far off place which is not in line-of-sight. For example, from Cox town, if you want to go to most part of the city - you would need to take a bus to Shivajinagar and then take another bus. So, both the problem of infrequent buses and lack of adequate direct buses compel people to take private transport.

A stark contrast to this is Kolkata. Here, even people having private vehicle prefer metro railways as it is faster and doesn't have problems of parking. Most people in Kolkata uses public transport - a good indicator would be the percentage of college students using private transport. I am sure it would be way below that in Bangalore. Now, I understand, there could be multiple reasons to it - from cultural ones to historical ones. But the fact remains that the key driver to this is good public transport system. The buses may not be as comfortable as in Bangalore but they are frequent and connects different parts of the city well. I guess, from what i have read, that Mumbai is very similar. The local train network is very good and people prefer it to their private cars. I am, no way, saying that transport system in Kolkata/Mumbai is better/worse than Bangalore. transport system/traffic has many other factors which i have not considered.

We should have the basic facilities in place first. Creating awareness is very important but doesn't come before creating the core product. Get the buses on road. Make them frequent. And then, the public would start using the services.

With the current infrastructure, Bus Day campaign is akin to spreading awareness on how good pulses are for health in a famine affected area.

Raajneeti: After-thoughts

If you are an engineer, you would know what is meant by research paper. For the others, here are the steps to write a paper:

1. Select a subject. More often than not, this is a topic on which one has some past experience and, preferably, in which one has burn his finger.
2. Select a few pioneering papers and refer to some current industry work.
3. Take bits and pieces of information from all these sources and compile them

The above three steps are for writing ordinary papers which will help you get a good job or an admission to a US grad program. However, to get into a top rung university/job, you need to be a little creative and follow the below step.

4. Do some transformation on the information gathered from the research papers and then compile it. For example, if there are two variables in an equation, combine them and make it a third variable. Transpose a variable from one side of the equation to the other side. Add two or more independent equations and make a consolidated compiled equation which, in essence, doesn't carry any new information.

And woila! We have an Ivy League paper!

Prakash Jha's Rajneeti can be considered analogous to a research paper. It takes bits and pieces from Mahabharat, God Father, Shiv Sena, Congress, (Priyadarshan's movie) Virasat among other sources.





Mahabharat is a timeless epic and any political saga could somehow be seen as inspired from Mahabharat. Raajneeti, doesn't have this subtlety. It overtly draws-in from Mahabharat. So - there is a ruling family. Bharati Rai (Kunti) abandon's her son, Suraj (Karna/AjayDevgan). She get married to the ruling family - she has two children and her brother-in-law has one (as apposed to 100!) The ruling party's president is taken to bed and there is a war of succession. His son Veer Pratap (Duryodhan) wants to be the president while his cousin Prithviraj Pratap (ArjunRampal/Pandav) claims that post. Veer Pratap (Duryodhan) befriends Suraj (Karna), a complete outsider to politics. There is Mama Shakuni, played by Nana Patekar - who (as per step 4) is on the Pandav's side! The conversation between Bharati and Suraj where she tells Suraj that she is her biological mother and that he should leave the opposition and join their side is lifted up from the Kunti-Karna conversation directly. The terms used - like "jesht putra" - shouted out loud that this is lifted form Mahabharat.


If you thought this was neat, Prakash Jha, intricately weaves, the Mahabharat tale with God Father's. Hence enters Samar (RanbirKapoor/Pandav/Michael Corleone). Though he is dis-interested in politics and is doing his PhD in the US, stays back when his father is murdered. (A sequence similar to Anil Kapoor's staying back in Virasat). He then, like Michael Corleone, takes charge of the Family and chalks out strategies. The sequence of car-blasting while the driver goes for a leak, the blood flooded dead on the bed, the peace treaty between the Families are some of the sequences directly picked up from God Father.

Considering the movie in its face value alone, it was a good attempt. The pace of the movie was fast enough to keep you seated. The whole screenplay was brilliant. The dialogues were very ordinary - a few however were absurd. Like:

Bharati's Father: Tum us do takey ke aadmi se pyar karti ho? (or something like that)
Bharati: Aapke liye toh takey hi sub kuchh hai na.

Katrina Kaif overtakes Ranbir's car.

Ranbir: Tumhare paas license hai? (or something like that)
Katrina: Kiska, gadi chalene ka ya tumhe kiss karne ka

The music was apt. Especially, Mora Piya song is good. The "disco" song was not needed - however, not being a full-length bollywood song, it didn't hurt. All the actors gave great performances. Nana Patekar does a good job by not mimicking himself. Naseerudding Shah is brilliant in his less-than-4-minutes role. However, Ranbir Kapoor steals the show. Brilliant acting by the newest offerings from The Kapoor Family. A special acknowledgment to the dress-designer. The long dupatta/stole worn by the politicians was cool and a little different from the mundane white kurta pajama.

