Wednesday, February 28, 2007

And some crazy Calcuttan

Came up with this really interesting alphabet for 'bheto-Bangalis'.. read and laugh:

A is for Awpheesh (as in Office). This is where the
> average Kolkakatan goes and spends a day hard at work.
> And if he works for the 'Vest Bengal Gawrment' he will
> arrive at 10, wipe his forehead till 11, have a tea
> break at 12, throw around a few files at 12.30, break
> for lunch at 1, smoke an unfiltered cigarette at 2,
> break for tea at 3, sleep sitting down at 4 and go
> home at 4:30. It's a hard life!
>
> B is for Bhision. For some reason many Bengalis don't
> have good bhision. In fact in Kolkata most people are
> wearing spectacles all the time.
>
> C is for Chappell. Currently, this is the Bengali word
> for the Devil, for the worst form of evil. In the
> night mothers put their kids to sleep saying, 'Na
> ghumaley Chappell eshey dhorey niye jabe.'
>
> D is for Debashish or any other name starting with
> Deb. By an ancient law every fourth Bengali Child has
> to be named Debashish. So you have a Debashish
> everywhere and trying to get creative they are also
> called Deb, Debu, Deba with variations like Debopriyo,
> Deboprotim, Debojyoti, etc. thrown in at times.

E is for Eeesh. This is a very common Bengali
> exclamation made famous by Aishwarya Rai in the movie
> Devdas. It is estimated that on an average a Bengali,
> especially Bengali women, use eeesh 10,089 times every
> year. 'Ei Morechhey' is a close second to Eeesh.
>
> F is for Feeesh. These are creatures that swim in
> rivers and seas and are a favourite food of the
> Bengalis. Despite the fact that a fish market has such
> strong smells, with one sniff a Bengali knows if a
> fish is all right. If not, he will say 'eeesh what
> feeesh is theesh!'
>
> G is for Good name. Every Bengali boy will have a good
> name like Debashish or Deboprotim and a pet name like
> Motka, Bhombol, Thobla, etc. While every Bengali girls
> will have pet names like Tia, Tuktuki, Mishti, Khuku,
> et cetera.
>
> H is for Harmonium. This the Bengali equivalent of a
> rock guitar. Take four Bengalis and a Harmonium and
> you have the successors to The Bheatles!
>
> I is for lleesh. This is a feeesh with 10,000 bones
> which would kill any ordinary person, but which the
> Bengalis eat with releeesh!

J is for Jhola. No self-respecting Bengali is complete
> without his Jhola. It is a shapeless cloth bag where
> he keeps all his belongings and he fits an amazing
> number of things in. Even as you read this there are
> two million jholas bobbling around Kolkata, and they
> all look exactly the same! Note that 'Jhol' as in Maachher
> Jhol is a close second.
>
> K is for Kee Kaando !. It used to be the favourite
> Bengali exclamation till eeesh took over because of
> Aishwarya Rai (now Kee Kando's agent is trying to hire
> Bipasha Basu).
>
> L is for Lungi, the dress for all occasions. People
> in Kolkata manage to play football and cricket wearing
> it not to mention the daily trip in the morning to the
> local bajaar. Now there is talk of a lungi expedition
> to Mt Everest.
>
> M is for Minibus. These are dangerous half buses whose
> antics would effortlessly frighten the living
> daylights out of all James Bond stuntmen as well as
> Formula 1 race car drivers.

N is for Nangto. This is the Bengali word for Naked.
> It is the most interesting naked word in any language!
>
> O is for Oil. The Bengalis believe that a touch of
> mustard oil will cure anything from cold (oil in the
> nose), to earache (oil in the ear), to cough (oil on
> the throat) to piles (oil you know where!).
>
> P is for Phootball. This is always a phavourite
> phassion of the Kolkattan. Every Bengali is born an
> expert in this game. The two biggest clubs there are
> Mohunbagan and East Bengal and when they play the city
> comes to a stop.
>
> Q is for Queen. This really has nothing to do with the
> Bengalis or Kolkata, but it's the only Q word I could
> think of at this moment. There's also Quilt but they
> never use them in Kolkata.

R is for Robi Thakur. Many many years ago Rabindranath
> got the Nobel Prize. This has given the right to all
> Bengalis no matter where they are to frame their
> acceptance speeches as if they were directly related
> to the great poet and walk with their head held high.
> This also gives Bengalis the birthright to look down
> at Delhi and Mumbai and of course 'all
> non-Bengawlees' ! Note that 'Rawshogolla' comes a close
> second !
>
> S is for Shourav. Now that they finally produced a
> genuine cricketer and a captain, Bengalis think that
> he should be allowed to play until he is 70 years old.
> Of course they will see to it that he stays in good
> form by doing a little bit of 'jawggo' and 'maanot'.
>
> T is for Trams. Hundred years later there are still
> trams in Kolkata. Of course if you are in a hurry it's
> faster to walk.
>
> U is for Aambrela. When a Bengali baby is born he is
> handed one.

V is for Bhaayolence. Bengalis are the most
> non-violent violent people around. When an accident
> happens they will fold up their sleeves, shout and
> scream and curse and abuse, "Chherey De Bolchhi" but
> the last time someone actually hit someone was in
> 1979.
>
> W is for Water. For three months of the year the city
> is underwater and every year for the last 200 years
> the authorities are taken by surprise by this!
>
> X is for X'mas. It's very big in Kolkata, with Park
> Street fully lit up and all Bengalis agreeing that
> they must eat cake that day.
>
> Y is for Yesshtaarday. Which is always better than
> today for a Bengali (see R for Robi Thakur).
>
> Z is for Jebra, Joo, Jipper and Jylophone.

Some crazy Bangladeshis

came up with this dubbed version of the Matrix in short.. its quite hilarious.. do see:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7116422276487170544&q=bengali+matrix&hl=en

Monday, February 26, 2007

Culpable Genocide: The artificial famine, Bengal 1942-1943.

Culpable Genocide: The artificial famine, Bengal 1942-1943.

Background:
1941 was a trying time for the British everywhere. General (later Field Marschall) Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox was pounding the merry hell out of the Brits in the desert, El Alamein and Stalingrad were many months and many lives ahead, Barbarossa had not yet begun and things were bleak. India, or British India was also part of the war effort, not by choice, but by coercion (the Defence of India Act). The Indian freedom movement was divided between the choice of doing what seemed like the honourable thing and working to help the Allies during the war and taking full advantage of England’s preoccupation in Europe to push the cause for total independence further. Sentiments in the mainstream freedom movement, as exemplified by members of the Indian National Congress (INC) were leaning towards supporting the British, perhaps in an effort to gain goodwill and accelerate the process to a peaceful transition to Home Rule after the war.

