Any civilised society does whatever possible for any community which deserves it. As citizens of a free world with a 5000+ years of human histroy, we must have the courage to to stand for others. It's time to save the Tibetan struggle for autonomy so that they can save their culture and traditional of tolerance of love and humility. As individuals I invite your suggestion for possible ways.
Please follow the following link to post your suggestions:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/restorehope2tibetans/
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Saturday, June 6, 2009
IPL vs IPL
Subhash Chandra controlled Indian Cricket League (ICL) is being reported to be busy packing its fateful entry ‘for the game of cricket’.
The end of ICL is not a very bad development. But what is bad is the way it has been brought to end. The way BCCI has went above the board to stop it was entirely avoidable. Lalit Modi has done a good job as IPL commissioner but again not without a pinch of salt on the conceptual level. While Modi has shown a lot of enterprise, for which he must be given due credit, it should not be forgotten that this excessive commercialization will have its own side effects.
The men in blue become popular, rather icons, overnight in this country. The selection is subject to a lot of public scrutiny. Despite we came to hear about news of money exchanging hands for a place in the national teams a couple of years back. The way money has entered the game it is entirely possible that same things can happen and without much public scrutiny as these players do not have such identities. The ultimate result can be cricket again being another game where an Irfan Pathan, son of a poor father can't become a cricketer. The next challenge for Modi and BCCI would be to check any such development.
I am sure the existence of a private initiative like ICL would have been an effective check as players would at least have had an option. Here it is equally true that there would have been more probability of money making rounds in ICL than IPL. It was undoubtedly a business venture and not a 'For the welfare of cricket' initiative. But I do not think, it would have posed BCCI any threat. Even if it would have it would have been good for cricket and cricketers.
As of now we do not foresee any ICL kind of development. The real test of BCCI’s “good merits” and Modi’s managerial abilities would be now. With a powerful politician at the helm of affairs BCCI has everything to raise the bar. It would be interesting to see if Sharad Pawar does not try to keep his control intact after demitting office. Mr. Modi will continue to hit headlines but he must remember money is not everything.
BCCI and Modi better keep in mind, how popularity of cricket went for the toss when the news of match fixing were first broken.
The end of ICL is not a very bad development. But what is bad is the way it has been brought to end. The way BCCI has went above the board to stop it was entirely avoidable. Lalit Modi has done a good job as IPL commissioner but again not without a pinch of salt on the conceptual level. While Modi has shown a lot of enterprise, for which he must be given due credit, it should not be forgotten that this excessive commercialization will have its own side effects.
The men in blue become popular, rather icons, overnight in this country. The selection is subject to a lot of public scrutiny. Despite we came to hear about news of money exchanging hands for a place in the national teams a couple of years back. The way money has entered the game it is entirely possible that same things can happen and without much public scrutiny as these players do not have such identities. The ultimate result can be cricket again being another game where an Irfan Pathan, son of a poor father can't become a cricketer. The next challenge for Modi and BCCI would be to check any such development.
I am sure the existence of a private initiative like ICL would have been an effective check as players would at least have had an option. Here it is equally true that there would have been more probability of money making rounds in ICL than IPL. It was undoubtedly a business venture and not a 'For the welfare of cricket' initiative. But I do not think, it would have posed BCCI any threat. Even if it would have it would have been good for cricket and cricketers.
As of now we do not foresee any ICL kind of development. The real test of BCCI’s “good merits” and Modi’s managerial abilities would be now. With a powerful politician at the helm of affairs BCCI has everything to raise the bar. It would be interesting to see if Sharad Pawar does not try to keep his control intact after demitting office. Mr. Modi will continue to hit headlines but he must remember money is not everything.
BCCI and Modi better keep in mind, how popularity of cricket went for the toss when the news of match fixing were first broken.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
What the Youth Can Do (Part VII)
‘I remember my youth and the feeling that
will never come back any more-the
feeling that I could last for ever, outlast
the sea, the earth, and all men; the
deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to
perils, to love, to vain effort- to death; the
triumphant conviction of strength, the
heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow
in the heart that with every year grows
dim, grows cold, grows small, and
expires – and expires, too soon, too soon-
before life itself.
Joseph Conrad: Youth, 1902
Youth is generally speaking assigned to the age group 16 to 35 years. Now whoever comes within this age group is youth: the males and females, the students and the non-students, the educated and the uneducated, the city dwellers and the rustics and not only those here but hose who live abroad have to be taken into account while dealing with such a problem. Yes the focus has to be on the student as they constitute the bulk of the youth population.
In the context of India youth have always played a decisive role in almost every socio-politico-cultural development. This is a particular mission in which active youth power is required.
I am a youth but still I can say there is a problem with the youth of India, especially those in the metros like Delhi that they are too much self-centred, too much fascinated about everything western and cynical about most of what is Indian. So the solution mostly they look for has its root in the west. The problem is not west. Western model is not always wrong, but they definitely have a very different socio-cultural set up than ours. The solution has to be as per Indian requirements. For example, years ago the government was promoting eucalyptus plantation in India. There can be nothing wrong with a tree at the conceptual level but it was not something that India required. It had to be later withdrawn as it sucked huge amount of water and would fell even in weak storms. This was something an overpopulated country with so much pressure on land can’t afford.
What we need is to exploit culture and traditional beliefs, modern science, and current requirement. To quote Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, culture is tradition and tradition is memory. Only one deeply steeped in the past and robust imagination of the future can efficiently handle present.
The problem of making sustainable development a practice is far from being simple. It requires sustained effort for it asks shaking very fundamentals and ideals of today’s lifestyle.
T. S. Eliot wrote in ‘Murder in the Cathedral’, “Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind!
Is Delhi listening?
will never come back any more-the
feeling that I could last for ever, outlast
the sea, the earth, and all men; the
deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to
perils, to love, to vain effort- to death; the
triumphant conviction of strength, the
heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow
in the heart that with every year grows
dim, grows cold, grows small, and
expires – and expires, too soon, too soon-
before life itself.
Joseph Conrad: Youth, 1902
Youth is generally speaking assigned to the age group 16 to 35 years. Now whoever comes within this age group is youth: the males and females, the students and the non-students, the educated and the uneducated, the city dwellers and the rustics and not only those here but hose who live abroad have to be taken into account while dealing with such a problem. Yes the focus has to be on the student as they constitute the bulk of the youth population.
In the context of India youth have always played a decisive role in almost every socio-politico-cultural development. This is a particular mission in which active youth power is required.
I am a youth but still I can say there is a problem with the youth of India, especially those in the metros like Delhi that they are too much self-centred, too much fascinated about everything western and cynical about most of what is Indian. So the solution mostly they look for has its root in the west. The problem is not west. Western model is not always wrong, but they definitely have a very different socio-cultural set up than ours. The solution has to be as per Indian requirements. For example, years ago the government was promoting eucalyptus plantation in India. There can be nothing wrong with a tree at the conceptual level but it was not something that India required. It had to be later withdrawn as it sucked huge amount of water and would fell even in weak storms. This was something an overpopulated country with so much pressure on land can’t afford.
What we need is to exploit culture and traditional beliefs, modern science, and current requirement. To quote Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, culture is tradition and tradition is memory. Only one deeply steeped in the past and robust imagination of the future can efficiently handle present.
The problem of making sustainable development a practice is far from being simple. It requires sustained effort for it asks shaking very fundamentals and ideals of today’s lifestyle.
T. S. Eliot wrote in ‘Murder in the Cathedral’, “Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind!
Is Delhi listening?
The Change Makers (Part V)
The Human Touch contd...
Climate change is not something local or regional phenomenon. So the solution also has to be of the global nature. Given the enormity of the situation and the hold of the rich and the interest of the bourgeois it is necessary that it involve the youth and the old, the masses and the classes, the politicians and the voters, the rich and the poor. The responsibility has to be of everybody, the battle at every step. Everyone has to be the leader and the follower. No one state or institution can keep a watch on whether you are sincere or not.
Life has to be made simple and original in harmony with the laws of the nature. It has to be a moral responsibility, a duty, a mission, a passion. It has to be the fight between the right and the wrong, between the rights of the humanity and the elites. It has to be a fight for what Rothkopf says a uniform global culture. Sustainability not greed has to be the essential component of any economic order.
This war will have to be of every Delhi, every Durban, every London and every Washington. The world needs to listen to the cries of extinction and death, of rivers and mountains, trees and vegetations, birds and other animal species, soil and the air, life and death.
The world needs to understand climate change has caused migration, and cultural separation, population dislocation and the collapse of ancient cultures. We can’t allow this to happen this time.
The year 2009 would be critical for reaching international agreement on efforts to tackle climate change. We will have the opportunity to rewrite man’s destiny when signatories to the UN Climate Change Convention meet in Copenhagen.
The role of India would be equally significant. Though it’ not a developed economy it is the third biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world after China and the United States. India emits 638,000,000 tons of CO2 every year. The argument that we are a developing country and we a chance to pollute the atmosphere is hollow because it’s not that the poor of this country are polluting. It is being by the corporations and the Navratnas (the nine most profitable companies that the government owns) of the Government of India who has been raking billions of rupee as profit. National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) alone spews 186,000,000 tons which constitutes about 30% of the total gas release. 16 power plants, operated by NTPC, are in Centre for Global Development's (CGD) “Red Alert”. China has already surpassed the US as the world’s biggest emitter of CO2 from power generation. South Africa is among the world’s top-ten power sector emitter in absolute terms.
Given all these phenomenal contribution it is ridiculous if they continue to give such logic. The youth are playing and will have to play further significant role in making the government realise that the responsibility can’t be done away with.
Climate change is not something local or regional phenomenon. So the solution also has to be of the global nature. Given the enormity of the situation and the hold of the rich and the interest of the bourgeois it is necessary that it involve the youth and the old, the masses and the classes, the politicians and the voters, the rich and the poor. The responsibility has to be of everybody, the battle at every step. Everyone has to be the leader and the follower. No one state or institution can keep a watch on whether you are sincere or not.
Life has to be made simple and original in harmony with the laws of the nature. It has to be a moral responsibility, a duty, a mission, a passion. It has to be the fight between the right and the wrong, between the rights of the humanity and the elites. It has to be a fight for what Rothkopf says a uniform global culture. Sustainability not greed has to be the essential component of any economic order.
This war will have to be of every Delhi, every Durban, every London and every Washington. The world needs to listen to the cries of extinction and death, of rivers and mountains, trees and vegetations, birds and other animal species, soil and the air, life and death.
The world needs to understand climate change has caused migration, and cultural separation, population dislocation and the collapse of ancient cultures. We can’t allow this to happen this time.
The year 2009 would be critical for reaching international agreement on efforts to tackle climate change. We will have the opportunity to rewrite man’s destiny when signatories to the UN Climate Change Convention meet in Copenhagen.
The role of India would be equally significant. Though it’ not a developed economy it is the third biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world after China and the United States. India emits 638,000,000 tons of CO2 every year. The argument that we are a developing country and we a chance to pollute the atmosphere is hollow because it’s not that the poor of this country are polluting. It is being by the corporations and the Navratnas (the nine most profitable companies that the government owns) of the Government of India who has been raking billions of rupee as profit. National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) alone spews 186,000,000 tons which constitutes about 30% of the total gas release. 16 power plants, operated by NTPC, are in Centre for Global Development's (CGD) “Red Alert”. China has already surpassed the US as the world’s biggest emitter of CO2 from power generation. South Africa is among the world’s top-ten power sector emitter in absolute terms.
Given all these phenomenal contribution it is ridiculous if they continue to give such logic. The youth are playing and will have to play further significant role in making the government realise that the responsibility can’t be done away with.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
The Solution (Part IV)
The Human Touch contd...
The problem needs serious attention. And one ought to understand that at the centre of the thought for solutions has to be the belief that we cannot have unlimited desires on a limited planet. The earth, the land, the water and the resources are in limited supply. The need is to ensure their supply in a way that is sustainable. And like charity it should begin from self.
1. The first and the most important challenge is food. Studies have proved time and again the energy required to produce non-vegetarian food is much more than vegetarian food. This will also reduce stress upon our land resources. The surplus land can be used to increase the forest cover which act as lungs in our city life.
2. The second most important thing has to be green housing. A housing that reduces dependence upon electricity by optimally using sunlight, air and water.
3. ‘Life Infrastructure’ like drainage, water conservation facilities, parks and proper waste disposal and recycling facilities should be mandatory for those who can afford. The government should support these initiatives in irregular poor colonies.
4. A city like Delhi can draw a lot of its energy from renewable source like sunlight as it receives ample amount of it throughout the year. The use of solar water heater and solar cooker can save precious natural gas for our power houses. Energy can also be produced from waste and excreta. Proper recycling of the waste products will also solve the problem of hygiene. It would also employ a large number of people.
Beside these big things that have to be done at the policy level by the government, there are things each of us can do from today.
1. Early to bed and early to rise can save millions of unit of electricity.
2. Soak rice and lentils for some a few hours so that they can be cooked with less fuel.
3. Use sprouts and fruits in place of packaged junk food which consume huge amount of energy from processing to packaging to marketing.
4. Use soft copy to wish birthday to valentine. It can save millions of trees every year.
5. Take things out of refrigerator a few hours before use so that they warm to room temperature.
6. Switch off the iron before ironing the last cloth. The residual heat is enough to iron it.
7. Don’t smoke. This will give a few more days of life and a clean atmosphere to others.
9. Always carry a jute bag when going out to buy vegetable. Plastic is a great polluter and at the top of it takes thousands of painful years to degrade.
These are just some of the many possible ways that one can think about depending upon his or her circumstances.
Sustainable development is meaningless without sustainable consumption. The basic question is can our entire population consume at the level of the affluent nations without causing rapid depletion of our limited non-renewable resources? I wonder if such a happy state can ever be attained. The International Council for Science in its report to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002) underscored the need to encourage the development and sharing of new and existing patterns with due emphasis on local, culturally appropriate and low cost technologies.
To quote Stieglitz from his seminal work ‘Globalization and its Discontents’, we are a global community and like all communities have to follow certain rules so that we can live together. These rules must be seen to be- fair and just, must pay due attention to the poor as well as the powerful, must reflect a basic sense of decency and social justice.
To be contd...
The problem needs serious attention. And one ought to understand that at the centre of the thought for solutions has to be the belief that we cannot have unlimited desires on a limited planet. The earth, the land, the water and the resources are in limited supply. The need is to ensure their supply in a way that is sustainable. And like charity it should begin from self.
1. The first and the most important challenge is food. Studies have proved time and again the energy required to produce non-vegetarian food is much more than vegetarian food. This will also reduce stress upon our land resources. The surplus land can be used to increase the forest cover which act as lungs in our city life.
2. The second most important thing has to be green housing. A housing that reduces dependence upon electricity by optimally using sunlight, air and water.
