By Maureen Dowd The New York Times
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
In 2005, a year after Ellie Grossman, a doctor, met Ray Fisman, a professor, on a blind date, she was talking to her grandmother about her guy."Never let a man think you're smarter," her grandmother advised."Men don't like that."Ray and Ellie "had a good laugh, thinking times had changed," he recalled. The pair went on to marry - after she proposed.But now, he says, "it seems like the students at Columbia University should pay heed to Grandma Lil's advice."
Fisman is a 36-year-old Columbia economics professor who conducted a two-year study, published last year, on dating. With two psychologists and another economist, he ran a speed-dating experiment at a local bar near the Columbia campus.The results surprised him and made him a little sad because he found that even in the 21st century, many men are still straitjacketed in stereotypes."I guess I had hoped that they had evolved beyond this," he said in a phone interview. "It's like that 'Sex and the City' episode where Miranda went speed-dating. When she says she's a lawyer, guys lose interest. Then she tells them she's a flight attendant and that plays into their deepest fantasies."
As he recapped the experiment in Slate last week:"We found that men did put significantly more weight on their assessment of a partner's beauty, when choosing, than women did. We also found that women got more dates when they won high marks for looks."
He continued: "By contrast, intelligence ratings were more than twice as important in predicting women's choices as men's. It isn't exactly that smarts were a complete turnoff for men: They preferred women whom they rated as smarter - but only up to a point. It turns out that men avoided women whom they perceived to be smarter than themselves. The same held true for measures of career ambition - a woman could be ambitious, just not more ambitious than the man considering her for a date.
"When women were the ones choosing, the more intelligence and ambition the men had, the better. So, yes, the stereotypes appear to be true: We males are a gender of fragile egos in search of a pretty face and are threatened by brains or success that exceeds our own."
Hillary Clinton, who is trying to crash through the Oval glass ceiling, may hope that we're evolving into a kingdom of queen bees and their male slaves. But stories have been popping up that suggest that evolution is moving forward in a circuitous route, with lots of speed bumps.
Perhaps smart women can take hope - as long as they're built like Marilyn Monroe. Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Pittsburgh have released a zany study on the zaftig, positing that men are drawn to hourglass figures not only because they look alluring, but because hips plumped up by omega-3 fatty acids could mean smarter women bearing smarter kids.
Yet Alex Williams recently reported in The New York Times that the new income superiority of many young women in big cities is causing them to encounter "forms of hostility they weren\'t prepared to meet," leaving them "trying to figure out how to balance pride in their accomplishments against their perceived need to bolster the egos of the men they date."
"We found that men did put significantly more weight on their assessment of a partner's beauty, when choosing, than women did. We also found that women got more dates when they won high marks for looks."He continued: "By contrast, intelligence ratings were more than twice as important in predicting women's choices as men's. It isn't exactly that smarts were a complete turnoff for men: They preferred women whom they rated as smarter - but only up to a point. It turns out that men avoided women whom they perceived to be smarter than themselves. The same held true for measures of career ambition - a woman could be ambitious, just not more ambitious than the man considering her for a date."When women were the ones choosing, the more intelligence and ambition the men had, the better. So, yes, the stereotypes appear to be true: We males are a gender of fragile egos in search of a pretty face and are threatened by brains or success that exceeds our own."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/14/opinion/edowd.php
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Should we be proud of Bobby Jindal?
The election of Bobby Jindal as governor of the US state of Louisiana has been greeted exultantly by Indians and Indian-Americans around the world. There’s no question that this is an extraordinary accomplishment: a young Indian-American, just 36 years old, not merely winning an election but doing so on the first ballot by receiving more votes than his 11 rivals combined, and that too in a state not noticeably friendly to minorities. Bobby Jindal will now be the first Indian-American governor in US history, and the youngest currently serving chief executive of an American state. These are distinctions of which he can legitimately be proud, and it is not surprising that Indians too feel a vicarious sense of shared pride in his remarkable ascent.
But is our pride misplaced? Who is Bobby Jindal and what does he really stand for? There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of Indian migrants in America: though no sociologist, i’ll call them the atavists and the assimilationists. The atavists hold on to their original identities as much as possible, especially outside the workplace; in speech, dress, food habits, cultural preferences, they are still much more Indian than American. The assimilationists, on the other hand, seek assiduously to merge into the American mainstream; they acquire a new accent along with their visa, and adopt the ways, clothes, diet and recreational preferences of the Americans they see around them. (Of course, there are the in-betweens, but we’ll leave them aside for now.) Class has something to do with which of the two major categories an Indian immigrant falls into; so does age, since the newer generation of Indians, especially those born in America, inevitably tend to gravitate to the latter category.
Bobby Jindal is an assimilationist’s dream. Born to relatively affluent professionals in Louisiana, he rejected his Indian name (Piyush) as a very young child, insisting that he be called Bobby, after a (white) character on the popular TV show ‘The Brady Bunch’. His desire to fit in to the majority-white society he saw around him soon manifested itself in another act of rejection: Bobby spurned the Hindusim into which he was born and, as a teenager, converted to Roman Catholicism, the faith of most white Louisianans. There is, of course, nothing wrong with any of this, and it is a measure of his precocity that his parents did not balk at his wishes despite his extreme youth. The boy was clearly gifted, and he soon had a Rhodes scholarship to prove it. But he was also ambivalent about his identity: he wanted to be seen as a Louisianan, but his mirror told him he was also an Indian. The two of us won something called an ‘Excelsior Award’ once from the Network of Indian Professionals in the US, and his acceptance speech on the occasion was striking — obligatory references to the Indian values of his parents, but a speech so American in tone and intonation that he mangled the Indian name of his own brother. There was no doubt which half of the hyphen this Indian-American leaned towards.
But there are many ways to be American, and it’s interesting which one Bobby chose. Many Indians born in America have tended to sympathise with other people of colour, identifying their lot with other immigrants, the poor, the underclass. Vinita Gupta, in Oklahoma, another largely white state, won her reputation as a crusading lawyer by taking up the case of illegal immigrants exploited by a factory owner (her story will shortly be depicted by Hollywood, with Halle Berry playing the Indian heroine). Bhairavi Desai leads a taxi drivers’ union; Preeta Bansal, who grew up as the only non-white child in her school in Nebraska, became New York’s Solicitor General and now serves on the Commission for Religious Freedom. None of this for Bobby. Louisiana’s most famous city, New Orleans, was a majority black town, at least until Hurricane Katrina destroyed so many black lives and homes, but there is no record of Bobby identifying himself with the needs or issues of his state’s black people. Instead, he sought, in a state with fewer than 10,000 Indians, not to draw attention to his race by supporting racial causes. Indeed, he went well beyond trying to be non-racial (in a state that harboured notorious racists like the Ku Klux Klansman David Duke); he cultivated the most conservative elements of white Louisiana society.
With his widely-advertised piety (he asked his Indian wife, Supriya, to convert as well, and the two are regular churchgoers), Bobby Jindal adopted positions on hot-button issues that place him on the most conservative fringe of the Republican Party. Most Indian-Americans are in favour of gun control, support a woman’s right to choose abortion, advocate immigrants’ rights, and oppose school prayer (for fear that it would marginalise non-Christians). On every one of these issues, Bobby Jindal is on the opposite side. He’s not just conservative; on these questions, he is well to the right of his own party. That hasn’t stopped him, however, from seeking the support of Indian-Americans. Bobby Jindal has raised a small fortune from them, and when he last ran (unsuccessfully) for governor in 2004, an army of Indian-American volunteers from outside the state turned up to campaign for him. Many seemed unaware of his political views; it was enough for them that he was Indian. At his Indian-American fundraising events, Bobby is careful to downplay his extreme positions and play up his heritage, a heritage that plays little part in his appeal to the Louisiana electorate. Indian-Americans, by and large, accept this as the price of political success in white America: it’s just good to have “someone like us” in such high office, whatever views he professes to get himself there. So Indians beam proudly at another Indian-American success story to go along with Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams, Hargobind Khorana and Subramaniam Chandrasekhar, Kal Penn and Jhumpa Lahiri. But none of these Indian Americans expressed attitudes and beliefs so much at variance with the prevailing values of their community.
Let us be proud that a brown-skinned man with an Indian name has achieved what Bobby Jindal has. But let us not make the mistake of thinking that we should be proud of what he stands for.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/SHASHI_ON_SUNDAY/Should_we_be_proud_of_Bobby_Jindal/articleshow/2495846.cms
But is our pride misplaced? Who is Bobby Jindal and what does he really stand for? There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of Indian migrants in America: though no sociologist, i’ll call them the atavists and the assimilationists. The atavists hold on to their original identities as much as possible, especially outside the workplace; in speech, dress, food habits, cultural preferences, they are still much more Indian than American. The assimilationists, on the other hand, seek assiduously to merge into the American mainstream; they acquire a new accent along with their visa, and adopt the ways, clothes, diet and recreational preferences of the Americans they see around them. (Of course, there are the in-betweens, but we’ll leave them aside for now.) Class has something to do with which of the two major categories an Indian immigrant falls into; so does age, since the newer generation of Indians, especially those born in America, inevitably tend to gravitate to the latter category.
Bobby Jindal is an assimilationist’s dream. Born to relatively affluent professionals in Louisiana, he rejected his Indian name (Piyush) as a very young child, insisting that he be called Bobby, after a (white) character on the popular TV show ‘The Brady Bunch’. His desire to fit in to the majority-white society he saw around him soon manifested itself in another act of rejection: Bobby spurned the Hindusim into which he was born and, as a teenager, converted to Roman Catholicism, the faith of most white Louisianans. There is, of course, nothing wrong with any of this, and it is a measure of his precocity that his parents did not balk at his wishes despite his extreme youth. The boy was clearly gifted, and he soon had a Rhodes scholarship to prove it. But he was also ambivalent about his identity: he wanted to be seen as a Louisianan, but his mirror told him he was also an Indian. The two of us won something called an ‘Excelsior Award’ once from the Network of Indian Professionals in the US, and his acceptance speech on the occasion was striking — obligatory references to the Indian values of his parents, but a speech so American in tone and intonation that he mangled the Indian name of his own brother. There was no doubt which half of the hyphen this Indian-American leaned towards.
But there are many ways to be American, and it’s interesting which one Bobby chose. Many Indians born in America have tended to sympathise with other people of colour, identifying their lot with other immigrants, the poor, the underclass. Vinita Gupta, in Oklahoma, another largely white state, won her reputation as a crusading lawyer by taking up the case of illegal immigrants exploited by a factory owner (her story will shortly be depicted by Hollywood, with Halle Berry playing the Indian heroine). Bhairavi Desai leads a taxi drivers’ union; Preeta Bansal, who grew up as the only non-white child in her school in Nebraska, became New York’s Solicitor General and now serves on the Commission for Religious Freedom. None of this for Bobby. Louisiana’s most famous city, New Orleans, was a majority black town, at least until Hurricane Katrina destroyed so many black lives and homes, but there is no record of Bobby identifying himself with the needs or issues of his state’s black people. Instead, he sought, in a state with fewer than 10,000 Indians, not to draw attention to his race by supporting racial causes. Indeed, he went well beyond trying to be non-racial (in a state that harboured notorious racists like the Ku Klux Klansman David Duke); he cultivated the most conservative elements of white Louisiana society.
With his widely-advertised piety (he asked his Indian wife, Supriya, to convert as well, and the two are regular churchgoers), Bobby Jindal adopted positions on hot-button issues that place him on the most conservative fringe of the Republican Party. Most Indian-Americans are in favour of gun control, support a woman’s right to choose abortion, advocate immigrants’ rights, and oppose school prayer (for fear that it would marginalise non-Christians). On every one of these issues, Bobby Jindal is on the opposite side. He’s not just conservative; on these questions, he is well to the right of his own party. That hasn’t stopped him, however, from seeking the support of Indian-Americans. Bobby Jindal has raised a small fortune from them, and when he last ran (unsuccessfully) for governor in 2004, an army of Indian-American volunteers from outside the state turned up to campaign for him. Many seemed unaware of his political views; it was enough for them that he was Indian. At his Indian-American fundraising events, Bobby is careful to downplay his extreme positions and play up his heritage, a heritage that plays little part in his appeal to the Louisiana electorate. Indian-Americans, by and large, accept this as the price of political success in white America: it’s just good to have “someone like us” in such high office, whatever views he professes to get himself there. So Indians beam proudly at another Indian-American success story to go along with Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams, Hargobind Khorana and Subramaniam Chandrasekhar, Kal Penn and Jhumpa Lahiri. But none of these Indian Americans expressed attitudes and beliefs so much at variance with the prevailing values of their community.
Let us be proud that a brown-skinned man with an Indian name has achieved what Bobby Jindal has. But let us not make the mistake of thinking that we should be proud of what he stands for.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/SHASHI_ON_SUNDAY/Should_we_be_proud_of_Bobby_Jindal/articleshow/2495846.cms
Friday, October 12, 2007
Internet revolution reaches India's poor
By Anand Giridharadas
International Herald TribuneThursday, October 11, 2007
Manohar Lakshmipathi does not own a computer. In fact, workmen like Manohar, a house painter, are usually forbidden to touch clients' computers on the job here.So you can imagine Manohar's wonder as he sat dictating his date of birth, phone number and work history to a secretary who entered them into a computer. Afterward, a man took his photo. Then, with a click of a mouse, Manohar's very own social-networking page popped onto the World Wide Web, the newest profile on Babajob.com.
Babajob, an Indian start-up aiming to bring the Facebook/MySpace revolution to the world's poor, is just one example of an unanticipated byproduct of the outsourcing boom: Entrepreneurs and large multinationals are making India a hub of computer innovation targeting the poor.
Outsourcing brought hundreds of multinationals and hundreds of thousands of techies to Bangalore. Now, more than a decade into the outsourcing surge, many of those companies and their employees are applying their skills not just to developing software, but to confronting the grinding poverty around them too."In Redmond, you don't see 7-year-olds begging on the street," said Sean Blagsvedt, Babajob's founder, referring to Microsoft's Washington State headquarters, where he once worked. "In India, you can't escape the feeling that you're really lucky. So you ask, 'What are you going to do about all the stuff around you? How are you going to use all these skills?' "Perhaps for less altruistic reasons, but often with positive effects for the poor, corporations have made India a lab for extending modern technological conveniences to those long deprived. Nokia, for instance, develops many of its ultracheap cellphones here. Citibank first experimented here with a special ATM that recognizes thumbprints to help slum-dwellers who struggle with personal identification numbers. And Microsoft has made India one of the major centers of its global research group that is studying technologies for the poor, like software that reads to illiterate computer users.
