Flights of Thought

Indian English

2012-02-12T12:17:00.000+05:30

From Chandan Mitra's weekly column in the Pioneer, some hilarious examples of English usage:

In a newspaper, describing a case of chain-snatching in which criminals shot dead the man who tried to resist and pursue the chain-snatchers, the reporter stated: “The deceased gave chase to the criminals who, however, managed to escape”!

Police notice: “Take care of belongings. You may be theft”

The article is interesting reading too.

http://dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/51044-dont-fast-you-may-be-theft-indlish-is-on-a-roll.html

Newspapers of India

2012-02-05T18:55:00.002+05:30

The print media plays an important role in shaping public opinion. Somehow a perception has been built that the media is the conveyor of the truth and most people find it as a trustworthy source of news and an institution that stands by the common people. It is therefore called the "fourth estate". While the TV media has become an object of ridicule for a lot of people, the print media is still supposed to report "true facts" in an impartial manner.

However, things get more complicated than that, many interests shape the worldview a newspaper projects and these in turn shape the opinion of their readers. It is not my case that newspapers be impartial in their opinion. Yes, we would expect news to be reported objectively, but an opinion by nature is subjective. What is a newspaper which does not have an opinion of the world and society - it would just seem like a dumb person? How can an institution run by journalists - people with an intellectual bent of mind, and who move around with those in power - not do a critical analysis of the world that they report and form a worldview?

The right thing to do is to recognize this enriching diversity of opinion that exists, and be exposed to many streams of thought rather than limiting ourselves to one. For years, it was the one newspaper that we subscribed to that would shape our thoughts, but with the Web we have at our disposal many alternative streams of thought. While I grew up reading a single newspaper, in the last few years, having access to these multiple sources of news and opinion has made me think of issues with a much broader perspective. This post in an attempt to put together my opinion about the various streams of thought in the Indian national print media.

So, let me have me take on the primary newspaper/magazines in India, which I follow with varying degrees of regularity. Of course, all these are English language media, which unfortunately is one of the biggest lacunae in my coverage. I hope to broaden my reading to at least a couple of regional languages in the near future.

The Indian Express: The Indian Express has a glorious history in upholding a fiercely independent media. It stood up to Indira Gandhi's regime during the Emergency and exposed corruption in the highest echelons of power in the Bofors case, Dhirubhai Ambani, etc. having been led by stalwarts like Ramnath Goenka and Arun Shourie It had a reputation of being strongly anti-establishment and on economic matters it supports free markets. Socially, it is a liberal centrist paper. However, over the years the anti-establishment sting seems to have gone out of the Express and it is now pretty favourable to the Congress and especially Manmohan Singh in its editorials. Yet, its oped is still the richest in terms of the diversity of opinion from all cross sections of ideologies. I still think it is the most comprehensive paper in terms of getting a view of national politics.

The New Indian Express: Its the less known sister group of the Indian Express, formed from the south Indian editions after the split in the paper's ownership. However, it seems to have inherited some of the anti-establishment spirit of the united Indian Express group. It seems to be nationalist, somewhat center-of-the right in its leanings. There are some good satirical columnists in the New Indian Express - V Sudarshan, Gnani Shankar, and Aditya Sinha (who is now with the DNA newspaper).

The Hindu: The venerable newspaper from Chennai, which is highly respected for its opinion even in the North. It believes in a greater purpose in its journalism and has built its image in that way. So you could consider it to be a "serious" if somewhat boring paper. Its leanings are generally left wing and liberal. However, at the same time there is a lot of respect and coverage for Indian arts and culture in the paper.

The Times of India: I do not know much about the history of ToI, and it is undoubtedly the largest selling English language newspaper in India (and the world?). Yet, it is difficult to have any respect for the ToI, because it doesn't really have any views of its own. Its views are shaped by what the consumer wants and its marketing managers seem to have more influence than its editors. You could classify it as an free-market supporting, liberal paper - but it doesn't matter. The Times shouldn't be taken too seriously. Unfortunately, it has a large following.

The Daily Pioneer: Unbashedly pro-BJP and probably the most right wing and nationalist of Indian papers, this paper is edited by BJP Rajya Sabha MP Chandan Mitra. So, for a perspective of right wing opinion this is the paper to read.

There are magazines and many online sites that present different points of view. More about them in some future post.

(PS)
On a lighter node, don't miss the newspaper wars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXLsi_Vmtw4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Eb-waHx-00&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxz4WvGG7uA&feature=related

Book Review: The Polyester Prince

2011-12-22T18:31:00.001+05:30

While poring over books at a street shop, I noticed Hamish MacDonald's The Polyester Prince. Knowing that the book would not be available at any book stores in India, due to pressure from the Ambanis, I immediately snapped it up. Having read it, I can say that its not only the Ambanis but a lot of other people who wouldn't want the book to be widely read. The Polyester Prince is an unofficial biography of Dhirubhai Ambani, chronicling his and Reliance's rise to the high table of the Indian industry. The books specifically focuses on the some of the inconvenient facts about Ambani's super rapid growth. Though a biography, it almost feels like reading a thriller as events move fast, there is always a conspiracy in the air and the years roll on quickly. The book is well researched and presents as balanced a point of view as possible, given that the Ambanis refused to answer any of the author's questions in the course of writing the book. It is a mixture of facts, suspicions, strong rumours, hearsay and legends around Reliance. The book is one of the very few bold accounts of contemporary Indian history. The book is almost surely an inspiration for Mani Rathnam's movie - 'Guru'.

The book tracks the growth of Ambani from his humble origins in a Bania family in Gujarat. Given the region and the community that he came from, it should be no surprise that he ended up in business. The trader community and Gujaratis are particularly well known for their trading and business skills, having perfected the skills over hundreds of years and have contributed in no small measure to make the Indian sub-continent the economic power it was. Ambani learnt the tricks of the trade during his stint in Aden and starting understanding how to manage money and finance. From then there was no stopping him, as he understood the importance of raising capital. He must have been the most innovative financier India has had and it is this skill that has taken Reliance where it is. Reliance isn't a polyester or petrochemical or telecom (or whatever sector it is investing in today). It is basically a financing company that knows how to raise capital with all kinds of schemes and then put it to use and showcase it to raise more capital.