3. ‘Life Infrastructure’ like drainage, water conservation facilities, parks and proper waste disposal and recycling facilities should be mandatory for those who can afford. The government should support these initiatives in irregular poor colonies.
4. A city like Delhi can draw a lot of its energy from renewable source like sunlight as it receives ample amount of it throughout the year. The use of solar water heater and solar cooker can save precious natural gas for our power houses. Energy can also be produced from waste and excreta. Proper recycling of the waste products will also solve the problem of hygiene. It would also employ a large number of people.
Beside these big things that have to be done at the policy level by the government, there are things each of us can do from today.
1. Early to bed and early to rise can save millions of unit of electricity.
2. Soak rice and lentils for some a few hours so that they can be cooked with less fuel.
3. Use sprouts and fruits in place of packaged junk food which consume huge amount of energy from processing to packaging to marketing.
4. Use soft copy to wish birthday to valentine. It can save millions of trees every year.
5. Take things out of refrigerator a few hours before use so that they warm to room temperature.
6. Switch off the iron before ironing the last cloth. The residual heat is enough to iron it.
7. Don’t smoke. This will give a few more days of life and a clean atmosphere to others.
9. Always carry a jute bag when going out to buy vegetable. Plastic is a great polluter and at the top of it takes thousands of painful years to degrade.
These are just some of the many possible ways that one can think about depending upon his or her circumstances.
Sustainable development is meaningless without sustainable consumption. The basic question is can our entire population consume at the level of the affluent nations without causing rapid depletion of our limited non-renewable resources? I wonder if such a happy state can ever be attained. The International Council for Science in its report to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002) underscored the need to encourage the development and sharing of new and existing patterns with due emphasis on local, culturally appropriate and low cost technologies.
To quote Stieglitz from his seminal work ‘Globalization and its Discontents’, we are a global community and like all communities have to follow certain rules so that we can live together. These rules must be seen to be- fair and just, must pay due attention to the poor as well as the powerful, must reflect a basic sense of decency and social justice.
To be contd...
Thursday, May 28, 2009
What Next (Part III)
The Human Touch Contd...
Do we take notice of the degradation of our environment or keep hoping that someone will find some solution? Can we rely on hope?
NO
Hope is never rational.
My Delhi is one of the world’s most polluted cities. My Delhi is also one of the greenest capitals of the world. How come both these designations are associated with one city!
The fact is Delhi is a city of more than 10 million people. Thousands of trains and trucks and millions of human beings come to Delhi every day. In New Delhi-1 and a few other areas where our political masters and the multimillionaires live there are parks, there are drainage facilities, playgrounds and lawns. There are other places like Tughlaquabad, Okhla, Badarpur and so many others where life is but survival. The struggle for food, for land, for air, for water, for sunlight…continues every day and night.
The question one may ask is why blame the rich and the powerful when every next person wants to be one. The issue is when you have a four member family owning eight cars, four TV sets, four laptops, four freezes, and an air conditioned duplex beside innumerable electrical gadgets, there is a problem. The issue is when you become a party to increasing carbon footprints; you become responsible for every single problem that results out of ecological imbalance.
Let me explain the how and what factor. India basically is an agricultural country. Around two-third of people in India are directly or indirectly depend for their livelihood on agriculture. Even if India can provide jobs to all of them in other sectors, which is anyway an impossible assumption as it would require market equivalent to three worlds, it’s not something sustainable. A country of 1.1 billion cannot afford to survive without food security of its own.
What has been happening in India is just its reverse. Agriculture has lost its charm. Well the reasons are overpopulation; lack of agricultural research, credit availability etc. But the most important reason is that we are unable to provide the necessary irrigation facilities. And behind this apart from policy and implementation matters are global warming and the resultant imbalance in the weather cycle. The recent flood in Bihar, Tsunami in December 2004, floods in Mumbai and Rajasthan, draught in parts of Andhra, Tamilandu, and Maharashtra and UP are all results of the growing imbalance in the weather cycle.
The resultant is massive migration of people towards cities, putting stress on the available resources making life miserable for the poor masse. Delhi is just one typical example of this. This is the situation that prevails in most of the developing world from, Mumbai to Durban, from Dhaka to Brasilia. The climate change affects mostly the poor as they are the least equipped to face any catastrophe.
To be continued...
Do we take notice of the degradation of our environment or keep hoping that someone will find some solution? Can we rely on hope?
NO
Hope is never rational.
My Delhi is one of the world’s most polluted cities. My Delhi is also one of the greenest capitals of the world. How come both these designations are associated with one city!
The fact is Delhi is a city of more than 10 million people. Thousands of trains and trucks and millions of human beings come to Delhi every day. In New Delhi-1 and a few other areas where our political masters and the multimillionaires live there are parks, there are drainage facilities, playgrounds and lawns. There are other places like Tughlaquabad, Okhla, Badarpur and so many others where life is but survival. The struggle for food, for land, for air, for water, for sunlight…continues every day and night.
The question one may ask is why blame the rich and the powerful when every next person wants to be one. The issue is when you have a four member family owning eight cars, four TV sets, four laptops, four freezes, and an air conditioned duplex beside innumerable electrical gadgets, there is a problem. The issue is when you become a party to increasing carbon footprints; you become responsible for every single problem that results out of ecological imbalance.
Let me explain the how and what factor. India basically is an agricultural country. Around two-third of people in India are directly or indirectly depend for their livelihood on agriculture. Even if India can provide jobs to all of them in other sectors, which is anyway an impossible assumption as it would require market equivalent to three worlds, it’s not something sustainable. A country of 1.1 billion cannot afford to survive without food security of its own.
What has been happening in India is just its reverse. Agriculture has lost its charm. Well the reasons are overpopulation; lack of agricultural research, credit availability etc. But the most important reason is that we are unable to provide the necessary irrigation facilities. And behind this apart from policy and implementation matters are global warming and the resultant imbalance in the weather cycle. The recent flood in Bihar, Tsunami in December 2004, floods in Mumbai and Rajasthan, draught in parts of Andhra, Tamilandu, and Maharashtra and UP are all results of the growing imbalance in the weather cycle.
The resultant is massive migration of people towards cities, putting stress on the available resources making life miserable for the poor masse. Delhi is just one typical example of this. This is the situation that prevails in most of the developing world from, Mumbai to Durban, from Dhaka to Brasilia. The climate change affects mostly the poor as they are the least equipped to face any catastrophe.
To be continued...
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Competing With The Best: Managing Strategically
“If you can run your business in India successfully, you will definitely be better prepared to face any other economy in the world. If nothing, at least you will be able to learn once you are outside”, says Dr. Rajnish Karki, the author of “COMPETING WITH THE BEST”. He further adds, “The sheer scale of Indian market offers both opportunities and challenges. While the complex nature of Indian market makes it a difficult nut to crack but those who persisted has succeeded.”
In an open interaction today in the pristine premises of the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi with Kiran Karnik, the former president of NASSCOM and currently Chairman, Satyam Computers, donning the role of anchor host, it was an evening worth it. Among industry bigwigs the session went beyond the immediate limits of the special session. Questions as wide as plummeting share market and corporate fraud and Tata’s acquisition were discussed. The market Czars discussed what constitutes the constraints now that India is no more a sellers market.
The book has the theme that global-focussed configuration was something unthinkable till 1990s. What followed has been an epoch making development for the Indian economy in general and Indian corporate world in particular. The credit for all this, said Dr Karnik in response to a question, definitely goes to the industry more than anything else.
Dr. Karki repeatedly talked about the unique Indianness about the way Indian companies work. He especially quoted the way Tatas carried out their execution. The IIM Alumni who has also taught strategic management there when asked for the reason behind the frustration of business school guys said that today’s youth lack the humility content. What a manager earlier expected after 20 years of service has begun to demand for more than that in just six months. Though the panel and the audience expressed confidence in the Indian entrepreneurs but confessed it could have been much better otherwise.
Detail abouth the author can be found at http://www.karkiassociates.com/
Monday, May 25, 2009
Art in the Capitalist World
‘Art’ and ‘market’ was never discussed so much within and outside the art circles. Traditionally art survived on ‘patronage’ of the ruling and the elite class? Today the whole concept of art making, display, circulation, and collecting has changed. Today value to art comes through so many factors; the major factors being financial, intellectual, historical and cultural. We explored the major art galleries in Delhi and NCR, the unknown and the famous artists, and the small villages of Madhubani and Darbhanga, the centres of the world famous MITHILA Painting. We talked to the people behind these galleries which pump millions and those artist who have created their mark with nothing but their skills.
There has been a noticeable expansion in the realm of art over last couple of years in India.
There has been a rise in the number of art fairs and biennales hosted across the globe in the last 7-8 years. They have created an altogether new platform for art to circulate and be sold. Indian artists and gallery’s participation has also grown steadily in these years.
With marketing came brand building; something never related to art. But with the emergence of a global art market, brand value pervades the field. New experiments, sensationalism and use of technology accompany an exponential rise in art price around the world. The proliferation of private galleries and auction homes within India points to a strong domestic as well as an international market. But the market is again only for those who have enough to do business. We tried to find people who search for a balance between monetary and artistic goals.
Since 2000 the art market has seen a steep rise. Contemporary art from India has gone global. The art fund, which is primarily concerned with art for its investment value has witnessed boom right till before the recession fears and the Lehman. The momentum generated during boom time is still pushing branded art galleries and the artists who became famous. But with business and marketing at the core of almost all these art galleries, the purpose of art as a medium to make man aware of his unconscious has taken a back seat in many cases.
The search might never be over. The search for purpose might be said to be biased one way or the other, but the art comes out of the creator in us. And a creator will create but with a purpose. What differentiates one from the other is the holiness, the impersonality, the purposefulness of the purpose.
However, how have all these shifts in the art world in general have and Indian art world in particular affected art? Does the expansion of the viewership effects an artist’s response towards audiences? In what way has the need to stand out impacted? In short, what has globalization brought to art?
Kavita Singh, Associate Professor, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, writes, “Questions as large as these cannot be answered. One might even say that they should not be answered; the questions are more productive as they open up lines of inquiry that facile answers would foreclose. But these questions are certainly worth asking today as contemporary art from India is seen and sought elsewhere on the globe. Yet at home it remains at best confined, to a small audience of artists and art professionals, or less congenially, is ‘branded’ as an investment opportunity and traded as such; or at worst, is alienated, derided or under attack.”
The use of what Kavita calls ‘shock-aesthetics’, is the new phenomenon, to startle viewers into some form of response; raise consciousness about social issues; or to turn into a desirable commodity, or to resist commodification or anything else is the thing being tried the most these days.
Every age will have its art. Ours is not an exception. The art coming up these days has its own purpose. Simultaneously exists the struggle of traditional arts to be modern, to be relevant contemporarily. The efforts to create brand should not blind the creator.
Let us hope that the fundamentals of art will always remain the same.
There has been a noticeable expansion in the realm of art over last couple of years in India.
There has been a rise in the number of art fairs and biennales hosted across the globe in the last 7-8 years. They have created an altogether new platform for art to circulate and be sold. Indian artists and gallery’s participation has also grown steadily in these years.
With marketing came brand building; something never related to art. But with the emergence of a global art market, brand value pervades the field. New experiments, sensationalism and use of technology accompany an exponential rise in art price around the world. The proliferation of private galleries and auction homes within India points to a strong domestic as well as an international market. But the market is again only for those who have enough to do business. We tried to find people who search for a balance between monetary and artistic goals.
Since 2000 the art market has seen a steep rise. Contemporary art from India has gone global. The art fund, which is primarily concerned with art for its investment value has witnessed boom right till before the recession fears and the Lehman. The momentum generated during boom time is still pushing branded art galleries and the artists who became famous. But with business and marketing at the core of almost all these art galleries, the purpose of art as a medium to make man aware of his unconscious has taken a back seat in many cases.
The search might never be over. The search for purpose might be said to be biased one way or the other, but the art comes out of the creator in us. And a creator will create but with a purpose. What differentiates one from the other is the holiness, the impersonality, the purposefulness of the purpose.
However, how have all these shifts in the art world in general have and Indian art world in particular affected art? Does the expansion of the viewership effects an artist’s response towards audiences? In what way has the need to stand out impacted? In short, what has globalization brought to art?
Kavita Singh, Associate Professor, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, writes, “Questions as large as these cannot be answered. One might even say that they should not be answered; the questions are more productive as they open up lines of inquiry that facile answers would foreclose. But these questions are certainly worth asking today as contemporary art from India is seen and sought elsewhere on the globe. Yet at home it remains at best confined, to a small audience of artists and art professionals, or less congenially, is ‘branded’ as an investment opportunity and traded as such; or at worst, is alienated, derided or under attack.”
The use of what Kavita calls ‘shock-aesthetics’, is the new phenomenon, to startle viewers into some form of response; raise consciousness about social issues; or to turn into a desirable commodity, or to resist commodification or anything else is the thing being tried the most these days.
Every age will have its art. Ours is not an exception. The art coming up these days has its own purpose. Simultaneously exists the struggle of traditional arts to be modern, to be relevant contemporarily. The efforts to create brand should not blind the creator.
Let us hope that the fundamentals of art will always remain the same.
The Threats (Part II)
(The Human Touch Contd...)
What they have done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her
and did her,
Stuck her with knives in the side of the
dawn,
And tied her with fences and dragged her
down.
(Sang Jim Morrison, American singer in his 1967 song ‘When the Music’s Over’)
-According to Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), in the year 2000, a total renewable water resource of Egypt was 58.3 cubic km. Its irrigation requirement was 28.43 cubic km or 53% of its renewable resources then. But the amount of water it withdrew was 53.85 cubic km which stands at 92% as a percentage of its renewable water resources.
- In April 2007, the National Geographic News reported early arrival of spring to the western slope of Colorado's Rocky Mountains. Recent studies suggest less of a temperature difference between winter and summer. Summer, fall, and winter have all started 1.7 days earlier this year. All these are signs of the world getting warmer at a faster pace.
-At the 2008 Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, from 15–19 December in San Francisco, scientists warned that, in California, extreme events such as heat-waves now occurring once every 100 years could be happening every year within a century.
-On February 3, 2009 National Geographic News reported volcanic smoke and gas from two new holes on Alaska's Redoubt Volcano—one of them (left) about the size of a football field. The Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) confirms increasing volcanic unrest at Redoubt Volcano.
-- The Guardian reported on February 18, 2009 that IPCC’s computer models had calculated an average loss of 2.5% in sea ice extent per decade from 1953 to 2006. But in reality the Arctic sea ice had declined at a rate of about 7.8% per decade. New researches reveal that melt-water pooling on the Arctic sea ice is causing it to melt at a faster pace.