Netaji and the INA:
A small faction, principally lead by the Bengali nationalist Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose leaned towards armed insurrection. On the 19th of January, 1941, Netaji escaped from house arrest in Calcutta and made a very circuitous journey to Berlin where he was received by von Rippentrop and the Wilhelmstrasse. Meanwhile the British Special Operations Executive, apart from its usual duties of helping the French Resistance put a dent in the Waffen SS’s shining armour, was also asked to assassinate this pesky Indian. They didn’t, or couldn’t, but this is only to indicate the seriousness with which the British regarded Netaji, even if he was ‘discredited’ within the Indian National Congress for holding ideas which ran counter to the non violent ideals of Mahatma Gandhi. (This led Netaji to raise the Forward Bloc, which is, till today, regarded as the most respected and idealistic of the Indian Left parties.) Eventually Netaji made his way to Japan where with the blessing of the Imperial Government, he was able to raise the Indian National Army. This army was composed mainly of Indian POWs from the British Indian Army. The story of the INA, with Netaji’s call of ‘tum mujhe khoon do, main tumhe azadi doonga’ (give me blood, and I will give you freedom) is something, which deserves to be better told elsewhere and separately. I have been talking about Netaji merely to drive home the point that the 1941-43 was a trying time for the Allies when Normandy and victory seemed impossibly far away.

Japanese action:
Japan had ‘awakened a vengeful sleeping giant’ on the 7th of December, 1941. But for the moment, the giant’s hammerstroke was stayed, and for the moment, fast carrier groups ruled the Eastern Pacific. On the 15th of February, 1942, Lt. General Arthur Percival surrendered the Allied garrison at Singapore to General Tomoyuki Yamashita. The Japanese had fielded a mere 30 000 troops, compared to almost 110 000 Allies. Their victory was in part due to far superior coordination and logistics and the Allies lack of armored regiments. The air battle was won on the wings of the superlative Mitsubishi Zero (which ruled the Pacific skies until much later in the war, when it was swept from the skies by vastly superior numbers of P38 Lightning’s and P51 Mustang’s).

Defence of India (DI) Act and stockpiling of rations:
Early in 1941, the British Indian Government started stockpiling rations for the armed forces. Midnapore had traditionally been a surplus district. It had also, traditionally been a hotbed of nationalist insurrection, giving the nation martyrs like Khudiram Bose and Satyendranath Basu. Thus, by procuring rice from Mednipore, the British could serve their (“legitimate”) wartime interest while starving this rebellious district to its knees. In the meantime, the autumn 1941 harvest had failed in eastern Mednipore (now Indian Mednipore). This did not dissuade the zealous British administration in carrying out its task, however. Procurement went on. On the 6th of April, 1942, buoyed by their successes in Singapore, the Malay peninsula and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Japanese launched raids against the Bay of Bengal ports of Kakinada and Vishakapatnam (present day Vizag). Fearful of a seaborne invasion from the Bay of Bengal, the British instituted a policy of denial of resources to the enemy along the delta. This quickly changed to a “scorched earth” policy, not much different from what Hitler did in the closing days of WW2 in Europe. In this riverine district, boats were frequently the only reliable mode of transportation. Those boats, which could not be moved deep inland (as far as 90 miles) as per British orders were sunk. Buses, trucks and other modes of land transport were withdrawn. Mednipore was cut off from the rest of the country with no way to move food, oil and any essential apart from British army resources. Needless to say, these resources were not available to the populace. Allied troops began massing in the district, anticipating a Japanese invasion. The Japanese had just taken Burma, cutting off cheap rice exports to Bengal. What they had provided, and provided in droves, instead of rice was an unending stream of refugees who would strain already scarce food supplies.

Elsewhere in the Nation; the Quit India Movement:
Talks between England’s delegate extraordinary, Stanford Cripps and leaders of the Indian freedom movement to obtain Indian cooperation during the war had failed. On the 14th of July, 1942, the Indian National Congress passed its resolution demanding “Poorna Swarajya”, or Total Freedom. This was not something that garnered unqualified support from all of India. The Communist Party of India, the Hindu Mahasabha did not fully support the Congress. The Muslim League, under the leadership of Muhammad Al Jinnah (who would become famous as the Quaid-e-Azam of Pakistan) found this an excellent opportunity to widen the wedge between Indians and Indians wider.. the wedge that would eventually culminate in the bloodshed of the Partition. On the 8th of August, 1942, Mahatma Gandhi started the Quit India Movement at the Bombay session of the INC. His call was for peaceful non-cooperation. The British responded quickly and savagely. The very next day, Gandhiji was imprisoned and senior members of the Congress Party Working Committee were arrested. Along with them, about 100, 000 common, or garden-variety freedom fighters were arrested nationwide. The Congress Party was banned, freedom fighters were publicly whipped, and every form of punitive action that a vengeful and fearful administration could bring to bear was used.

Insurrection in Mednipore:
Near the end of September, the people of Kanthi and Tamluk regions in Mednipore rose in revolt. Telegraph poles were cut down, roads were dug up, and culverts were blown up, in fact all of those things that the French Resistance was busy doing in Occupied France was being done here. The British could scarcely tolerate a revolt on this scale in a region that would be the beachhead for Japanese forces, if their attention turned to the Bay of Bengal. The administration struck back with a vengeance. Hundreds were rounded up and summarily executed. The Royal Air Force was called in to bomb the centres of rebellion to submission.

Cyclone:
The Bay of Bengal has long been, quite literally a stormy region. The coastline is periodically battered by severe tropical storms and cyclones. Take for example, the Supercyclone 05B in 1999 which hit ravaged coastal state of Orissa. The damage inflicted rises in proportion to population density, and the coast of West Bengal is one of the most densely populated regions in the world.