That's not the case with Reliance alone. Every major Indian industrial conglomerate today - the Tatas, Birlas, the Ambanis, etc. come from a trading background and it looks like this is the standard operating procedure of most of these family firms. So, my hypothesis is that India's industrial growth is not oriented towards building and innovating solutions geared towards the country's problems but rather importing and retrofitting someone else's solution to some similar problem - a trader's solution. Since the Indian economy opened up, the Indian conglomerates have adapted and been hugely successful at their core competency - trading, and they can stand up to any challenge in the world on this front.

Ambani was not only a master financier but a great manipulator of the license-raj system that Indira Gandhi converted the Indian state to. The Govt. Of India controlled a lot of economic activity like - what industries to allow, who gets to run it, what manufacturing capacity, what items to import and in what quantity and basically everything under the sun. The Govt basically ran a huge patronage network, where favored people would get their needs met; all rules and regulations being malleable and subject to convenient interpretation. The book illustrates how bad the license-raj was and how Ambani exploited it to the hilt with the help of his cohorts in the Government, some of whom still hold the highest posts in the country.

And the government was ruthless too. It could make life miserable for anybody who would not do their bidding. The way the governments cracked down on the Indian Express group for their expose of Reliance and on Ambani's rival Nusli Wadia (and Dhirubhai too, when his enemies were in power) shows all that is wrong with our arbitrary system of government where those in power have a lot of discretionary power. This system is best expressed in S. Gurumurthy's first salvo of his now legendary Reliance expose:

If the mail rule prohibits something, get a sub-rule added which permits it. The main rule will no doubt exist in the book but the book alone. ... Rule of law at once becomes sub-rule of law and the sub-rule eventually becomes subversive rule.

Dhirubhai was a product of his times, and the book is an indictment of that bad system which created a person like him and allowed his tactics to flourish. The moral of the story is that Government should have minimal discretionary powers, and create a level playing field for competition. Some liberalization has happened in the last 20 years, but real reform of the Government is yet to happen. Afterall, A. Raja of 2G scam fame seems to have referred to Pranab Mukherjee's coaching manual of the 80's when he was the Finance Minister and had Ambani's backing.

Post script: It is downright hypocritical of the large banias (all our big conglomerates) to plead for the interest of the Indian consumer and demonise their own brethen (the small banias who run the kiranas) in the FDI-in-retail debate. The big fish is now are just waiting for an opportunity to eat the small fish. Don't be taken in by the propaganda.

Book review: The Lost River

2011-11-01T08:40:00.001+05:30

How many times have we heard praises to the triumvirate of rivers - the Ganga, the Yamuna and the Sarasvati? While we know where the Ganga and Yamuna flow, we have been conventionally told that the Sarasvati is a mythical river that joins the Ganga and the Yamuna at the triveni sangam at Prayaag. However, for more than a century a debate has been raging, unknown to most layman in India, about the real truth of the Sarasvati.

'The Lost River' by Michel Danino explains the issues involved, the various viewpoints that exist and provides a beautiful narrative of the story of the Sarasvati. It is a good scholarly work, and an interesting read at the same time. A few questions that have been asked in the course of the debate, and I have tried to summarize them and the answers/viewpoints from the book's position on the issue :

Is the river Sarasvati for real?
Where did it flow? Since the mid 19th century, a seasonal stream in Rajasthan's desert with an unusually wide bed, the Ghaggar-Hakra, has been postulated by many to be the lost Sarasvati river. The archaeological, literary, geological and local folklore evidence is very strong to suggest that there was indeed a very large perennial river flowing through the desert of Rajasthan and Pakistan.

The Ghaggar-Hakra may have been a large river in old times. But was it the Sarasvati? Again the circumstantial evidence is strong - mainly from our literary sources. The 'nadistuti hymn' from the Rg Veda enumerates the major rivers of Northwest India - the Sapta Sindu - in east to west direction; the Sarasvati lies exactly between the Satluj and the Yamuna, just like the Ghaggar-Hakra. Balarama's journey along the Saravati in the Mahabharata and the places he visits correspond to places in this region.
Over the last fifty years, the Ghaggar-Hakra basin has also seen the discovery of a large number of Indus valley civilization sites from Haryana to deserts of Cholistan in Pakistan. This has led to the realization that the Indus Valley civilization was built around two major river systems, the Indus and the Sarasvati. Some of the largest Indus valley sites like Kalibangan, Banawali, Rakhagarhi, Ganeriwala and Lothal are in the Sarasvati's basin.
What happened to the Sarasvati? The Sarasvati's major tributaries were the Himalayan rivers, the Satluj and the Yamuna; whereas traditionally the Sarasvati has itself been identified to originate from the Shivalik Hills at Ad Badri. At some point, the Yamuna and the Satluj changed courses, the Yamuna joining the Ganga and the Satluj joining the Indus thus depriving the Sarasvati of its major water sources. The Satluj is known to have a very volatile history of changing its course, the latest being somewhere in the 17th century. Some tectonic movements may also have contributed to these changes.
When did this drying take place? Studies show that the river was in full flow in around 3000 BC, but it had dried up in its central sections by around 2500 BC. That means in the Mature Harappan age, the river was already dry in some parts and this is clearly observable from the settlement pattern of Indus valley sites. Most sites during this period are either near the northern end in Haryana/Punjab or in the southern portions in Cholistan area of Pakistan. The sites in Rajasthan from the Early Harappan phase seem to have been abandoned by then.
What happened to the people in this region once the river died? Here is where the story gets even murkier and gets intertwined with the Aryan Invasion theory. Traditional history says that what followed was a dark period in the history of India till the Aryans from Europe invaded and settled in the Gangetic plains which evolved into the classical Indian civilization from which our present day civilization derives. The contention of many historians is that there is simply no archaeological or genetic evidence to support such a theory, whose only basis seems to be the need to explain the commonality in the Indo-European languages. The author argues for a strong continuity of our present day culture from the Indus valley civilization. As the river dried up, people migrated to the east settling in the Gangetic plains and carrying over their science and technology, architecture, religion and arts. A couple of chapters in the book are dedicated to exploring these connections and make for very interesting reading.

In addition to the debate on the Sarasvati, this book is also good material for anyone wanting to read on the Indus valley civilization. One part of the book is devoted to the Indus valley civilization, with one chapter on a few prominent Indus valley cities on the Sarasvati river.

As a footnote, what is most depressing is that our history books make no mention of these facts. Why are these alternate views presented in our history books when the evidence for these theories too are not trivial at the least? Our history books too live either in Indus valley time or truly in Kaliyuga.