-India’s agricultural production has been consistently on the decline in recent years and is growing at less than a quarter the pace of the Indian economy. Annual per capita food grain production declined from 207 kilograms (455 pounds) in 1995 to 186 kilograms in 2006. The rate of agricultural growth has fallen from 5% in the mid-1980s to less than 2% (average) in the past half-decade. Despite building of huge dams it continues to be hostage to the vagaries of the monsoon. Not a happy sign for a country of every seventh human being.
-Climate change does not simply floods or droughts. It can cause epic devastation involving super cyclones, extreme weather, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond our imagination. It can pose existential threat to our coastal regions and ruin our agriculture by causing moisture -salinity imbalance in the soil. Projections show extinction of more than 5000 useful plant and animal species mainly due to the loss of suitable habitats.
- The Technical Paper on Climate Change of Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) shows substantial spatial and intensity variation in precipitation just in a matter of decades due to global warming. It is projected to increase the risks of flooding and drought in many areas, and in turn decreased food security. The quantity and even quality of water will be affected as a result of this. Already about 25% of the contemporary African population experiences water stress. By 2025, water availability in nine countries, mainly in eastern and southern Africa, is projected to be less than 1,000 cubic metre/person/yr. By 2020s there is an increased risk of winter flood in northern Europe and of flash flood in all of Europe.
- The same report says precipitation decline and droughts in deltas of Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and China have caused drying of wetlands and severe degradation of ecosystems. The recurrent droughts from 1999 to 2001, the construction of upstream reservoirs and improper use of groundwater have led to drying of the Momoge Wetland located in the Songnen Plain in north-eastern China.
The Nature says the warming caused by greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, is the main reason behind these changes. But the most worrying perhaps has been the surge in atmospheric concentrations of methane, a gas with a warming potential twenty-three times that of carbon dioxide. The extensive release of gaseous methane from formerly frozen deposits off the Siberian coast is of serious concern given this background.
What they have done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her
and did her,
Stuck her with knives in the side of the
dawn,
And tied her with fences and dragged her
down.
(Sang Jim Morrison, American singer in his 1967 song ‘When the Music’s Over’)
-According to Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), in the year 2000, a total renewable water resource of Egypt was 58.3 cubic km. Its irrigation requirement was 28.43 cubic km or 53% of its renewable resources then. But the amount of water it withdrew was 53.85 cubic km which stands at 92% as a percentage of its renewable water resources.
- In April 2007, the National Geographic News reported early arrival of spring to the western slope of Colorado's Rocky Mountains. Recent studies suggest less of a temperature difference between winter and summer. Summer, fall, and winter have all started 1.7 days earlier this year. All these are signs of the world getting warmer at a faster pace.
-At the 2008 Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, from 15–19 December in San Francisco, scientists warned that, in California, extreme events such as heat-waves now occurring once every 100 years could be happening every year within a century.
-On February 3, 2009 National Geographic News reported volcanic smoke and gas from two new holes on Alaska's Redoubt Volcano—one of them (left) about the size of a football field. The Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) confirms increasing volcanic unrest at Redoubt Volcano.
-- The Guardian reported on February 18, 2009 that IPCC’s computer models had calculated an average loss of 2.5% in sea ice extent per decade from 1953 to 2006. But in reality the Arctic sea ice had declined at a rate of about 7.8% per decade. New researches reveal that melt-water pooling on the Arctic sea ice is causing it to melt at a faster pace.
-India’s agricultural production has been consistently on the decline in recent years and is growing at less than a quarter the pace of the Indian economy. Annual per capita food grain production declined from 207 kilograms (455 pounds) in 1995 to 186 kilograms in 2006. The rate of agricultural growth has fallen from 5% in the mid-1980s to less than 2% (average) in the past half-decade. Despite building of huge dams it continues to be hostage to the vagaries of the monsoon. Not a happy sign for a country of every seventh human being.
-Climate change does not simply floods or droughts. It can cause epic devastation involving super cyclones, extreme weather, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond our imagination. It can pose existential threat to our coastal regions and ruin our agriculture by causing moisture -salinity imbalance in the soil. Projections show extinction of more than 5000 useful plant and animal species mainly due to the loss of suitable habitats.
- The Technical Paper on Climate Change of Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) shows substantial spatial and intensity variation in precipitation just in a matter of decades due to global warming. It is projected to increase the risks of flooding and drought in many areas, and in turn decreased food security. The quantity and even quality of water will be affected as a result of this. Already about 25% of the contemporary African population experiences water stress. By 2025, water availability in nine countries, mainly in eastern and southern Africa, is projected to be less than 1,000 cubic metre/person/yr. By 2020s there is an increased risk of winter flood in northern Europe and of flash flood in all of Europe.
- The same report says precipitation decline and droughts in deltas of Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and China have caused drying of wetlands and severe degradation of ecosystems. The recurrent droughts from 1999 to 2001, the construction of upstream reservoirs and improper use of groundwater have led to drying of the Momoge Wetland located in the Songnen Plain in north-eastern China.
The Nature says the warming caused by greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, is the main reason behind these changes. But the most worrying perhaps has been the surge in atmospheric concentrations of methane, a gas with a warming potential twenty-three times that of carbon dioxide. The extensive release of gaseous methane from formerly frozen deposits off the Siberian coast is of serious concern given this background.
The Human Touch…(Part I)
Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he’s been given. But up to now he hasn’t been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life’s has become extinct, the climate’s ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.
-Anton Chekhov , Uncle Vanya ( 1967)
A life is worth it if it has the opportunity to explore all its potentialities. A life is worthier if the opportunities are available and the fight is for potential. But a life is worthiest if there are avenues to expand potentialities and opportunity is not an issue but only the challenge to better your best.
When a child drinks water, it never knows what it is, nor does it matter for an injured surviving on saline. When a cow consumes a plastic bag, and dies of the entanglements it causes to its digestive mechanism, she never knows, it will take her life, so painfully. When a plant dies due to logging of water or drought or because of a storm uprooting it, it never knows why every next storm is more powerful and frequent than it used to be. But there is one thing that even many of us don’t know: ‘that we men are the single most important denominator behind all this’.
Rabindranath Tagore , said, ‘Man’s civilization is built upon his surplus.’
Truly man has intelligence and ingenuity beyond the limit of bare necessity and usefulness. There lies the power of creating ‘New’. There lies our test to give our next generations a happier, cleaner and greener home to live: Mother Earth.
Can we ensure a better future for our forthcoming generations and the generations of our plants, our animals, our surroundings? Can we turn the greatest threat to man’s existence into the greatest opportunity? Can we go beyond the limits and set a new standard of a sustainable growth?
This time we don’t have an option.
The answer must be YES.
To be contd...
-Anton Chekhov , Uncle Vanya ( 1967)
A life is worth it if it has the opportunity to explore all its potentialities. A life is worthier if the opportunities are available and the fight is for potential. But a life is worthiest if there are avenues to expand potentialities and opportunity is not an issue but only the challenge to better your best.
When a child drinks water, it never knows what it is, nor does it matter for an injured surviving on saline. When a cow consumes a plastic bag, and dies of the entanglements it causes to its digestive mechanism, she never knows, it will take her life, so painfully. When a plant dies due to logging of water or drought or because of a storm uprooting it, it never knows why every next storm is more powerful and frequent than it used to be. But there is one thing that even many of us don’t know: ‘that we men are the single most important denominator behind all this’.
Rabindranath Tagore , said, ‘Man’s civilization is built upon his surplus.’
Truly man has intelligence and ingenuity beyond the limit of bare necessity and usefulness. There lies the power of creating ‘New’. There lies our test to give our next generations a happier, cleaner and greener home to live: Mother Earth.
Can we ensure a better future for our forthcoming generations and the generations of our plants, our animals, our surroundings? Can we turn the greatest threat to man’s existence into the greatest opportunity? Can we go beyond the limits and set a new standard of a sustainable growth?
This time we don’t have an option.
The answer must be YES.
To be contd...
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Artistic Freedom
''When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
There was no one left to speak out.''
Confessed prominent German anti-Nazi theologian and Pastor Martin Niemöller
Creativity is the supreme art. The pursuit of art, thus, is mostly a singular journey at the conceptual as well as the practical level. Art is the making of the new and the artists despite all the commercialisation around ‘create’. ‘Creation’, as art never has a precedent, a legacy or tradition in the normal sense of the term. Even if there is a tradition, it exists not to be followed, not to be learnt and copied but to be experienced and felt only to ‘recreate.’
Art is an effort, an attempt to come to terms with the various component parts of countries, memories, histories, families and gods. Art is an experience for the artist and its connoisseurs, and even for those who ‘hate’ it. Hate is not the right term to be expressively involved to art. An effort and especially a creative effort should be only appreciated. But of late, what we have seen in recent times is that some vigilante extremists are trying to determine and control the dimensions of art. Be it the unnecessary controversy around Prof. Shivaji Panikkar , the attack on Taslima Nasreen by followers of the Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) in Hyderabad in August 2007, the furore raised on the issue of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard who caricatured Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban or Haji Yaqub Qureshi , a minister in the then UP government announcing Rs 50-crore reward publicly, on the head of Danish cartoonists are all vigilantism.
Agreed it was not for art’s sake. It was uncalled for, deplorable and done with a vicious motive. But, it is also true that such violent reactions, somehow, undermine the spirit of creative urge of all the stakeholders. In any case, there will always be a section ready to misuse things created with the best of intention.
The society needs to look for ways to control over-assertion of any short of identities. At the same time overreaction ought to be discouraged for both are forms of radicalism and hence dangerous. What was done to Maqbul Fida Hussain is condemnable. The way an artist of his stature has been forced out of the country is a loss for the tradition of art in this country. Equally condemnable is the ostracising of Salman Rushdie whose writing promises a whole new era in English language and literature.
The impact is for all the reasonable persons to experience. The impact has been disastrous. Creation has got ‘ideology’. Art has become ‘political’. Love for art is being subjected to the whims of collectivism . ‘Individualism ’ has suddenly become a bad word. The expression of feelings is being subjected to hooliganism. It has suddenly got ‘national’ and ‘ethnic’ colours. Suddenly artists being attacked have got media attention. Suddenly a few artists are being blamed for being insensitive and hurting sentiments. The alarm bell is for there to pay attention to. The way not only extremists but also the so called rationalists are taking extreme positions are both detrimental to the cause of institution building.
If all this is not enough we need to revisit the last line of Martin Nimoller’s confession. Otherwise art will be tied either to art galleries who are guided by business considerations at the end of the day or to ideologies. In its existence since times immemorial the love for art was probably never guided so ‘consciously’.
Salman Rushdie once commented, ‘to say that beyond self-exploration lies a sense of writing as sacrament, and maybe that's closer to how I feel: that writing fills the hole left by the departure of God.’
I don’t want that hole to be determined or defined by anyone else.
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
There was no one left to speak out.''
Confessed prominent German anti-Nazi theologian and Pastor Martin Niemöller
Creativity is the supreme art. The pursuit of art, thus, is mostly a singular journey at the conceptual as well as the practical level. Art is the making of the new and the artists despite all the commercialisation around ‘create’. ‘Creation’, as art never has a precedent, a legacy or tradition in the normal sense of the term. Even if there is a tradition, it exists not to be followed, not to be learnt and copied but to be experienced and felt only to ‘recreate.’
Art is an effort, an attempt to come to terms with the various component parts of countries, memories, histories, families and gods. Art is an experience for the artist and its connoisseurs, and even for those who ‘hate’ it. Hate is not the right term to be expressively involved to art. An effort and especially a creative effort should be only appreciated. But of late, what we have seen in recent times is that some vigilante extremists are trying to determine and control the dimensions of art. Be it the unnecessary controversy around Prof. Shivaji Panikkar , the attack on Taslima Nasreen by followers of the Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) in Hyderabad in August 2007, the furore raised on the issue of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard who caricatured Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban or Haji Yaqub Qureshi , a minister in the then UP government announcing Rs 50-crore reward publicly, on the head of Danish cartoonists are all vigilantism.
Agreed it was not for art’s sake. It was uncalled for, deplorable and done with a vicious motive. But, it is also true that such violent reactions, somehow, undermine the spirit of creative urge of all the stakeholders. In any case, there will always be a section ready to misuse things created with the best of intention.
The society needs to look for ways to control over-assertion of any short of identities. At the same time overreaction ought to be discouraged for both are forms of radicalism and hence dangerous. What was done to Maqbul Fida Hussain is condemnable. The way an artist of his stature has been forced out of the country is a loss for the tradition of art in this country. Equally condemnable is the ostracising of Salman Rushdie whose writing promises a whole new era in English language and literature.
The impact is for all the reasonable persons to experience. The impact has been disastrous. Creation has got ‘ideology’. Art has become ‘political’. Love for art is being subjected to the whims of collectivism . ‘Individualism ’ has suddenly become a bad word. The expression of feelings is being subjected to hooliganism. It has suddenly got ‘national’ and ‘ethnic’ colours. Suddenly artists being attacked have got media attention. Suddenly a few artists are being blamed for being insensitive and hurting sentiments. The alarm bell is for there to pay attention to. The way not only extremists but also the so called rationalists are taking extreme positions are both detrimental to the cause of institution building.
If all this is not enough we need to revisit the last line of Martin Nimoller’s confession. Otherwise art will be tied either to art galleries who are guided by business considerations at the end of the day or to ideologies. In its existence since times immemorial the love for art was probably never guided so ‘consciously’.
Salman Rushdie once commented, ‘to say that beyond self-exploration lies a sense of writing as sacrament, and maybe that's closer to how I feel: that writing fills the hole left by the departure of God.’
I don’t want that hole to be determined or defined by anyone else.
Monday, April 6, 2009
What Makes Art Contemporary
The three word ‘arts’, ‘aesthetics’ and ‘contemporary’ are in a relationship. But a contemporary art is not necessarily contemporary aesthetics and many art practices and aesthetics sensibilities are not necessarily contemporary despite being in practice.
An art is contemporary, if identified by contemporary people who matter. At the same time an art of a better genre might not be appreciated because of bad marketing or, managerial practices. So what determine the contemporariness of arts and aesthetics is mostly not the art of the arts but the art of presenting art in front of people.
The world famous Indian artist like Subodh Gupta took themes which got an international recognition. But that does not mean he is the only person who thinks on similar lines. Subodh got cows and cow dung, tongs and daily utensils, and such materials of common use to reach this stage. But no less was the role of Flora Boillot in promoting Brand Subodh. What I feel after five months of research and exchanges with these contemporaries is it’s really dependent upon things which might have nothing to do with art.
The conclusion I am able to reach as of now is- contemporary aesthetic beliefs of those who matter is critical for an art to be contemporary.
The fact remains that any folk art is better understood and practised by a larger number of people than any abstract or modern art. Any traditional art, simply because it is in the common psyche since ages is easily understood. But a folk art is not considered contemporary as it is not taken up by the marketers to the Sotheby and the Biennale.