On the 16th of October, 1942, a tropical cyclone made landfall near Kanthi. Gales reaching up to 255 km/hr were reported. The Cyclone Warning Centre of the Indian Meteorological Department at Calcutta issued warnings: warnings which should have been passed along by the District Collectorate to the population; and were not. How many lives an early warning could have saved is not known. What is known is the damage that was wreaked. About 7400 villages in an area of 3300 sq.miles were affected. 786 villages in Kanthi and Tamluk were wiped off the map, leaving no trace. Some 2.5 million were affected. The word “affected” is a nice one. It can be used to signify a lot of things with little, or no emotional association. Just what does “affected” mean anyway? In this case it means that an affected person has probably lost part or all of his family to flood waters, that the affected person has probably been starving until rescue people reach him. In case there are no rescue people, the affected person will starve to death. In case he doesn’t actually starve to death, he will probably die of cholera, because when there is no drinking water, people drink the same water they defecate into, and cholera happens to be a waterborne disease. This, and other diseases are unfortunate by products of floods and cyclones. However, back to the topic at hand. About 1.9 million cattle heads were drowned. Saline flood waters had rendered all drinking water unfit. There was no food. There was no water for Mednipore.

Communications Blackout:
Wartime censorship, coupled with the fact that Mednipore was actually under attack by the British for daring to hoist the flag meant that the rest of India did not know what was happening. The British administration ‘helped’ things along by confiscating what pitiful remnants of food supplies there were for feeding their troops. For some fifteen days after the cyclone, news of the tragedy did not reach the outside world. Again, ‘outside world’ has to be understood as Calcutta and the rest of India. The ‘world’ was busy containing one Adolf and didn’t have time for such petty things as a few million Bengalis starving. Legitimate relief workers from Calcutta were jailed. Observers who reached Mednipore in early December villagers subsisting on decaying, rotten black rice, which smelled of decaying flesh. Thus began the great Bengal Famine of 1942 and 1943.

The Famine:
What relief was available from the rest of the beleaguered nation was denied to Mednipore. This might at first be attributed to an apathetic administration, or an administration preoccupied with war at its doorstep. But circumspect reasoning cannot, but come to the inevitable conclusion that this carnage, and indeed it was carnage was well orchestrated and pre meditated. The District Collectorate COULD have issued storm warnings. It did not not. The administration COULD have rushed food and medical supplies immediately in the aftermath of the cyclone. It did not. The work of Nobel Laurate Amartya Sen has proved that overall shortages of rice production were not enough to cause such widespread famine.

Year Rice production for Mednipore
(in million of tons)
1938 8.474
1939 7.922
1940 8.223
1941 6.768
1942 9.296
1943 7.628

Prof. Sen argues that hoarding of food, caused in part by actual shortages, and in part by the very real shortage (which was, however, localized, and could have been easily reversed by imports from other states) and a rising black market lead to rice simply being priced out of the reach of the common man.

The British Raj created this artificial famine. The British presided over the slow death by starvation and disease of approximately five million Bengalis. They were responsible for the murder of these people. This was genocide. It cannot be termed anything else by apologists or others. Hitler’s score in six years was some six million Jews. Churchill’s score was only marginally less: five million Bengalis.

Note: I started writing this article after a conversation with my father regarding the way things worked out during the war. This essay follows very closely an earlier article written by Padmabhushan Prof. Tapan Roy Choudhury (Professor Emeritus of Indian History and Civilization in the University of Oxford) which appeared in the Calcutta Statesman in late 2005.

Online Readings:
1.http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a1138673.shtml?sectionId=4&articleId=1138673
2.http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a1138673.shtml?sectionId=4&articleId=1138673
3.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
4.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_05B_(1999)#Impact
5.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_of_India_Act




Friday, February 23, 2007

No, I do not code.

I have somehow managed to survive some eight years shuttling from one Physics department to another without gaining the slightest amount of coding experience. In fact, if you ask me what career skills I have actually developed, then I would have to think for a while, because for sure, I am not the problem solving Irodov crunching maniac that people who make it to the top 100 in the IIT-JEE turn into approximately 30 days from the date of the IIT-JEE. Neither did I turn into the superhumanlike creature which usually graduates from Presidency and heads straight into the world of high energy physics (via the usual route of IITK+[insert appropriate US university]/MatScience/CU+TIFR or HRI or SINP). No, somewhat to the shock and horror of my friends (and the delight/frustration of my lab partner) I displayed a disconcerting liking for experiments. This is enough to render one persona non grata in a crowd of people who only need a Casio FX-100 to finish a really complicated experiment involving, say ballistic galvanometers and/or two slit diffraction spectrometry setups. (To this day, I have very little patience for people who cannot focus a spectrometer and level a diffraction setup.)Yes, sad, but true. Shunned by most of my classmates who either chose to ignore me or turned away and muttered/giggled (depending on gender) when I walked by, I chose to invest my time and energy to things that would not despise me.. like two channel oscilloscopes. And I became that most downtrodden of people: an experimentalist. I would sneak away from erudite discussions on beta decay and what not to spend some quality time with LM741 OPAMPs.

Eventually I found myself in a place where other unhappy experimentalists turned up and ran a reverse snobbery club which looked down upon people who did things with Hamiltonians instead of notch filters. True to form, I decided to scoot halfway between the two competing camps and ended up in NMR.. which is this strange transition land between experiments and theory... the nearest parallel I can think of is the Nazgul in Lord of the Rings.. those blokes who walk around in the shadow land between life and death.. neither here nor there. Now this is not a good analogy... I mean we spectroscopists, unlike the Nazgul can actually cross streams.. and we do not ride monstrous birds which have been fed on fell meats in the dark to become .. well.. monstrous birds. But well, you get the point. However, spectroscopists have this amazing ability to switch sides at will and pretend to be either theorists or experimentalists. This has some benefits.. and it is convenient.

Except when I find myself with a dataset which has to be filtered in somewhat convoluted ways.. and I realise that I can neither code to do it in 30 seconds... nor do I have the patience to do it by hand.. like an old fashioned experimentalist. So.... I will have to teach myself to code ... or start dating someone who can. As the latter is not about to happen.... here goes... nose firmly clamped shut by thumb and forefinger.. here I go.. about to take a dive into the uncharted waters of programming..

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Rajinder Puri's Homepage.

This is part of my ongoing effort to assuage the pangs of my social/economic/political conscience. I am including HERE a link to Rajinder Puri's Homepage. Mr. Puri is a very respected Indian cartoonist and journalist, and his articles regularly appear in newspapers such as the Statesman. He has a knack for looking beyond the usual rhetoric. Link

Guest Post

This time, from my father.. for the record, Buro refers to me. The signature file alluded to is:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men
believe and adore and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the
city of God!
- Emerson
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------



The signature in Buro's mail on the "City of God" suddenly conjured up an image.. the milky way seen from a close distance , nothing less! And I remembered having seen that! It happened when I was taking a night flight.. perhaps to Hyderabad via Bhuvaneswar. As the plane approached BBSR and was banking to align itself with the runway, the city gradually slid under the wing. Even before that point, the city looked like an extended glow of coloured lights .. an almost linear glow. Fat in the middle. Almost suddenly it widened, and tilted; the far side rising to the sky .. a wide table of light, with a dark sinuous band of darkness in the middle. The table of light showed like a wide expanse of glittering jewels white, yellowish and red. But the most beautiful ones were green .. yes greenish blue. On the ground I have never noticed that some lights can look greenish blue; but from the window-seat in a plane some lights did appear greenish blue and most alluring.