Thanks to mankuthima for recommending this book, and you can find his summary of the book here:

300 Ramayanas - Some thoughts

2011-10-27T15:58:00.000+05:30

This Diwali was preceded by some fire-crackers in the Delhi University and noise of these crackers made a larger public hear A.K. Ramanujan's essay on the Ramayana - '300 Ramayanas'. A little controversy is always good publicity and lot of people must have read this essay for themselves and made a judgment about it. I read it too, and at a cursory look it looks like an interesting summary of the various ways in which the Ramayana is narrated and the differences that exist in these various tellings. In our country, our scriptures have been the vehicles of spreading culture, rather than being a mere series of historical facts and figures (if such a thing exists). So as times have changed, so have the interpretations to our scriptures. All Ramanujan's essay does it to give a bird's eye view of the process and to highlight the importance attached to these traditions to our country. Go read it for yourself and make a judgment.

Then, the whole controversy of it being deleted from the DU's syllabus doesn't make sense - either from the point of those wanting it in the syllabus or those opposing it. It was a local university decision which doesn't merit any national headlines. I doesn't do any harm to have it on the university syllabus either, but there is nothing spectacular about Ramanujan's essay to make it indispensable. It is just a manufactured controvery. As Pratap Bhanu Mehta points out,
"The exclusion of A.K. Ramanujan’s great essay from the syllabus of the Delhi University highlights the ways in which both the Left and the Right have reduced a great tradition to an impoverished political totem."

Both are blinded by their preconceived notions much like Dhridrastra was by his love for Duryodhana,
"The Left and Right in India share one deep premise. The tradition, in its final analysis, has to be reduced to the social question."

For the Left, as Swapan Das Gupta puts it, "rather than encouraging students to savour divergent ways of looking at the past, history became a set of acceptable truths and unacceptable untruths — hardly an approach befitting an open and argumentative society."

The Right in desperation and indignation, "has substituted intimidation for sober argument."

The result is the pathetic state of intellectual discourse in India.

Mehta says that the Delhi University was finding it difficult to get anyone to teach Chayavad, that great movement in modern Hindi poetry. Engaging with the meaning of Nirala (Hindi poet) is out of question. But the situation is even more dire for the teaching of Tulsidas. This assertion of tradition is coming at a moment where its loss is imminent.

Das Gupta makes an interesting argument,
"The problem, it would seem, arises from the dubious practice of listing prescribed texts. In the past, a history curriculum would identify broad themes for study, leaving teachers the independence to recommend readings for further study. A student would be tested in the examination for his ability to construct lucid arguments that would reveal their understanding of the subject. With 'prescribed' texts becoming the norm, the student's scope for demonstrating independence of mind and even originality of thought are naturally at a discount. They are expected to imbibe and parrot prevailing orthodoxies — a process that can hardly be said to be conducive for the training of the mind.

What we are witnessing in India is not an assault on free speech but something far worse, an attack on the spirit of free inquiry. There is something fundamentally skewed with a system of higher education that posits two stark alternatives: a compulsory reading (and, by implication, acceptance) of a scholarly work or not reading it at all. The space for critical discernment is fast disappearing and we are turning into a nation of slogan shouters. "

The good thing is that the intellectual debate that should have been in the university is now open to everyone for participation via the Internet. So forget these boardroom wars and read Ramanujan's essay and recommend me any similar ones if you can find them. I would especially like to know if similar ones exist for the Mahabharata.

printf("Adieu Ritchie, McCarthy and Jobs");

2011-10-25T23:39:00.001+05:30

In the last two weeks, the world of computing has lost three of its stalwarts - Dennis Ritchie (the inventor of C and Unix), John McCarthy (the father of AI and Lisp) and Steve Jobs (of Apple).

For me and for basically everybody I know of, the introduction to programming came through C. I still admire C for its simplicity and orthogonality. The notions of elegant and efficient programming can probably not be taught better in any language other than C. Unix, of course, is a boon to the world - an operating system so simple and elegant that every OS of note essentials follows its design principles. Ritchie, Brian Kerninghan and Ken Thompson were first class hackers who changed the world forever.

The very term 'Artificial Intelligence' was coined by John McCarthy and he along with Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon laid the foundations of this branch of computer science that I now happen to be associated with. AI is now the darling of the computing world, though the challenges McCarthy had set for us is still far away. And who can forget Lisp - the language that has spawned the functional paradigm of programming that every programmer of note will appreciate for its elegant style.

Unlike Ritchie and McCarthy, Jobs was no technical whiz or geek - but the idea that drove him was the same - beauty and elegance. Its a word not normally associated with CEO - but it is his insistence of aesthetics that has seen Apple build the sleekest products that just do what they are supposed to do with no feature crap that is the bane of all software.

R.I.P

North of the Vindhyas

2011-10-23T14:03:00.001+05:30

I am just back from a vacation north of the Vindhyas, my first trip to this vast part of India. Where did I go? Delhi was my base camp, and I travelled from there to Agra, Mathura, Rishikesh and Haridwar. To be my unbelievable fortune, I also got to go to Srinagar on official work :). That's a lot of travelling in 10 days. It also means I have a few posts to write, but I will save that for the next few days and leave you with the major achievements of this vacation and a few snaps:

I saw the three giant rivers of the Indian plains - the Ganga, the Yamuna and the Saraswati. Wait! Did I say the Saraswati? Does it even exist? Well, I started reading 'The Lost River: On the trail of the Sarasvati' on this trip. So I can say I realized the truth of its existence and one day I hope to see the bed of the Ghaggar-Hakra river it she once flowed through.
'Kashmir se Kanyakumari' is an oft-used phrase in our country, and I can say that I have visited both the poles of India.
It is a awesome feeling to visit places graced by two of the most revered teachers of India, Shankaracharya (Shankaracharya Temple, Srinagar) and Krishna (Sree Krishna Janmasthan, Mathura)
Finally, I got to visit two of the most beautiful places associated with India - the Taj Mahal and Kashmir.

Sameer, me and Ritesh in Gulmarg

Majestic !

Book Review: The Man who knew Infinity

2011-10-02T11:40:00.000+05:30

Till a few days back, to me, Srinivasa Ramanujan was a well known and eccentric Indian mathematician. Now, after reading Robert Kanigel's 'The Man Who Knew Infinity', I am better informed. Ramanujan was one of the most original mathematicians of the 20th century. More specifically, he is acknowledged to be a great formalist comparable in skills to the all time greats - Gauss, Euler and Jacobi. And Robert Kanigel's biography of Ramanujan is the one of the best biographies I have read, and one has that has made a lasting impression on me.