Utility is again not all together a lost case. The survival of an art practice requires it to be of some use. There are many experiments which are in demand today but that might not be the case about them just after a couple of years. While votaries of arts would talk of art for arts’ sake, ultimately, the purpose should be commonly identifiable.
When we visit the market, many old crafts and practices have become contemporary. Yoga and meditation have become contemporary because of their utility. Because Yoga is a rage today, it has affected all forms of contemporary fitness practices. Meditation does not give much scope of changing itself, still it is a rage. Similar patterns are visible in the art world.
Contemporary is not art but the aesthetics of men who matter and the marketers who are able to drive home the point in their mind. These marketers are not the traditional painter artists but those who got taught in Wharton and Harvard: how to sell a product.
Is it good or bad? Will this trend hurt art practice? Do we need to search for better ways to identify or classify what is contemporary art and what is not? These questions are confusing. We really don’t know what’s going to happen after 10 years to the art world. As of now the most difficult is the art of waiting to watch.
An art is contemporary, if identified by contemporary people who matter. At the same time an art of a better genre might not be appreciated because of bad marketing or, managerial practices. So what determine the contemporariness of arts and aesthetics is mostly not the art of the arts but the art of presenting art in front of people.
The world famous Indian artist like Subodh Gupta took themes which got an international recognition. But that does not mean he is the only person who thinks on similar lines. Subodh got cows and cow dung, tongs and daily utensils, and such materials of common use to reach this stage. But no less was the role of Flora Boillot in promoting Brand Subodh. What I feel after five months of research and exchanges with these contemporaries is it’s really dependent upon things which might have nothing to do with art.
The conclusion I am able to reach as of now is- contemporary aesthetic beliefs of those who matter is critical for an art to be contemporary.
The fact remains that any folk art is better understood and practised by a larger number of people than any abstract or modern art. Any traditional art, simply because it is in the common psyche since ages is easily understood. But a folk art is not considered contemporary as it is not taken up by the marketers to the Sotheby and the Biennale.
Utility is again not all together a lost case. The survival of an art practice requires it to be of some use. There are many experiments which are in demand today but that might not be the case about them just after a couple of years. While votaries of arts would talk of art for arts’ sake, ultimately, the purpose should be commonly identifiable.
When we visit the market, many old crafts and practices have become contemporary. Yoga and meditation have become contemporary because of their utility. Because Yoga is a rage today, it has affected all forms of contemporary fitness practices. Meditation does not give much scope of changing itself, still it is a rage. Similar patterns are visible in the art world.
Contemporary is not art but the aesthetics of men who matter and the marketers who are able to drive home the point in their mind. These marketers are not the traditional painter artists but those who got taught in Wharton and Harvard: how to sell a product.
Is it good or bad? Will this trend hurt art practice? Do we need to search for better ways to identify or classify what is contemporary art and what is not? These questions are confusing. We really don’t know what’s going to happen after 10 years to the art world. As of now the most difficult is the art of waiting to watch.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Mortuary is no mystery
By Tilak Jha, Sanjeev Kumar and Manisha Sharma
The sight of a corpse leaves many with a palpitating heart. We think it is very difficult to be in a morgue handling the dead day in and out. Death, for man, has always been difficult to come to term with. And we all want to stay away from a mortuary. But “science”, says Dr. Sunay Kumar, senior resident doctor, forensic medicine at the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, “has proved that the fear of dead is a misplaced notion.” “This sealed room has all the skeletal remains of the Nithari serial killings case. It is critical until the trial goes on”, says Dr Adarsh Kumar, Asst. Professor, forensic medicine at, AIIMS. A dead body is as important as those alive to ascertain the cause of death. When there is no evidence, a dead body is the greatest witness of the dead. Autopsy is what helps to know the reasons behind the death. The forensic experts in the mortuary along with their toxicology counterparts make a dead tell the tale of their death, of their claim for justice and peace and the pain and frustration they underwent while alive. But a lot of facilities and care is required and the results can be, at times, startling. Dr. D. N. Bhardwaj, additional professor of forensic science and toxicology at AIIMS, recalling one of the autopsy says, “Everyone believed the death to be a murder, but it was a road accident, where the person was hit by a truck.” Dead bodies can be of great research value. Organ donation especially eye donation is another thing being actively promoted. Dr. Adarsh Kumar, assistant professor of forensic medicine at AIIMS says, “There can be no substitute of a dead body for research purpose. And there are a few NGOs who are promoting contribution of dead bodies.” Even in a hospital mortuaries are the most ignored places. Discussing the problems of mortuaries Dr. Kumar says that good infrastructure is limited to metros. Even at AIIMS, the lack of enough hands does affect the quality of autopsy. Another major reason is the lack of enough remuneration. “Forensic experts are the highest paid people in Australia and England.” Dr. Sunay Mahesh, senior resident, forensic medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi says, “the stigma attached to this department is another major reason why the department struggles for enough manpower. But apart from monetary consideration, the stigma attached to the job is especially for the 4th grade staffs who actually manhandles the body is significant. “Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one. Wrote Vladimir Nabokov in his 1962 novel ‘Pale Fire’ The obviousness and the triviality of death is enough to recognise that misconceptions about dead be removed.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
A Hairy Story!
Haircutting is one of the oldest surviving professions. India, which is now known for it’s IT and Outsourcing sectors, still has the old style barber shops. What is interesting is that even today, roadside barber stalls are still prevalent here along with the ones with proper salons.
Some of these barbers have newly started their own businesses with their own salons. While some have carried it on as family tradition and take pride in it.
Some of these barbers have migrated to big cities like Delhi from smaller towns. Most of them run their haircutting stalls by the roadside. And it is always a struggle for them to make both ends meet.
As far as haircutting is concerned, it is an art for the barbers. It is something which is achieved after a lot of practice and requires a lot of concentration. If we keep this thing in mind, then they are no less than any big shot hair designer.
By Joydeep Hazarika and Tilak Jha
Some of these barbers have newly started their own businesses with their own salons. While some have carried it on as family tradition and take pride in it.
Some of these barbers have migrated to big cities like Delhi from smaller towns. Most of them run their haircutting stalls by the roadside. And it is always a struggle for them to make both ends meet.
As far as haircutting is concerned, it is an art for the barbers. It is something which is achieved after a lot of practice and requires a lot of concentration. If we keep this thing in mind, then they are no less than any big shot hair designer.
By Joydeep Hazarika and Tilak Jha
Monday, March 30, 2009
Reservation issue and Loksabha elections
As India prepares for the Loksabha elections, in April-May this year, party manifestoes are full of reservation promises. The party manifestoes of even major political parties including the Congress, Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI (M)] and the Bhartiys Janata Party (BJP) seems to have got caught in the reservation bandwagon.
CPI (M) in its 31 page 2-part election manifesto has blamed congress for not implementing women reservation. The party promises reservation for Dalit Christians and Muslims apart from promising reservation in the private sector. The party manifesto calls for extending 27% reservation for other backward classes (OBC) in the private educational institutions.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has been promising reservation for poor upper-caste people since a long time. Quite recently the party released a new slogan, “vote se lenge CM PM, aarakshan se SP, DM” (we will take chief minister and prime minister posts through votes and civil services jobs through reservation). Though the party has not issued its election manifesto saying BSP believes in doing and not in making promises.
Congress that currently heads the ruling coalition promises 1/3 rd reservation of jobs to women in all government jobs, and yes reservation in the private sector.
The BJP on the other hand promises all the reservations promised above but opposes religion based quota.
As election dates are nearing, the reservation issue is back. Be it regional or national party reservation sops continue to polarize voting patterns.
CPI (M) in its 31 page 2-part election manifesto has blamed congress for not implementing women reservation. The party promises reservation for Dalit Christians and Muslims apart from promising reservation in the private sector. The party manifesto calls for extending 27% reservation for other backward classes (OBC) in the private educational institutions.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has been promising reservation for poor upper-caste people since a long time. Quite recently the party released a new slogan, “vote se lenge CM PM, aarakshan se SP, DM” (we will take chief minister and prime minister posts through votes and civil services jobs through reservation). Though the party has not issued its election manifesto saying BSP believes in doing and not in making promises.
Congress that currently heads the ruling coalition promises 1/3 rd reservation of jobs to women in all government jobs, and yes reservation in the private sector.
The BJP on the other hand promises all the reservations promised above but opposes religion based quota.
As election dates are nearing, the reservation issue is back. Be it regional or national party reservation sops continue to polarize voting patterns.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Death In Delhi
The one thing that has kept me perplexed in the last two years of my stay in Delhi is that what is it that makes me and probably many others of all sorts to love and hate it at the same time. From what I am able to conclude about based upon my own experience is, it’s the difficulty in our home towns more than any thing else that makes it attractive.
I love travelling; and that I loved always because the wanderer in me is powerful than so many other things. I have travelled a lot in Delhi also. Just yesterday, you won’t believe, I went to AIIMS mortuary and then to the Safdurjung mortuary.
The plan was to meet the people who actually handle the dead body and get clue of how I can do a video story of around 2 min. It was difficult. The first time I had thought of doing this story was last year when I had been to AIIMS to record the ambience in a hospital premises as part of our radio assignment.
But yesterday’s was much tougher than what I would have otherwise imagined.
The moment I reached, I found a dead body lying wrapped in the lawn. For a moment I thought like returning, like thinking bad about what kind of project I have planned!
I waited for around 15 min. thinking about my pressed jeans that I wore just the same day and will have to cleanse once I am back. I also thought that some day I will also be wrapped liked the one lying in my front. That no one has ever avoided death, nor can I. that I too will need to handle a body of people who I love so passionately. And that they will show no emotion once they are dead. I felt about my parents, about my grandpa who died when I was a kid. I thought about my kids who might have to handle my dead body. I thought about the business of handling dead, about the people who handle one every day.
It’s not normal.
Why not? It’s like anything else. It’s like just handling a chicken, a lamb! Nope! Definitely not! Man is not chicken. Man is not animal. He is more than an animal. A chicken can’t build institutions, a lamb can’t build empires. And man can’t stop resisting for if something unwanted happens to him or her.
It was my first conscious encounter with death. I had seen many deaths around me. We all have seen. But I had never thought of presenting death. I had never thought of reporting death. I had never thought of looking towards a dead body just like a body.
Am sounding stupid? I hope so! Not because I think it’s bad. Not because it’s not normal. But, because like everyone else, I also fear death. In our lives of struggle, we never count death as a factor. We earn to live, we give to earn again. We don’t do anything to die peacefully.
We run away from dead body, from flyovers where a person meets an accident, from a collapsed building where a family is buried alive, from a pond where a car jumps drowning and killing all inside, from hostels where a student hangs himself, from a village where people die after drinking spurious liquor.
Hello, death is unavoidable. But we can be much more responsive towards people who die due to negligence of us ‘will die later men’.
I love travelling; and that I loved always because the wanderer in me is powerful than so many other things. I have travelled a lot in Delhi also. Just yesterday, you won’t believe, I went to AIIMS mortuary and then to the Safdurjung mortuary.
The plan was to meet the people who actually handle the dead body and get clue of how I can do a video story of around 2 min. It was difficult. The first time I had thought of doing this story was last year when I had been to AIIMS to record the ambience in a hospital premises as part of our radio assignment.
But yesterday’s was much tougher than what I would have otherwise imagined.
The moment I reached, I found a dead body lying wrapped in the lawn. For a moment I thought like returning, like thinking bad about what kind of project I have planned!
I waited for around 15 min. thinking about my pressed jeans that I wore just the same day and will have to cleanse once I am back. I also thought that some day I will also be wrapped liked the one lying in my front. That no one has ever avoided death, nor can I. that I too will need to handle a body of people who I love so passionately. And that they will show no emotion once they are dead. I felt about my parents, about my grandpa who died when I was a kid. I thought about my kids who might have to handle my dead body. I thought about the business of handling dead, about the people who handle one every day.
It’s not normal.
Why not? It’s like anything else. It’s like just handling a chicken, a lamb! Nope! Definitely not! Man is not chicken. Man is not animal. He is more than an animal. A chicken can’t build institutions, a lamb can’t build empires. And man can’t stop resisting for if something unwanted happens to him or her.
It was my first conscious encounter with death. I had seen many deaths around me. We all have seen. But I had never thought of presenting death. I had never thought of reporting death. I had never thought of looking towards a dead body just like a body.
Am sounding stupid? I hope so! Not because I think it’s bad. Not because it’s not normal. But, because like everyone else, I also fear death. In our lives of struggle, we never count death as a factor. We earn to live, we give to earn again. We don’t do anything to die peacefully.
We run away from dead body, from flyovers where a person meets an accident, from a collapsed building where a family is buried alive, from a pond where a car jumps drowning and killing all inside, from hostels where a student hangs himself, from a village where people die after drinking spurious liquor.
Hello, death is unavoidable. But we can be much more responsive towards people who die due to negligence of us ‘will die later men’.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Economy and Election
When problems come, they don’t come alone. Sometimes, solutions are there too. We God believing human beings can’t wait for eventualities to come naturally. We actually create one, when they can be avoided. We give sops; allow black economy to flourish when times are good. We also do away with fiscal responsibility and of course we dream in every decoupling type theories and surveys that present the rosy picture of a sustained growth, whatever happens in the other part of the world.
Hello! We better not dream that decoupling means, getting not affecte4d at all. This is not possible. Simply because however less we are coupled; there will always be exports and imports and yes FDIs and FIIs who will be affected in case there is a financial downturn.
And least not when the IMF estimates global growth contraction in 2009 to a range of (-) 1.0 to (-) 0.5 per cent; first in 60 years. Another first is that all the advanced economies – the United States, Europe and Japan – had never gone so firmly, simultaneously, into recession. The world is projected to contract by 2.8 per cent in 2009, again the highest shrinkage in the last 80 years.
In a speech delivered at the Confederation of Indian Industry's National Conference at New Delhi on March 26, 2009 RBI governor D. Subbarao said, “In a globalized world no country can be an island.” I would say not even an island can be completely decoupled today.
Let’s have a fact check. India’s two-way trade (merchandize exports plus imports), as a proportion of GDP, increased from 21.2 per cent in 1997-98, to 34.7 per cent in 2007-08.
The ratio of total external transactions (gross current account flows plus gross capital flows) to GDP, this ratio has more than doubled from 46.8 per cent in 1997-98 to 117.4 per cent in 2007-08. Though the external demand, as measured by merchandize exports, accounts for less than 15 per cent of our GDP. Still it’s a significant number, at least enough to tarnish the scorching growth figures.
Well, while the government continues with stimulus measures and has already invoked emergency provisions of the FRBM Act to seek relaxation from the fiscal targets, the real recession threat will be faced by the next government.
For the time being one another stimulus package is eager to be poured in the economy in Loksabha election. And if newspaper reports are believed the expenditure is set to cross 10000 crore barrier; that’s more than US presidential election!