It took me a few seconds to realize that the dark band was a river. The plane has come lower, and the table was tilting and becoming horizontal. As we passed over the river, the banks were marked by a few scattered lights, mostly yellowish white. In the isolated huts the dim glow of (Kerosene) lamps . The plane was coming lower still.and suddenly we pass over a part of the city. It was between 9 and 10PM. Some roads , I could see with isolated street lights; a poor affair of naked electric bulbs dripping a small pool of yellowish light on the solitary road. A few houses with compound wall- a lamp "diya" burning, and in the centre of the court yard perhaps a "tulsi"? The verandah lit by a frugal bulb. Earthern courtyard. Nobody, absolutely nobody can be seen anywhere. All the roads are deserted, all houses seem deserted, except that some ray of dim light comes out of some windows or doors. The scene too quickly pass below the wings allowing only a fleeting impression. You feel like a nocturnal bird flying over a sleeping town and looking for people, and they do not bother about you.

The roads quickly pass at an angle below and out of attention. The wing, now dimly seen against the brighter lights of a more crowded part of the city. The flashing red lights at the edge of the wing appear harsh. A broad avenue with more street lights? Perhaps halogen lights brighter with wider pools on the road. Cars with white beams in front and red glow at the back, slowly moving up. Look like ants, no not ants , rather small boxes with headlights. A crowded crossing looms up, and quickly passes down and on the other side. The most interesting aspect is that the city is so silent. We perhaps come lower, and now the roads pass very quickly, and at an angle . I see some people walking , nobody looks up at me. Am I a ghost? Noticed by none? Is it how it will feel AFTERWARDS ? Is it how the magic seen from a distance vanishes and becomes earthy grimy reality.? But for the first one minute or so, that broad tilting sheet of necklace - like jewel-studded tapestry the city of man that looks like the city of God up in the sky.


This was irresistible.

But I found a video of Scar Tissue by RHCP here, and then a hilarious spoof with 'misheard lyrics' here. Check out.

A nation on the roll, by Saumitra Mohan

Yes, another guest article.. this time by a member of the Indian Administrative Service..

A nation on the roll
Coping With Systemic Maladies

By Saumitra Mohan

These are testing times for the country. Although the economy is booming and the stock markets are
zooming, we are actually at the crossroads. Where do we go from here? We never tire of boasting that
we are the world?s largest democracy with the second largest population, the third largest army, the
fourth largest economy (in purchasing power parity terms), the fourth largest air force, the fifth
largest navy, the sixth nuclear country and the seventh largest industrialised country. For all that,
we are faced with many systemic maladies that are expressing themselves in various ways. These include
terrorists, secessionists, the Maoist violence, systemic corruption and institutional degeneration.
We are, today, one of world?s most corrupt countries going by the projections of such organisations as
Transparency International. Even though vigilance of an overactive civil society and judiciary led by
citizens supposedly with conscience, non-governmental organisations and media does give us some hope,
the fact remains that we actually don?t know as to what might happen the next moment, whose bomb
attack or violence some or many of us may fall prey to.

Misguided men

Surprisingly enough, today we have guided missiles but misguided men out there to scupper their own
boat for a few pieces of silver.
We all aspire to be a great power and as such hanker for such symbolisms as permanent membership of an
almost defunct and toothless United Nations Security Council and the recognition of an alien United
States for legitimising our national nuclear programme. But we shall do almost nothing by way of our
own character and behaviour that are becoming of citizens of a great country. We have all seen and
heard as to how a Hansie Cronje, a Shane Warne or a Gunter Grass, pricked by a guilt consciousness,
have come forward to confess their mistake or folly, but how many times have we heard of an Indian
coming forward to do so even though inquiries have proved them to be on the wrong side of the law. Our
values and ethics are at an all-time low despite those stupendous growth figures.
Infused with a chalta hai attitude, we do anything and everything that suits us and our interests but
shall shy away to do things that actually evince a strong character behoving citizens of a great
country. We resent a bandh or a strike, but shall not flinch from calling and participating in one
such bandh, strike or procession when it suits us without any concern for others and, howsoever,
detrimental the same may be to the interests of the system.
When it comes to critical social issues such as women, dowry, girl child and others, we make loud
protestations but continue to do the reverse at home. Our excuse is that, ?it is the whole system that
has to change. How will it matter if I alone forego my son?s right to a dowry?? We run to America to
bask in their glory and praise their system but again when New York becomes insecure (as in the
aftermath of twin tower bombings), we run to England. Again, when England experiences unemployment, we
take the next flight to the Gulf. When the Gulf war struck, we demand to be rescued and brought home
by the Indian government.
Everybody is out to abuse and prostitute the country. Nobody thinks of feeding or nurturing the
system. Our conscience is mortgaged to our selfish interests and we don?t wish to look beyond them. At
times, we talk of the rich demographic dividend of having more than half of our population in the
productive age group of 25-50 by 2040 AD, but we are hardly bothered as to how to reap this dividend
successfully. John Stuart Mill was right when he said that ?you cannot think of becoming a great
country with small men?? with small capacities, small thinking and dubious character.
While almost all of us keep whining about our government being inefficient, about our laws being too
old or too bad, about our municipalities not cleaning the streets, about our transport system being the worst in the world, about our mails never reaching their destination in time, and about our
country having been gone to the dogs. But have we ever paused and thought as to what to do. John F
Kennedy rightly said, ?Ask not what the country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.?
Notice the behavioural change of an Indian while in India and while abroad. When out of the country,
we are at our best. When at Singapore, we don?t throw cigarette butts on the roads and we dutifully
come to the parking lot to punch our parking ticket if we have over-stayed there rather than sulking
and trying to sneak away without payment as we often do in our own country.
Similarly, we don?t dare to eat in public during Ramadan while in Dubai or we don?t dare to go out
without our head covered in Jeddah because the local laws demand that. We don?t chuck an empty coconut
shell anywhere other than the garbage vat on the beaches in Australia and New Zealand nor do we spit
paan on the streets of Tokyo. We also don?t dare to speed beyond the stipulated limit in Washington DC
and then try to get away with it by throwing our weight with the traffic cop.