Ramanujan's story is a most extraordinary one. He arrived from nowhere and cast his genius on the mathematical world in a short, dazzling life (1887-1920). Born in the Kumbakonam town, Tanjavur district of Tamil Nadu in the Kaveri delta, he spend a childhood in tight financial conditions, yet not in penury. However, given his Brahmin roots there was an emphasis on education. He did very well in school in all subjects, excelling in Maths and was given a scholarship for the Government College, Kumbakonam. Around this time he developed a fierce appetite for mathematics. The turning point came with Carr's 'A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics'. This was basically a book for preparation to Cambridge's Tripos exam, so it basically listed results and hints to get to them. A totally unremarkable book, that may be despised as one of those 'exam guides'. However, he had little access to mathematical texts and this book hooked him to mathematics. He lost all interest in all other subjects. He proved results in Carr's book by developing his own methods, finding his own ways through the mathematical maze, totally immersing himself in mathematics. The book proved influential to Ramanujan's style of mathematics which as Hardy said was a "curious mix of reason, intuition .." Today, Carr is famous only because Ramanujan read his book. As a result, Ramanujan flunked other subjects and lost his scholarship to college. He spent a few years in wilderness, with no income and just about sustaining himself. He tutored a few students to support himself. He got another scholarship, but the temptation for mathematics would again lead him to ignore other courses. He spent a lot of time at home or being supported by his friends. Yet, he continued his mathematics and started maintaining notebooks of his results. which were to subsequently become the famous Ramanujan notebooks. He was so hard pressed that he didn't have any money for paper, and did the proofs on slate and chalk transferring results to paper later. In this manner he ended up "rediscovering a century of Western mathematics and added his own astounding finds". His mathematical skills of no use, he spent very harsh days barely surviving and working on Maths. Through his friends, he got a monthly stipend from a wealthy benefactor and finally a decently paying job at Madras port trust as a clerk.

In Madras, people started noticing his mathematics, and he was encouraged by his boss. He was soon publishing in the Indian Mathematical Society. But no one really understood his maths, and he needed validation of his work from a more established authority - so that he could be justified of his achievement, so that he could support himself while doing maths. He sent letters to Cambridge mathematicians, one of which was to Prof. Hardy. This event was to change his life. Hardy soon recognized that it was the work of a great mathematician. With Hardy's stamp of approval, the Madras University made an exception for him and made him a research fellow though he did not have a Bachelor's degree. But Hardy was not satisfied, and wanted to bring Ramanujan to England. Ramanujan was not ready given the caste restrictions on travelling to foreign lands and concerns about food given his strict vegetarian needs. Finally he relented, supposedly after a commandment in a dream from the family deity Namagiri. His stay in England was most fruitful, where in collaboration with Hardy he made significant contribution to partitions, prime number theorem. However, the alien conditions took their toll on Ramanujan, both physically and mentally. He attempted suicide once, and returned home in poor health. He was now however an FRS and Fellow of Trinity, and was given a generous research grant with which he could live comfortably with his family. In spite of failing health, he continued to work and in the last year of his life did some pathbreaking work on mock-theta functions.

His is a story of true determination and integrity as much as it is a story of genius. Against all odds, in a society where there was no particular place for his mathematics and with no mathematical pedigree in his family, how did a genius like Ramanujan arrive? A writer best described him as 'svayambhu' - 'self-born'. As Kanigel says - "He was self-willed, self directed and self-made. Indeed, some might conceivably label him as 'selfish' for his preoccupation with doing the mathematics he loved without any concern for the betterment of his family or country. Ramanujan did what he wanted to do, went his own way." It was his unshakable confidence in himself that carried him so far. He found his own methods and stuck to them. When the whole of Europe was moving towards a maths based on rigor where intuition seemed to have little place, Ramanujan displayed his brand of mathematics which was "a curious mix of intuition and evidence".

Kanigel's biography is a great effort that goes beyond Ramanujan, the legend to discover Ramanujan, the man. Kanigel has done excellent reseach in understanding the culture of South India prevalent at that time. His attempt to describe South India, its geography, landscape, its people and culture is admirable. Given that the book is written for a western audience, it is a very beautiful account of a part of the world for readers who don't know about it. A lot of what we know about Ramanujan is due to Hardy, and Kanigel rightly delves deep into the story of Hardy. It is almost as if the book contains a mini-biography of Hardy within. As Hardy himself has acknowledged - it was his good fortune to be associated with Ramanujan and Littlewood. Kanigel paints a picture of English middle class at that time, of the Cambridge culture. Its seems eerily similar to ours today - the focus of parents on education then, the Tripos exams - which is the equivalent of the JEE today, the coaching culture. Truly, history repeats itself.

But Ramanujans occur but so rarely.

JokeRulers

2011-08-19T07:11:00.003+05:30

The way the ruling party and Government has handled Anna Hazare's agitation makes then look like a pack of jokers. What explains government actions that seem to make a political strategist out of a novice called Anna? Consider the series of blunders on this one single issue of Anna's agitation:

What was essentially a political problem was turned into a law-and-order problem. The Prime Minister first washes off his hand off the matter by not entertaining Anna's request and by putting the restrictions on his protest. As Arun Jaitley said in Parliament, the government seemed to want to decide how many people should protest against it, where they should protest, when they should protest, what kind of vehicles they could get in order to protest against itself! Having already seen the kind of popular support Anna was able to mobilize earlier this year, the government seemed to suffering from amnesia.
Finally, it arrests Anna even before he starts his protest. Within a few hours the government is running helter-skelter to get the man out of jail seeing the mass mobilization. Anna turns out to be smarter than Baba Ramdev and now refuses to walk out of jail him being given unconditional right to protest? So now the government can't get a prisoner out of its own jail! How is that for political acumen and planning?
The appointed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh then hides behind bureaucrats and the police, as he always does, and says that they were alone responsible for all decisions taken. That is like the desperate lame excuse of a child caught doing something he was prohibited from.
The Congress dirty tricks department jumps into business. The rabble-rousing Manish Tewari calls Anna corrupt and his team of activists "armchair fascists, overground Maoists, closet anarchists..." and makes things difficult for the party. Why was Team Anna then included in the drafting panel earlier? It of course needed the genius of Prince Charming to dissuade the party from such below-the-belt attacks. The appointed PM is no less guilty and he uses the age old Congress 'foreign hand' trick saying, "there are many forces that would not like to see India realize its true place in the Comity of Nations. We must not play into their hands". Taking the cue, Rashid Alvi for his fifteen minutes of fame claims as the party's official line, "It needs to be considered whether there is any power which is supporting this movement, which wants to destabilize not only the government but the country". With such balderdash coming from within, why does the Congress party need any opponents? Did it seriously expect people to fall for it?
The PM then tries to cast the issue as civil society vs the Parliament through an inept performance in the Parliament, rightly called by Arun Jaitley as "a list and resume of events". After having taking the Opposition for granted so long, this falls flat too as his arguments are destroyed in Parliament.
After all this, the government is left with no option but to surrender to Anna and relax virtually each of the restrictions imposed. But here too it tried to be too clever by half, and proposed a virtually useless Ramlila Ground as the venue. Anna's team ofcourse outsmarted them, as Anna refused to step out of jail till the venue was ready to his satisfaction. And guess who is in charge of preparing the ground? The BJP-led Municipal Corporation of Delhi! Another self-goal ??