However, if there were one thing i could change in the movie - it would be the ending. A party's president is taken-to-bed. Its second in command is killed. A major part of the party spins off. Still, that spun off party wins. I would have made a third party winning. Dividing a party divides the vote base - and it's more "real" that a third party wins. We have seen this in case of MNS being spun off from Shiv Sena.

Overall, it was a good movie with a lot things happening in three hours - Mahabharat and God Father. Despite drawing heavily from the two, it keeps you seated till the end. Not a great movie or a movie you would want to watch again and again - but worth watching it once, preferably, in single-screen theater.

Prince: After-thoughts

[Acknowledgment: Some of the ideas in this post is by Viswanath who bore this movie in an almost empty theater with me]

Software engineers are a different species altogether. The first noteworthy thing about them is the kind of language they use. They learn to use this "version" of the language to be impressive (as opposed to being expressive) and later on it becomes part of their lexicon. So, every 'problem' becomes an 'issue ' and the lessons learned become 'learnings'. They try to 'leverage ' their 'cross-functional' network to 'access' (instead of get access) the latest updates in their industry. Another characteristic of theirs is that they are 'liquid' - they would change companies more frequently than Shivraj Patil would change his clothes. It becomes very difficult for companies to give the client what they exactly want. Not that the clients are clear on this, but changing hands on the project has impacts on the final outcome. The project becomes similar to the broth spoiled by too many cooks.

Such mundane software engineers decided to make a film. Imagine - how could it be! First, the fascination for on-site made them base the film abroad. Having watched pirated movies like Matrix, Batman, Spiderman, Iron Man, Bourn Identity, etc with subtitles in their desktop when doing their engineering and then in their laptops when working - they added dollops such fight sequences regardless of their connection to the story. Not only these movies, but the action was inspired heavily by Max Pyne - their introduction to computer games (after Road Rash). So, the fight sequences and the location where the movie would be based were decided.

Like most software engineers, the story-writer post had new engineers quitting and joining almost every day. The resultant story was not much different from the software they make. Each engineer gave it the turn he wanted to give. Same was the case with other roles like screenplay. To give you an example - The climax of the movie is a pirated Da Vinci Code treasure hunt sequence. The hero and heroine crack the code and gets to the Holy Grail. Just then the story writer and the screenplay artist quits. To reduce costs, cheap resources were hired without much verification - not only because they wanted to meet the phantom deadline but also because there was no one capable enough to interview them. And the new hires called a LoveSong() function. So, the moment the Holy Grail came to their hand a love song where hero expresses his love to the heroine and vice versa comes!

But that's not it. Software engineers, after all, will be software engineers. So, the plot revolved around the innovation where a person's memory can be read and written into a chip. His brain can be formatted. And at a later point in time, his memory whose dump was taken in a chip can be re-written to the brain. In fact, you can delete certain files from the chip - in which case, when restored from the chip, the person's brain will not have those 'events' in the memory. Imagine if you could delete the memory of KKR's no-semi-finals-qualify hat-trick!

The software engineers try to be as real as possible. Just as you need to reboot your computer for any OS update to take effect, the person after installing an update from the chip to his brain or restoring to a previous restore-point need to sleep. Until he sleeps, he runs on the older brain version. And once he wakes up, he comes up on the newer version. However, the dreams that he may see when he's asleep are undefined - it could correspond to any or none of the software versions.

Attrition happens and an electronics engineer is hired. He thinks that rebooting a machine time and again would degrade the hardware and finally yield the machine dead. So, he adds to the story that the hero would die after six upgrades of his brain!

But one thing remains common across engineers - the dialogue of the movie. Throughout the movie a hook dialogue - "It's show time" - is used. This, perhaps, is like a recurring meeting notice pop up. This keeps reminding you that you are in a movie in case you are wondering 'main kahan hoon'.

3 Idiots is a favorite movie of most engineers as they can connect to its plot.They all want to be anything but engineers. These software engineers working on the movie also liked 3 Idiots. And being innovative that they are, they tried to improve upon it. So, if 3 Idiots showed the use of vacuum cleaner to do child delivery, this movie showed the use to vacuum cleaner to do diamond robbery. Isn't that a useful innovation! Now, while the hero is on-site - picking up diamonds like small pieces of stones with the vacuum cleaner, his offshore partner senses that the security is coming to catch him. He asks him if he should stop the operation - but then the on-site hero says one of the best dialogues in the history of world cinema - "No way. It's show time for plan B". Brilliant. Isn't it? Not only it's a great dialogue but it also has a moral - that one should always have a plan B.