Babajobs is a quintessential example of how Indian back offices have spawned poverty-inspired innovation. The best-known networking sites connect the computer-savvy elite to one another. Babajob, by contrast, connects the Indian elite to the poor at their doorsteps, people who need jobs but lack the connections to find them. Job seekers advertise skills, employers advertise jobs and matches are made through "friend-of-a-friend" networks.For example, if Rajeev and Sanjay are friends, and Sanjay needs a chauffeur, he can surf onto Rajeev's page, travel onto the page of Rajeev's chauffeur and then see which of the chauffeur's friends happen to be looking for similar work.
Blagsvedt, 31, joined Microsoft in Redmond in 1999. Three years ago, he was sent to India to help build the local office of Microsoft Research, the company's in-house institute.But the Microsoft employees who worked here led very different lives than their counterparts back home. They had servants and laborers. They read newspaper tales of undernourishment and illiteracy. The Indian employees were not seeing such conditions for the first time, but many of them felt newly empowered to confront them.Equipped with world-class computing skills, many felt an urge to do something to help their society.At the same time, Microsoft, with software piracy limiting revenues in India, was looking to low-income consumers as a vast commercial opportunity, so engineers' altruistic urges were encouraged.
In Blagsvedt's research office, poverty became a major focus. Anthropologists and sociologists were hired to explain things like the effect of the caste system on rural computer usage. One day, in the course of that work, Blagsvedt stumbled on an insight by a Duke University economist that first unnerved and then inspired him.The economist, Anirudh Krishna, found that many poor Indians in dead-end jobs stay poor not because there are no better jobs, but because they lack the connections to discover such jobs. Any Bangalorean could confirm the observation: the city teems with laborers desperate for work, and yet wealthy software tycoons complain endlessly about a shortage of maids and cooks.
Blagsvedt's epiphany? "We need village LinkedIn!" he recalled saying, referring to a professional networking site. He quit Microsoft and, with his stepfather, Ira Weise, and a former Microsoft colleague, built a social-networking site to connect the yuppies of Bangalore with its wage laborers. (The site, which Blagsvedt began this summer and runs out of his home, focuses on Bangalore for now, with plans to spread to other Indian cities and perhaps globally.)Building a site meant to reach laborers earning $2 to $3 a day presented special challenges. The workers would be unfamiliar with computers in general and with Babajob in particular. Moreover, wealthy employers would be reluctant to let random applicants tend to their gardens or their newborns.
To deal with the connectivity problem, Babajob pays anyone, from charities to Internet cafe owners, to find job seekers and register them. (Babajob earns its keep from employers' advertisements, diverting a portion of that to those who sign up job seekers.) Also, instead of creating an anonymous job bazaar, Babajob replicates online the process by which Indians hire in real life: using chains of personal connections.In India, a businessman looking for a chauffeur might ask his friend, who might ask his chauffeur. Such connections provide a kind of quality control. The friend's chauffeur, for instance, will not recommend a hoodlum, for fear of losing his own job.
To recreate this dynamic online, Babajob pays people to be "connectors" between employer and employee. In the example above, the businessman's friend and his chauffeur would each earn the equivalent of $2.50 if they connected the businessman with someone he likes.The model is gaining attention, and praise. A Bangalore venture capitalist, when told of Babajob, immediately asked to be put in touch with Blagsvedt."Wow," said Steve Pogorzelski, president of the international division of Monster.com, the American jobs site, when told of the company. "It is an important innovation," he said, "because it opens up the marketplace to people of socioeconomic levels who may not have the widest array of jobs available to them."Krishna, the Duke economist, praised the idea as a "very significant innovation," but he cautioned that the very poor may not belong to the social networks that would bring them to Babajob.
In its first few months, the company has drummed up job seekers on its own, sending workers out into the streets with fliers promising employment.When it comes to potential employers, in addition to counting on word of mouth among those desperate for maids and laborers, Babajob is also counting on Babalife, the company's parallel social networking site. People listed on Babalife will automatically be on Babajob, as well.So far, more than 1,100 have registered on Babajob. The listings are a portrait of the floating underclass in India, millions and millions seeking a few dollars a day to work as chauffeurs, nannies, gardeners, guards and receptionists.A woman named Selvi Venkatesh was desperate. "I am really in need of a job, as our residential building collapsed last month in Ejipura," she said, referring to a disaster in July that killed two people, including an infant, according to The Times of India.I
n Blagsvedt's apartment, Manohar, the painter, professed hope. He earns $100 a month. Jobs come irregularly, and so he spends up to three months of the year idle. Between jobs, he borrows from loan sharks to feed his wife and children. They levy 10 percent monthly interest, enough to make a $100 loan a $314 debt in one year.Manohar wants his three children to walk a different path. They must not know his pain, he said; they should work in a nice office. So he spends nearly half his income on private schooling for them. That is why he was at Babajob in a swiveling chair, staring at a computer screen, dreaming of more work.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/10/asia/jobs.php
International Herald TribuneThursday, October 11, 2007
Manohar Lakshmipathi does not own a computer. In fact, workmen like Manohar, a house painter, are usually forbidden to touch clients' computers on the job here.So you can imagine Manohar's wonder as he sat dictating his date of birth, phone number and work history to a secretary who entered them into a computer. Afterward, a man took his photo. Then, with a click of a mouse, Manohar's very own social-networking page popped onto the World Wide Web, the newest profile on Babajob.com.
Babajob, an Indian start-up aiming to bring the Facebook/MySpace revolution to the world's poor, is just one example of an unanticipated byproduct of the outsourcing boom: Entrepreneurs and large multinationals are making India a hub of computer innovation targeting the poor.
Outsourcing brought hundreds of multinationals and hundreds of thousands of techies to Bangalore. Now, more than a decade into the outsourcing surge, many of those companies and their employees are applying their skills not just to developing software, but to confronting the grinding poverty around them too."In Redmond, you don't see 7-year-olds begging on the street," said Sean Blagsvedt, Babajob's founder, referring to Microsoft's Washington State headquarters, where he once worked. "In India, you can't escape the feeling that you're really lucky. So you ask, 'What are you going to do about all the stuff around you? How are you going to use all these skills?' "Perhaps for less altruistic reasons, but often with positive effects for the poor, corporations have made India a lab for extending modern technological conveniences to those long deprived. Nokia, for instance, develops many of its ultracheap cellphones here. Citibank first experimented here with a special ATM that recognizes thumbprints to help slum-dwellers who struggle with personal identification numbers. And Microsoft has made India one of the major centers of its global research group that is studying technologies for the poor, like software that reads to illiterate computer users.
Babajobs is a quintessential example of how Indian back offices have spawned poverty-inspired innovation. The best-known networking sites connect the computer-savvy elite to one another. Babajob, by contrast, connects the Indian elite to the poor at their doorsteps, people who need jobs but lack the connections to find them. Job seekers advertise skills, employers advertise jobs and matches are made through "friend-of-a-friend" networks.For example, if Rajeev and Sanjay are friends, and Sanjay needs a chauffeur, he can surf onto Rajeev's page, travel onto the page of Rajeev's chauffeur and then see which of the chauffeur's friends happen to be looking for similar work.
Blagsvedt, 31, joined Microsoft in Redmond in 1999. Three years ago, he was sent to India to help build the local office of Microsoft Research, the company's in-house institute.But the Microsoft employees who worked here led very different lives than their counterparts back home. They had servants and laborers. They read newspaper tales of undernourishment and illiteracy. The Indian employees were not seeing such conditions for the first time, but many of them felt newly empowered to confront them.Equipped with world-class computing skills, many felt an urge to do something to help their society.At the same time, Microsoft, with software piracy limiting revenues in India, was looking to low-income consumers as a vast commercial opportunity, so engineers' altruistic urges were encouraged.
In Blagsvedt's research office, poverty became a major focus. Anthropologists and sociologists were hired to explain things like the effect of the caste system on rural computer usage. One day, in the course of that work, Blagsvedt stumbled on an insight by a Duke University economist that first unnerved and then inspired him.The economist, Anirudh Krishna, found that many poor Indians in dead-end jobs stay poor not because there are no better jobs, but because they lack the connections to discover such jobs. Any Bangalorean could confirm the observation: the city teems with laborers desperate for work, and yet wealthy software tycoons complain endlessly about a shortage of maids and cooks.
Blagsvedt's epiphany? "We need village LinkedIn!" he recalled saying, referring to a professional networking site. He quit Microsoft and, with his stepfather, Ira Weise, and a former Microsoft colleague, built a social-networking site to connect the yuppies of Bangalore with its wage laborers. (The site, which Blagsvedt began this summer and runs out of his home, focuses on Bangalore for now, with plans to spread to other Indian cities and perhaps globally.)Building a site meant to reach laborers earning $2 to $3 a day presented special challenges. The workers would be unfamiliar with computers in general and with Babajob in particular. Moreover, wealthy employers would be reluctant to let random applicants tend to their gardens or their newborns.
To deal with the connectivity problem, Babajob pays anyone, from charities to Internet cafe owners, to find job seekers and register them. (Babajob earns its keep from employers' advertisements, diverting a portion of that to those who sign up job seekers.) Also, instead of creating an anonymous job bazaar, Babajob replicates online the process by which Indians hire in real life: using chains of personal connections.In India, a businessman looking for a chauffeur might ask his friend, who might ask his chauffeur. Such connections provide a kind of quality control. The friend's chauffeur, for instance, will not recommend a hoodlum, for fear of losing his own job.
To recreate this dynamic online, Babajob pays people to be "connectors" between employer and employee. In the example above, the businessman's friend and his chauffeur would each earn the equivalent of $2.50 if they connected the businessman with someone he likes.The model is gaining attention, and praise. A Bangalore venture capitalist, when told of Babajob, immediately asked to be put in touch with Blagsvedt."Wow," said Steve Pogorzelski, president of the international division of Monster.com, the American jobs site, when told of the company. "It is an important innovation," he said, "because it opens up the marketplace to people of socioeconomic levels who may not have the widest array of jobs available to them."Krishna, the Duke economist, praised the idea as a "very significant innovation," but he cautioned that the very poor may not belong to the social networks that would bring them to Babajob.
In its first few months, the company has drummed up job seekers on its own, sending workers out into the streets with fliers promising employment.When it comes to potential employers, in addition to counting on word of mouth among those desperate for maids and laborers, Babajob is also counting on Babalife, the company's parallel social networking site. People listed on Babalife will automatically be on Babajob, as well.So far, more than 1,100 have registered on Babajob. The listings are a portrait of the floating underclass in India, millions and millions seeking a few dollars a day to work as chauffeurs, nannies, gardeners, guards and receptionists.A woman named Selvi Venkatesh was desperate. "I am really in need of a job, as our residential building collapsed last month in Ejipura," she said, referring to a disaster in July that killed two people, including an infant, according to The Times of India.I
n Blagsvedt's apartment, Manohar, the painter, professed hope. He earns $100 a month. Jobs come irregularly, and so he spends up to three months of the year idle. Between jobs, he borrows from loan sharks to feed his wife and children. They levy 10 percent monthly interest, enough to make a $100 loan a $314 debt in one year.Manohar wants his three children to walk a different path. They must not know his pain, he said; they should work in a nice office. So he spends nearly half his income on private schooling for them. That is why he was at Babajob in a swiveling chair, staring at a computer screen, dreaming of more work.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/10/asia/jobs.php
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
The Odyssey years
International Herald Tribune
Brooks: The Odyssey years
By David Brooks
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood.
During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another.
Their parents grow increasingly anxious. These parents understand that there's bound to be a transition phase between student life and adult life. But when they look at their own grown children, they see the transition stretching five years, seven and beyond. The parents don't even detect a clear sense of direction in their children's lives. They look at them and see the things that are being delayed.
They see that people in this age bracket are delaying marriage. They're delaying children. They're delaying permanent employment. Americans who were born before 1964 tend to define adulthood by certain accomplishments - moving away from home, becoming financially independent, getting married and starting a family.
In 1960, roughly 70 percent of American 30-year-olds had achieved these things. By 2000, fewer than 40 percent of 30-year-olds had done the same.
Yet with a little imagination it's possible even for baby boomers - the 76 million Americans born from 1946 to 1964 - to understand what it's like to be in the middle of the odyssey years. It's possible to see that this period of improvisation is a sensible response to modern conditions.
Two of America's best social scientists have been trying to understand this new life phase. William Galston of the Brookings Institution has recently completed a research project for the Hewlett Foundation. Robert Wuthnow of Princeton has just published a tremendously valuable book, "After the Baby Boomers," that looks at young adulthood through the prism of religious practice.
Through their work, you can see the spirit of fluidity that now characterizes this stage. Young people grow up in tightly structured childhoods, Wuthnow observes, but then graduate into a world characterized by uncertainty, diversity, searching and tinkering. Old success recipes don't apply, new norms have not been established and everything seems to give way to a less permanent version of itself.
Dating gives way to Facebook and hooking up. Marriage gives way to cohabitation. Church attendance gives way to spiritual longing. Newspaper reading gives way to blogging. (In 1970, 49 percent of adults in their 20s read a daily paper; now it's at 21 percent.)
The job market is fluid. Graduating seniors don't find corporations offering them jobs that will guide them all the way to retirement. Instead they find a vast menu of information economy options, few of which they have heard of or prepared for.
Social life is fluid. There's been a shift in the balance of power between the genders. Thirty-six percent of female workers in their 20s now have a college degree, compared with 23 percent of male workers.
Male wages have stagnated over the past decades, while female wages have risen.
This has fundamentally scrambled the courtship rituals and decreased the pressure to get married. Educated women can get many of the things they want (income, status, identity) without marriage, while they find it harder (or, if they're working-class, next to impossible) to find a suitably accomplished mate.
The odyssey years are not about slacking off. There are intense competitive pressures as a result of the vast numbers of people chasing relatively few opportunities. Moreover, surveys show that people living through these years have highly traditional aspirations (they rate parenthood more highly than their own parents did) even as they lead improvising lives.
Rather, what we're seeing is the creation of a new life phase, just as adolescence came into being a century ago. It's a phase in which some social institutions flourish - knitting circles, Teach for America - while others - churches, political parties - have trouble establishing ties.
But there is every reason to think this phase will grow more pronounced in the coming years. European nations are traveling this route ahead of Americans, Galston notes. Europeans delay marriage even longer than Americans do and spend even more years shifting between the job market and higher education.