With so many seasoned politicians, how could the government be so stupid, so clueless? The truth is the government has demonstrated what many have been claiming for some time now - that this government is inept, not in control, does not know what its different wings are doing, controlled by a kitchen cabinet that may probably excel better at culinary skills. It is just waiting for its saviour - but is the situation now beyond redemption after a year of battering?

JokeRulers

2011-08-19T07:11:00.002+05:30

What was essentially a political problem was turned into a law-and-order problem. The Prime Minister first washes off his hand off the matter by not entertaining Anna's request and by putting the restrictions on his protest. As Arun Jaitley said in Parliament, the government seemed to want to decide how many people should protest against it, where they should protest, when they should protest, what kind of vehicles they could get in order to protest against itself! Having already seen the kind of popular support Anna was able to mobilize earlier this year, the government seemed to suffering from amnesia.
Finally, it arrests Anna even before he starts his protest. Within a few hours the government is running helter-skelter to get the man out of jail seeing the mass mobilization. Anna turns out to be smarter than Baba Ramdev and now refuses to walk out of jail him being given unconditional right to protest? So now the government can't get a prisoner out of its own jail! How is that for political acumen and planning?
The appointed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh then hides behind bureaucrats and the police, as he always does, and says that they were alone responsible for all decisions taken. That is like the desperate lame excuse of a child caught doing something he was prohibited from.
The Congress dirty tricks department jumps into business. The rabble-rousing Manish Tewari calls Anna corrupt and his team of activists "armchair fascists, overground Maoists, closet anarchists..." and makes things difficult for the party. Why was Team Anna then included in the drafting panel earlier? It of course needed the genius of Prince Charming to dissuade the party from such below-the-belt attacks. The appointed PM is no less guilty and he uses the age old Congress 'foreign hand' trick saying, "there are many forces that would not like to see India realize its true place in the Comity of Nations. We must not play into their hands". Taking the cue, Rashid Alvi for his fifteen minutes of fame claims as the party's official line, "It needs to be considered whether there is any power which is supporting this movement, which wants to destabilize not only the government but the country". With such balderdash coming from within, why does the Congress party need any opponents? Did it seriously expect people to fall for it?
The PM then tries to cast the issue as civil society vs the Parliament through an inept performance in the Parliament, rightly called by Arun Jaitley as "a list and resume of events". After having taking the Opposition for granted so long, this falls flat too as his arguments are destroyed in Parliament.
After all this, the government is left with no option but to surrender to Anna and relax virtually each of the restrictions imposed. But here too it tried to be too clever by half, and proposed a virtually useless Ramlila Ground as the venue. Anna's team ofcourse outsmarted them, as Anna refused to step out of jail till the venue was ready to his satisfaction. And guess who is in charge of preparing the ground? The BJP-led Municipal Corporation of Delhi! Another self-goal ??

Thakarachenda - movie review

2011-07-17T13:07:00.003+05:30

'Thakarachenda' is a 2007 Malayalam movie set in the slums of Ernakulam. Many movies have been made around this theme from Mira Nair's excellent 'Salaam Bombay' to the stereotypical 'Slumdog Millionaire'. While all these movies relied on melodrama to make an impact that invokes pity or even inspiration, 'Thakarachenda' is a very raw depiction that shows the purposelessness and harshness of the lives of these poor slum dwellers. Period. The minimal but impactful background score and just a single song emphasizes this rawness.

Sreenivasan as a totally cynical handicapped beggar 'Chakrapani' is at his satirical best, and most of the men in the slum seem to have given up hope and are ekeing out an existence. In contrast the female characters in the movie are strong personalities (as in many Malayalam movies), doing their best to lead an honourable life, ensuring their kids can have a better future. Lata's attempts to keep her children away from Chakrapani's attempts to rope them in for begging even in the face of hunger is both tragic and inspiring.

Technically, the film by a debutant director leaves a lot to be desired, especially the acting of the kids. But it more than makes up for that with the choice of a very relevant theme and a tight narrative. Movies like these just remind us how fortunate we are in the lives we enjoy, and just reaffirms that we have a responsibility to excel in what we do, to lend an ear to what is going in around us, and to make a positive contribution beyond the cocoon of our comfortable lives.

To the new metros - I

2011-06-19T15:30:00.006+05:30

The last couple of months have involved some travelling for me, having visited Hyderabad and Bangalore. Though these were short visits and I didn't have much of a chance to go around the cities, I still like to record impressions of places I visit.

This was my second visit to Hyderabad, though the first one is hardly worth a mention. It was a one day official trip where I barely stepped foot outside office and the hotel. This time it was a three day trip to attend a workshop at the International Institute of Information Technology or simply, IIIT Hyderabad. After barely manging to get tickets confirmed at the last minute the train journey was unremarkable, since I have seen the barren Telangana landscape dotted with rocky hillocks umpteen times. I got down at the Nampally station, which going by its size would hardly qualify to be Hyderabad's central station. For a moment, I wondered if I had got down at the wrong station. The first thing you are met with is rickshaw drivers calling out for passengers in the distinctive Hyderabadi dialect - 'Kidharku jaaneka?'.

The first thing I looked out for in the rick journey from Nampally to Gachibowli was the roads and the public transport, having had to endure the pathetic traffic conditions in Pune for a long time. The roads in Hyderabad are excellent and wide, yet I saw a couple of instances of reckless driving, which I am told is the norm. The public transport too provides good connectivity. Speaking of roads, if you thought the Mumbai-Pune Expressway was the best road to drive on, the 8-lane Jawaharlal Nehru Outer Ring Road that connects Hyderabad city to the international airport will give it a stiff challenge.