Zero contribution

In America every dog-owner has to clean up after his or her pet has done the job. But we never do the
same when in our own country. We expect the government to clean up. We expect the railways to provide
clean bathrooms but we are not going to learn the proper use of bathrooms. We want our airlines to
provide the best of food and toiletries but we are not going to stop pilfering at the first available
opportunity.
We go to the polls to choose a government and after that we forsake everything, forgetting all our
responsibilities and duties. We sit back wanting to be pampered and expect the government to do
anything and everything whilst our own contribution is totally nil or, at least even negative. We
destroy our own national property during a bandh or a strike and then complain about government not
doing enough.
We should realise that a country is made of people and unless its people value themselves, their
country, their rights and, more importantly, their duties, we shall continue to grovel in the dust. If our system is bad it is because we are bad. We get the government we deserve. So we should first
deserve and only then desire.

(The author is an IAS officer presently posted as Addiional District Magistrate, Hooghly, West Bengal)


Again, while pretending

to find educational stuff about Neural conduction, Neural networks and membrane potentials.. what I was actually up to was goofing all over looking at random youtube videos, and for some random reason... searching X-Files videos. And what I found is that there is a gigantic crowd of people called SHIPPERS who spend their time making Mulder/Scully videos. Here, look at one. And then, I see them. I also got to this quotes page... if you are an X-Phile, this is for you, else stay away.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Yeah, Maddox!

What better way to spend a Sunday evening than to pretend to study for a Dynamics exam? Seriously, I can't think of any. While looking for serious academic references, I found this Wikipedia page on Maddox, who is probably the rudest person in the known Universe. Check out.

Do tell me what is an interoperatibility partner?

Seeing that I have no clue.. so it was at the 2007 Linux Asia conference at New Delhi between Jan 31st and Feb 2nd that a bunch of techies and a larger bunch of businessmen got together. With Microsoft!!!!!!!!!!!
Murder! Fire! Rape! Insurrection! Riot! AAAARrrrrrrgjfjkjhjhghdgf#$^!#^%%&^@$%&@$&%

Microsoft in bed with Open Source? And people are happy about it? Why? What is wrong with this sick world? The last time something like this happened was in Tolkien's literature when Sauron is imprisoned by the King of Numenor... and he uses his close proximity to corrupt the hearts and minds of the Numenoreans. So take a lesson from what happened to them.. (they all died ina gigantic flood that sank their island)... know thy enemy. And do not let him sponsor thine conference....

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Mediocrity and thinking.

Usman Bhai says the following on his Orkut profile: "I hate mediocrity. Hence, I hate myself." Now Usman, an old friend is one the world's few original thinkers after Descartes (note that I limit myself to criticising other's views.).. and it must be said that he is not, in fact, mediocre. So why does he think that he is? Is it that he has standards that cannot ever be met, no matter what the effort put it? If that is the case, then this is something that we should all aspire to. Or if we wanted to be really obtuse here.. we could say that we need the world to put things into perspective. That is a thought indeed.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Cruise should take one of those fake guns from

His Mission Impossible, Still Mission Impossible and Yoo, Still Awake? Yeah, the Mission is Still Impossible series and shoot himself in the foot. Or somewhere more anatomically apt, I don't care. Why..? Because apparently He has teamed up with Ben Stiller (the guy who invented Active Stupidity) in a movie of the 'Hardy Men'.. yeah.. that is what happens to the Hardy Boys of Franklin W. Dixon fame when they grow up. Not good, not good at all. I mean, Ben Stiller is halfway decent when he is paired up with Owen Wilson... Tom Cruise is a half baked arse. Anyways, I have done my bit by alerting the thinking world to this piece of avoidable trash and I have been warned, in turn by Cecilia.

Love affairs.

There has always been some kind of bizarre love affair between Presidencians, grass and Floyd. Well, to be sure, not all Presidencians.. just the self destructive ones.. and in some cases, the wannabe self destructive wimpy ones. There is something about the self congratulatory feeling that sends you into a three year 'Canteen Honours' programme with a more than necessary introduction into the art of Indian politics. Ok, having bitched enough for one day, let me get to the point and talk about some of my very favourite music videos. Note that I am talking about favourite music video and not favourite music. There is a small overlap region... in fact, let me get started on that.. as this is likely to be a continual ongoing thingummy.. so here goes.. the first one that I am going to talk about is High Hopes by Pink Floyd, in their album Division Bell. The video is here, and the lyrics are here. A Wiki entry is here.

A lot of people have spent a lot of time interpreting different themes in the song and in the video.. this is always something that is great about Floyd.. as a band they always managed to skate on the edge of comprehension... never degenerating into the nonsense of so many other groups.. and never letting their lyrics turn into banalities like.. say Scorpions. Again, Scorpions made great music.. but their songs were somewhat brain dead. Yes, so as Anirban used to make fun of Suman and me, 'so, what do the guitars floating down the river mean?' and so on.. it is to everyone to individually enjoy.. and perhaps analyse. But do listen.

Jishnu and James.

Jishnu is a friend of mine from the happy days of Presidency. James is a Bangladeshi popular singer. After one year of IITK (MSc-Physics) Jishnu came to Calcutta on vacation singing Mirabai by James. Aparently, this song was all the rage amongst the IITK Bongs (a rather big population).. I recently found a video of Mirabai by James on youtube and it is here. Do check out. It would appear that the Bangladeshi entertainment industry has the right musicians .. but not people who can direct halfway decent music videos.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Photographs.

Recently had this chat with a friend who has been the extremely unwilling subject of my camera. So, I had sent her some of the pictures of her, and she said that they were not as awful as she thought they would be. A few points here: sure, I might be a total buffoon, but this is something that I think(well, hope) that I am learning, and hopefully am not a terribly lousy hand it. In fact, here a link to my flickr album You decide: http://www.flickr.com/photos/feelingdisconnected/

Right.. so why this terribly lack of confidence in me...? I am most distressed!

The day came and went....

with nary a whisper.. a whole day of work, and then some... there are things outside which are worth a lot.. at this moment, i don't know and i mostly don't care either ...

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Rajinder Puri does it again: Iran, Pakistan and India: possible allies?

This is another guest post written by Rajinder Puri which appeared in today's Statesman, Calcutta edition. The article makes some interesting points in which things might flow, conceivably, if people in power make the right decisions.