Well, but this black election stimulus will only; delay the crisis to come powerfully: NEXT TIME dear!
Hello! We better not dream that decoupling means, getting not affecte4d at all. This is not possible. Simply because however less we are coupled; there will always be exports and imports and yes FDIs and FIIs who will be affected in case there is a financial downturn.
And least not when the IMF estimates global growth contraction in 2009 to a range of (-) 1.0 to (-) 0.5 per cent; first in 60 years. Another first is that all the advanced economies – the United States, Europe and Japan – had never gone so firmly, simultaneously, into recession. The world is projected to contract by 2.8 per cent in 2009, again the highest shrinkage in the last 80 years.
In a speech delivered at the Confederation of Indian Industry's National Conference at New Delhi on March 26, 2009 RBI governor D. Subbarao said, “In a globalized world no country can be an island.” I would say not even an island can be completely decoupled today.
Let’s have a fact check. India’s two-way trade (merchandize exports plus imports), as a proportion of GDP, increased from 21.2 per cent in 1997-98, to 34.7 per cent in 2007-08.
The ratio of total external transactions (gross current account flows plus gross capital flows) to GDP, this ratio has more than doubled from 46.8 per cent in 1997-98 to 117.4 per cent in 2007-08. Though the external demand, as measured by merchandize exports, accounts for less than 15 per cent of our GDP. Still it’s a significant number, at least enough to tarnish the scorching growth figures.
Well, while the government continues with stimulus measures and has already invoked emergency provisions of the FRBM Act to seek relaxation from the fiscal targets, the real recession threat will be faced by the next government.
For the time being one another stimulus package is eager to be poured in the economy in Loksabha election. And if newspaper reports are believed the expenditure is set to cross 10000 crore barrier; that’s more than US presidential election!
Well, but this black election stimulus will only; delay the crisis to come powerfully: NEXT TIME dear!
Thursday, March 26, 2009
The power of appreciation
Can a man be made to do anything by thrashing, criticising, booing or just ignoring? I think, if someone believes in this, he is more than dishonest.
When you have a kid, you love it. Don’t you? We water a plant in the hope that a beautiful flower will smile for us some day. But what happens, when it comes to building men for the future? What happens to that father or mother in you, who claims to be the builder, the creator? Where goes that lover inside, when someone looks with hope towards you?
I sincerely believe, if things can be built, it can be built but through patience, perseverance, determination and love. With praise, you don’t bring satisfaction for others but the desire to get praised, again and again. With criticism you don’t gain, but make others lose, which is never intended.
All Great things in this world are dependent upon great relationships. Be it friendship, or institution building, relationship has to be at the core of all these processes.
We love dogs, and train them? Again,all by love. We can’t get anything out of them by whipping. We love ourselves and keep looking for good thing in us. That way we try maintaining our strengths and reduce our weaknesses.
It’s very easy to look for weaknesses. You can always find one. The toughest and therefore the most difficult thing is to praise, to appreciate, to encourage, to promise, ‘I am with you’.
Are you with me?
Advani as PM?
Who thinks Advani will not be a good PM? And who is sure Advani will be bad PM?
I am confused! Not because of Advani, who I think, has done both good and bad things unlike Manmohan Singh, who never did anything bad! Not because Manmohan Singh might be the longest serving coalition PM? I am worried, why everyone is not confused?
Let me present myself in a bit ‘organised’ way!
First why I think he will be a good PM?
Advani was acquitted by the court in the Baabri Masjid demolition case. Remember, Rath Yatra was no joke! Advani, if you ask an Investigation Bureau insider, was much better than any of the home ministers in last couple of decades. Remember the Muftis and the Patils were suit not polity changers! During his tenure as Home Minister, Kashmir saw a significant decline in terrorism. Forget human rights violation, they have always happened. After all we can’t hundred percent is an improbable idea. And let’s not take the credit of his Jinna praise away! After all Jinna gave us a neighbour! And anyway a man, who partitioned India, for whatever reasons, can’t be a stupid person! And I don’t have problems with Advani’s open declaration, ‘I want to be PM’. We feel bad because of our tradition of pretense! We liked Obama. Let’s be fair to Advani.
Now why I think, he will be bad PM?
First, Advani doesn’t have a Rahul and he can’t choose his successor. This will be his greatest handicap. Everyone will fight for post Advani scenario. Second, PMO is not Home Ministry. And, he can’t handle it like the terrorists! Next, he is just going to be yet another PM, not a Rathyatri this time. He might be an embarrassment if he does not have any information of his finance minister going to New York in recession times, the way it happened in Quandhar!
Hello, one thing I am sure without confusion! We are not going to have a powerful PM.
I am confused! Not because of Advani, who I think, has done both good and bad things unlike Manmohan Singh, who never did anything bad! Not because Manmohan Singh might be the longest serving coalition PM? I am worried, why everyone is not confused?
Let me present myself in a bit ‘organised’ way!
First why I think he will be a good PM?
Advani was acquitted by the court in the Baabri Masjid demolition case. Remember, Rath Yatra was no joke! Advani, if you ask an Investigation Bureau insider, was much better than any of the home ministers in last couple of decades. Remember the Muftis and the Patils were suit not polity changers! During his tenure as Home Minister, Kashmir saw a significant decline in terrorism. Forget human rights violation, they have always happened. After all we can’t hundred percent is an improbable idea. And let’s not take the credit of his Jinna praise away! After all Jinna gave us a neighbour! And anyway a man, who partitioned India, for whatever reasons, can’t be a stupid person! And I don’t have problems with Advani’s open declaration, ‘I want to be PM’. We feel bad because of our tradition of pretense! We liked Obama. Let’s be fair to Advani.
Now why I think, he will be bad PM?
First, Advani doesn’t have a Rahul and he can’t choose his successor. This will be his greatest handicap. Everyone will fight for post Advani scenario. Second, PMO is not Home Ministry. And, he can’t handle it like the terrorists! Next, he is just going to be yet another PM, not a Rathyatri this time. He might be an embarrassment if he does not have any information of his finance minister going to New York in recession times, the way it happened in Quandhar!
Hello, one thing I am sure without confusion! We are not going to have a powerful PM.
Varun Gandhi's hate Speech in Pilibhit
It’s a shocking reminder of how our democracy functions? It’s a repetition of what was always expected. It’s a reassertion of what’s the direction in which we are heading? The democracy is maturing or going off track?
Who thinks that Varun Gandhi was a liberal? Go and read what he has written in so many articles published in the RSS mouthpiece ORGANISER. Well, Gandhi is not the first in BJP or for that matter in Indian Politics to have found such short cuts to success. His fate was in doldrums since when Shivraj Singh Chauhan didn’t let him fight election from Vidisha in 2006 after he became the CM of Madhya Pradesh. Since then, he was really looking for an opportunity to project himself as a rising leader?
What Kalyan Singh and Narayan Rane did? What did Sanjay Nirupam do? Hello, this is politics? And you are mistaken if you still think that politics in this great country is for the cause of democracy.
I always think, why people believe that Nehru, Indira or Rajiv were great. For that matter Advani too has the credit of being the man who changed the polity of India. And I agree with Advani at least on one point. It is on what he told about Jinna being a great man. We consider Ravan also a great king. Why not Jinna?
If Indira imposed emergency, but won a war in the battlefield she becomes great!
Nehru is great as he was Gandhi’s favourite and returned to India to ‘suffer’?
Gandhi, I sincerely believe, was a great person; mistakes can always happen.
But lo Rajiv is also great; because he was killed for he sent IPKF to Lanka to check what was an ethnic problem and required a diplomatic solution?
Varun ‘deserves’ criticism for his effort. But remember until we can’t rid our politics of caste and power and ah sweet money; hate is here to stay!
Who thinks that Varun Gandhi was a liberal? Go and read what he has written in so many articles published in the RSS mouthpiece ORGANISER. Well, Gandhi is not the first in BJP or for that matter in Indian Politics to have found such short cuts to success. His fate was in doldrums since when Shivraj Singh Chauhan didn’t let him fight election from Vidisha in 2006 after he became the CM of Madhya Pradesh. Since then, he was really looking for an opportunity to project himself as a rising leader?
What Kalyan Singh and Narayan Rane did? What did Sanjay Nirupam do? Hello, this is politics? And you are mistaken if you still think that politics in this great country is for the cause of democracy.
I always think, why people believe that Nehru, Indira or Rajiv were great. For that matter Advani too has the credit of being the man who changed the polity of India. And I agree with Advani at least on one point. It is on what he told about Jinna being a great man. We consider Ravan also a great king. Why not Jinna?
If Indira imposed emergency, but won a war in the battlefield she becomes great!
Nehru is great as he was Gandhi’s favourite and returned to India to ‘suffer’?
Gandhi, I sincerely believe, was a great person; mistakes can always happen.
But lo Rajiv is also great; because he was killed for he sent IPKF to Lanka to check what was an ethnic problem and required a diplomatic solution?
Varun ‘deserves’ criticism for his effort. But remember until we can’t rid our politics of caste and power and ah sweet money; hate is here to stay!
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
IPL:Where in this world
Courtesy the home ministry of India: Delhi and Jaipur are out of the third revised schedule of the IPL 2009.
Now it’s upon these two states to take care of security concerns if they want T-20 in their state! What a pleasant surprise for Delhi, home to two of India’s currently playing stars cricketers and of course Jaipur, the defending IPL champion!! Indian state’s capital does not have the wherewithal to provide security to our ‘Cricket’!!! Credit: The Home Ministry of the State of India which won’t give in to the terrorist threat and is prepared to defend to any attack.
Why so much fuss about security! We have commandos to defend all our politicians and their cronies. We have police to deploy outside the homes of every Shahrukh and Amitabh. We have personnel to guard every single flower in the Raisina Hills. But when it comes to defending the game of cricket, suddenly, problems prop up. So much so for the government that claims the credit of ‘improved’ security inside the country.
The issue is of credibility and not allowing others to exploit the recent attack on the Sri Lanka cricketers in Pakistan, wrote Rahul Bhonsle in the ‘mint’ yesterday. It’s more than that. It’s the spirit of the game, the creed of cricket which ought to be upheld against all odds. It’s the popular.
We are world’s largest democracy, my dear. Let the ‘gentleman’ be his own.
Now it’s upon these two states to take care of security concerns if they want T-20 in their state! What a pleasant surprise for Delhi, home to two of India’s currently playing stars cricketers and of course Jaipur, the defending IPL champion!! Indian state’s capital does not have the wherewithal to provide security to our ‘Cricket’!!! Credit: The Home Ministry of the State of India which won’t give in to the terrorist threat and is prepared to defend to any attack.
Why so much fuss about security! We have commandos to defend all our politicians and their cronies. We have police to deploy outside the homes of every Shahrukh and Amitabh. We have personnel to guard every single flower in the Raisina Hills. But when it comes to defending the game of cricket, suddenly, problems prop up. So much so for the government that claims the credit of ‘improved’ security inside the country.
The issue is of credibility and not allowing others to exploit the recent attack on the Sri Lanka cricketers in Pakistan, wrote Rahul Bhonsle in the ‘mint’ yesterday. It’s more than that. It’s the spirit of the game, the creed of cricket which ought to be upheld against all odds. It’s the popular.
We are world’s largest democracy, my dear. Let the ‘gentleman’ be his own.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Responding Against Economic Crisis
If we go by our response against economic crisis, historically, it has almost always been perfunctory. Indians do not take financial crisis seriously. We respond to wars, we respond to famines, we respond to earthquakes and floods. Economic crisis, we don’t care for much.
Nehru responded to China’s attack not US capitalism. Indira responded to Pakistan’s attack not to China’s liberalization of its economy. We began responding once we landed into serious trouble in 1990s and we had to put negotiate our gold reserve. It’s a sad comparison when compared to the way geopolitics has worked in the post industrialization era. The power holds today with those who keep a tab on economic factors.
In India the British were successful and not French most importantly because the financial powerhouse of Bengal was with the British. Why British were able to rule India was because they decided to exploit India economically and not interfere with the lifestyle of the populace. The response of 1857 was more due to violent suppression by the British of the intermittent unrests than the economic misery they brought to the Indians.
Albeit it’s true not only for India; our response has been more sluggish when compared to others.
In the global meltdown of 2008-09 the response has been quite unhurried. While the CRR and repo rates were election adjusted, export led sectors were allowed to fall making thousands jobless. We brought loan waiver scheme when we should have made micro credit easily available for farmers. We implemented 6th pay commission reports when we should have worried about fiscal deficit. We have allocated higher subsidy for fertilizers when we should have gone all out for organic farming. But we just don’t care for all this in an election year. And alas when was it last when there was no election for one whole year?
Today we are safe because our economy has been on the roll courtesy individual enterprise of the Tantis, the Ambanis, the Mittals etc. The government focus has been to punish the wealth creators and not award the deserving. But that is how India always responds. We don’t vote out a party for dabbling with our financial security. We are happy with a government that does creative accounting to hide financial deficit. We are satisfied with a government that puts fiscal responsibility on the back burner, which believes in allocation and not implementation, which has damaged autonomous institutions like the AIIMS and the IIMs by threatening their annual allocation. It’s all shocking and disappointing.
…to be continued.
Nehru responded to China’s attack not US capitalism. Indira responded to Pakistan’s attack not to China’s liberalization of its economy. We began responding once we landed into serious trouble in 1990s and we had to put negotiate our gold reserve. It’s a sad comparison when compared to the way geopolitics has worked in the post industrialization era. The power holds today with those who keep a tab on economic factors.
In India the British were successful and not French most importantly because the financial powerhouse of Bengal was with the British. Why British were able to rule India was because they decided to exploit India economically and not interfere with the lifestyle of the populace. The response of 1857 was more due to violent suppression by the British of the intermittent unrests than the economic misery they brought to the Indians.
Albeit it’s true not only for India; our response has been more sluggish when compared to others.
In the global meltdown of 2008-09 the response has been quite unhurried. While the CRR and repo rates were election adjusted, export led sectors were allowed to fall making thousands jobless. We brought loan waiver scheme when we should have made micro credit easily available for farmers. We implemented 6th pay commission reports when we should have worried about fiscal deficit. We have allocated higher subsidy for fertilizers when we should have gone all out for organic farming. But we just don’t care for all this in an election year. And alas when was it last when there was no election for one whole year?
Today we are safe because our economy has been on the roll courtesy individual enterprise of the Tantis, the Ambanis, the Mittals etc. The government focus has been to punish the wealth creators and not award the deserving. But that is how India always responds. We don’t vote out a party for dabbling with our financial security. We are happy with a government that does creative accounting to hide financial deficit. We are satisfied with a government that puts fiscal responsibility on the back burner, which believes in allocation and not implementation, which has damaged autonomous institutions like the AIIMS and the IIMs by threatening their annual allocation. It’s all shocking and disappointing.