And as the new generational structure solidifies, social and economic entrepreneurs will create new rites and institutions. Someday people will look back and wonder at the vast social changes wrought by the emerging social group that saw their situations first captured by "Friends" and later by "Knocked Up."
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=7815532
Brooks: The Odyssey years
By David Brooks
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood.
During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another.
Their parents grow increasingly anxious. These parents understand that there's bound to be a transition phase between student life and adult life. But when they look at their own grown children, they see the transition stretching five years, seven and beyond. The parents don't even detect a clear sense of direction in their children's lives. They look at them and see the things that are being delayed.
They see that people in this age bracket are delaying marriage. They're delaying children. They're delaying permanent employment. Americans who were born before 1964 tend to define adulthood by certain accomplishments - moving away from home, becoming financially independent, getting married and starting a family.
In 1960, roughly 70 percent of American 30-year-olds had achieved these things. By 2000, fewer than 40 percent of 30-year-olds had done the same.
Yet with a little imagination it's possible even for baby boomers - the 76 million Americans born from 1946 to 1964 - to understand what it's like to be in the middle of the odyssey years. It's possible to see that this period of improvisation is a sensible response to modern conditions.
Two of America's best social scientists have been trying to understand this new life phase. William Galston of the Brookings Institution has recently completed a research project for the Hewlett Foundation. Robert Wuthnow of Princeton has just published a tremendously valuable book, "After the Baby Boomers," that looks at young adulthood through the prism of religious practice.
Through their work, you can see the spirit of fluidity that now characterizes this stage. Young people grow up in tightly structured childhoods, Wuthnow observes, but then graduate into a world characterized by uncertainty, diversity, searching and tinkering. Old success recipes don't apply, new norms have not been established and everything seems to give way to a less permanent version of itself.
Dating gives way to Facebook and hooking up. Marriage gives way to cohabitation. Church attendance gives way to spiritual longing. Newspaper reading gives way to blogging. (In 1970, 49 percent of adults in their 20s read a daily paper; now it's at 21 percent.)
The job market is fluid. Graduating seniors don't find corporations offering them jobs that will guide them all the way to retirement. Instead they find a vast menu of information economy options, few of which they have heard of or prepared for.
Social life is fluid. There's been a shift in the balance of power between the genders. Thirty-six percent of female workers in their 20s now have a college degree, compared with 23 percent of male workers.
Male wages have stagnated over the past decades, while female wages have risen.
This has fundamentally scrambled the courtship rituals and decreased the pressure to get married. Educated women can get many of the things they want (income, status, identity) without marriage, while they find it harder (or, if they're working-class, next to impossible) to find a suitably accomplished mate.
The odyssey years are not about slacking off. There are intense competitive pressures as a result of the vast numbers of people chasing relatively few opportunities. Moreover, surveys show that people living through these years have highly traditional aspirations (they rate parenthood more highly than their own parents did) even as they lead improvising lives.
Rather, what we're seeing is the creation of a new life phase, just as adolescence came into being a century ago. It's a phase in which some social institutions flourish - knitting circles, Teach for America - while others - churches, political parties - have trouble establishing ties.
But there is every reason to think this phase will grow more pronounced in the coming years. European nations are traveling this route ahead of Americans, Galston notes. Europeans delay marriage even longer than Americans do and spend even more years shifting between the job market and higher education.
And as the new generational structure solidifies, social and economic entrepreneurs will create new rites and institutions. Someday people will look back and wonder at the vast social changes wrought by the emerging social group that saw their situations first captured by "Friends" and later by "Knocked Up."
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=7815532
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Eager dragon, wary bear
WASHINGTON:
Most people looking at Russia and China when Mao died in 1976 would have assumed that Russia was better positioned to become a major player in global technology industries.
The Soviet Union was a superpower with many of the requisites for development. Its literacy levels and enormous numbers of scientific, technical and other specialists with advanced education far surpassed China's overwhelmingly peasant society emerging from the chaos of the cultural revolution.
Yet since Mao's death it is China that has generated consistent high economic growth rates, fostering increasingly competitive industries and lifting a significant number of people out of poverty. China is an important global player in a growing number of technology industries and in the international economic system, things Russian leaders merely talk about.
Russian growth since August 1998 is attributable overwhelmingly to the ruble devaluation and increased oil prices. Despite the windfall oil revenues, Russia's growth rate since Vladimir Putin became president has been lower than most of the countries of the former Soviet Union.
What accounts for an outcome that contradicts most people's expectations?
Many analysts cite "initial conditions," but explanations based on large numbers of peasants not covered by social welfare systems, diasporas with capital to invest or beginning reform with agriculture do not withstand a comparative test. Other countries with similar conditions have not matched China's growth.
Others emphasize the stable environment provided by authoritarian leadership. But if government administration was the key, the state sector should be the basis for China's success rather than an anchor dragging on the economy.
The crucial difference, I believe, is the quality of China's and Russia's integration with the international economy. China has embraced economic globalization and integration; Russia remains wary and peripheral.
Russia's economy is open, but selling natural resources and arms generates few linkages leading to higher value-added production. Russia's economic integration is "thin." China's integration is "thick" - it involves linkages in technology chains and participation in entire product cycles. China joined the WTO in 2001; Russia has been a year or two away from membership since 1993, largely because so much of its economy is outside WTO's scope.
These differences influence internal politics. China's thick integration has fostered regional, sectoral and institutional interests that have defended and expanded the policies of reform and openness. Economic retrenchment was repeatedly abandoned because coalitions of entrepreneurs, officials and investors benefiting from openness helped pro-reform leaders to prevail. Russia's thin integration generates few forces to contest renewed administrative domination of the economy.
Chinese discourse portrays globalization as the great opportunity to overcome centuries of relative backwardness; Russian elites equate globalization with Americanization, often viewing it as a threat to Russia's future.
Why do Chinese elites embrace globalization while Russians question it? The answer, I believe, is found in the mutually reinforcing interaction of historical legacy with political and economic conditions.
Deng Xiaoping's policy of openness followed China's cultural revolution, so China began its reforms with neither a self-confident ruling elite nor a horde of policy intellectuals invested in the old system. The Communist Party remained in power but accepted new economic approaches.
In contrast, the Soviet cultural revolution of 1928-31 created a new elite that remained in power until the 1970s and bequeathed economic autarky and superpower myths to the next generation. Russia's elites are descended from the Stalinist party faction that explicitly rejected the West and internationalism. When Mikhail Gorbachev initiated perestroika, Russia considered itself a co-equal superpower. Not only do Russians have ambivalent attitudes toward the West; they think the West has nothing to teach them.
While both China and Russia have become major exporters, the nature of those exports differs markedly. China is a global manufacturing center, producing a mix of value-added products three times above what economists would expect.
Russia is a petrostate. In contrast to China's robust manufacturing sectors, finished goods represent less than 10 percent of Russian exports. Hydrocarbons and other natural resources account for an overwhelming share of both exports and state revenues.
Power devolved to the regions in both countries in the 1980s. In some areas of China, this resulted in rapid economic development. Regions and enterprises competed for capital and workers competed for jobs. China is a case where economic success derives from sometimes harsh competition.
When Russian regions were given the opportunity to establish free economic zones in the 1990s, they produced a flurry of special commercial privileges, tax evasion and black market schemes rather than industrial development. Now regional development depends on Kremlin approval and funding.
International linkages are helping China overtake Russia in education and scientific research. At China's National Conference on Science in 1978, Deng proclaimed that "one must learn from those who are most advanced before one can catch up with and surpass them." Russian leaders remain convinced that they have the best schools and best scientists in the world, and everyone else should learn from them. Four of China's top universities now hire almost exclusively from among Chinese with foreign Ph.Ds; Russian universities refuse to recognize foreign credentials.
China's embrace of globalization and resulting thick international economic integration have been the key to its emergence as a commercial and manufacturing power. Russian resistance to integration makes it less able to overcome resource dependence. When Russian leaders suggest that they need to emulate China's policies, they emphasize strong governmental control rather than the diverse and independent local and regional economic activity that accounts for China's early success.
China has not solved all its problems or discovered an optimal development model. Weaknesses are easily identified, particularly uneven development, weak property rights, safety standards, environmental damage and demographic shifts. Whether China can continue to grow despite these challenges is the question for the global economy. Russia's economic prospects are mainly of concern to commodities markets.
The character of integration with the international economy not only explains why China, and not Russia, has become a commercial and industrial power. It also has profound implications for their future development trajectories.
Both countries need greater societal involvement in political life. By generating diverse economic interests that at times can affect policy, China's thick international integration has created the potential for continued influence. Russia's thinner integration places fewer constraints on leaders who appear to be dizzy with petroleum.
Harley Balzer is a professor in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/24/news/edbalzar.php
Most people looking at Russia and China when Mao died in 1976 would have assumed that Russia was better positioned to become a major player in global technology industries.
The Soviet Union was a superpower with many of the requisites for development. Its literacy levels and enormous numbers of scientific, technical and other specialists with advanced education far surpassed China's overwhelmingly peasant society emerging from the chaos of the cultural revolution.
Yet since Mao's death it is China that has generated consistent high economic growth rates, fostering increasingly competitive industries and lifting a significant number of people out of poverty. China is an important global player in a growing number of technology industries and in the international economic system, things Russian leaders merely talk about.
Russian growth since August 1998 is attributable overwhelmingly to the ruble devaluation and increased oil prices. Despite the windfall oil revenues, Russia's growth rate since Vladimir Putin became president has been lower than most of the countries of the former Soviet Union.
What accounts for an outcome that contradicts most people's expectations?
Many analysts cite "initial conditions," but explanations based on large numbers of peasants not covered by social welfare systems, diasporas with capital to invest or beginning reform with agriculture do not withstand a comparative test. Other countries with similar conditions have not matched China's growth.
Others emphasize the stable environment provided by authoritarian leadership. But if government administration was the key, the state sector should be the basis for China's success rather than an anchor dragging on the economy.
The crucial difference, I believe, is the quality of China's and Russia's integration with the international economy. China has embraced economic globalization and integration; Russia remains wary and peripheral.
Russia's economy is open, but selling natural resources and arms generates few linkages leading to higher value-added production. Russia's economic integration is "thin." China's integration is "thick" - it involves linkages in technology chains and participation in entire product cycles. China joined the WTO in 2001; Russia has been a year or two away from membership since 1993, largely because so much of its economy is outside WTO's scope.
These differences influence internal politics. China's thick integration has fostered regional, sectoral and institutional interests that have defended and expanded the policies of reform and openness. Economic retrenchment was repeatedly abandoned because coalitions of entrepreneurs, officials and investors benefiting from openness helped pro-reform leaders to prevail. Russia's thin integration generates few forces to contest renewed administrative domination of the economy.
Chinese discourse portrays globalization as the great opportunity to overcome centuries of relative backwardness; Russian elites equate globalization with Americanization, often viewing it as a threat to Russia's future.
Why do Chinese elites embrace globalization while Russians question it? The answer, I believe, is found in the mutually reinforcing interaction of historical legacy with political and economic conditions.
Deng Xiaoping's policy of openness followed China's cultural revolution, so China began its reforms with neither a self-confident ruling elite nor a horde of policy intellectuals invested in the old system. The Communist Party remained in power but accepted new economic approaches.
In contrast, the Soviet cultural revolution of 1928-31 created a new elite that remained in power until the 1970s and bequeathed economic autarky and superpower myths to the next generation. Russia's elites are descended from the Stalinist party faction that explicitly rejected the West and internationalism. When Mikhail Gorbachev initiated perestroika, Russia considered itself a co-equal superpower. Not only do Russians have ambivalent attitudes toward the West; they think the West has nothing to teach them.
While both China and Russia have become major exporters, the nature of those exports differs markedly. China is a global manufacturing center, producing a mix of value-added products three times above what economists would expect.
Russia is a petrostate. In contrast to China's robust manufacturing sectors, finished goods represent less than 10 percent of Russian exports. Hydrocarbons and other natural resources account for an overwhelming share of both exports and state revenues.
Power devolved to the regions in both countries in the 1980s. In some areas of China, this resulted in rapid economic development. Regions and enterprises competed for capital and workers competed for jobs. China is a case where economic success derives from sometimes harsh competition.
When Russian regions were given the opportunity to establish free economic zones in the 1990s, they produced a flurry of special commercial privileges, tax evasion and black market schemes rather than industrial development. Now regional development depends on Kremlin approval and funding.
International linkages are helping China overtake Russia in education and scientific research. At China's National Conference on Science in 1978, Deng proclaimed that "one must learn from those who are most advanced before one can catch up with and surpass them." Russian leaders remain convinced that they have the best schools and best scientists in the world, and everyone else should learn from them. Four of China's top universities now hire almost exclusively from among Chinese with foreign Ph.Ds; Russian universities refuse to recognize foreign credentials.
China's embrace of globalization and resulting thick international economic integration have been the key to its emergence as a commercial and manufacturing power. Russian resistance to integration makes it less able to overcome resource dependence. When Russian leaders suggest that they need to emulate China's policies, they emphasize strong governmental control rather than the diverse and independent local and regional economic activity that accounts for China's early success.
China has not solved all its problems or discovered an optimal development model. Weaknesses are easily identified, particularly uneven development, weak property rights, safety standards, environmental damage and demographic shifts. Whether China can continue to grow despite these challenges is the question for the global economy. Russia's economic prospects are mainly of concern to commodities markets.
The character of integration with the international economy not only explains why China, and not Russia, has become a commercial and industrial power. It also has profound implications for their future development trajectories.
Both countries need greater societal involvement in political life. By generating diverse economic interests that at times can affect policy, China's thick international integration has created the potential for continued influence. Russia's thinner integration places fewer constraints on leaders who appear to be dizzy with petroleum.
Harley Balzer is a professor in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/24/news/edbalzar.php
Friday, September 14, 2007
€1 million Lamborghinis sell like hotcakes
रॉयटर्स
Thursday, September 13, २००७
What price exclusivity?
If you ask Lamborghini, €1 million should do it - before tax, of course।
In a bid to burnish its prestige, the Italian maker of the super luxury sports car unveiled the Reventón earlier this week at the Frankfurt International Motor Show - a very limited edition car that looks more like an arrow than anything on four wheels।
With the $1.4 million price tag, it is the most expensive car ever built. Needless to say, Lamborghini has already sold the 20 cars that it planned to build."As soon as the word got out, we sold out in four days," Stephan Winkelmann, the company's chief executive, said, adding that Lamborghini could have easily sold another 20.Most of the buyers were men from the United States, some of whom already own a Lamborghini, Winkelmann said.Lamborghini named the car after a bull that killed matador Felix Guzman in 1943.