A pipeline pipe dream?
The Domino Effect Theory In Peace

By Rajinder Puri

There is a domino effect theory in war. The collapse of one bastion can lead to the fall of others one by one. Can that theory work for peace? The developments related to South Asia and Iran could demonstrate this. In the pursuit of singular interest each nation might interact with others to help defuse fire after fire leading ultimately to world peace. To consider this mind-boggling imaginary scenario let’s begin at the beginning.
The press quoted Pakistan Foreign Minister Kasuri revealing that there existed a secret ‘K Plan’ regarding Kashmir which was known only to five individuals in Pakistan. Some observers zeroed in on President Musharraf’s proposal of joint control of Kashmir by India and Pakistan. But that was widely publicised and not secret. That proposal has not been shot down. It remains alive. This column has argued previously that the proposal can succeed only if preceded by agreement on a larger framework ~ of joint South Asian arrangement, including defence. Could Mr Kasuri’s ‘K Plan’ relate to some such idea?

Lack of coordination

If this guess has substance, the proposed plan differs widely on one detail from what was envisioned in this column: the framework would at the outset include not members of the Saarc organisation, but only India, Pakistan and Iran. And the impulse to create this framework emanates not from wise and visionary statesmanship, but from pure self-interest of each of these three nations as they pursue profit. The catalyst of course is the Indo-Pakistan-Iranian gas pipeline deal.
Petroleum Minister Murli Deora jubilantly told the press that pricing details had been sorted out with Iran and the pipeline agreement would be signed by June. Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee in Tehran quickly scotched this statement and snubbed Deora by saying that nothing yet had been finalised. However the lack of coordination and the characteristic confusion within the Indian government is unlikely to imperil the deal. The stakes are simply too high.
India’s urgent need for energy needs no reiteration. But for Pakistan’s growing economy the need for natural gas is equally urgent. It is estimated that Pakistan with one of the world’s fastest growing populations will need to increase its use of gas dramatically within the next two decades. By next decade not only will India’s gas demand almost double but its declining reserves will compel heavy import of gas. Iran has the world’s second largest gas reserve. It neighbours both nations. A prime bargain seems tailor-made.
India has three options for importing gas from Iran: shipping it as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) by tankers over sea; getting it through a deep sea pipeline; or transporting it over land. A land-based pipeline would be four times cheaper than any other option, even after including transit fee payments to Pakistan. It is an unbelievably sweet deal for all three ~ India, Pakistan and Iran. The project is estimated to cost around $4 billion. A third of the gas would be for Pakistan, the rest for India. But here is the complication which could bring into play the domino theory for peace: the pipeline will have to pass through 475 miles of Balochistan.
Indo-Pakistan tension over Kashmir and terrorism had prevented India from accepting the deal earlier because of dependence on Pakistan. Now, either because of economic compulsions or international pressure, India seems to have overcome its reluctance. But what about the Balochistan problem inside Pakistan? Balochistan is home for Al Qaeda leaders as well as for indigenous Baloch insurgents seeking some measure of self-rule. The two groups have conflicting interests. Before the pipeline can become viable Pakistan will have to expel Al Qaeda and redress Baloch grievances. President Musharraf has the power to grant Balochistan requisite autonomy. How will he deal with Al Qaeda? Is that why he is reported considering imposition of Emergency?
For Iran the pipeline is its lifeline. Not only does it need the broad South Asian market for its gas. Iran has already passed signals that it hopes India will play a mediatory role in defusing its nuclear dispute with the West. Equally, Iran’s relationship with Pakistan is strategically crucial. With American troops stationed in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran would like to defuse all tension with Pakistan, with which its past ties have been uneven. That is why Iran Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki repeatedly described the gas project as the “peace pipeline”. That is why the representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei met the Indian ambassador urging India to intervene on Iran’s behalf in its nuclear dispute with America. That is why Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz described the gas pipeline as “a win-win proposition for Iran, India, and Pakistan”.
But for this euphoria to translate to reality, the ‘domino effect theory for peace’ would have to bring peace to Balochistan and defeat to Al Qaeda. This is a tall order. And that is not all. For normalisation to endure, Iran’s nuclear crisis will have to be solved. For that, India could conceivably be a conduit for uranium, and guarantor of Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme. But Iran’s security concerns would also have to be met. A few months ago Iran specified that it would renounce nuclear weapons if India and Pakistan renounced them too. Does that not indicate the necessity of India, Pakistan and Iran arriving at some agreement involving mutual guarantees for nuclear security? Can India and Pakistan ever normalise between themselves without some such tangible agreement? The domino effect theory therefore must of necessity ensure solution of Iran’s nuclear dispute.

Iraq crisis

If Iran’s nuclear dispute with the west is resolved the decks would have been cleared for ending the Iraq crisis. Already the leaders of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two most powerful influences respectively of Shias and Sunnis, are in touch at the highest level. Iraq’s Sunni insurgents have made overtures for talks. They seek a new constitution and a share of oil revenue. A federal Iraq seems feasible. That would allow America to withdraw troops which ought never to have invaded Iraq. This would be the last but one domino of discord. If it falls a final settlement of the Palestinian problem would become a distinct possibility. That would be the last domino on the way to achieving overall Middle East peace.
Does all this sound wildly fanciful? Probably it is. To imagine that a gas pipeline from Iran to India through Pakistan could have such far-reaching implications does sound crazy. But consider the potential, not the prospect. And if the potential for South Asian nations to exert such global influence while pursuing their own interests exists, surely our national leaders should close ranks?

(The author is a veteran journalist and cartoonist )

Linux

Just to make things even.. here is an IBM Linux ad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOlrKH3SmtI
.. the kid is creepy!

and these Red hat ads are bloody cool! Also a wicked soundtrack...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwYt7hobYZg&NR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_VFKqw1q2Q&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rSLQAqV2Lw&mode=related&search=
and one of them features a quote from Gandhi which I have not heard before.. hmmmm..

Some ridiculous Mac commercial spoofs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MG_O3Y8JD4&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZh_rwrYgAY&NR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc4oP_ITqMc&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-L-0s-7-Z0&NR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFAJDbV9Vfs&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjpn3L3bSJQ&mode=related&search=

Snatch...

This week is going to be a lot of work and all that... something to ease the pain.... part of the soundtrack from Snatch at this link.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Overheard in Graduate School

Chairman of the Data Committee: Why, Mr. Anderson? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep doing those experiments? Do you believe you're collecting data for something? For more that your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Yes? No? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. The temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the University itself, although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as a graduate programme. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can't graduate. It's pointless to keep analyzing data. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?
Graduate Student: Because I choose to.

Epar and Opar.