After the robbery, the journalists throng at the site. A CBI officer is going in for investigations where he over-hears a reported rhetorically asking whether there were any locks. Hearing this, the CBI officer, Khan, replies, "Taale sharifon ke liye hote hai, Choro ke liye salakhein hoti hai." Now, isn't that mind-boggling!

The same CBI officer, Khan, tries to trick certain Mr Roy. Mr Roy says, "Khan, Don't act smart." To which, Khan replies, "Roy, But i am smart".

The whole film is filled with such uber cool dialogues.

The movie also conforms to the current Bollywood trend. Apart from the hero and heroine, only one person is shown 'good' in the film. His name is Khan and he is not a terrorist.

Like most engineers, these software engineers are also fan of cool Apple gadgets. So, they name one of the secret agencies as iGRIP!

But then - by jaisi-karni-waisi-bharni rule - a software engineer who copy-pastes others' code shall get his work being copy-pasted by others. After the movie was completed in the true software development method - the software engineers were partying and browsing a banned site. A virus in the form of a cookie (Kookie) Gulati'd (somersaulted) into the machine and uploaded the movie to its server and corrupted the original copy. The engineers got out of the grief of losing their work pretty soon. They, anyway, are used to shelf'ing their project.

This Kookie-uploaded-movie is released as Prince.

Travel: Madhugiri Trek

Warning: This post doesn’t have any analysis, views or opinion.

Last Saturday I went for a trek to Madhugiri. Madhugiri makes a good one-day weekend trip. I couldn’t find all the information in one place on the Net. So, I thought of compiling it. In the rest of the post, I’ll answer the FAQs.

What is Madhugiri?

Madhugiri is a small town in the Tumkur district of Karnataka. It has Asia’s largest monolith and the second largest in the world. On this rock is the Madhugiri Fort. This is the fort we climbed. The fort is initially easy to climb but eventually becomes very steep. After a point it is so steep that there are small ‘poles’ mounted to help in climbing. Just before the top, it is so steep that I couldn’t climb till the top. There is a ‘patch’ where we need to walk horizontally in the incline, i.e., perpendicular to the slant height of the slope. That is what I found the most difficult part and that is from where I retreated. Being a ‘holiday-trekker’ as opposed to professional trekker, I had enough adventure/fun to take that risk.

How to go to Madhugiri?

There are frequent buses from Bangalore (Majestic) to Tumkur. We took a bus at 7:30 am and reached Tumkur at around 9:30 am. If you take an early bus (6:00 am) – then you can get to Tumkur in an hour. At Tumkur, we enquired for the timing of the bus to Madhugiri. They said it was at 10:00 am. We went out of the bust terminal for breakfast. Just on the opposite side of the bus terminal is a local ‘tiffins’ eatery. I liked the masala dosa there. If you, like me, don’t like the ‘red chattney’ in masala dosa, you need to tell them that explicitly. We also packed our lunch and boarded a bus to Madhugiri. We reached Madhugiri around 11:15. The Madhugiri fort is just a few minutes walk from the bus stop. The way to the fort is through Madhugiri court. Once there, you can start climbing. Unlike other forts that I had visited – like Golconda fort in Hyderabad, Daulatabad fort near Aurangabad – Madhugiri fort doesn’t have any entry fee.

What to carry?

Lunch: As I mentioned, we had packed our lunch in Tumkur. However, we found that there were quite a few eateries in Madhugiri. So, carrying lunch is optional.

Water bottle: Unlike in Vaisho Devi or in Shikharji, there are no food and beverage stalls on the fort. So, it’s better to carry a bottle of water per person. You can also carry easy-to-carry snacks (biscuits, chocolates, etc). We didn’t carry any snacks and we didn’t need any snacks :)

Shoes, for good grip: Chapals can carry you to a certain height but not till the top

Goggles/Caps: The fort is on a rock and is not shaded with trees. It’s very arid. Sun shines bright on the fort.

Camera: Apart from the names of unknown lovers inscribed on the fort, you can spot weird shapes in which the rocks have been eroded in, chameleons, etc.

People: Yes. Go in a group of three or more people. This place is safe but it is largely deserted. We couldn’t find any trekkers/tourists while climbing up. We, however, met one group while climbing down.

Returning:

We climbed down by 2:30 pm. Then we binged on the sugarcane juice, coconut water and cold drink. Having filled ourselves with water, we were in no mood to eat. We slept/rested for about an hour beneath a tree. It was bliss. There are frequent buses from Madhugiri to both Bangalore and Tumkur. However, enquire about the bus timing if you plan to check out the town. We caught a direct-bus to Bangalore at 4:00 pm and reached Bangalore around 7:00 pm.