Although it is based on its Murciélago LP640 model, Lamborghini's engineers took inspiration from a fighter jet and reworked the composite carbon fibre body to accentuate the sleekness and angular edges usually associated with its cars.The engine is the same as the LP640: a 12-cylinder rocket that can propel the car from zero to 100 kilometers per hour, or 60 miles per hour, in 3.4 seconds.By comparison, the coupe version of the LP640 costs a relatively more modest €219,600.
Lamborghini, which is run by Volkswagen's Audi division, will start making the Reventón in January and deliver them in October.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/13/business/auto.php
Thursday, September 13, २००७
What price exclusivity?
If you ask Lamborghini, €1 million should do it - before tax, of course।
In a bid to burnish its prestige, the Italian maker of the super luxury sports car unveiled the Reventón earlier this week at the Frankfurt International Motor Show - a very limited edition car that looks more like an arrow than anything on four wheels।
With the $1.4 million price tag, it is the most expensive car ever built. Needless to say, Lamborghini has already sold the 20 cars that it planned to build."As soon as the word got out, we sold out in four days," Stephan Winkelmann, the company's chief executive, said, adding that Lamborghini could have easily sold another 20.Most of the buyers were men from the United States, some of whom already own a Lamborghini, Winkelmann said.Lamborghini named the car after a bull that killed matador Felix Guzman in 1943.
Although it is based on its Murciélago LP640 model, Lamborghini's engineers took inspiration from a fighter jet and reworked the composite carbon fibre body to accentuate the sleekness and angular edges usually associated with its cars.The engine is the same as the LP640: a 12-cylinder rocket that can propel the car from zero to 100 kilometers per hour, or 60 miles per hour, in 3.4 seconds.By comparison, the coupe version of the LP640 costs a relatively more modest €219,600.
Lamborghini, which is run by Volkswagen's Audi division, will start making the Reventón in January and deliver them in October.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/13/business/auto.php
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Import Indian bridegrooms for Russian brides
Vladimir Radyuhin
New Russian magic mantra to reverse alarming fall in the country’s birth rate
MOSCOW: Desperate to reverse a steep decline in their numbers, Russians are coming up with some bold ideas on how to overcome Russia’s demographic crisis.
A Russian feminist has proposed a radical solution to the falling birth rate — importing Indian bridegrooms for Russian girls. Maria Arbatova, writer and TV moderator, who married an Indian businessman a few years ago “after 25 years of keeping marrying Russians”, thinks Indian men make ideal husbands.
“They are crazy about their family and children,” she said presenting her new book, ‘Tasting India’, here. “What is more, Indians, like Russians, are Indo-Europeans, and many Sanskrit and Russian words have the same roots.”
Indian bridegrooms can help ward off a Chinese demographic invasion in Russia, says the feminist: “If we do not balance off the Chinese with Indians, Africans or aliens, by 2050 China will annex Russia’s Siberia up to the Ural Mountains.”
Russia has a population of 142 million spread across a territory five times the size of India. Its population is shrinking at one-third of a million a year. Under a federal programme launched this year, women who give birth to a second or subsequent child are given certificates worth $10,000, which can be used for education, mortgage or pensions. Monthly support payments to young mothers have been raised from $28 to $60. Afraid that the Government measures are not enough, the Governor of Ulyanovsk has suggested his own way of getting Russian couples to have more babies.
This Wednesday, Ulyanovsk residents will enjoy an extra day off work that the Governor decreed to give them more time to produce babies. The holiday, officially called “Family Contact Day”, was quickly renamed by locals as “Day of Conception”. That day the people will be invited to join a festival, “I Love You”, while teams of gynaecologists, midwives and psychologists will fan out to all parts of the region to advise women on having babies.
September 12 has been chosen for the new holiday so that babies conceived that day may be born on June 12, Russia’s National Day. Couples who hit the target date win prizes, including refrigerators, TV sets and washing machines. The main prize is an Ulyanovsk-built all-terrain vehicle called Patriot.
© Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2007091256220100.htm&date=2007/09/12/&prd=th&
New Russian magic mantra to reverse alarming fall in the country’s birth rate
MOSCOW: Desperate to reverse a steep decline in their numbers, Russians are coming up with some bold ideas on how to overcome Russia’s demographic crisis.
A Russian feminist has proposed a radical solution to the falling birth rate — importing Indian bridegrooms for Russian girls. Maria Arbatova, writer and TV moderator, who married an Indian businessman a few years ago “after 25 years of keeping marrying Russians”, thinks Indian men make ideal husbands.
“They are crazy about their family and children,” she said presenting her new book, ‘Tasting India’, here. “What is more, Indians, like Russians, are Indo-Europeans, and many Sanskrit and Russian words have the same roots.”
Indian bridegrooms can help ward off a Chinese demographic invasion in Russia, says the feminist: “If we do not balance off the Chinese with Indians, Africans or aliens, by 2050 China will annex Russia’s Siberia up to the Ural Mountains.”
Russia has a population of 142 million spread across a territory five times the size of India. Its population is shrinking at one-third of a million a year. Under a federal programme launched this year, women who give birth to a second or subsequent child are given certificates worth $10,000, which can be used for education, mortgage or pensions. Monthly support payments to young mothers have been raised from $28 to $60. Afraid that the Government measures are not enough, the Governor of Ulyanovsk has suggested his own way of getting Russian couples to have more babies.
This Wednesday, Ulyanovsk residents will enjoy an extra day off work that the Governor decreed to give them more time to produce babies. The holiday, officially called “Family Contact Day”, was quickly renamed by locals as “Day of Conception”. That day the people will be invited to join a festival, “I Love You”, while teams of gynaecologists, midwives and psychologists will fan out to all parts of the region to advise women on having babies.
September 12 has been chosen for the new holiday so that babies conceived that day may be born on June 12, Russia’s National Day. Couples who hit the target date win prizes, including refrigerators, TV sets and washing machines. The main prize is an Ulyanovsk-built all-terrain vehicle called Patriot.
© Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2007091256220100.htm&date=2007/09/12/&prd=th&
Sunday, September 09, 2007
In Its Match With China, India Penalizes Its Own Team
In Its Match With China, India Penalizes Its Own Team
(from the New York times)
April 24, 2007Op-Ed ColumnistBy NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
KHAWASPUR, India
India is stirring after many centuries of torpor, and it has a chance of ending this century as the capital of the world, the most important nation on earth. You see up-and-coming cities like Hyderabad or Ahmedabad, and it’s easy to believe that India will eventually surpass China.
But here in rural Bihar state in northern India, there’s no economic miracle to be seen. And it’s difficult to see how India can emerge on top unless it takes advantage of its greatest untapped resource: its rural population.
The village of Khawaspur has no electricity. It has a school with 600 students, but — as is common in Indian state schools — many teachers show up only rarely. “We go to school, but the teachers don’t,” explained Doli, a second-grade girl.
On a typical day there will be just one or two teachers in the whole school, and the students learn next to nothing. “You have to bribe your way to be a teacher there,” explained Yogender Singh, who tutors children for payment.
No child I met in Khawaspur had ever been vaccinated for anything. And the local government hospital exists only in theory.
“There is a hospital,” said a villager named Muhammad Shaukat. “But there’s not even a door or a window. Forget about a doctor.”
That’s a common problem: the government pays for schools, clinics or vaccinations, but someone pockets the money and no education or health care materializes.
In a village in Gujarat that I visited on this trip, all the children were out of school because the teachers had decided to take a monthlong vacation. One sixth-grade student, Ramila, could not write her name, not even in Gujarati.
Another sixth grader, Janah, said that when it came time for exams, the teachers wrote the answers on the blackboard for students to copy so the exam results wouldn’t embarrass the school.
Then there’s the toll of malnutrition. India has more malnourished children than any country in the world and one of the highest rates of malnutrition, 30 to 47 percent, depending on who does the estimating.
Those malnourished children suffer permanent losses in I.Q. and cognition, and are easy prey for diseases. There is some evidence that widespread malnutrition lowers economic growth in affected countries by two to four percentage points a year.
So in the middle of this century, India will still be held back by its failure to educate, feed and vaccinate its children today. This failure will haunt India for many decades to come. Sure, China has many similar problems, with growing gaps between rich and poor and an interior that is being left far behind. But rural Chinese schools provide a basic education, including solid math and science skills.
India’s boom is real, and its overall growth rate puts India right at China’s heels. Its middle class is expanding, governance is improving, and the transformation is one of the most exciting things going on in the world today. The 21st century will belong to Asia, and young Americans need to study Asia, live in it and learn its languages.
But Indians refer to the “Bimaru” states — a play on the word “bimar,” which means “sick” in Hindi. The Bimaru states are Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, and Orissa deserves a spot as well.
In the Bimaru states, there is no boom. “We see nothing here,” said Vidya Sagar Gupta, a businessman who once operated many factories in northern Bihar. Now he has closed most of
them down and is trying to sell his properties.
Electricity is unreliable, crime is growing, corruption is endless, the agricultural sector is in crisis, supplies are difficult to get, and criminal gangs and politics are so interwoven that it is difficult to foresee improvements, he says.
For anyone who wants to see this country succeed, a visit to rural India is a bitter disappointment. Ela Bhatt, who founded the Self-Employed Women’s Association, a union of poor women that now has nearly one million members, told me that India’s economy is profoundly limited: “It is like a car having one motorized tire, and the others are cart wheels.”
So in the great race of this century, the race to see which country will lead the world in 2100, I’m still betting on China for now. I’m having my kids learn Chinese, not Hindi (or Indian English, a remarkable language in its own right).
Until India’s economic boom becomes much more broadly based, and until Indian schools manage to teach their students, this country will continue to waste its precious brainpower and won’t achieve a fraction of what it should.
(from the New York times)
April 24, 2007Op-Ed ColumnistBy NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
KHAWASPUR, India
India is stirring after many centuries of torpor, and it has a chance of ending this century as the capital of the world, the most important nation on earth. You see up-and-coming cities like Hyderabad or Ahmedabad, and it’s easy to believe that India will eventually surpass China.
But here in rural Bihar state in northern India, there’s no economic miracle to be seen. And it’s difficult to see how India can emerge on top unless it takes advantage of its greatest untapped resource: its rural population.
The village of Khawaspur has no electricity. It has a school with 600 students, but — as is common in Indian state schools — many teachers show up only rarely. “We go to school, but the teachers don’t,” explained Doli, a second-grade girl.
On a typical day there will be just one or two teachers in the whole school, and the students learn next to nothing. “You have to bribe your way to be a teacher there,” explained Yogender Singh, who tutors children for payment.
No child I met in Khawaspur had ever been vaccinated for anything. And the local government hospital exists only in theory.
“There is a hospital,” said a villager named Muhammad Shaukat. “But there’s not even a door or a window. Forget about a doctor.”
That’s a common problem: the government pays for schools, clinics or vaccinations, but someone pockets the money and no education or health care materializes.
In a village in Gujarat that I visited on this trip, all the children were out of school because the teachers had decided to take a monthlong vacation. One sixth-grade student, Ramila, could not write her name, not even in Gujarati.
Another sixth grader, Janah, said that when it came time for exams, the teachers wrote the answers on the blackboard for students to copy so the exam results wouldn’t embarrass the school.
Then there’s the toll of malnutrition. India has more malnourished children than any country in the world and one of the highest rates of malnutrition, 30 to 47 percent, depending on who does the estimating.
Those malnourished children suffer permanent losses in I.Q. and cognition, and are easy prey for diseases. There is some evidence that widespread malnutrition lowers economic growth in affected countries by two to four percentage points a year.
So in the middle of this century, India will still be held back by its failure to educate, feed and vaccinate its children today. This failure will haunt India for many decades to come. Sure, China has many similar problems, with growing gaps between rich and poor and an interior that is being left far behind. But rural Chinese schools provide a basic education, including solid math and science skills.
India’s boom is real, and its overall growth rate puts India right at China’s heels. Its middle class is expanding, governance is improving, and the transformation is one of the most exciting things going on in the world today. The 21st century will belong to Asia, and young Americans need to study Asia, live in it and learn its languages.
But Indians refer to the “Bimaru” states — a play on the word “bimar,” which means “sick” in Hindi. The Bimaru states are Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, and Orissa deserves a spot as well.
In the Bimaru states, there is no boom. “We see nothing here,” said Vidya Sagar Gupta, a businessman who once operated many factories in northern Bihar. Now he has closed most of
them down and is trying to sell his properties.
Electricity is unreliable, crime is growing, corruption is endless, the agricultural sector is in crisis, supplies are difficult to get, and criminal gangs and politics are so interwoven that it is difficult to foresee improvements, he says.
For anyone who wants to see this country succeed, a visit to rural India is a bitter disappointment. Ela Bhatt, who founded the Self-Employed Women’s Association, a union of poor women that now has nearly one million members, told me that India’s economy is profoundly limited: “It is like a car having one motorized tire, and the others are cart wheels.”
So in the great race of this century, the race to see which country will lead the world in 2100, I’m still betting on China for now. I’m having my kids learn Chinese, not Hindi (or Indian English, a remarkable language in its own right).
Until India’s economic boom becomes much more broadly based, and until Indian schools manage to teach their students, this country will continue to waste its precious brainpower and won’t achieve a fraction of what it should.
Our Achilles heel
MEN & IDEAS
Our Achilles heel
9 Sep 2007,
0239 hrs IST,
Gurcharan Das
A friend of mine, who hikes frequently in the Himalayas, showed me a solar torch the other day which gives light for seven hours before you need to recharge it in the sun. It has a hook for hanging and can light up a small room. My friend uses it for camping. But what a boon, i thought, for our 250,000 villages without electricity and the millions of school children who can't do homework at night and village women who fear walking after dark.
I googled the maker of the torch and discovered an inspiring story about how to be both a good and an effective human being. Mark Bent, an American, worked for 20 years in Africa and saw the waste behind government aid programs. He came home and invented what he calls the BoGo solar torch. BoGo means 'Buy One, Give One'. When you buy one flashlight for Rs 1,000, Mark gives one at half price to NGOs in Africa, who give it to villagers at a nominal price. Mark makes the torches in China to keep costs low. The story is remarkable not because Mark is a 'do-gooder' but because he has found an innovative and sustainable way to profit from the rich and benefit the poor.
Rich campers bring light to African villagers. I hope some NGO in India will google Mark and begin distributing these torches here. Now, why couldn't one of our boys or girls invent and market this lamp? The answer, of course, is our education system, which stifles all creativity through rote learning. It was modelled on the British system, but the British have moved on and reformed theirs, partly under American inspiration. But our kids are still stuck in a world of cramming and coaching classes.