Gachibowli is around 15 km from the station, on the outskirts of the city. Its an ideal location for an academic campus, and the IIIT-H campus is a serene, green zone in the midst of the barren landscape and the concrete jungle coming around it. For Gachibowli and its surroundings are home to large IT parks coming up. A drive along the road the ISB road gives glimpses of the rocky hillocks that stretch for miles giving way to glitzy tech parks. These guys have so much barren land, I guess land acquisition wouldn't be a problem out here. On this road stands Microsoft's India Development Center, which I had a chance to visit to meet a friend. I must say its an impressive campus spanning a few low-rise buildings, with all facilities and comforts, save for lodging :).

I wanted to visit the Char-Minar, but with only one curtailed evening available it wasn't feasible to visit the old city, so I settled for visiting the Hussain Sagar Lake. At the center of the lake is the famous statue of Buddha, and it looks quite impressive with all the lighting in the evenings. The areas around the lake are a picnicking spot with gardens like the NTR Garden and Lumbini Park around. I also saw a fair with a Ferris wheel on the lakefront, quite reminiscent of the Navy Pier on the Lake Michigan in Chicago. I hung out for some time at the NTR gardens which is wonderfully landscaped and the place is abuzz with lots of people, especially kids. The next destination was the Birla Temple, which sits on a hillock just behind the NTR gardens. It was already late with 10 minutes to temple closing, so I had to hurry up the stairs to the temple at the top of the hillock. The temple shows a Rajasthani architecture made of marble, with carving from the Indian epics like the Ramayana on the walls. The main deity is Lord Balaji, and from the top you get a bird's eye-view of the city. This temple reminded me of the gigantic open air Ganapati statue-cum-temple on a hill back home in Somatna Phate, Dehu Road that overlooks the Bombay-Pune national highway. The connection between the two is that the Birlas have built both the temples. Would a trip to Hyderabad be complete without tasting the Hyderabadi Biryani? I signed off the evening with biryani at 'Barawarchi', Nampally.

More on Bangalore in the new post :)

Breaking India - A review

2011-06-16T12:16:00.003+05:30

Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindan Neelakandan's 'Breaking India - Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines' is a detailed work on much under-studied internal security challenge that India faces - "Dravidian and Dalit separatism being fostered by the West in the name of human rights".

The roots of this separatist thought go back to the colonial times, when the British for political reasons concocted the stories of Aryan and Dravidian races. Then Dravidians were made out to have a separate culture and religion historically, and they were shown to have been subjugated by the tyrannical Aryans and 'cunning' Brahmins. Thus Dravidians were made out to be the oppressed original inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent, who were assimilated into the Vedic culture. Tamil culture was made out to be the torchbearer of this alternative Dravidian culture. Such interpretations were drawn through malicious interpretation of Vedic literature. I am simplifying the story, which is always a dangerous thing to do with history. But the authors have presented a good history of how the alternative identify was created.

This has already caused us national integration problems in the past with the rabid Dravidian political forces in Tamil Nadu. However, that Dravidian movement has lost steam - but not the idea. In fact, trouble is still being brewed up by a group of western think-tanks, academic circles - probably with tacit support from elements in the Western establishment. Add to this the extreme Christian evangelicals who see India as the next big target for evangelicism. They have a vested interest in dividing up Indian communities so as to make them more amenable to conversion. The route they take is to first delink communities from a larger Indian civilization , by promoting divides like the Aryan-Dravidian divide. This sets the stage for missionary activity. However, to convert a community there needs to be a cultural connect that Christianity has to make with them. There is an effort to do the same with Dravidian identity. First, Tamil spiritual works like 'Shaiva Siddhanta' and 'Thirukural' are proclaimed to be non-Vedic in identity. All the good in the Tamil culture was ascribed to these works whereas all the bad was ascribed to the Vedic literature. Then mischievous mappings were done from the Tamil works to the Bible and Christian theology, to show how they derive from the Bible and is thus an impure form of Christianity (Dravidian Christianity). For this the story of St. Thomas visiting India and his persecution has been accepted as fact without verification, and additional embellishments were done on top of that - like claiming that all the Tamil works originate from the teachings of St. Thomas. Now, the stage is set for evangelism, and indeed a lot of NGOs and activists have been co-opted by the evangelicals. It is said that among some communities the conversions are being done at a rapid rate, and this is causing social tensions. The authors elaborate on these issues and provide insightful instances.

In a similar way, the Dalit identity has also been forged and sought to be separated from the Indian civilization. As the authors mention, Westerners have attempted to foster such ethnic divisions in other parts of the world (Rwanda, Sri Lanka), and the results have been disastrous for the people. Wasn't the Indian Partition also a result of such a divide-and-rule policy? They caution that we should maintain our vigil against such attempts at social engineering by a these trouble-mongers.

The book is a work of great detail running into 600 pages, including 200 pages of appendices, notes and references. However, the basic idea is essentially what has been mentioned above. The authors have of course argued their ideas and presented an analysis in a much better way than what this little post can do, and have given extensive examples and instances. It is generally said that history is written by the victor, and hence its always a refreshing change to learn another perspective and then to draw your own conclusions.

Funny!

2011-02-15T22:02:00.001+05:30

From Ramanand's blog :

In India, boys (or "youths") often "propose a girl", instead of "proposing to a girl". Exactly to which post they are proposing her for is not very clear, but in their fragile state (esp. on days like yesterday), it must be for high offices such as "Dictator of my Life for Life" or "Plenipotentiary Extraordinary to my Anatomy". But who seconds the proposal? It must be the ubiquitous "friend", a staple presence of the Indian youth's life, as illustrated by Indian rom-com-dishum-films.

Such language gladdens the hearts of those that previously thought constitutional thought among Indians would never take firm root. Even though political parties have become increasingly autocratic, here are young men keeping alive the democratic game of proposing a name, seconding it, all the way through to unanimity, via consensus junction. The High Command approves.

One way for the lad to propose a girl is to write to her. If you were in American parts of the world, this expression is sometimes rendered as "write her a letter". This used to confuse me earlier. If you were allowed only one letter, which letter do you pick? "X" is perhaps safest.