…to be continued.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Personal Background
My name is Tilak. Apart from academics, I was actively engaged with Friends' Club (FC) (An Intellectuals' Assembly) a non-profit institution. I became the secretary of the club in the year 2005. As the secretary of FC, my responsibilities included selection, supervision & personality development of the members of the Club. I also participated and compeered many debates and discussions on issues of socio-politico-economic importance. I also won first prize for my entry” The Future of Rashtra Bhasha in India" in June 2007 in Pratiyogita Darpan (Eng.).
One of the greatest experiences of my life was working for flood victims in 2004, collecting funds for Tsunami victims in Jan 2005 and organizing a seminar in Jan 2006 which gave me immense experience of working in a team of intellectuals, sponsors and of course the common milieu. That exposure also helped in improving my communication skills significantly.
My greatest strength is my belief in my abilities for which the credit goes to the circumstances I was blessed with. Working for flood victims I discovered what Amala Rodrigues once said that strangely suffering touches human heart deeper than pleasure. My experience was similar while collecting funds for Tsunami victims. Albeit, sufferings alone should not be the axis of distribution of rights and privileges, but managing human being, the greatest of all the resources.
The year was 2006 when the thought of journalism first came to my mind. The inspiration was an interview, of mine, by a journalist. The one thing that the journalist said to me after the interview was over was, ‘you are sensitive, and someone like you should be a journalist’. At that time I was preparing for MBA. The reason, ultimately myself, though, my state of affairs too had a role. I had to prepare for MBA for the next two years.
At the end of the year 2008 I had calls from two reputed institutes to opt from. One was a reputed management programme run by the University of Delhi. Another was the offer to pursue masters in journalism from one of the most reputed journalism schools on India, AJKMCRC. An MBA degree would have given far more secure career than journalism. Actually monetary consideration would have never allowed me to join journalism.
But the one thing that prompted me to go for journalism was that there are many ways to earn but few to give back. I believe my nurturing has implanted in me that money has to be the last criteria to think of.
I come from a very humble background. My father is a teacher. His dedication towards his students has always been a source of inspiration for both me and my sister. My mother always taught us never to go for short-cuts and be patient.
I don’t claim to be a perfect man. But I believe I have always done things differently. I have always inspired those around me and every action of mine has and always had a human angle.
I just want to reinvent, repossess myself every next moment for a greater cause.
One of the greatest experiences of my life was working for flood victims in 2004, collecting funds for Tsunami victims in Jan 2005 and organizing a seminar in Jan 2006 which gave me immense experience of working in a team of intellectuals, sponsors and of course the common milieu. That exposure also helped in improving my communication skills significantly.
My greatest strength is my belief in my abilities for which the credit goes to the circumstances I was blessed with. Working for flood victims I discovered what Amala Rodrigues once said that strangely suffering touches human heart deeper than pleasure. My experience was similar while collecting funds for Tsunami victims. Albeit, sufferings alone should not be the axis of distribution of rights and privileges, but managing human being, the greatest of all the resources.
The year was 2006 when the thought of journalism first came to my mind. The inspiration was an interview, of mine, by a journalist. The one thing that the journalist said to me after the interview was over was, ‘you are sensitive, and someone like you should be a journalist’. At that time I was preparing for MBA. The reason, ultimately myself, though, my state of affairs too had a role. I had to prepare for MBA for the next two years.
At the end of the year 2008 I had calls from two reputed institutes to opt from. One was a reputed management programme run by the University of Delhi. Another was the offer to pursue masters in journalism from one of the most reputed journalism schools on India, AJKMCRC. An MBA degree would have given far more secure career than journalism. Actually monetary consideration would have never allowed me to join journalism.
But the one thing that prompted me to go for journalism was that there are many ways to earn but few to give back. I believe my nurturing has implanted in me that money has to be the last criteria to think of.
I come from a very humble background. My father is a teacher. His dedication towards his students has always been a source of inspiration for both me and my sister. My mother always taught us never to go for short-cuts and be patient.
I don’t claim to be a perfect man. But I believe I have always done things differently. I have always inspired those around me and every action of mine has and always had a human angle.
I just want to reinvent, repossess myself every next moment for a greater cause.
Sound effects in soap operas
The main characteristics that define soap operas are "an emphasis on family life, personal relationships, sexual dramas, emotional and moral conflicts. They also cover topical issues and are normally set in familiar domestic interiors with only occasional excursions into new locations. Soap narratives, like those of film melodramas, are marked by 'chance meetings, coincidences, missed meetings, sudden conversions, last-minute rescues and revelations. These elements are found across the gamut of soap operas, from EastEnders to Dallas.
The characters are frequently attractive, seductive, glamorous and wealthy. Soap operas from Australia to United Kingdom to India tend to focus on more everyday characters and situations, and are frequently set in working class environments. Soap operas explore realistic storylines such as family discord, marriage breakdown, or financial problems. Romance, secret relationships, extramarital affairs, and genuine love have also been the basis for many soap opera storylines.
Stunts and complex physical action are largely absent as extensive post production work, while possible, is not feasible for the genre due to the high output each week and normally low budgets.
Indian soap operas are often mass-produced under large production banners, with houses like Balaji Telefilms—run by Ekta and Shobha Kapoor. Soap operas like Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii, Kasautii Zindagii Ki, Kusum, Kavyanjali, Kahiin To Hoga , Kasam Se use two dialogue dimensions simultaneously, timbre in dialogue and other sound is effects to enrich the visual aesthetic and work with them to emphasize the overall meaning.
Music, dialogue and noise - or the absence of it has a profound impact on soap operas. It is used to enhance drama and to help illustrate the emotional content in the story. It is also used to manipulate the feelings and sentiments of viewers. This is universal, whether you watch domestic or foreign content.
Ambient sound is just as important. Animal sounds, flushing toilets, throwing objects together, crushing paper, dropping things on surfaces or rubbing things together - all these techniques get interesting sounds that fit the scenes in a film or show. These sounds can be used to surprising and unexpected ways if used creatively.
Silence is also used to dramatize effect. Too much music can grate on the nerves. Beats of silence can be put in to a scene or it can be used as an element to underscore something or someone and it can be just as dramatic and effective as music. It, like music, can overwhelm viewers and may have to be pulled back, which can make it more impactful, more visceral.
Again the suggestive nature of the music is an important element because it works with the thriller theme to build tension and suspense. No one has actually heard a dinosaur roar yet the audience accepts the mix of animal noises in Jurassic Park.
Overall, music and sound are an integral part of any production including Soap operas. It helps tell the story, guide the audience and evoke mood, character and themes that can drive home whatever the story is trying to convey.
As technology developed to allow more advanced sound techniques in film, the soundtracks became an integral element of a production and actually play a vital role to sustain low budget soap operas. Finally sound is an important element for the industry in terms of synergy and commercial gain.
PS: Soap are called such because the operas were all sponsered by soap companies in the beginning. It can be anything but one need to take the lead.
The characters are frequently attractive, seductive, glamorous and wealthy. Soap operas from Australia to United Kingdom to India tend to focus on more everyday characters and situations, and are frequently set in working class environments. Soap operas explore realistic storylines such as family discord, marriage breakdown, or financial problems. Romance, secret relationships, extramarital affairs, and genuine love have also been the basis for many soap opera storylines.
Stunts and complex physical action are largely absent as extensive post production work, while possible, is not feasible for the genre due to the high output each week and normally low budgets.
Indian soap operas are often mass-produced under large production banners, with houses like Balaji Telefilms—run by Ekta and Shobha Kapoor. Soap operas like Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii, Kasautii Zindagii Ki, Kusum, Kavyanjali, Kahiin To Hoga , Kasam Se use two dialogue dimensions simultaneously, timbre in dialogue and other sound is effects to enrich the visual aesthetic and work with them to emphasize the overall meaning.
Music, dialogue and noise - or the absence of it has a profound impact on soap operas. It is used to enhance drama and to help illustrate the emotional content in the story. It is also used to manipulate the feelings and sentiments of viewers. This is universal, whether you watch domestic or foreign content.
Ambient sound is just as important. Animal sounds, flushing toilets, throwing objects together, crushing paper, dropping things on surfaces or rubbing things together - all these techniques get interesting sounds that fit the scenes in a film or show. These sounds can be used to surprising and unexpected ways if used creatively.
Silence is also used to dramatize effect. Too much music can grate on the nerves. Beats of silence can be put in to a scene or it can be used as an element to underscore something or someone and it can be just as dramatic and effective as music. It, like music, can overwhelm viewers and may have to be pulled back, which can make it more impactful, more visceral.
Again the suggestive nature of the music is an important element because it works with the thriller theme to build tension and suspense. No one has actually heard a dinosaur roar yet the audience accepts the mix of animal noises in Jurassic Park.
Overall, music and sound are an integral part of any production including Soap operas. It helps tell the story, guide the audience and evoke mood, character and themes that can drive home whatever the story is trying to convey.
As technology developed to allow more advanced sound techniques in film, the soundtracks became an integral element of a production and actually play a vital role to sustain low budget soap operas. Finally sound is an important element for the industry in terms of synergy and commercial gain.
PS: Soap are called such because the operas were all sponsered by soap companies in the beginning. It can be anything but one need to take the lead.
Why Journalism
The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines journalism as ‘the work of collecting and writing news stories for newspapers, magazines, radio or television’. The definition is limited in the sense that it does not cover what or how or why!
Truly journalism is the fourth pillar of democracy and not simply a profession. With the duty of the profession of journalism come many responsibilities. A journalist is a true messenger, an honest guide and the voice of the voiceless. Of late after continuing with the Official Secrets Act, 1923, and later bringing The Copyright Act, 1957, and the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 the government has also recognised the power of press.
Let’s not forget that a journalist is also a human being. That human beings wherever they are suffer with certain vice and virtues. But the fact remains that a journalist has to be more conscientious than what others are supposed to be. That, a journalist won’t be a journalist, if, he or she craves for money. That a journalist has to be a link between the masses and the classes, the ruler and the ruled, the people and the state. That a Journalist's first obligation is to the truth. That its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover. That it must serve as an independent monitor of power.
I believe that my background and experiences are proof of something called humane at the centre of my thought process. I honestly have faith in the ethical obligations of this profession. For me the greatest joy would be if I can bring hope to those in grief, trust for those who have lost faith and love for those who are hated.
I think that human being should be at the core of any planning. The way industrialization and globalization is submerging the rural, the simple and the gentle voice, humanity is doomed to loose. Might is right can’t be true as might can’t be measured on any single criteria. The criteria when expanded will include every single human being as there can be no human being without a single good quality.
Journalism can play and has played in recent times an active role in rooting out corruption. Journalism can lead to the citizenry being active, society being conscious and in turn a dynamic democracy.
Globalisation has brought with it business conglomerates who control the Press. The result — profits are given more importance than journalistic ethics and people are losing faith in the Fourth Estate. The fundamental role of the press to inform and empower citizens is endangered. A free and independent press is essential to human liberty. No people can remain sovereign without a vigorous press that reports the news, examines critical issues and encourages a robust exchange of ideas. An unbalanced emphasis on profits and financial growth weakens the foundation of journalism as a public trust. In such a situation the responsibility increases even more.
Truly journalism is the fourth pillar of democracy and not simply a profession. With the duty of the profession of journalism come many responsibilities. A journalist is a true messenger, an honest guide and the voice of the voiceless. Of late after continuing with the Official Secrets Act, 1923, and later bringing The Copyright Act, 1957, and the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 the government has also recognised the power of press.
Let’s not forget that a journalist is also a human being. That human beings wherever they are suffer with certain vice and virtues. But the fact remains that a journalist has to be more conscientious than what others are supposed to be. That, a journalist won’t be a journalist, if, he or she craves for money. That a journalist has to be a link between the masses and the classes, the ruler and the ruled, the people and the state. That a Journalist's first obligation is to the truth. That its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover. That it must serve as an independent monitor of power.
I believe that my background and experiences are proof of something called humane at the centre of my thought process. I honestly have faith in the ethical obligations of this profession. For me the greatest joy would be if I can bring hope to those in grief, trust for those who have lost faith and love for those who are hated.
I think that human being should be at the core of any planning. The way industrialization and globalization is submerging the rural, the simple and the gentle voice, humanity is doomed to loose. Might is right can’t be true as might can’t be measured on any single criteria. The criteria when expanded will include every single human being as there can be no human being without a single good quality.
Journalism can play and has played in recent times an active role in rooting out corruption. Journalism can lead to the citizenry being active, society being conscious and in turn a dynamic democracy.
Globalisation has brought with it business conglomerates who control the Press. The result — profits are given more importance than journalistic ethics and people are losing faith in the Fourth Estate. The fundamental role of the press to inform and empower citizens is endangered. A free and independent press is essential to human liberty. No people can remain sovereign without a vigorous press that reports the news, examines critical issues and encourages a robust exchange of ideas. An unbalanced emphasis on profits and financial growth weakens the foundation of journalism as a public trust. In such a situation the responsibility increases even more.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Beauty Will Save the world
Is Paris Burning?
Hitler questioned Alfred Jodl, his chief of staff, on the eve of the liberation of Paris on August 25, 1944. General Dietrich von Choltitz, military governor of Paris, had been ordered to destroy Paris. Choltitz disobeyed.
What inspired Chotitz to disobey Hitler? The ‘turmoil’ inside the man. A man who didn't want to be on the wrong side of history, as a man who caused the destruction of a beautiful city.
Beauty will save the world. Dostoevsky's maxim rings true as we question the core values of art. This is only the sleeping love for art, inside Chotitz, that made him do what none would have expected from an army that executed Holocaust. Truly art can awaken the unconscious inside, the aesthetic, the sense to see nonsense. We will triy to find in this blog the things that matter to the Theory of Aesthetics .
The Oxford Advance Learner’s Dictionary defines the word art as “the use of the imagination to express ideas or feelings, particularly in painting, drawing or sculpture”. In today’s time when new forms of art are coming every day, this definition can unfold dissent. We thus will also explore the new experiments in art themes on a conceptual level.
Be it antique, modern or contemporary, good quality art is something to covet. Creativity, knowledge and, above all, sensitivity mark out the true masters. We salute rise of one of the most enduring contemporary art genres in India.
Tradition had very strong influences in the art of the times and hence the word ‘traditional’ became part of the lexicon of the art world .Traditionally Royal extravagance and patronage promoted art form. From the Art Nouveau to the emergence of art galleries like, Art Basel, Frieze Art Fair, Chanel Mobile Art through to contemporary jewellery that’s all the rage. We will introduce you to some of the most exotic art galleries in India which are not only beating norms of tradition but invariably emerging as the Sotheby’s of India.