The disease lies in the lack of autonomy. The ministry of HRD and its children, University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) have a stranglehold. A college cannot decide what courses to teach, what fees to charge and what salaries to pay its professors. How could creativity emerge from this servitude? Creating new universities, as the PM proposes, is not the answer unless you give them autonomy. Forget creativity, Indian companies are frightened by the shortage of basic skills which is currently driving up salaries unhealthily. Of the 400,000 new engineers that graduate each year, roughly 100,000 have the skills to enter the job market. It is tragic that over 400,000 students strive for 6,000 IIT and IIM seats annually.
The answer, of course, is to increase the supply of good colleges. As it is, we lose 160,000 students to foreign universities and parents pay $3 billion in fees and costs. Indian 'edupreneurs' and foreign universities have repeatedly tried to start high quality campuses but the HRD ministry's 'licence raj' drives them away. AICTE even wants to close down the prestigious, private Indian School of Business which offers a better education than an IIM. The draft foreign universities bill doesn't provide autonomy either and ensures that no decent foreign university will enter India. Our education system is our Achilles heel and we will not spawn Mark Bents until we do a 1991 on HRD and unbind India's education. Meanwhile, I console myself in knowing that there are individuals like my friend, N S Raghavan, who is using part of his Infosys fortune to incubate entrepreneurs at the IIM Bangalore. He will make a difference and modest breakthroughs like Mark Bent's will contribute more to human happiness than either the massive aid programs of governments or the soul-killing mediocrity of our universities.
Our Achilles heel
9 Sep 2007,
0239 hrs IST,
Gurcharan Das
A friend of mine, who hikes frequently in the Himalayas, showed me a solar torch the other day which gives light for seven hours before you need to recharge it in the sun. It has a hook for hanging and can light up a small room. My friend uses it for camping. But what a boon, i thought, for our 250,000 villages without electricity and the millions of school children who can't do homework at night and village women who fear walking after dark.
I googled the maker of the torch and discovered an inspiring story about how to be both a good and an effective human being. Mark Bent, an American, worked for 20 years in Africa and saw the waste behind government aid programs. He came home and invented what he calls the BoGo solar torch. BoGo means 'Buy One, Give One'. When you buy one flashlight for Rs 1,000, Mark gives one at half price to NGOs in Africa, who give it to villagers at a nominal price. Mark makes the torches in China to keep costs low. The story is remarkable not because Mark is a 'do-gooder' but because he has found an innovative and sustainable way to profit from the rich and benefit the poor.
Rich campers bring light to African villagers. I hope some NGO in India will google Mark and begin distributing these torches here. Now, why couldn't one of our boys or girls invent and market this lamp? The answer, of course, is our education system, which stifles all creativity through rote learning. It was modelled on the British system, but the British have moved on and reformed theirs, partly under American inspiration. But our kids are still stuck in a world of cramming and coaching classes.
The disease lies in the lack of autonomy. The ministry of HRD and its children, University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) have a stranglehold. A college cannot decide what courses to teach, what fees to charge and what salaries to pay its professors. How could creativity emerge from this servitude? Creating new universities, as the PM proposes, is not the answer unless you give them autonomy. Forget creativity, Indian companies are frightened by the shortage of basic skills which is currently driving up salaries unhealthily. Of the 400,000 new engineers that graduate each year, roughly 100,000 have the skills to enter the job market. It is tragic that over 400,000 students strive for 6,000 IIT and IIM seats annually.
The answer, of course, is to increase the supply of good colleges. As it is, we lose 160,000 students to foreign universities and parents pay $3 billion in fees and costs. Indian 'edupreneurs' and foreign universities have repeatedly tried to start high quality campuses but the HRD ministry's 'licence raj' drives them away. AICTE even wants to close down the prestigious, private Indian School of Business which offers a better education than an IIM. The draft foreign universities bill doesn't provide autonomy either and ensures that no decent foreign university will enter India. Our education system is our Achilles heel and we will not spawn Mark Bents until we do a 1991 on HRD and unbind India's education. Meanwhile, I console myself in knowing that there are individuals like my friend, N S Raghavan, who is using part of his Infosys fortune to incubate entrepreneurs at the IIM Bangalore. He will make a difference and modest breakthroughs like Mark Bent's will contribute more to human happiness than either the massive aid programs of governments or the soul-killing mediocrity of our universities.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Japan's subtle etiquette code
By Kumiko Makihara
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
TOKYO: Every day in Japan I face etiquette dilemmas.
My son returns from camp with another child's clothes. Do I ship them back dirty, which seems sort of mean, or do I launder them, which would cause the owner to lose face?
My neighbor tells me to leave my phone number in her letter box if I want to occasionally receive baked goods from her. It seems forward of me to leave her my number, but I don't want to ignore her request.
I'm in a crowded train, and my nose is running. Blowing is considered disgusting here, but the alternative is disgusting to me.
From the proper degree of a bow (15 to 45 degrees depending on occasion) to how a lady eats a rice cracker (broken by hand into bite size pieces with handkerchief on lap), a\ncomplex and subtle etiquette code dictates the proper way to do everything in Japan.
Japanese embrace the rules because following them assures there will be no offensive or embarrassing moments. My parents implanted the code into me from childhood, warning that I would be shunned if I didn't learn the protocol. But my reflexes are rusty from having lived abroad for many years.
Judging from the large section of manners books at my local bookstore, I'm not the only lost, rude soul. Increased social interaction and new technology like cellphones and computers have diversified scenarios giving rise to more rules and a big demand for the latest etiquette guides.
Last year, long-time former bureaucrat Mariko Bando set out to write a book on how professional women could maintain their emotional dignity in a male-dominated workplace, but her publishers urged her to cover etiquette tips like attire, manners and polite language. She complied, and "Dignity of a Woman" has become a best seller.
Manners books traditionally focused on "kan kon sou sai" - literally meaning the rites of coming of age - weddings, funerals and ancestor worship. Now they offer titles like "PTA Dictionary for Getting Along with Others and Writing Notes," which tells you how to inform the teacher that your child has to sit out gym class or how to wiggle out of committee duties. A letter-writing guide offers tips on composing an apology note to a store where you have shoplifted two packs of gum and some AA batteries, (express deep remorse even if the items are small) and declining an offer for a second hand piano (blame it on a scatterbrained child who now wants to take swimming instead).
It doesn't all end in this lifetime either. Funeral preparation books offer pointers on how to be well-regarded after death. Want to make a phone call? I found four books on the store shelf devoted exclusively to phone manners with tips like no walking and talking on a cellphone because the other party might detect a roughness of breath or hear your footsteps. If you buy the phone guide, you might need a language handbook, too, to guide you through the\nmaze of honorifics. I was recently tongue-tied with confusion on the phone with\nmy father's secretary when trying to tell her my father didn't need to call me\nback. I must use respectful forms when addressing her but humble language when referring to my father or myself.
There are plenty of\netiquette guides for foreign visitors, but it's probably most important to try to do as others do instead of flaunting what you think you may know. On several\noccasions I've seen foreigners striking wooden chopsticks against each other, smug that they know how to smooth off any splinters. That's actually a crass gesture. These people probably don't know that there are more than 30 faux pas chopsticks maneuvers each with their proper term like sucking and wandering.
A likely infraction that is a topic of much discussion these days is applying makeup on trains. It's become a common sight to see young women drawing their eyeliner and\nbrushing on mascara with great dexterity in crowded morning commuter trains. While critics say grooming is a private act that others don't wish to observe,"there are still no rules for anonymous situations," says Bando.
It doesn't all end in this lifetime either. Funeral preparation books offer pointers on how to be well-regarded after death.
Want to make a phone call? I found four books on the store shelf devoted exclusively to phone manners with tips like no walking and talking on a cellphone because the other party might detect a roughness of breath or hear your footsteps. If you buy the phone guide, you might need a language handbook, too, to guide you through the maze of honorifics. I was recently tongue-tied with confusion on the phone with my father's secretary when trying to tell her my father didn't need to call me back. I must use respectful forms when addressing her but humble language when referring to my father or myself.
There are plenty of etiquette guides for foreign visitors, but it's probably most important to try to do as others do instead of flaunting what you think you may know. On several occasions I've seen foreigners striking wooden chopsticks against each other, smug that they know how to smooth off any splinters. That's actually a crass gesture. These people probably don't know that there are more than 30 faux pas chopsticks maneuvers each with their proper term like sucking and wandering.
A likely infraction that is a topic of much discussion these days is applying makeup on trains. It's become a common sight to see young women drawing their eyeliner and brushing on mascara with great dexterity in crowded morning commuter trains. While critics say grooming is a private act that others don't wish to observe, "there are still no rules for anonymous situations," says Bando.
I'm still trying to get my bearings back, and my current strategy is to overcompensate. I laundered and ironed the scraggly camp clothes and took a gift with me when I presented my neighbor with my phone number. On the packed train, I dabbed my nose and swallowed the rest. All for the sake of politesse.
Kumiko Makihara is a freelance writer based in Tokyo.
By Kumiko Makihara
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
TOKYO: Every day in Japan I face etiquette dilemmas.
My son returns from camp with another child's clothes. Do I ship them back dirty, which seems sort of mean, or do I launder them, which would cause the owner to lose face?
My neighbor tells me to leave my phone number in her letter box if I want to occasionally receive baked goods from her. It seems forward of me to leave her my number, but I don't want to ignore her request.
I'm in a crowded train, and my nose is running. Blowing is considered disgusting here, but the alternative is disgusting to me.
From the proper degree of a bow (15 to 45 degrees depending on occasion) to how a lady eats a rice cracker (broken by hand into bite size pieces with handkerchief on lap), a\ncomplex and subtle etiquette code dictates the proper way to do everything in Japan.
Japanese embrace the rules because following them assures there will be no offensive or embarrassing moments. My parents implanted the code into me from childhood, warning that I would be shunned if I didn't learn the protocol. But my reflexes are rusty from having lived abroad for many years.
Judging from the large section of manners books at my local bookstore, I'm not the only lost, rude soul. Increased social interaction and new technology like cellphones and computers have diversified scenarios giving rise to more rules and a big demand for the latest etiquette guides.
Last year, long-time former bureaucrat Mariko Bando set out to write a book on how professional women could maintain their emotional dignity in a male-dominated workplace, but her publishers urged her to cover etiquette tips like attire, manners and polite language. She complied, and "Dignity of a Woman" has become a best seller.
Manners books traditionally focused on "kan kon sou sai" - literally meaning the rites of coming of age - weddings, funerals and ancestor worship. Now they offer titles like "PTA Dictionary for Getting Along with Others and Writing Notes," which tells you how to inform the teacher that your child has to sit out gym class or how to wiggle out of committee duties. A letter-writing guide offers tips on composing an apology note to a store where you have shoplifted two packs of gum and some AA batteries, (express deep remorse even if the items are small) and declining an offer for a second hand piano (blame it on a scatterbrained child who now wants to take swimming instead).
It doesn't all end in this lifetime either. Funeral preparation books offer pointers on how to be well-regarded after death. Want to make a phone call? I found four books on the store shelf devoted exclusively to phone manners with tips like no walking and talking on a cellphone because the other party might detect a roughness of breath or hear your footsteps. If you buy the phone guide, you might need a language handbook, too, to guide you through the\nmaze of honorifics. I was recently tongue-tied with confusion on the phone with\nmy father's secretary when trying to tell her my father didn't need to call me\nback. I must use respectful forms when addressing her but humble language when referring to my father or myself.
There are plenty of\netiquette guides for foreign visitors, but it's probably most important to try to do as others do instead of flaunting what you think you may know. On several\noccasions I've seen foreigners striking wooden chopsticks against each other, smug that they know how to smooth off any splinters. That's actually a crass gesture. These people probably don't know that there are more than 30 faux pas chopsticks maneuvers each with their proper term like sucking and wandering.
A likely infraction that is a topic of much discussion these days is applying makeup on trains. It's become a common sight to see young women drawing their eyeliner and\nbrushing on mascara with great dexterity in crowded morning commuter trains. While critics say grooming is a private act that others don't wish to observe,"there are still no rules for anonymous situations," says Bando.
It doesn't all end in this lifetime either. Funeral preparation books offer pointers on how to be well-regarded after death.
Want to make a phone call? I found four books on the store shelf devoted exclusively to phone manners with tips like no walking and talking on a cellphone because the other party might detect a roughness of breath or hear your footsteps. If you buy the phone guide, you might need a language handbook, too, to guide you through the maze of honorifics. I was recently tongue-tied with confusion on the phone with my father's secretary when trying to tell her my father didn't need to call me back. I must use respectful forms when addressing her but humble language when referring to my father or myself.
There are plenty of etiquette guides for foreign visitors, but it's probably most important to try to do as others do instead of flaunting what you think you may know. On several occasions I've seen foreigners striking wooden chopsticks against each other, smug that they know how to smooth off any splinters. That's actually a crass gesture. These people probably don't know that there are more than 30 faux pas chopsticks maneuvers each with their proper term like sucking and wandering.
A likely infraction that is a topic of much discussion these days is applying makeup on trains. It's become a common sight to see young women drawing their eyeliner and brushing on mascara with great dexterity in crowded morning commuter trains. While critics say grooming is a private act that others don't wish to observe, "there are still no rules for anonymous situations," says Bando.
I'm still trying to get my bearings back, and my current strategy is to overcompensate. I laundered and ironed the scraggly camp clothes and took a gift with me when I presented my neighbor with my phone number. On the packed train, I dabbed my nose and swallowed the rest. All for the sake of politesse.
Kumiko Makihara is a freelance writer based in Tokyo.
Poor Calcutta!
September 5, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Poor Calcutta
By CHITRITA BANERJI
Cambridge, Mass.
ONE morning in January 1997, I walked into my office at a nonprofit group here after a visit to my hometown, Calcutta. A very senior colleague, whom I would have, until then, characterized as being the “sensitive” sort, greeted me: “Welcome back. And how is everyone in Calcutta — still starving and being looked after by Mother Teresa?”
At first I thought this might be a bad attempt at humor, but I soon realized that my colleague was seriously inquiring about my city’s suffering humanity and its ministering angel — the only images Calcutta evoked for him and countless others in the West. When Mother Teresa died eight months later, 10 years ago today, foreign dignitaries and the Western news media descended on the city. The reports on the funeral portrayed a city filled with starving orphans, wretched slums and dying people abandoned on the streets, except for the fortunate ones rescued by Mother Teresa.