Anyway, democratic or not, boys will be boys, and Indian lads will remain youths for life (ask the Youth Congress). V-Days will come and go, and girls will be nominated and impeached from tall towers of the heart. All we can say to them is "Best Luck".

The disposable Ph.D

2011-01-23T17:12:00.001+05:30

The Economist recently carried an article about how and why Ph.D degrees were losing their sheen. In summary, its argument was basically this:

Designed to be a programme for preparing candidates for an academic career, there is now an oversupply of Ph.D holders, with the US itself handing 64,000 doctorates every year.
Given the low stipends/scholarships that bright Ph.D candidates are given, they have become "cheap, highly motivated and disposable labour" that is driving most of the research today, and are being taken for a ride with promises of a better future for the present struggles. The so-called "postdocs" are also victims of this infrastructure, the post itself being a result of an attempt to fix the demand-supply mismatch.
Does having a Ph.D add value to your career? The Economist says its definitely better than a bachelor's degree, but not much value-addition over a master's - in fact you may be disadvantaged. The Ph.D skills of deep analysis, research are not what today's fast moving markets are looking for. The more qualified a candidate is, the more likely he is to be dissatisfied and de-motivated with the work at hand.

Now, here's what I think on the Economist's viewpoint:

The demand-supply mismatch argument does not hold in India, since there is a large shortfall of qualified, well-versed academic staff today, while the number of Ph.Ds joining the pool is very small. For example, India produces just about a 100 Ph.Ds in Computer Science today. With globalization, the Indian educational institutions have to achieve higher benchmarks to maintain relevance. This explains the sprouting of new higher educational institutions like the new IITs,IIITs, IISER, and others trying to match them. These have to be manned by qualified faculty. So, we need to have more students pursuing Phds.
Yet, we don't see too many people pursuing doctorates in India. Why? One, there is no monetary benefit for the long struggle. But that will always be the cost of pursuing anything different, hence that will never deter the really committed. Secondly, there is government apathy of which the zillions of pages have already been written. More importantly, we are not contextualizing and localizing the problems we are solving. We are solving problems defined and relevant to the West, hence neither the potential candidates nor the Indian society at large feels any affinity to the kind of problems tackled as part of the candidate's thesis. So, even the demand exists, the supply doesn't inspire enough confidence in the society. This chain of thought naturally leads to preference for the West by many wannabe candidates.
Of course, the PhD syllabus needs to reformed. In a fast moving and dynamic world, the course needs to be more flexible. There could be intermediate exit points in the course, for instance.
This seems to be part of the conservative agenda (of which the Economist is the vanguard), that wants to spend lesser and lesser on free and open education, and make the work force pay for job oriented skills. Of course, societies don't run only on markets and there should always be a place for intellectual and artistic pursuits that don't necessarily yield the market any pay-off. Society must always support such endeavours.

What Ph.D candidates need to do to weather this storm:

Information is now ubiquitous, it is not a premium; hence, the days of the informed teacher being highly regarded are gone. However, with the deluge of data, the ability to analyze information, think deeply and synthesize ideas are needed more than ever. Hence Ph.D candidates have to focus more on developing their faculties in this direction. This is anyway part of their brief, but being satisfied with low-hanging fruits like being an authority of a subject will not work in future.
They must not become super-specialists, limiting their thinking to some restricted domains of thought. After all, it is a doctorate of philosophy, and the spirit of philosophy is to think openly with no restrictions. Creativity depends a lot on cross pollination of ideas from many disciplines.
There has to be an irreverence to authority and a commitment to be fiercely independent.

PS: Cross posted from my tech blog.

Round up of some blog readup

2011-01-15T21:49:00.003+05:30

Weekends are generally the time for me to catch up on reading backlog of feeds. Here are some interesting readings:

A brilliant joke from Atanu Dey's blog:

1 Lac = 1 Peti
1 Crore = 1 Khoka
500 Crore = 1 Koda
1,000 Crore = 1 Radia
10,000 Crore = 1 Kalmadi
100,000 Crore = 1 Raja
10 KALMADI + 1 RAJA = 1 SHARAD PAWAR
10 SHARAD PAWAR = 1 Madam

Aditya Sinha is leaving the New Indian Express as its chief editor. Of all the leading dailies, I have found him to be the most balanced and forthright. Wonder where he is headed next.

While all of us are worried about the rising inflation, there has been little analysis in the media (at least the mainstream papers). Here is one viewpoint by M.R Venkatesh in the Organiser, basically blaming speculation in the futures market and the ability of the players to influence policy.

"Many scientists are scientists because they are afraid of life"

2011-01-10T23:24:00.000+05:30

This quote by John Backus, the creator of FORTRAN and the Backus-Naur form inspires this post. This is what Backus had to say in his later years about science and life:

"Many scientists are scientists because they are afraid of life. It's wonderful to be creative in science be use you can do it without clashing with people and suffering the pain of relationships and making your way through the world. It's sort of this aseptic world where you can do exciting things with your faculties, and not encounter any pain. The pain in solving problems is small potatoes compared with the pain you encounter in living.
Introspection is not a scientific activity, it is not repeatable, there are no good theories about how to repeat it, what you expect to find. It's strange that by looking into yourself you really get an appreciation of the mystery of the universe. You don't by trying to find the laws of physics."

Wise words from an old hand, and they ring true. The central idea of any modern science is abstraction, the process of drawing out the essential features that describe and system, while leaving out those which are irrelevant to the goal. Through this abstraction a system is simplified, and the abstraction becomes the basis for a lot of creativity. For eg. Newton abstracted mechanical motion to precisely three laws and this spawned the modern industrial revolution and all its inventions. We now know that Newton's laws cannot explain all phenomena, neither can relativity. The uncertainty principle is a partial acceptance of the fact that everything cannot be explained through abstraction and reason. It's a messy dynamic world out there, at the level of sub atomic particles, where our clean abstractions of matter and energy, wave and particle, force and particle break down. Even our intellect is based on this kind of learning through discrimination, categorisation, and abstraction.

But abstraction is beautiful, which is why the greatest of scientists cherish these abstractions, and adjectives like 'beautiful', 'elegant', 'simple' are applied to great works of science. It is then easy to mistake the abstraction for the 'perfect' and the real for the 'impure'. In essence, one is being afraid, running away from reality - the justification of perfection is only an alibi. This belief in the 'perfection' of abstraction can become fanatical, with disastrous consequences - especially in the social sciences. And so the communist and social Darwinian ideas brought disaster to millions, as the processes of globalisation driven by a fanatical belief in the infallibility of the markets are homogenising an inherently diverse human society.