Epar Bangla refers to the Indian State of West Bengal, capital Calcutta (Kolkata), mostly populated by Ghoti's and apparently has been going to the dogs for ever.... (this is a delicate and subtle point.. everyone will tell you that West Bengal and its inhabitants have been going to the dogs for ever... the fact that we are not yet there leads one to either of two conclusions... 1. the dogs are really far away or 2. people who say such things are full of shite.).

Opar Bangla refers to Bangladesh, capital Dhaka, mostly populated by Bangals, tropical cyclones and amazing seafood. Now if West Bengal has been going to the dogs.... its spiritual brother, the independant country of Bangladesh cannot be very far behind... in fact, is probably leading the way. But again, as those people have managed to keep their country afloat for quite a while.. they obviously have a lot going for them.. apart from the fact they simply cannot decide upon what kind of government they want.

Now "epar" means 'this side' and "opar" means 'that side'. So, obviously, while Epar is home to me and Opar is the home of my ancestors (not kidding), the situation is probably just reversed for any regular Imran or Abdul sitting in Dhaka. The reason I suddenly got to writing is because I was on Orkut where someone was saying that the best Epar Bangla band is 'Fossils' while the best Opar Bangla band is 'Miles'. So, then think about this... we keep exchanging musicians and other artists all the time.. Bangladesh keeps a more or less continuous flood of refugees on the borders of West Bengal, so why not simply cut the border away and reunify? After all the whole separation of Bangla.. the whole Bangla was a uniquely British piece of work.. done by His Sonofabitch Excellency, Lord Curzon, the then Viceroy of British India waaaay back in 1905. Isn't it time to undo this rather hideous piece of work?

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Doggerel/

So I am not a poet.
But does that really matter?
I have read through Voet and Voet.
That is a Biochem book,
And it has taught me so much, look!

Yes, so poetry does not agree with me,
sentimental love poems even less,
but to you, long suffering reader,
this little I will confess.

Writing shitty verse is actually fun,
Sometimes you get to use your favourite pun.
But where do I get my poetic licence?
Is there an exam I must write?
Is there a dragon I must fight?
Does it involve having to parallel park?
I must say, this makes very little sense,
But of course, its all for a lark.

More Harry Potter Titles.

Harry Potter and the Precipitated Protein.
Harry Potter and the Feminist.
Harry Potter and the Broken Record.
Harry Potter and the Tax Return.
Harry Potter and the Unearthly Glow early on Friday Afternoons of the Pornographic Parchments.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Because the Indian moviegoing audience is full of arseholes.

Hence, a great movie like Lakshya bombed at the box office. While shitty Shahrukh Khan movies with funky foreign locations and no storyline whatsoever make truckloads of money. That is the Indian movie audience for you. A few words about Lakshya. In 1999, Pakistan attacked India. The Indian and Pakistani armies are fighting a low intensity way all year round on the highest and most brutal battleground in the world: the mountains of Kashmir. During the winter months, both armies have traditionally moved back from their frontline positions on the Line of Control. This has long been a gentleman's agreement. In the winter of 1998, however, the Pakistani army took advantage of the Indian army's withdrawal and proceeded to equip and arm both regular infantrymen (of the Northern Light Infantry) and irregulars (mujahideen, fedayeen and other unsavoury sorts) who built bunkers and lived out the winter. Come spring, the shooting started. People have called this a colossal failure of the much vaunted Indian Intelligence agencies. That is a matter for debate. What happens to be recorded fact though, was that the Indian army came back with a vengeance. Although hobbled by the Prime Minister's decision to not cross the Line of Control (which would have made things much easier, the army could have simply looped across the Paki positions and shot their backsides out; instead of which, they were forced to literally fight their way up), the army kicked Paki and mujahideed arse quite thoroughly.

Ok, so that was about the Kargil war. The movie Lakshya is about a restless young college student with no goals, no ambitions, just an abiding distrust for whatever his father has planned for him who joins the Indian Military Academy for a lark, for no other reason than his friend was writing the exam and he decided to as well. In the first semester of training (which my friends who are in the services have told me is rather.. brutal), he cops out and deserts. He comes home to see that this is exactly what his father had expected him to do. This, and the fact that his hot girlfriend won't have anything to do with a loser lights some kind of spark in him and sends him back. He graduates and like a large number of his batchmates, is posted to a regiment in Kashmir. His regimental commander, Col. Sunil Damle is played to perfection by the great Amitabh Bachhan. It is while standing at the Line of Control and looking over to Pakistan occupied Kashmir is that he begins to understand what it means to be an Indian. And then, the war starts. The high point of this magnificent movie is the raid on Point 5179, an important artillery spotter peak by a small unit for our hero's battalion. THIS LINK has a video of the climb to Point 5179. Check it out. The dialogue at the end of this clip translates to :
Jawan: Sir?
Karan: Yes, Trilok Singh.
Jawan: I feel dizzy when I look down.
Karan: Well, Trilok Singh.. don't look down.
Jawan: Yes Sir.

David Duchovny...

No, it’s not obvious. Why did a talented actor like David Duchovny have to disappear into obscurity? Like everyone else, I used to be a diehard fan of the X-Files about a decade ago. In fact, for a while, my computer password was ‘truustno1’ or something similar. The movie was great. Duchovny made such a great character of being an inarticulate mumbler, that everyone expected great things for him on the big screen. In fact, so did everyone for his partner, played so well by Gillian Anderson. But these two people seem to have fallen prey to their own images as agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. One might, I would say, have trouble imagining them as anything else. Which is, I suspect what happened. Of course, I may be wrong.. but then.. I am a fan, and fans are entitled to their interpretation of things. The one episode of X-Files that I had serious trouble with had Scully driving like the blazes from coast to coast because it was only by traveling parallel to the equator that she could prevent her passenger from dying most horribly. Yes, I disliked this episode because it defenestrates Special Relativity. That is too much to take.

Anways, I was watching ‘Playing God’ last night which has Duchovny as a surgeon who has a drug problem and loses his licence… and then by a series of strange events gets involved with the Mob. Nice movie, could have been handled better, but the failings were more of a directorial nature… the actors were perfectly competent. The soundtrack was quite interesting… but frequently missing when I thought it would be of some help. See it.

Totakaahinee

THIS LINK leads to a recitation of the poem Totaakahinee written by the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. The poem is an allegorical description of the wretchedness in which 'education' finds itself. The bloke reciting is my friend Suman Chakraborty, a chemist, an actor and one extremely skilled at the peculiarly Bengali art of 'Aabritti'.