They described a city I didn’t recognize as the place where I had spent the first 20 years of my life. There was no mention of Calcutta’s beautiful buildings and educated middle class, or its history of religious tolerance and its vibrant literary and cultural life. Besides, other Indian cities also have their share of poverty, slums and destitution, as would be expected in a country where a third of the population lives on $1 a day — for example, more than half of Mumbai residents live in slums, far more than in Calcutta. Why were they not equally damned in the eyes of the world?
The answer was that none of them served for seven decades as the adopted home base for a saintly European crusader whose work could succeed only if it was disproportionately magnified. It was an instance of spin in which the news media colluded — voluntarily or not — with a religious figure who was as shrewd as any fund-raising politician, as is evident from the global expansion of her organization. For Calcutta natives like me, however, Mother Teresa’s charity also evoked the colonial past — she felt she knew what was best for the third world masses, whether it was condemning abortion or offering to convert those who were on the verge of death.
After the funeral, I comforted myself with the possibility that Mother Teresa’s death might redress the balance of perception. Calcutta, once called the second city of the British Empire, would again be seen as a pulsing metropolis of 14 million that has survived despite being twice slammed by huge influxes of refugees, once after the partition of 1947 and again during the Bangladesh war of independence in 1971. In the absence of a missionary who had never allowed her compassion to be de-linked from Catholic dogma, I hoped the world would recognize that Calcutta has not merely survived, it has battled tremendous odds without losing its soul.
Ten years and one beatification later, however, the relentless hagiography of the Catholic Church and the peculiar tunnel vision of the news media continue to equate Calcutta with the twinned entities of destitution and succor publicized by Mother Teresa. With cultish fervor, her organization, the Missionaries of Charity, promotes her as an icon of mercy. Meanwhile, countless unheralded local organizations work for the needy without the glamour of a Nobel Prize or of impending sainthood.
Charity need not be inconsistent with clarity. Calcutta is a modern Indian city where poverty and inequality coexist with measurably increasing prosperity, expanding opportunities, cautious optimism and, above all, pride in its unique character. Mother Teresa might have meant well, but she furthered her mission by robbing Calcutta of its richly nuanced identity while pretending to love it.
Chitrita Banerji is the author, most recently, of “Eating India: An Odyssey Into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/opinion/05banerji.html?_r=2&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=print
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
India at 60 - An interesting read!
India's democratic path
By Salil Tripathi
International Herald TribuneTuesday, August 14, 2007
At their blood-soaked independence 60 years ago this week, India and Pakistan embarked on unique experiments in nation-building. Pakistan was to be a nation bringing together diverse languages, ethnic groups and cultures, united by a common faith - Islam - even if its eastern and western wings were miles apart, with India, a neighbor it considered hostile, straddled in between.The Indian dream was to unite an even more diverse body of ethnicities, languages, castes, cultures and religions, to mold a country built on the ideals of secular, liberal democracy.The difference between the two visions is so fundamental that the many ties that bind the two nations - music, cinema, food, cricket, culture and a shared history - cannot overcome it.Pakistan made religion its centerpiece, making people subservient to the state. India, despite its overt religiosity, officially swore by secularism, and its institutions strove to keep its people politically free for most of its post-independence history - with the exception of the "Emergency" of 1975-1977, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended key provisions of the Constitution and jailed many of her opponents.
There was never a race between the two countries: India is, after all, many times bigger and has far more people - but the world, and Pakistan, saw it as a rivalry. The politics of the Cold War polarized that thinking, with Pakistan being a U.S. ally, and for some time a member of Central Treaty Organization; India opting ostensibly for nonalignment, but in essence, supporting Soviet positions on many issues.Those ties notwithstanding, it was India's great frustration that it could not decouple itself from the politics of the subcontinent.Strangely, it was the tit-for-tat nuclear tests of 1998 - and not the original Indian nuclear test of 1974 - that helped India sail away from being linked with Pakistan. By making its nuclear program overt, Pakistan thought it secured parity; instead, it became the subject of international pressure. India escaped much censure because by then India was already a booming economy; its businesses critical in the globalized world of multinational business and trade; and what India considers its crown jewels - its rule of law, its English-speaking elite, and its dynamic private sector - were being recognized internationally.
To be sure, both had internal strife. India in Punjab, Kashmir, and its northeast; Pakistan had skirmishes in its frontier provinces, its business capital Karachi becoming the capital of lawlessness, and its social structure disintegrated after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan of 1979, which helped consolidate the nearly decade-long rule of General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, under whose leadership Pakistan embraced a form of Islam that its founding fathers had never bargained for.One could argue Pakistan had little choice, once it had chosen to be a theocracy. The more Pakistani society modernized, the more its people sought freedom, the more Pakistan would begin to look like India. But being like India was not the point of the Partition: The point was to create a home for the subcontinent's Muslims, who were presumably unsafe in India. But while India has a shameful record of riots in which many Muslims have died, and many Muslims lead lives of utter destitution (but then so do many Hindus and others, too), it was also electing Muslims as presidents, appointing them to head the air force, to the supreme court, and Muslims dominated Bollywood, played cricket for India, and founded multimillion dollar companies.
In Pakistan, the record of advances for minorities was poorer.Faith alone could not bind Pakistan, in any case. East Pakistan went its own way, becoming Bangladesh in 1971 after a civil war that killed over 300,000 civilians. In 1984, the astute British author of Pakistani origin, Tariq Ali, raised pertinent questions about his former home in a book called "Can Pakistan Survive?" A year later, M. J. Akbar, an Indian writer, wrote a sobering yet sunny book about India, called "The Siege Within," suggesting that despite its internal turmoil, the country would hold together because its democratic form permitted dissent.Today, India connotes images of the hi-tech city of Bangalore and shopping malls of Gurgaon; Pakistan reminds many foreigners of madrasas from where militants emerge. Indeed, that is a caricature, but like all clichés, there is a grain of truth in these images.Clearly everything isn't sound with India. Maoists control stretches of Indian hinterland; the caste wars have not abated; bomb blasts occur periodically; and there are concerns over perceived rise in inequality. (In fact, after 15 years of economic reforms, India has lifted more people out of absolute poverty than at any time in its history). India has succeeded, not only to break free from being compared constantly with Pakistan, but it is being taken reasonably seriously in world affairs. The nuclear agreement between India and the United States and the important role India plays in current global trade negotiations are examples of that.
What brought about that change in perceptions?National choices may provide the key. Pakistan opted for religion and military, two forces that require submission to authority, to bind the nation. The corruption of its military could not be questioned; and its flawed democratic leaders rarely given the opportunity to complete their terms.In India, such choices were left for the people to decide. The military largely remained in the barracks, brought out on the Republic Day in January every year like family silver for display. Of course, it suppressed - often brutally - insurgencies in the northeast, Punjab and Kashmir. But those insurgencies existed in the first place because India did not fully extend its democracy to those regions.Elsewhere, India trusted the basics of democracy - where people could, and did, vote out governments, and elect leaders who more accurately represented their interests.When political pressure increased, India had the mechanism that permitted the steam to be let off. Pakistan did not, except rarely - which is why the recent reinstatement of Judge Iftikhar Chaudhry to the Supreme Court, whom President Pervez Musharraf clearly does not like, is all the more remarkable.
The rise of China has resurrected the old debate: Does democracy help, or hinder development? The Chinese compromise - that the rice bowl will be full but the peasants shouldn't ask questions - has seemed attractive to many autocrats around the world, who portray freedom of expression and civil liberties as inconvenient luxuries poor countries cannot afford.But Pakistan shows that an absence of democracy does not mean sustained high growth or a stable order. And India's old excuse - that being democratic it can't grow fast - is also wearing thin. It is among the fastest-growing economies in the world today. What keeps nations free and prosperous, then, are those fundamental freedoms - to think, to speak, to trade?Pakistan has been ruled for nearly half its 60 years by unelected generals and its economy still runs along feudal, monopolistic lines. For its first 45 years, Indians had abundant political freedom, but limited economic freedom. (Wealthy Indians could have any car they wanted, so long as it was a white Ambassador). That has changed, and its people are free, and its businesses are becoming so. That's the real meaning of freedom and the ultimate lesson of this anniversary, for both nations, and beyond.
Salil Tripathi is a London-based writer.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/14/opinion/edtripathi.php
By Salil Tripathi
International Herald TribuneTuesday, August 14, 2007
At their blood-soaked independence 60 years ago this week, India and Pakistan embarked on unique experiments in nation-building. Pakistan was to be a nation bringing together diverse languages, ethnic groups and cultures, united by a common faith - Islam - even if its eastern and western wings were miles apart, with India, a neighbor it considered hostile, straddled in between.The Indian dream was to unite an even more diverse body of ethnicities, languages, castes, cultures and religions, to mold a country built on the ideals of secular, liberal democracy.The difference between the two visions is so fundamental that the many ties that bind the two nations - music, cinema, food, cricket, culture and a shared history - cannot overcome it.Pakistan made religion its centerpiece, making people subservient to the state. India, despite its overt religiosity, officially swore by secularism, and its institutions strove to keep its people politically free for most of its post-independence history - with the exception of the "Emergency" of 1975-1977, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended key provisions of the Constitution and jailed many of her opponents.
There was never a race between the two countries: India is, after all, many times bigger and has far more people - but the world, and Pakistan, saw it as a rivalry. The politics of the Cold War polarized that thinking, with Pakistan being a U.S. ally, and for some time a member of Central Treaty Organization; India opting ostensibly for nonalignment, but in essence, supporting Soviet positions on many issues.Those ties notwithstanding, it was India's great frustration that it could not decouple itself from the politics of the subcontinent.Strangely, it was the tit-for-tat nuclear tests of 1998 - and not the original Indian nuclear test of 1974 - that helped India sail away from being linked with Pakistan. By making its nuclear program overt, Pakistan thought it secured parity; instead, it became the subject of international pressure. India escaped much censure because by then India was already a booming economy; its businesses critical in the globalized world of multinational business and trade; and what India considers its crown jewels - its rule of law, its English-speaking elite, and its dynamic private sector - were being recognized internationally.
To be sure, both had internal strife. India in Punjab, Kashmir, and its northeast; Pakistan had skirmishes in its frontier provinces, its business capital Karachi becoming the capital of lawlessness, and its social structure disintegrated after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan of 1979, which helped consolidate the nearly decade-long rule of General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, under whose leadership Pakistan embraced a form of Islam that its founding fathers had never bargained for.One could argue Pakistan had little choice, once it had chosen to be a theocracy. The more Pakistani society modernized, the more its people sought freedom, the more Pakistan would begin to look like India. But being like India was not the point of the Partition: The point was to create a home for the subcontinent's Muslims, who were presumably unsafe in India. But while India has a shameful record of riots in which many Muslims have died, and many Muslims lead lives of utter destitution (but then so do many Hindus and others, too), it was also electing Muslims as presidents, appointing them to head the air force, to the supreme court, and Muslims dominated Bollywood, played cricket for India, and founded multimillion dollar companies.
In Pakistan, the record of advances for minorities was poorer.Faith alone could not bind Pakistan, in any case. East Pakistan went its own way, becoming Bangladesh in 1971 after a civil war that killed over 300,000 civilians. In 1984, the astute British author of Pakistani origin, Tariq Ali, raised pertinent questions about his former home in a book called "Can Pakistan Survive?" A year later, M. J. Akbar, an Indian writer, wrote a sobering yet sunny book about India, called "The Siege Within," suggesting that despite its internal turmoil, the country would hold together because its democratic form permitted dissent.Today, India connotes images of the hi-tech city of Bangalore and shopping malls of Gurgaon; Pakistan reminds many foreigners of madrasas from where militants emerge. Indeed, that is a caricature, but like all clichés, there is a grain of truth in these images.Clearly everything isn't sound with India. Maoists control stretches of Indian hinterland; the caste wars have not abated; bomb blasts occur periodically; and there are concerns over perceived rise in inequality. (In fact, after 15 years of economic reforms, India has lifted more people out of absolute poverty than at any time in its history). India has succeeded, not only to break free from being compared constantly with Pakistan, but it is being taken reasonably seriously in world affairs. The nuclear agreement between India and the United States and the important role India plays in current global trade negotiations are examples of that.
What brought about that change in perceptions?National choices may provide the key. Pakistan opted for religion and military, two forces that require submission to authority, to bind the nation. The corruption of its military could not be questioned; and its flawed democratic leaders rarely given the opportunity to complete their terms.In India, such choices were left for the people to decide. The military largely remained in the barracks, brought out on the Republic Day in January every year like family silver for display. Of course, it suppressed - often brutally - insurgencies in the northeast, Punjab and Kashmir. But those insurgencies existed in the first place because India did not fully extend its democracy to those regions.Elsewhere, India trusted the basics of democracy - where people could, and did, vote out governments, and elect leaders who more accurately represented their interests.When political pressure increased, India had the mechanism that permitted the steam to be let off. Pakistan did not, except rarely - which is why the recent reinstatement of Judge Iftikhar Chaudhry to the Supreme Court, whom President Pervez Musharraf clearly does not like, is all the more remarkable.
The rise of China has resurrected the old debate: Does democracy help, or hinder development? The Chinese compromise - that the rice bowl will be full but the peasants shouldn't ask questions - has seemed attractive to many autocrats around the world, who portray freedom of expression and civil liberties as inconvenient luxuries poor countries cannot afford.But Pakistan shows that an absence of democracy does not mean sustained high growth or a stable order. And India's old excuse - that being democratic it can't grow fast - is also wearing thin. It is among the fastest-growing economies in the world today. What keeps nations free and prosperous, then, are those fundamental freedoms - to think, to speak, to trade?Pakistan has been ruled for nearly half its 60 years by unelected generals and its economy still runs along feudal, monopolistic lines. For its first 45 years, Indians had abundant political freedom, but limited economic freedom. (Wealthy Indians could have any car they wanted, so long as it was a white Ambassador). That has changed, and its people are free, and its businesses are becoming so. That's the real meaning of freedom and the ultimate lesson of this anniversary, for both nations, and beyond.
Salil Tripathi is a London-based writer.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/14/opinion/edtripathi.php
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
About Shekar Kapur
The below piece is taken from one of the posts published by Shekhar Kapur on his blog: http://www.shekharkapur.com/blog/archives/2005/11/about_myself.htm#more
The crux of what he says about love echoes what Albert Camus says: That love is noble which is exceptional and short lived..
November 18, 2005 01:32 AM
About Myself
At 22, was an accountant in London long before I dreamt of bieng a film-maker ..
I was successful. But uncomfortable.