Happy New Year 2011

2010-12-31T23:16:00.002+05:30

Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year! Just 2 posts this year, obviously my resolution for 2011 is to be regular blogging. I call this the "lost year", but as Andy Dufrene says "Hope is a good thing", and I will begin the new year with optimism. One post a week ? Let's see :)

Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran at IIT Bombay

2010-12-09T23:53:00.004+05:30

A couple of days back, I had the opportunity to listen to the famous neurologist, Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran at IIT Bombay. It was a dream come true to hear the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, talk about his work on behavioral neurology, phantom limbs, Capgra's syndrome, synesthesia and mirror neurons, among others. The "Sherlock Holmes of Neurology"'s simple but insightful experiments are a treat to learn about. It was followed by one of the liveliest interactions I have seen. While I don't know of a video of the talk that exists, he covered what he has previously talked about in his TED talks. So I recommend you see these:

VS Ramachandran on your mind - 1

VS Ramachandran on your mind - 2

The neurons that shaped civilization

If that doesn't whet your appetite, you should read 'Phantoms in the Brain'

Salaam Bombay - That's how you tell a story

2010-01-24T13:28:00.003+05:30

And Salaam to the New Year too! Long time since I have been able to write a blog, or have some leisurely time. But then - leisure is a state of the mind, and some effort was needed to get into that frame of mind, with so many other things going around. So finally, I saw Mira Nair's 'Salaam Bombay' - as a good movie ought to be; at leisure, peacefully on a Sunday afternoon.

For those are fuming over all the fuss over 'Slumdog Millionaire', this is the movie to watch. 'Salaam Bombay' is the story of Bombay's street kids, set in Mumbai's underbelly - its harsh life, the slums, the drugs, the sex-workers. The plot unfolds through the experiences of the kid, Chaipau/Krishna, who struggles to earn the money required to get back to his home. Facing adverse situations all around him, it is this single hope that keeps him fighting.

The character is played by Shafiq Syed, who ran away from his to land in Mumbai's streets and now earns a living driving rickshaws in Bangalore.

Impressions: Pazhassi Raja

2009-11-10T06:18:00.003+05:30

Finally, the long awaited Pazhassi Raja from the Mamooty-M.T.Vasudevan Nair-Hariharan trio has hit the screens. I wondered when I could see it on the big screens in Pune. Fortunately, it hit the Pune screens within one week of its release.

The movie keeps you rivetted every moment, MT Vasudevan's script is well-researched, the action scenes are brilliant and the background score keeps the tempo. Sharath Kumar as Edachena Kunkan stands out, though everyone has given an impressive performance. Except, Padmapriya - who is irritating with her strange Malayalam accent. Perhaps the character of the tribal girl Nili demanded it.

A good movie to watch. Comparison to the famed trio's 'Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha' are inevitable, but difficult to justify. 'Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha' is based on a regional legend which gave the makers ample creative license and M.T. Vasudevan Nair used it to brilliant effect in turning the story of Chandu on its head, while 'Pazhassi Raja' had to stick to history. Ofcourse, the music is disappointing as compared to the melodies of 'Ori Vadakkan Veeragatha'.

Innovators and Scientists

2009-10-09T04:46:00.004+05:30

To tread the path less taken in solving the big problems in isolation, or to be satisfied working on the little problems? To work for monetary gains or for the sheer pleasure of finding the solutions to hard problems?

Here are a couple of interesting posts exploring these themes:
From Daniel Lemire: Getting a Ph.D. for the money?
From Ramanand: From New York to New Guinea
From Paul Graham: Hackers and Painters

Home Alone

2009-10-08T04:53:00.002+05:30

Finally, my parents came back from Kerala after a long trip. They had been gone for almost a month, and it was me and my brother at home. Running a household is no mean business, I understand from my experience of keeping a truncated household going :). Doing all the little chores, keep the house clean, keeping track of the bills and the other things that keep coming up was enough to keep me occupied. And I was still having a race against time to catch the 8.05 am local train. Well, most of the time I had to make do with the 8.15 am local.

Did I not mention the biggest task of them all - food? Unfortunately, there isn't much I do in the kitchen beyond making tea. I extended those efforts to baking bread and making Australia shaped omlettes in the last month :D. For the rest, our neighbours were gracious enough to care of my gastronomical requirements. But left us with the most irritating task - washing utensils. Its especially frustrating because we didn't even have the joy of cooking the food ourselves. It is like having to fix bugs in code someone else has written. The next thing is to learn to cook atleast the minimum required for survival; I don't mind fixing bugs in my own code :).

Make hay while the sun shines!

2009-09-23T06:10:00.003+05:30

Things going topsy-turvy, travelling and things to write. All difficult things have to come at the same time - Murphy's law. That is why people say 'Make hay while the sun shines'. I should be making the most of it when I have time, maybe multiple blog posts a day :). For now, I will leave with a few quotes 'The Shawshank Redemption', which I always like to quote:

"I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."

"In 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank prison. All they found of him was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and an old rock hammer, damn near worn down to the nub. I used to think it would take six-hundred years to tunnel under the wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty. Oh, Andy loved geology. I guess it appealed to his meticulous nature. An ice age here, million years of mountain building there. Geology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes really, pressure, and time. That, and a big god-damned poster. Like I said, in prison a man will do anything to keep his mind occupied. It turns out Andy's favorite hobby was totin' his wall through the exercise yard, a handful at a time. I guess after Tommy was killed, he decided he had been here just about long enough. Andy did like he was told, buffed those shoes to a high mirror shine. The guard simply didn't notice. Neither did I... I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a mans shoes? Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit smelling foulness I can't even imagine, or maybe I just don't want to. Five hundred yards... that's the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile."

A welcome blog: Transforming the Learning Eco System

2009-09-13T12:05:00.000+05:30

Recently, our educational system has been in the news - thanks to the HRD Minister, Kabil Sibal's educational reforms proposals. Finally, the state of the education discourse is getting some attention, and I hope it is more than a flash in the pan. While Mr. Sibal has started off with some top-heavy measures and administrative reforms, we need to seriously look at the educational paradigm and have some serious debate on how learning should be.

One aspect of learning is how to leverage community resources, especially in the context of the wide availability of the Internet as a collaborative medium to share and learn, and to make learning resources widely available. Kaushik has recently started sharing this thoughts on community based learning on his blog and set the debate in motion. Share your thoughts!