What was to total expenditure?

The total expenditure for the trip was around Rs. 250 per head.

Since we were very tired after the trek we didn't go to any other place around Madhugiri. If you are interested, there is a blackbuck sanctuary which you can check out. In case you have any other questions, do let me know. Also, do share your experience if you visited Madhugiri and more so, if you could climb to the top.

Idea: Bag Vouchers

[Acknowledgment:  I got this idea while reading Suman's post - She Said No!]

There is no dearth of awareness, especially among the upwardly mobile youngsters, about the ill effect of plastics. One major use of plastic is in the form of plastic-bags also known as 'chimki', 'cover' or 'polythene bags'. Searching the Internet reveals mind numbing evidences concerning the hazards of plastics. Most urban people know it. However, they are helpless. There is no 'feasible' solution to the problem. Yes, there are a lot of alternatives to using plastic bags - like using cloth/jute bag and paper bag. But they have their own problems. Let's take a look at the reasons which make these eco-friendly bags 'unpopular' and then I'll try to find a solution addressing those problems.

Problem: The most favorable factor for the use of plastic bags is that it is cheap. So, any shopkeeper can give you a complementary plastic bag to carry the purchased item - be it Benarasi Paan or Benarasi Saaree. However, the cost of cloth/jute bag is prohibitively large huge compared to the actual price of the goods bought in case the goods cost less than Rs 100. Unless all the shopkeepers start to stop using plastic bags,  it is not possible for a few eco-conscious  shopkeepers to give cloth/jute bag. Paper bag, on the other hand, is moderately priced but it can bear only very light weight. Also, most of the shopping is done unplanned - so we don't necessarily  carry a cloth bag with us.

Solution: One easy solution to the problem is use of bag vouchers. These vouchers are basically a 'token' for the actual bag. It is similar to sodexho coupons in essence. Just as sodexho coupons can be redeemed for food, the bag vouchers can be redeemed for cloth/jute bags. So, if you go to buy vegetables, you can give the shop owner a bag voucher in exchange of the cloth bag he gives you to keep the vegetables in. The shop keeper can then redeem the coupon for more bags. In this way, the bags can change hands depending on who needs it.

Implementation: There could be many ways of implementing this idea. I would start with a completely private solution. An organization, I'll give it a fictitious name - Wriddhi, wants to implement this idea. It first gets "non-duplicable" vouchers printed. It then distributes cloth bags to different shops. Consumers can buy the vouchers from the Wriddhi office. Now, when they go out and do unplanned shopping, they can redeem the bag voucher, which they bought from Wriddhi and kept in their wallets along with credit card and sodexho coupon, for a cloth bag. If there is too much accumulation of cloth bags, they can exchange it for vouchers at the Wriddhi office. The shop keeper, on the other hand, can exchange the vouchers with bags at the Wriddhi office.

Details and Refinements: Instead of keeping a stock of bags at one place (Wriddhi office), Wriddhi can partner with several NGOs to use them as distribution points. The shopkeeper (and consumers - basically, anyone having a bag-voucher) can redeem the coupon for a bag or exchange bag for coupon or buy new/fresh coupons at these points. The bags could be of many types (or one type based on the implementation) - It could have corporate ads. It could be made from old but strong clothes - this would appeal to people with 'social' bent of mind. Or, it could be just a simple bag. Again, the coupon price could differ based on the size, strength and nature of the material used to make the bags. A designer bag could be more expensive than a jeans bag. Moreover, a bag could be claimed to have reached 'end of life' based on some predefined criteria. Also, the coupon/bag can also 'age' which would reduce its value/voucher. Say, a bag which is of value X can 'age' to a value of X/2 after 6 months' use. The criteria of aging could also be the condition of the bag. Also, Wriddhi could be an NGO, a private company, a govt body or a combination of them.

Challenges: There a lot of challenges in implementing this. The most important challenge is to get a buy-in of the junta. Why should they pay for something they are used to getting free? Why should they take the trouble of buying coupon? Why should the shopkeepers bother to stock the bags? Since the shopkeeper doesn't have to buy the plastic bags, it would reduce the costs - the benefit of which can be passed on, partly, to the customer and partly in maintaining the bags inventory. Since, the customer may get the benefit of reduced cost and get the impression of being "cool" by being eco-conscious, they would not mind to add a few vouchers to their monthly grocery items.

This is just one solution to the problem. There, of course, are huge challenges in implementing this idea.

PS: This is not a business plan. It's just an idea. Do pour in your inputs on it.