I remember strongly feeling the chasm between what I did and who I was. The young man at play (those were the swinging 70's don't forget), and the one at work were two completely different people. With almost a schizophrenic relationship with each other.
So I left accounting in search for a way to overcome that duality.
On the way I have been a model, an actor, a chat show host both in India and the UK, a commercials film maker both in India and Europe, and a film director, also in India and internationally. I also ran an entertainment TV channel, and was for a while a scuba diving instructor.
To find a way define every moment of my waking life as one complete whole, rather than one that is structured into different compartments. One complete emotional all encompassing feeling that embodied everything I did,felt and thought. I just wanted to express myself completely in everything that I did.
The journey turned out much much longer than I thought. It continues to this day. Because the duality existed not merely between work and play, but within work and play.
But on the way, I started to understand some things.
That the words 'truth', 'love' and 'compassion' took on different meanings from those boring idealistic interpretations that were rammed down our throats when we were kids.
There was power,I later discovered, in these concepts. The power to hold everything together. Like falling in love, I discovered.
All structures fall apart in the throes of the first passions of love. All duality dissapeared. Everything emcompassed by that one emotion. Bieng in the throes of love, even life and death encompassed by that one emotion.
Whenever I fell deeply in love, I lived the moment completely. That's what I realized it was all about. I felt a surge of courage I had not felt before. With that courage came such incredible fullfilment of that moment, thatI did not fear the next. Death too, at that time became acceptable. My 'cup of love' as they say, would be full.
But how does on stay in love all the time ? How does one continue this passion all the time ? If the love was derived from one singular person you could wreak havoc on their lives. I have done that before. And my own too. For I had not (atleast not at that time) learnt to 'let go' in love. I had not learnt that the attempt for permanence would utimately kill passion. That love was so much greater when lived in a womb of freedom. That there could no 'ownership' in love.
Thats where I began to understand the concepts of Meera's obsession for Krishna. There was no desire on Meera's part to have a singular relationship with Krishna. Or the Poetry of Rumi and his obsession for his friend. I discovered the difference between Obsession and Ownership. By directing all your passions to an imagined universal force, you could go on deriving from it. Forever. As long as you realized that the obsession for other person was only your conduit to the universe. To yourself.
And then u could continue to exist in that state of creative passion. I began to understand the concept of Prasadam. Where everything you create, you are merely the conduit. Everything you own, is merely an offering that is never complete. At a function in New York where I was awarded the critics award for Best Director, I said from the bottom of my heart :
" I did not direct the film. I am learning not to direct my films. I am learnng that I am merely the gardener. The garden grows. The sun shines. The rains come. The seeds sprout. the flowers bloom. And I watch. Having been the conduit through which the seeds were planted, I merely encompass the garden with love. In return the garden encompasses me with love. And together, we watch in wonder at the creation of the Universe's bounty"
I am learning the power of not imposing. I am learning the power throwing everything to the moment. I understand that is what the concept of Prasadam means.
and gradually, in this path, I try and let the duality, my individuality melt away. Will I suceed ?
Well, isn't that question once again reaffirming my individuality though ? Who is that 'I' that wants to suceed.
Shekhar
The crux of what he says about love echoes what Albert Camus says: That love is noble which is exceptional and short lived..
November 18, 2005 01:32 AM
About Myself
At 22, was an accountant in London long before I dreamt of bieng a film-maker ..
I was successful. But uncomfortable.
I remember strongly feeling the chasm between what I did and who I was. The young man at play (those were the swinging 70's don't forget), and the one at work were two completely different people. With almost a schizophrenic relationship with each other.
So I left accounting in search for a way to overcome that duality.
On the way I have been a model, an actor, a chat show host both in India and the UK, a commercials film maker both in India and Europe, and a film director, also in India and internationally. I also ran an entertainment TV channel, and was for a while a scuba diving instructor.
To find a way define every moment of my waking life as one complete whole, rather than one that is structured into different compartments. One complete emotional all encompassing feeling that embodied everything I did,felt and thought. I just wanted to express myself completely in everything that I did.
The journey turned out much much longer than I thought. It continues to this day. Because the duality existed not merely between work and play, but within work and play.
But on the way, I started to understand some things.
That the words 'truth', 'love' and 'compassion' took on different meanings from those boring idealistic interpretations that were rammed down our throats when we were kids.
There was power,I later discovered, in these concepts. The power to hold everything together. Like falling in love, I discovered.
All structures fall apart in the throes of the first passions of love. All duality dissapeared. Everything emcompassed by that one emotion. Bieng in the throes of love, even life and death encompassed by that one emotion.
Whenever I fell deeply in love, I lived the moment completely. That's what I realized it was all about. I felt a surge of courage I had not felt before. With that courage came such incredible fullfilment of that moment, thatI did not fear the next. Death too, at that time became acceptable. My 'cup of love' as they say, would be full.
But how does on stay in love all the time ? How does one continue this passion all the time ? If the love was derived from one singular person you could wreak havoc on their lives. I have done that before. And my own too. For I had not (atleast not at that time) learnt to 'let go' in love. I had not learnt that the attempt for permanence would utimately kill passion. That love was so much greater when lived in a womb of freedom. That there could no 'ownership' in love.
Thats where I began to understand the concepts of Meera's obsession for Krishna. There was no desire on Meera's part to have a singular relationship with Krishna. Or the Poetry of Rumi and his obsession for his friend. I discovered the difference between Obsession and Ownership. By directing all your passions to an imagined universal force, you could go on deriving from it. Forever. As long as you realized that the obsession for other person was only your conduit to the universe. To yourself.
And then u could continue to exist in that state of creative passion. I began to understand the concept of Prasadam. Where everything you create, you are merely the conduit. Everything you own, is merely an offering that is never complete. At a function in New York where I was awarded the critics award for Best Director, I said from the bottom of my heart :
" I did not direct the film. I am learning not to direct my films. I am learnng that I am merely the gardener. The garden grows. The sun shines. The rains come. The seeds sprout. the flowers bloom. And I watch. Having been the conduit through which the seeds were planted, I merely encompass the garden with love. In return the garden encompasses me with love. And together, we watch in wonder at the creation of the Universe's bounty"
I am learning the power of not imposing. I am learning the power throwing everything to the moment. I understand that is what the concept of Prasadam means.
and gradually, in this path, I try and let the duality, my individuality melt away. Will I suceed ?
Well, isn't that question once again reaffirming my individuality though ? Who is that 'I' that wants to suceed.
Shekhar
Monday, July 02, 2007
Giving credit where it's due
The Article below appeared in the New York Times/International Herald tribune (Dec 8, 2006) and is by the 2006 Nobel Peace prize winner Muhammad Yunus. Truly Inspiring...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DHAKA, Bangladesh
When I stepped out of my classroom at Chittagong University 30 years ago and into Jobra, the village next to my campus, I had only one goal in mind: to see if I could be of service to a few starving human beings.
Little did I know that those walks into Jobra village would lead me to walk across a stage in Oslo, Norway this Sunday afternoon to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. What I learned in that village changed my life and the lives of hundreds of millions of others around the world.
In 1976, I met Sufia Khatum, who made bamboo stools. This hardworking woman, who could neither read nor write, became my teacher. She didn't have the money to buy the bamboo for her stools and so she borrowed from a local moneylender on the condition that she sell the finished stools back to him at a price he set.
The moneylender's price barely covered the cost of the bamboo, leaving her with only a two- penny return on her work. This forced her to continue borrowing from the moneylender and placed her in a condition of slave labor. My students found 41 other people like Sufia who needed a grand total of $27 to free themselves from this debt trap. She and the other 41 microentrepreneurs were the first borrowers of what would become Grameen Bank, the institution with which I share the Nobel Peace Prize.
They, and our nearly 7 million current borrowers, who are the owners of the bank, will be with me on that stage receiving the prize. Ninety-six percent of Grameen's clients are women, affecting a total of 35 million family members. We have lent nearly $6 billion over the last 30 years in loans that average $130 each.
The $27 I lent to 42 people 30 years ago was my first lesson in a new kind of banking. The first rules to be broken were the rules of banking. We made small loans to women without collateral, not large loans to men with great holdings. We required no paperwork of our illiterate borrowers, only that they learn to sign their names, and we did our banking in the villages.
Our work is built on the realization that our society has not only marginalized the poor, but also marginalized women. That is why our housing loans are in the name of the woman and require that the title to the land on which the house will be built is also in the name of the woman. We have made nearly 600,000 housing loans on these conditions.
One of our sister organizations, GrameenPhone, has 10 million cellphone subscribers in Bangladesh. There is no revolution in getting cellphones to better-off people in poor countries. Our revolution, however, is placing cellphones in the hands of 300,000 village phone ladies who use the phone as a profitable business. The Nobel Peace Prize has established the link between poverty and peace, and underscored that poverty is a threat to peace. Microcredit plays a very important role in reducing poverty. From humble beginnings 30 years ago with a loan of $27 to 42 people in Jobra, this work has now spread rapidly worldwide, empowered by the Microcredit Summit, a global campaign committed to ensuring 100 million microcredit families rise above the $1 a day threshold by the end of 2015, thus lifting half a billion people out of extreme poverty.
She and the other 41 microentrepreneurs were the first borrowers of what would become Grameen Bank, the institution with which I share the Nobel Peace Prize.
They, and our nearly 7 million current borrowers, who are the owners of the bank, will be with me on that stage receiving the prize. Ninety-six percent of Grameen's clients are women, affecting a total of 35 million family members. We have lent nearly $6 billion over the last 30 years in loans that average $130 each.
The $27 I lent to 42 people 30 years ago was my first lesson in a new kind of banking. The first rules to be broken were the rules of banking. We made small loans to women without collateral, not large loans to men with great holdings. We required no paperwork of our illiterate borrowers, only that they learn to sign their names, and we did our banking in the villages.
Our work is built on the realization that our society has not only marginalized the poor, but also marginalized women. That is why our housing loans are in the name of the woman and require that the title to the land on which the house will be built is also in the name of the woman. We have made nearly 600,000 housing loans on these conditions.
One of our sister organizations, GrameenPhone, has 10 million cellphone subscribers in Bangladesh. There is no revolution in getting cellphones to better-off people in poor countries. Our revolution, however, is placing cellphones in the hands of 300,000 village phone ladies who use the phone as a profitable business.
The Nobel Peace Prize has established the link between poverty and peace, and underscored that poverty is a threat to peace. Microcredit plays a very important role in reducing poverty.
From humble beginnings 30 years ago with a loan of $27 to 42 people in Jobra, this work has now spread rapidly worldwide, empowered by the Microcredit Summit, a global campaign committed to ensuring 100 million microcredit families rise above the $1 a day threshold by the end of 2015, thus lifting half a billion people out of extreme poverty.
Poverty does not belong in a civilized society. It belongs in museums. We are committed to building a world in which our children and grandchildren will have to go to museums to see what poverty looked like..
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DHAKA, Bangladesh
When I stepped out of my classroom at Chittagong University 30 years ago and into Jobra, the village next to my campus, I had only one goal in mind: to see if I could be of service to a few starving human beings.
Little did I know that those walks into Jobra village would lead me to walk across a stage in Oslo, Norway this Sunday afternoon to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. What I learned in that village changed my life and the lives of hundreds of millions of others around the world.
In 1976, I met Sufia Khatum, who made bamboo stools. This hardworking woman, who could neither read nor write, became my teacher. She didn't have the money to buy the bamboo for her stools and so she borrowed from a local moneylender on the condition that she sell the finished stools back to him at a price he set.
The moneylender's price barely covered the cost of the bamboo, leaving her with only a two- penny return on her work. This forced her to continue borrowing from the moneylender and placed her in a condition of slave labor. My students found 41 other people like Sufia who needed a grand total of $27 to free themselves from this debt trap. She and the other 41 microentrepreneurs were the first borrowers of what would become Grameen Bank, the institution with which I share the Nobel Peace Prize.
They, and our nearly 7 million current borrowers, who are the owners of the bank, will be with me on that stage receiving the prize. Ninety-six percent of Grameen's clients are women, affecting a total of 35 million family members. We have lent nearly $6 billion over the last 30 years in loans that average $130 each.
The $27 I lent to 42 people 30 years ago was my first lesson in a new kind of banking. The first rules to be broken were the rules of banking. We made small loans to women without collateral, not large loans to men with great holdings. We required no paperwork of our illiterate borrowers, only that they learn to sign their names, and we did our banking in the villages.
Our work is built on the realization that our society has not only marginalized the poor, but also marginalized women. That is why our housing loans are in the name of the woman and require that the title to the land on which the house will be built is also in the name of the woman. We have made nearly 600,000 housing loans on these conditions.
One of our sister organizations, GrameenPhone, has 10 million cellphone subscribers in Bangladesh. There is no revolution in getting cellphones to better-off people in poor countries. Our revolution, however, is placing cellphones in the hands of 300,000 village phone ladies who use the phone as a profitable business. The Nobel Peace Prize has established the link between poverty and peace, and underscored that poverty is a threat to peace. Microcredit plays a very important role in reducing poverty. From humble beginnings 30 years ago with a loan of $27 to 42 people in Jobra, this work has now spread rapidly worldwide, empowered by the Microcredit Summit, a global campaign committed to ensuring 100 million microcredit families rise above the $1 a day threshold by the end of 2015, thus lifting half a billion people out of extreme poverty.
She and the other 41 microentrepreneurs were the first borrowers of what would become Grameen Bank, the institution with which I share the Nobel Peace Prize.
They, and our nearly 7 million current borrowers, who are the owners of the bank, will be with me on that stage receiving the prize. Ninety-six percent of Grameen's clients are women, affecting a total of 35 million family members. We have lent nearly $6 billion over the last 30 years in loans that average $130 each.
The $27 I lent to 42 people 30 years ago was my first lesson in a new kind of banking. The first rules to be broken were the rules of banking. We made small loans to women without collateral, not large loans to men with great holdings. We required no paperwork of our illiterate borrowers, only that they learn to sign their names, and we did our banking in the villages.
Our work is built on the realization that our society has not only marginalized the poor, but also marginalized women. That is why our housing loans are in the name of the woman and require that the title to the land on which the house will be built is also in the name of the woman. We have made nearly 600,000 housing loans on these conditions.
One of our sister organizations, GrameenPhone, has 10 million cellphone subscribers in Bangladesh. There is no revolution in getting cellphones to better-off people in poor countries. Our revolution, however, is placing cellphones in the hands of 300,000 village phone ladies who use the phone as a profitable business.