What is unique and common among the works of the royal courts, is the fact that they were all created for the Royal Family by a number of talented artists.But in those days it was considered a sign of weakness for the artist to leave his name on the work. In some countries it was even considered sacrilegious, akin to the artist’s attempt to elevate himself to the stature of God.
But now with new ways of expressing art coming up the trend has been completely reversed. From function to fashion, if there’s one trend that has bucked phases, fads and figures, it is art. Ingenuity, though, becomes the crucial differentiator. We will try to find how new materials are being experimented with to express ideas and emotions.
More than ever though, people today want to be appreciated for their individuality. The clothes they wear and the trends they follow are the silent means by which they express who they are and how they feel. Though, the tradition of quality, specialty and craftsmanship continues today. We discover the elixir of youth and dynamism as we introduce you to those who became famous and fabulous well into their youth.
Hitler questioned Alfred Jodl, his chief of staff, on the eve of the liberation of Paris on August 25, 1944. General Dietrich von Choltitz, military governor of Paris, had been ordered to destroy Paris. Choltitz disobeyed.
What inspired Chotitz to disobey Hitler? The ‘turmoil’ inside the man. A man who didn't want to be on the wrong side of history, as a man who caused the destruction of a beautiful city.
Beauty will save the world. Dostoevsky's maxim rings true as we question the core values of art. This is only the sleeping love for art, inside Chotitz, that made him do what none would have expected from an army that executed Holocaust. Truly art can awaken the unconscious inside, the aesthetic, the sense to see nonsense. We will triy to find in this blog the things that matter to the Theory of Aesthetics .
The Oxford Advance Learner’s Dictionary defines the word art as “the use of the imagination to express ideas or feelings, particularly in painting, drawing or sculpture”. In today’s time when new forms of art are coming every day, this definition can unfold dissent. We thus will also explore the new experiments in art themes on a conceptual level.
Be it antique, modern or contemporary, good quality art is something to covet. Creativity, knowledge and, above all, sensitivity mark out the true masters. We salute rise of one of the most enduring contemporary art genres in India.
Tradition had very strong influences in the art of the times and hence the word ‘traditional’ became part of the lexicon of the art world .Traditionally Royal extravagance and patronage promoted art form. From the Art Nouveau to the emergence of art galleries like, Art Basel, Frieze Art Fair, Chanel Mobile Art through to contemporary jewellery that’s all the rage. We will introduce you to some of the most exotic art galleries in India which are not only beating norms of tradition but invariably emerging as the Sotheby’s of India.
What is unique and common among the works of the royal courts, is the fact that they were all created for the Royal Family by a number of talented artists.But in those days it was considered a sign of weakness for the artist to leave his name on the work. In some countries it was even considered sacrilegious, akin to the artist’s attempt to elevate himself to the stature of God.
But now with new ways of expressing art coming up the trend has been completely reversed. From function to fashion, if there’s one trend that has bucked phases, fads and figures, it is art. Ingenuity, though, becomes the crucial differentiator. We will try to find how new materials are being experimented with to express ideas and emotions.
More than ever though, people today want to be appreciated for their individuality. The clothes they wear and the trends they follow are the silent means by which they express who they are and how they feel. Though, the tradition of quality, specialty and craftsmanship continues today. We discover the elixir of youth and dynamism as we introduce you to those who became famous and fabulous well into their youth.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Oh! Those Letters...
Mobile has changed the way of our life. But it also took away something I and probably many of us would have loved to bargain for. The joy of writing and of course reading a letter.
There was a time when letters were written. We waited for one every next morning. The days when it came, we read and re-read it. We planned for how to reply, what to reply, when to reply. We thought and thought how I should address, what things I should not write. Actually letters became the mirror of our self in the reader’s eyes. But somehow it fell at the onslaught of this audio medium.
We never thought if ever we would stop writing letters. Now I doubt if we would ever stop talking on mobile, or for that matter mobile will become a victim of some new technology. As of now, probably ‘NO’.
Let me ask you one question, do any of you miss writing a letter? At least when you read some old letter in your Granny’s locker or your pa’s file. Go and ask your parents how they felt when they received a letter. How they were excited when they first talked to someone sitting thousands of mile away? And how they feel that postman knocking at the door when that old ragged postcard or inland letter suddenly is found. Yes that must be exciting.
Personally, I feel, letters had that ‘distance creates love phenomenon’ not found with mobiles. The problem has aggravated also because we have become self-centred. Also because we want others not to share, because we never become friends now. We remain partners, we remain competitors, and we remain successes or failures. Our success which is defined in bizarre terms today has nothing to do with that human touch which should ideally bind a man with a man.
We have come closer to move away. We talk to share, our hobbies, our achievements, our beliefs and our ideologies but not what we are. Letters gave the scope to say many things without saying every thing.
That old world’s majestic charm…! Alas could be brought back, just if we try to be more sensible.
There was a time when letters were written. We waited for one every next morning. The days when it came, we read and re-read it. We planned for how to reply, what to reply, when to reply. We thought and thought how I should address, what things I should not write. Actually letters became the mirror of our self in the reader’s eyes. But somehow it fell at the onslaught of this audio medium.
We never thought if ever we would stop writing letters. Now I doubt if we would ever stop talking on mobile, or for that matter mobile will become a victim of some new technology. As of now, probably ‘NO’.
Let me ask you one question, do any of you miss writing a letter? At least when you read some old letter in your Granny’s locker or your pa’s file. Go and ask your parents how they felt when they received a letter. How they were excited when they first talked to someone sitting thousands of mile away? And how they feel that postman knocking at the door when that old ragged postcard or inland letter suddenly is found. Yes that must be exciting.
Personally, I feel, letters had that ‘distance creates love phenomenon’ not found with mobiles. The problem has aggravated also because we have become self-centred. Also because we want others not to share, because we never become friends now. We remain partners, we remain competitors, and we remain successes or failures. Our success which is defined in bizarre terms today has nothing to do with that human touch which should ideally bind a man with a man.
We have come closer to move away. We talk to share, our hobbies, our achievements, our beliefs and our ideologies but not what we are. Letters gave the scope to say many things without saying every thing.
That old world’s majestic charm…! Alas could be brought back, just if we try to be more sensible.
Friday, January 23, 2009
On Vulture
In Ramayana, the Hindu epic, there appear two demi-gods who had the form of vultures, Jatayu and his brother Sampaati with whom are associated stories of courage and self-sacrifice . Although the vulture plays an important natural role, in the Western world, and of late in India also its image is quite negative.
Vultures are scavenging birds, feeding mostly on the carcasses of dead animals. Except Antarctica and Oceania, , Vultures are found on everywhere. Vultures seldom attack healthy animals as they feed on the wounded or sick. In hot regions like ours these birds are of great value as scavengers.
According to available reports, 99 per cent of the country’s vulture population has vanished mainly because they have been consuming carcasses of cows treated with an anti-inflammatory drug Diclofenac Sodium. This has been caused by the practice of medicating working farm animals with diclofenac, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) with anti-inflammatory and pain killing actions. Its manufacturing was banned in 2006.
The decline in vultures has led to serious hygiene problems in India as carcasses of dead animals now tend to rot, or be eaten by rats or wild dogs, rather than be tidied up by vultures. Rabies among these other scavengers is a major health threat. India has one of the world's highest incidences of rabies. The decline in vultures causes particular problems for certain communities, such as the Parsi, who practice sky burials, where the human dead are put on the top of ‘Towers of Silence’ and are eaten by vultures, leaving only dry bones.
The rising number of vultures recently in the Jim Corbett national park in Uttarakhand finally promises to give some hope. The positive reports about the population are significant considering a wide concern that vultures may soon become extinct.
“No doubt vulture population is decreasing in our country and wildlife experts are concerned. But I am very happy that I sighted over 100 vultures of three different species here. There are at least 20 pairs of Seyranian, there are around 35 pairs of Himalayan vultures and we even saw the cylinder built birds. This is a very good symbol. I am very happy,” said P.K. Patro, Divisional Forest Officer, Ramnagar.
Scientists warn that Asian vultures can become extinct within a decade unless the livestock drug blamed for their rapid demise is eliminated.
Vultures find a place in Schedule I of Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, the country’s only legal framework to protect endangered species, which prohibits hunting and trafficking of endangered species. Its high time we do not ignore the issue further.
Vultures are scavenging birds, feeding mostly on the carcasses of dead animals. Except Antarctica and Oceania, , Vultures are found on everywhere. Vultures seldom attack healthy animals as they feed on the wounded or sick. In hot regions like ours these birds are of great value as scavengers.
According to available reports, 99 per cent of the country’s vulture population has vanished mainly because they have been consuming carcasses of cows treated with an anti-inflammatory drug Diclofenac Sodium. This has been caused by the practice of medicating working farm animals with diclofenac, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) with anti-inflammatory and pain killing actions. Its manufacturing was banned in 2006.
The decline in vultures has led to serious hygiene problems in India as carcasses of dead animals now tend to rot, or be eaten by rats or wild dogs, rather than be tidied up by vultures. Rabies among these other scavengers is a major health threat. India has one of the world's highest incidences of rabies. The decline in vultures causes particular problems for certain communities, such as the Parsi, who practice sky burials, where the human dead are put on the top of ‘Towers of Silence’ and are eaten by vultures, leaving only dry bones.
The rising number of vultures recently in the Jim Corbett national park in Uttarakhand finally promises to give some hope. The positive reports about the population are significant considering a wide concern that vultures may soon become extinct.
“No doubt vulture population is decreasing in our country and wildlife experts are concerned. But I am very happy that I sighted over 100 vultures of three different species here. There are at least 20 pairs of Seyranian, there are around 35 pairs of Himalayan vultures and we even saw the cylinder built birds. This is a very good symbol. I am very happy,” said P.K. Patro, Divisional Forest Officer, Ramnagar.
Scientists warn that Asian vultures can become extinct within a decade unless the livestock drug blamed for their rapid demise is eliminated.
Vultures find a place in Schedule I of Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, the country’s only legal framework to protect endangered species, which prohibits hunting and trafficking of endangered species. Its high time we do not ignore the issue further.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Global Meltdown and India
Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank, delivering the Tenth L. K. Jha Memorial Lecture at Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai, on November 26th 2007 on ‘The growing importance of emerging economies in the globalized world and its implications for the international financial architecture’ said –“It is never time for complacency. The next crisis is always different from the previous one. Both industrialised and emerging countries have to continue to work to keep up with new developments and challenges. Efforts to ensure global stability and prevent crises have to be made constantly, by all of us, and should be guided by the principles of transparency, good practices and dialogue between relevant players.”
The financial meltdown has resulted in effective nationalisation of major financial institutions in the US, UK and Europe. So far global banks, mortgage lenders and insurance firms have announced write downs of over US$ 800 billion. There has been a massive increase in central bank lending to the banking system and rescue packages totalling almost US$3 trillion have been announced by governments around the world. Monetary policy has been eased aggressively but given the lagged impact attention has shifted to fiscal policy.
The global financial situation continues to be uncertain and unsettled. What started off as a sub-prime crisis in the US housing mortgage sector has turned successively into a global banking crisis, global financial crisis and now a global economic crisis. The contagion has traversed from the financial to the real sector; and it now looks like the recession will be deeper and the recovery longer and painful.
The IMF has revised its forecast for global growth from 3.9 to 3.7 per cent for 2008, and from 3.0 to 2.2 per cent for 2009. Notably, advanced economies, as a group, are projected to contract by 0.3 per cent in 2009. If all this were indeed to come true, 2009 will mark the first year on record when emerging economies will be the sole contributors to global growth.
The Indian Scenario
India’s share in world exports of goods and services tripled between the early 1990s and 2006, to close to 1.5%, with a notable acceleration in the last three years, due to dynamic exports of services, including IT and IT-enabled services. Going by the common measure of globalisation, India’s two way trade (merchandise exports plus imports), as a proportion of GDP, grew from 21.2 per cent in 1997/98, the year of the Asian crisis, to 34.7 per cent in 2007/08. If we take an expanded measure of globalisation, that is the ratio of gross current account and gross capital flows to GDP, this ratio has increased from 46.8 per cent in 1997/98 to 117.0 per cent in 2007/08. These numbers are clear evidence of India’s increasing integration into the world economy over the last 10 years. The decoupling theory has almost completely lost credibility.
The endeavour of our monetary policymakers has been to balance growth, inflation and financial stability concerns. By managing liquidity – both domestic and forex – it tries to ensure that credit continues to flow for productive activities. When inflation surged earlier this year, the RBI moved quickly to suck out excess liquidity. Then again, as oil prices softened and decline in inflation was expected, RBI has its monetary adjusted by reducing Cash Reserve Ratio (the portion of deposit banks have to keep with RBI) and repo rate(the rate at which RBI lends to other banks). Since mid September 2008, the RBI has reduced repo rate by 350 basis points from 9 to 5.5 per cent, reduced the reverse repo rate (the rate at which RBI borrows from banks) by 200 bps from 6 to 4 per cent and by 400 bps from 9 to 5 per cent. The cumulative amount of liquidity made available to finance system through these measures is over Rs 3, 00,000 crore.
Why the crisis in India?
Despite Indian banking system not being directly exposed to the sub-prime mortgage assets, or to the US mortgage market, or to the failed institutions or stressed assets, how come we landed into trouble? Also Indian banks, both in the public sector and in the private sector, are financially sound, well capitalised and well regulated.
Even so, India is experiencing the effects of the global crisis, through the monetary, financial and real channels. Our financial markets – equity markets, money markets, forex markets and credit markets – have all come under pressure mainly because of what is being called ‘the substitution effect’. As credit lines and credit channels overseas went dry, some of the credit demand earlier met by overseas financing shifted to the domestic credit sector, putting pressure on domestic resources. The reversal of capital flows taking place as part of the global de-leveraging process has put pressure on our forex market. Together, the global credit crunch and deleveraging were reflected at home in the sharp fluctuation in the money market rates in October 2008 and the depreciation of the rupee.
The Road Ahead
The outlook for India is mixed. The real GDP growth has moderated in the first half of 2008-09. Industrial activity, particularly in the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors, is decelerating. The services sector too, which has been our prime growth engine for the last five years, is slowing, mainly in the construction, transport and communication, trade, hotels and restaurants sub-sectors. Recent data indicate that the demand for bank credit is slackening despite comfortable liquidity in the system. Higher input costs and dampened demand have dented corporate margins while the uncertainty surrounding the crisis has affected business confidence. It will be tough for investors and businessmen to commit money to buy shares or fund new projects till there is more clarity on the extent of the slowdown and how long it will last.
On a positive note the fundamentals of our economy are stronger than is often recognised. India’s growth has been based on a sustained rise in the capital formation and gross savings rate as a percentage of GDP. FIIs have already started coming back. There has been a net inflow of FII funds in December 2008. This is seen in the Sensex rising from 8K to around 10k presently.