The Nobel Peace Prize has established the link between poverty and peace, and underscored that poverty is a threat to peace. Microcredit plays a very important role in reducing poverty.
From humble beginnings 30 years ago with a loan of $27 to 42 people in Jobra, this work has now spread rapidly worldwide, empowered by the Microcredit Summit, a global campaign committed to ensuring 100 million microcredit families rise above the $1 a day threshold by the end of 2015, thus lifting half a billion people out of extreme poverty.
Poverty does not belong in a civilized society. It belongs in museums. We are committed to building a world in which our children and grandchildren will have to go to museums to see what poverty looked like..
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Alleviating poverty with deep pockets!
Another encouraging trend that has stated in India..
India Rides the VC Wave
[Source:http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jun2007/gb20070629_887666_page_2.htm]
The fishermen from the Indian village of Chidambaram live a hard life. They sleep most of the day, then spend the night out on the water. For light during those dark hours, they have long depended on wobbly kerosene lamps that were easily blown out or, worse, toppled by the wind, risking deadly fires on their boats.
But these days, the kerosene lamps have been replaced with MightyLights, $50 solar-powered fixtures. "I save 100 rupees [$2.50] a month on kerosene alone," says K Kanimuri, a fisherman's wife, who also uses the MightyLight in her makeshift kitchen. With her savings, she now makes and sells candles.
Kanimuri and her fellow villagers may not know it, but the change in their fortunes is rooted in global finance. MightyLight is the brainchild of New Delhi-based Cosmos Ignite Innovations, a Stanford University-incubated startup by Matthew Scott and Amit Chugh that aims to provide simple products for the world's poorest people. And Cosmos got its start with backing from Vinod Khosla, a veteran Silicon Valley venture capitalist. Now Cosmos is in talks with other groups, including London-based 3i Group (TIGRF) and eBay (EBAY) founder Pierre Omidyar, for a second round of funding. "For us, it's not just the light, but using a sustainable model to affect social change," says Scott, chief executive of Cosmos.
Going Beyond Tech
Just a few years ago, most venture capital funds focused on pure technology companies operating in industrialized countries. But now, VCs are starting to look for opportunities in the developing world. They believe that it isn't just the tech plays that are scalable and sustainable. What was earlier shunned as small is suddenly a potential business opportunity.
For U.S.-based Matrix Partners (with $150 million under management), the low-hanging fruits in India now include companies in consumer services, health care, financial services, travel, media, and entertainment. Avnish Bajaj, managing director of Matrix Partners India, says the fund is interested in bottom-of-the-pyramid ventures in two potential areas—rural credit and finance, and agriculture-related industries including retail services.
"The base of the pyramid is often ignored, but offers a tremendous opportunity," says Katie Hill, the India representative of Acumen Fund, an $8 million fund backed by the Cisco Systems (CSCO) Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Acumen has put $1.5 million into Ziqitza, a Mumbai-based ambulance company that offers deep discounts on its service for residents of the city's vast slums. Shafi Matther, the founder of Ziqitza, says the funds will be used to stretch the company's ambulance fleet of two dozen vehicles to 70 in the next two years, and roll out service across India. It is already operational in the south Indian state of Kerala.
New Investment Waters
The trend is due in part to the amount of money chasing deals. VCs these days are forced to "invest in less-fished areas," says Sumir Chadha, managing director of U.S.-based Sequoia Capital India, an arm of the famed Silicon Valley VC firm. It was the 25%-to-30% profit potential of Hyderabad-based SKS Microfinance, which gives loans to poor entrepreneurs across India, that attracted Sequoia to invest $11.5 million in March, 2007.
A clincher was also SKS founder Vikram Akula's plan to leverage the microfinance distribution network to sell a range of products from insurance to consumer goods, mobile phones, and even home loans. "This is the next big thing for us," says Chadha. He claims that they are now actively looking at bottom-of-the-pyramid projects.
Or take IT-rural, set up by a group of software engineers from the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. A clutch of U.S.-based VCs are circling the startup technology venture, which develops solutions for rural India. The company doesn't just provide a bunch of computers and conduct basic-training classes, but has a Web site to educate farmers, giving them information about crop patterns, nature of soil, crop diseases, and remedies. IT-rural also has established backward and forward linkages, from buying the seeds to branding and retailing products.
The company has just finished a pilot project in the 30 villages of the Pulivendala district in Andhra Pradesh. According to Ramakrishna Thiruchelvam, the brain behind IT-rural, the project has covered about 30,000 people and 6,000 farmers cultivating more than 20,000 acres, "raising the GDP of the villages substantially." Some of their fruit has even made it to the shelves of Singapore's retail stores. IT-rural is currently negotiating with the state government to undertake similar IT-related projects in other villages.
Good Business, not Goodwill
But don't mistake such investments as charity. Clearstone Venture Partners, based in Santa Monica, Calif., has put $5 million into DigiBee Microsystems, which expects to pocket handsome profits by selling low-end mobile phones to poor Indians. "We are excited about consumers choosing differentiated products," says Rahul Khanna, a Clearstone director. And two California VC funds—Walden International and New Enterprise Associates—are considering a $5 million investment in Novatium, a Chennai-based company that has developed a $100 personal computer. The machine uses microprocessors similar to those found in cell phones, and Novatium hopes to offer a suite of products including Internet connectivity, application software, and services for $10 a month, according to founder Rajesh Jain. Novatium expects to sell 3 million machines, with the potential to reach 40 million households by 2010. Says Alok Singh, CEO of Novatium, "We have always been market-driven."
India Rides the VC Wave
[Source:http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jun2007/gb20070629_887666_page_2.htm]
The fishermen from the Indian village of Chidambaram live a hard life. They sleep most of the day, then spend the night out on the water. For light during those dark hours, they have long depended on wobbly kerosene lamps that were easily blown out or, worse, toppled by the wind, risking deadly fires on their boats.
But these days, the kerosene lamps have been replaced with MightyLights, $50 solar-powered fixtures. "I save 100 rupees [$2.50] a month on kerosene alone," says K Kanimuri, a fisherman's wife, who also uses the MightyLight in her makeshift kitchen. With her savings, she now makes and sells candles.
Kanimuri and her fellow villagers may not know it, but the change in their fortunes is rooted in global finance. MightyLight is the brainchild of New Delhi-based Cosmos Ignite Innovations, a Stanford University-incubated startup by Matthew Scott and Amit Chugh that aims to provide simple products for the world's poorest people. And Cosmos got its start with backing from Vinod Khosla, a veteran Silicon Valley venture capitalist. Now Cosmos is in talks with other groups, including London-based 3i Group (TIGRF) and eBay (EBAY) founder Pierre Omidyar, for a second round of funding. "For us, it's not just the light, but using a sustainable model to affect social change," says Scott, chief executive of Cosmos.
Going Beyond Tech
Just a few years ago, most venture capital funds focused on pure technology companies operating in industrialized countries. But now, VCs are starting to look for opportunities in the developing world. They believe that it isn't just the tech plays that are scalable and sustainable. What was earlier shunned as small is suddenly a potential business opportunity.
For U.S.-based Matrix Partners (with $150 million under management), the low-hanging fruits in India now include companies in consumer services, health care, financial services, travel, media, and entertainment. Avnish Bajaj, managing director of Matrix Partners India, says the fund is interested in bottom-of-the-pyramid ventures in two potential areas—rural credit and finance, and agriculture-related industries including retail services.
"The base of the pyramid is often ignored, but offers a tremendous opportunity," says Katie Hill, the India representative of Acumen Fund, an $8 million fund backed by the Cisco Systems (CSCO) Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Acumen has put $1.5 million into Ziqitza, a Mumbai-based ambulance company that offers deep discounts on its service for residents of the city's vast slums. Shafi Matther, the founder of Ziqitza, says the funds will be used to stretch the company's ambulance fleet of two dozen vehicles to 70 in the next two years, and roll out service across India. It is already operational in the south Indian state of Kerala.
New Investment Waters
The trend is due in part to the amount of money chasing deals. VCs these days are forced to "invest in less-fished areas," says Sumir Chadha, managing director of U.S.-based Sequoia Capital India, an arm of the famed Silicon Valley VC firm. It was the 25%-to-30% profit potential of Hyderabad-based SKS Microfinance, which gives loans to poor entrepreneurs across India, that attracted Sequoia to invest $11.5 million in March, 2007.
A clincher was also SKS founder Vikram Akula's plan to leverage the microfinance distribution network to sell a range of products from insurance to consumer goods, mobile phones, and even home loans. "This is the next big thing for us," says Chadha. He claims that they are now actively looking at bottom-of-the-pyramid projects.
Or take IT-rural, set up by a group of software engineers from the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. A clutch of U.S.-based VCs are circling the startup technology venture, which develops solutions for rural India. The company doesn't just provide a bunch of computers and conduct basic-training classes, but has a Web site to educate farmers, giving them information about crop patterns, nature of soil, crop diseases, and remedies. IT-rural also has established backward and forward linkages, from buying the seeds to branding and retailing products.
The company has just finished a pilot project in the 30 villages of the Pulivendala district in Andhra Pradesh. According to Ramakrishna Thiruchelvam, the brain behind IT-rural, the project has covered about 30,000 people and 6,000 farmers cultivating more than 20,000 acres, "raising the GDP of the villages substantially." Some of their fruit has even made it to the shelves of Singapore's retail stores. IT-rural is currently negotiating with the state government to undertake similar IT-related projects in other villages.
Good Business, not Goodwill
But don't mistake such investments as charity. Clearstone Venture Partners, based in Santa Monica, Calif., has put $5 million into DigiBee Microsystems, which expects to pocket handsome profits by selling low-end mobile phones to poor Indians. "We are excited about consumers choosing differentiated products," says Rahul Khanna, a Clearstone director. And two California VC funds—Walden International and New Enterprise Associates—are considering a $5 million investment in Novatium, a Chennai-based company that has developed a $100 personal computer. The machine uses microprocessors similar to those found in cell phones, and Novatium hopes to offer a suite of products including Internet connectivity, application software, and services for $10 a month, according to founder Rajesh Jain. Novatium expects to sell 3 million machines, with the potential to reach 40 million households by 2010. Says Alok Singh, CEO of Novatium, "We have always been market-driven."
Saturday, June 23, 2007
The Eternal Question
How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it, why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?
taken from the book, Repetition, Kierkegaard's literary character Young Man laments..
taken from the book, Repetition, Kierkegaard's literary character Young Man laments..
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Life in a Metro - My views...
That modern India has become mature enough to make and positively accept movies that are a reflection of the current state of society has come as a pleasant surprise to me.
Yes, movies like Mother India and Zanjeer did depict the malaise that was prevailing in India at that time. But that was yesteryear. Movies like these have been few and far in between – Rang De Basanti being the most recent example.
Being such an integral part of the “metro” culture, it was possible for me to understand the characters pretty well – and I felt that given such a huge starcast, the director did an excellent job of etching the characters, played by an exceptionally talented star cast - Irrfan Khan and Kay Kay being the obvious standouts. Sherman Joshi was also given reasonable screen time to prove himself yet again. Need I mention Konkana Sen? She, Irrfan Khan and Kay Kay have become brands of quality cinema in India. Shiney was superb too…I only wish he starts doing roles which showed other sides of his acting skills. He seems to be stuck in the I-am-always-so-screwed-in-life roles.
The music is excellent and the way the band (Pritam) keeps appearing sporadically throughout the film is very stylish and entertaining. Someone mentioned that this was inspired by Woody Allen movies. Maybe, but this is inspiration in a very positive way. The camera work was decent, but then such films are not made with an emphasis on cinematography. One of the critical success factors of such multi-story movies is the editing. And full marks to this film for this. The editing was extremely crisp and the stories were seamlessly bound together.
But let me to cut to the chase (whew!), the film shows what’s happening in metro India – infidelity being the most pervasive theme throughout the film. It’s not as if infidelity is a new phenomenon, but yes I tend to think that current lifestyles make it easier, which is alos what the fim implicitly shows - the heavy workloads and crazy ambitions are causing people to enter a vicious cycle where people spend more time at their workplaces, and lesser quality time at home, disrutping their relationships and making them look for other avenues...
The film ends on a happy-happy note – but let’s not kid ourselves; do relationships in real life necessarily see the light at the end of a dark, tumultuous tunnel? You take the call!
Yes, movies like Mother India and Zanjeer did depict the malaise that was prevailing in India at that time. But that was yesteryear. Movies like these have been few and far in between – Rang De Basanti being the most recent example.
Being such an integral part of the “metro” culture, it was possible for me to understand the characters pretty well – and I felt that given such a huge starcast, the director did an excellent job of etching the characters, played by an exceptionally talented star cast - Irrfan Khan and Kay Kay being the obvious standouts. Sherman Joshi was also given reasonable screen time to prove himself yet again. Need I mention Konkana Sen? She, Irrfan Khan and Kay Kay have become brands of quality cinema in India. Shiney was superb too…I only wish he starts doing roles which showed other sides of his acting skills. He seems to be stuck in the I-am-always-so-screwed-in-life roles.
The music is excellent and the way the band (Pritam) keeps appearing sporadically throughout the film is very stylish and entertaining. Someone mentioned that this was inspired by Woody Allen movies. Maybe, but this is inspiration in a very positive way. The camera work was decent, but then such films are not made with an emphasis on cinematography. One of the critical success factors of such multi-story movies is the editing. And full marks to this film for this. The editing was extremely crisp and the stories were seamlessly bound together.
But let me to cut to the chase (whew!), the film shows what’s happening in metro India – infidelity being the most pervasive theme throughout the film. It’s not as if infidelity is a new phenomenon, but yes I tend to think that current lifestyles make it easier, which is alos what the fim implicitly shows - the heavy workloads and crazy ambitions are causing people to enter a vicious cycle where people spend more time at their workplaces, and lesser quality time at home, disrutping their relationships and making them look for other avenues...
The film ends on a happy-happy note – but let’s not kid ourselves; do relationships in real life necessarily see the light at the end of a dark, tumultuous tunnel? You take the call!
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Working Class Hero
Note: I came across this poem on a blog of my friend Mr. Jindal (http://zombieworld.blogspot.com/)
Had to put it on mine too...
A tribute to the working class hero by the one and only Johnny Lenon!
As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty-odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function you're so full of fear
A working class hero is something to
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be
There's room at the top they're telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
A working class hero is something to be
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
Had to put it on mine too...
A tribute to the working class hero by the one and only Johnny Lenon!
As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty-odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function you're so full of fear
A working class hero is something to
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be
There's room at the top they're telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
A working class hero is something to be
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
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