The focus of our attention must shift to the real economy. India needs growth in its core sectors, especially manufacturing, construction and agriculture. The western countries are not likely to be growth propellant for us. We have to depend on domestic demand, which will sustain our growth. There are few lessons to be learnt: uncontrollable greed, over leveraging and debt is not good for the economy; putting profit as a motivator over and above people is not a good idea; and living on credit is simply bad lifestyle.
The projections for long-term growth, based on demographic trends and models of capital accumulation and productivity, tell us that emerging markets like India are likely to become even weightier in the world economy tomorrow than they are today. Will 2009 be the beginning of India’s journey to become an economic superpower?
Tilak Jha
MACJ (P)
The financial meltdown has resulted in effective nationalisation of major financial institutions in the US, UK and Europe. So far global banks, mortgage lenders and insurance firms have announced write downs of over US$ 800 billion. There has been a massive increase in central bank lending to the banking system and rescue packages totalling almost US$3 trillion have been announced by governments around the world. Monetary policy has been eased aggressively but given the lagged impact attention has shifted to fiscal policy.
The global financial situation continues to be uncertain and unsettled. What started off as a sub-prime crisis in the US housing mortgage sector has turned successively into a global banking crisis, global financial crisis and now a global economic crisis. The contagion has traversed from the financial to the real sector; and it now looks like the recession will be deeper and the recovery longer and painful.
The IMF has revised its forecast for global growth from 3.9 to 3.7 per cent for 2008, and from 3.0 to 2.2 per cent for 2009. Notably, advanced economies, as a group, are projected to contract by 0.3 per cent in 2009. If all this were indeed to come true, 2009 will mark the first year on record when emerging economies will be the sole contributors to global growth.
The Indian Scenario
India’s share in world exports of goods and services tripled between the early 1990s and 2006, to close to 1.5%, with a notable acceleration in the last three years, due to dynamic exports of services, including IT and IT-enabled services. Going by the common measure of globalisation, India’s two way trade (merchandise exports plus imports), as a proportion of GDP, grew from 21.2 per cent in 1997/98, the year of the Asian crisis, to 34.7 per cent in 2007/08. If we take an expanded measure of globalisation, that is the ratio of gross current account and gross capital flows to GDP, this ratio has increased from 46.8 per cent in 1997/98 to 117.0 per cent in 2007/08. These numbers are clear evidence of India’s increasing integration into the world economy over the last 10 years. The decoupling theory has almost completely lost credibility.
The endeavour of our monetary policymakers has been to balance growth, inflation and financial stability concerns. By managing liquidity – both domestic and forex – it tries to ensure that credit continues to flow for productive activities. When inflation surged earlier this year, the RBI moved quickly to suck out excess liquidity. Then again, as oil prices softened and decline in inflation was expected, RBI has its monetary adjusted by reducing Cash Reserve Ratio (the portion of deposit banks have to keep with RBI) and repo rate(the rate at which RBI lends to other banks). Since mid September 2008, the RBI has reduced repo rate by 350 basis points from 9 to 5.5 per cent, reduced the reverse repo rate (the rate at which RBI borrows from banks) by 200 bps from 6 to 4 per cent and by 400 bps from 9 to 5 per cent. The cumulative amount of liquidity made available to finance system through these measures is over Rs 3, 00,000 crore.
Why the crisis in India?
Despite Indian banking system not being directly exposed to the sub-prime mortgage assets, or to the US mortgage market, or to the failed institutions or stressed assets, how come we landed into trouble? Also Indian banks, both in the public sector and in the private sector, are financially sound, well capitalised and well regulated.
Even so, India is experiencing the effects of the global crisis, through the monetary, financial and real channels. Our financial markets – equity markets, money markets, forex markets and credit markets – have all come under pressure mainly because of what is being called ‘the substitution effect’. As credit lines and credit channels overseas went dry, some of the credit demand earlier met by overseas financing shifted to the domestic credit sector, putting pressure on domestic resources. The reversal of capital flows taking place as part of the global de-leveraging process has put pressure on our forex market. Together, the global credit crunch and deleveraging were reflected at home in the sharp fluctuation in the money market rates in October 2008 and the depreciation of the rupee.
The Road Ahead
The outlook for India is mixed. The real GDP growth has moderated in the first half of 2008-09. Industrial activity, particularly in the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors, is decelerating. The services sector too, which has been our prime growth engine for the last five years, is slowing, mainly in the construction, transport and communication, trade, hotels and restaurants sub-sectors. Recent data indicate that the demand for bank credit is slackening despite comfortable liquidity in the system. Higher input costs and dampened demand have dented corporate margins while the uncertainty surrounding the crisis has affected business confidence. It will be tough for investors and businessmen to commit money to buy shares or fund new projects till there is more clarity on the extent of the slowdown and how long it will last.
On a positive note the fundamentals of our economy are stronger than is often recognised. India’s growth has been based on a sustained rise in the capital formation and gross savings rate as a percentage of GDP. FIIs have already started coming back. There has been a net inflow of FII funds in December 2008. This is seen in the Sensex rising from 8K to around 10k presently.
The focus of our attention must shift to the real economy. India needs growth in its core sectors, especially manufacturing, construction and agriculture. The western countries are not likely to be growth propellant for us. We have to depend on domestic demand, which will sustain our growth. There are few lessons to be learnt: uncontrollable greed, over leveraging and debt is not good for the economy; putting profit as a motivator over and above people is not a good idea; and living on credit is simply bad lifestyle.
The projections for long-term growth, based on demographic trends and models of capital accumulation and productivity, tell us that emerging markets like India are likely to become even weightier in the world economy tomorrow than they are today. Will 2009 be the beginning of India’s journey to become an economic superpower?
Tilak Jha
MACJ (P)
Monday, January 19, 2009
Art n Technology
Book-Review
From Technological to Virtual Art
Frank Popper
The MIT Press
Cambridge, England
January 2007
7 x 9, 471 pp., 154 illus.
$48.00/£30.95 (CLOTH)
SALE! $33.60/£30.95 *
Trade
ISBN-10:
0-262-16230-X
ISBN-13:
978-0-262-16230-2
Ever heard of technology-inspired art? What about "Light and Movement in Art"? Can technology and virtuality allow us to think differently about our humanness? To think better? To become more human?
Here is a book that ponders over the idea of virtual art flowing out of technological art. How does virtual art relate to truth? The epistemological question. How does virtual art relate to being? The ontological question. And finally, how does the virtualization of art relate to the other? The ethical question …particularly important in light of today’s abundant globalization.
Renowned aesthetician, art theorist, curator, teacher and critic Frank Popper, in his recent book, “From Technological to Virtual Art”, gives an insightful overview of the technological arts by clarifying the concept of 'virtual art.' He outlines its historical development and explains its ability to immerse the body and senses of its participants in a simulated world. He traces the development of immersive, interactive new media art from its historical antecedents through today's digital, multimedia, and networked art. He argues further that what distinguishes the artists who practice virtual art from traditional artists is their combined commitment to aesthetics and technology. Their "extra-artistic" goals—linked to their aesthetic intentions—concern not only science and society but also basic human needs and drives.
Virtual model the author proposes has its epistemological, ontological and ethical connotations. But it has also its aesthetic and philosophical "humanist" sides that should allow us to better understand the multiple existential changes that our society and every individual undergo at the present.
The emphasis is on the different aspects—technical, aesthetic, and extra-artistic—
demonstrated by contemporary artists the author has encountered personally or on the Net. Chapters 1 and 2 are historical sections based very much on author’s personal experience. Chapter 1 covers his own personal itinerary from 1918 up to 1967. The year 1967 marks the end of kinetic art and the preliminary phase of socially engaged art as well as the beginning of a new technically dominated era in art. The second chapter, running from 1968 to 1983—the year of the exhibition of “Electra: Electricity and Electronics in the Art of the Twentieth Century”,—covers the different new technologies adopted by artists and leads to what can be named the virtual or digitally assisted art of the present. Somehow these dates also correspond to some outstanding historical events: 1918 saw the end of the First World War, 1967–68 was the year of the student revolution, and 1983 signalled the moment when a certain number of technological innovations, such as the Internet, were becoming reality.
In these historical chapters, the author takes most of virtual art’s artistic origins as well as technical sources like cybernetic and programmed art, and participatory and environmental, telematics, interactive networks, and satellite, video art into account. The effort is also to give some general and several individual examples of art movements and artists that can be regarded as prototypes for the contemporary virtual artists described in chapters 3 through 6.
Chapter 3, the first of the sections on current virtual art and artists, is devoted to materialized digital-based work. This work, which at first sight may resemble more traditional art, is nonetheless virtual (or virtualized) by digital techniques and so takes on a totally different dimension. Although the main aesthetico-technical category involved in chapter 3 is perception and the image, the works can be subcategorized into plastic, cognition, and bio-aesthetic issues.
Chapter 4 deals with multimedia off-line works. In addition to the main theme of multi-sensoriality, it includes secondary aesthetic items such as language, narration, hypertext and synaesthesia as well as socio-political and security issues.
Chapter 5 is based on interactive digital installations and its main aesthetic theme is indeed interactivity. It comprises sub themes such as sensory immersion and reciprocal aesthetic propositions, and looks at individual, social, environmental, and scientific commitments toward interactivity.
Finally, chapter 6, devoted to Net art and multimedia online works, explores artistic communication via the Internet along with the secondary aesthetic subjects of the Internet as a social communications option, personal presence and critical attitudes on the Net, and telematic and telerobotic human commitments.
To explain and illustrate the globalization of virtuality and the emergence of techno-aesthetics, the book deals with two leading lines of discussion: the technical and the aesthetic. The technical line, leads continuously from materialized digital-based work to multimedia on-line works (re: net art), passing through multimedia and multi-sensorial off-line works into the all-important interactive digital installations. The aesthetic line leads from cognitive to telematic and telerobotic human issues in a coherent and uninterrupted style with a beginning and an end. Thus it touches a good number of extra-aesthetic regions, such as the political, economic, biological and other scientific areas. These areas are always treated with a certain distance and within an aesthetic context - as well as with an aesthetic finality. This explains the globalized open-endedness of this virtual work.
The hard bound edition with a modernistic appearance and the good quality of paper is an added advantage for a book like this. The book can be used as a reference post.
Tilak Jha
MACJ (Previous)
From Technological to Virtual Art
Frank Popper
The MIT Press
Cambridge, England
January 2007
7 x 9, 471 pp., 154 illus.
$48.00/£30.95 (CLOTH)
SALE! $33.60/£30.95 *
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ISBN-10:
0-262-16230-X
ISBN-13:
978-0-262-16230-2
Ever heard of technology-inspired art? What about "Light and Movement in Art"? Can technology and virtuality allow us to think differently about our humanness? To think better? To become more human?
Here is a book that ponders over the idea of virtual art flowing out of technological art. How does virtual art relate to truth? The epistemological question. How does virtual art relate to being? The ontological question. And finally, how does the virtualization of art relate to the other? The ethical question …particularly important in light of today’s abundant globalization.
Renowned aesthetician, art theorist, curator, teacher and critic Frank Popper, in his recent book, “From Technological to Virtual Art”, gives an insightful overview of the technological arts by clarifying the concept of 'virtual art.' He outlines its historical development and explains its ability to immerse the body and senses of its participants in a simulated world. He traces the development of immersive, interactive new media art from its historical antecedents through today's digital, multimedia, and networked art. He argues further that what distinguishes the artists who practice virtual art from traditional artists is their combined commitment to aesthetics and technology. Their "extra-artistic" goals—linked to their aesthetic intentions—concern not only science and society but also basic human needs and drives.
Virtual model the author proposes has its epistemological, ontological and ethical connotations. But it has also its aesthetic and philosophical "humanist" sides that should allow us to better understand the multiple existential changes that our society and every individual undergo at the present.
The emphasis is on the different aspects—technical, aesthetic, and extra-artistic—
demonstrated by contemporary artists the author has encountered personally or on the Net. Chapters 1 and 2 are historical sections based very much on author’s personal experience. Chapter 1 covers his own personal itinerary from 1918 up to 1967. The year 1967 marks the end of kinetic art and the preliminary phase of socially engaged art as well as the beginning of a new technically dominated era in art. The second chapter, running from 1968 to 1983—the year of the exhibition of “Electra: Electricity and Electronics in the Art of the Twentieth Century”,—covers the different new technologies adopted by artists and leads to what can be named the virtual or digitally assisted art of the present. Somehow these dates also correspond to some outstanding historical events: 1918 saw the end of the First World War, 1967–68 was the year of the student revolution, and 1983 signalled the moment when a certain number of technological innovations, such as the Internet, were becoming reality.
In these historical chapters, the author takes most of virtual art’s artistic origins as well as technical sources like cybernetic and programmed art, and participatory and environmental, telematics, interactive networks, and satellite, video art into account. The effort is also to give some general and several individual examples of art movements and artists that can be regarded as prototypes for the contemporary virtual artists described in chapters 3 through 6.
Chapter 3, the first of the sections on current virtual art and artists, is devoted to materialized digital-based work. This work, which at first sight may resemble more traditional art, is nonetheless virtual (or virtualized) by digital techniques and so takes on a totally different dimension. Although the main aesthetico-technical category involved in chapter 3 is perception and the image, the works can be subcategorized into plastic, cognition, and bio-aesthetic issues.
Chapter 4 deals with multimedia off-line works. In addition to the main theme of multi-sensoriality, it includes secondary aesthetic items such as language, narration, hypertext and synaesthesia as well as socio-political and security issues.
Chapter 5 is based on interactive digital installations and its main aesthetic theme is indeed interactivity. It comprises sub themes such as sensory immersion and reciprocal aesthetic propositions, and looks at individual, social, environmental, and scientific commitments toward interactivity.
Finally, chapter 6, devoted to Net art and multimedia online works, explores artistic communication via the Internet along with the secondary aesthetic subjects of the Internet as a social communications option, personal presence and critical attitudes on the Net, and telematic and telerobotic human commitments.
To explain and illustrate the globalization of virtuality and the emergence of techno-aesthetics, the book deals with two leading lines of discussion: the technical and the aesthetic. The technical line, leads continuously from materialized digital-based work to multimedia on-line works (re: net art), passing through multimedia and multi-sensorial off-line works into the all-important interactive digital installations. The aesthetic line leads from cognitive to telematic and telerobotic human issues in a coherent and uninterrupted style with a beginning and an end. Thus it touches a good number of extra-aesthetic regions, such as the political, economic, biological and other scientific areas. These areas are always treated with a certain distance and within an aesthetic context - as well as with an aesthetic finality. This explains the globalized open-endedness of this virtual work.
The hard bound edition with a modernistic appearance and the good quality of paper is an added advantage for a book like this. The book can be used as a reference post.
Tilak Jha
MACJ (Previous)
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