Monday, February 05, 2007

Singur and land grabbing by the State.

This is an extract from a Statesman article a few weeks ago on the ongoing crisis at Singur where the State Goverment of West Bengal seems to have allied itself with Tata Industries and is busy "appropriating" cultivable land from peasants to set up a small car factory.

Special Article

ON LAND-GRABBING

Dr Singh’s India, Buddhadeb’s Bengal, Modi’s Gujarat have notorious US, Soviet and Chinese examples to follow ~ distracting from the country’s real economic problems

By SUBROTO ROY

AT a business meet on 12 January 2005, Dr Manmohan Singh showered fulsome praise on Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee as “dynamic”, “the Nation’s Best Chief Minister”, whose “wit and wisdom”, “qualities of head and heart”, “courage of conviction and passionate commitment to the cause of the working people of India” he admired, saying “with Buddhadeb Babu at the helm of affairs it appears Bengal is once again forging ahead… If today there is a meeting of minds between Delhi and Kolkata, it is because the ideas that I and Buddhadebji represent have captured the minds of the people of India. This is the idea of growth with equity and social justice, the idea that economic liberalization and modernization have to be mindful of the needs of the poor and the marginalized.” With such support of a Congress Prime Minister (as well as proximity to Pranab Mukherjee), Mr Bhattacharjee could hardly have feared the local Congress and Trinamul would pose any threat in the 2006 Assembly Elections despite having more potential voters between them than the CPI-M.
Dr Singh returned to the “needs of the poor and the marginalized” at another business meet on 8 January 2007 promising to “unveil a new Rehabilitation Policy in three months to increase the pace of industrialisation” which would be “more progressive, humane and conducive to the long-term welfare of all stakeholders”, while his businessman host pointedly stated about Singur “land for industry must be made available to move the Indian manufacturing sector ahead”. The “meeting of minds between Delhi and Kolkata” seems to be that agriculture allegedly has become a relatively backward slow-growing sector deserving to yield in the purported larger national interest to industry and services: what the PM means by “long-term welfare of all stakeholders” is the same as the new CPI-M party-line that the sons of farmers should not remain farmers (but become automobile technicians or IT workers or restaurant waiters instead).
It is a political viewpoint coinciding with interests of organised capital and industrial labour in India today, as represented by business lobbies like CII, FICCI and Assocham on one hand, and unions like CITU and INTUC on the other. Business Standard succinctly (and ominously) advocated this point of view in its lead editorial of 9 January as follows: “it has to be recognised that the world over capitalism has progressed only with the landed becoming landless and getting absorbed in the industrial/service sector labour force ~ indeed it is obvious that if people don’t get off the land, their incomes will rise only slowly”.
Land is the first and ultimate means of production, and the attack of the powerful on land-holdings or land-rights of the unorganised or powerless has been a worldwide phenomenon ~ across both capitalism and communism.
In the mid-19th Century, white North America decimated hundreds of thousands of natives in the most gargantuan land-grab of history. Defeated Chief Red Cloud of the Sioux spoke in 1868 for the Apache, Navajo, Comanche, Cheyenne, Iroquois and hundreds of other tribes: “They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept any except one: they promised to take our land, and they took it.”
Half a century later, while the collapse of grain prices contributed to the Great Depression and pauperisation of thousands of small farmers in capitalist America in the same lands that had been taken from the native tribes, Stalin’s Russia embarked on the most infamous state-sponsored land-grab in modern history: “The mass collectivisation of Soviet agriculture (was) probably the most warlike operation ever conducted by a state against its own citizens…. Hundreds of thousands and finally millions of peasants…were deported… desperate revolts in the villages were bloodily suppressed by the army and police, and the country sank into chaos, starvation and misery… The object of destroying the peasants’ independence…was to create a population of slaves, the benefit of whose labour would accrue to industry. The immediate effect was to reduce Soviet agriculture to a state of decline from which it has not yet recovered… The destruction of the Soviet peasantry, who formed three quarters of the population, was not only an economic but a moral disaster for the entire country. Tens of millions were driven into semi-servitude, and millions more were employed as executants…” (Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism).
Why did Stalin destroy the peasants? Lenin’s wishful “alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry” in reality could lead only to the peasants being pauperised into proletarians. At least five million peasants died and (Stalin told Churchill at Yalta) another ten million in the resultant famine of 1932-1933. “Certainly it involved a struggle ~ but chiefly one between urban Communists and villagers… it enabled the regime to obtain much of the capital desired for industrialization from the defeated village… it was the decisive step in the building of Soviet totalitarianism, for it imposed on the majority of the people a subjection which only force could maintain” (Treadgold, 20th Century Russia).
Mr Bhattacharjee’s CPI-M is fond of extolling Chinese communism, and the current New Delhi establishment have made Beijing and Shanghai holiday destinations of choice. Dr Singh’s Government has been eager to create hundreds of “Special Economic Zones” run by organised capital and unionised labour, and economically privileged by the State. In fact, the Singur and Nandigram experiences of police sealing off villages where protests occur are modelled on creation of “Special Economic Zones” in China in recent years. For example, Chinese police on 6 December 2005 cracked down on farmers and fishermen in the seaside village of Dongzhou, 125 miles North East of Hong Kong. Thousands of Dongzhou villagers clashed with troops and armed police protesting confiscation of their lands and corruption among officials. The police immediately sealed off the village and arrested protesters. China’s Public Security Ministry admitted the number of riots over land had risen sharply, reaching more than seventy thousand across China in 2004; police usually suppressed peasant riots without resort to firing but in Dongzhou, police firing killed 20 protesters. Such is the reality of the “emergence” of China, a totalitarian police-state since the Communist takeover in 1949, from its period of mad tyranny until Mao’s death in 1976, followed by its ideological confusion ever since.
Modern India’s political economy today remains in the tight grip of metropolitan “Big Business” and “Big Labour”. Ordinary anonymous individual citizens ~ whether housewife, consumer, student, peasant, non-union worker or small businessman ~ have no real voice or representation in Indian politics. We have no normal conservative, liberal or social democratic party in this country, as found in West European democracies where the era of land-grabbing has long-ceased. If our polity had been normal, it would have known that economic development does not require business or government to pauperise the peasantry but instead to define and secure individual property rights and the Rule of Law, and establish proper conditions for the market economy. The Congress and BJP in Delhi and CPI-M in Kolkata would not have been able to distract attention from their macroeconomic misdeeds over the decades ~ indicated, for example, by increasing interest-expenditure paid annually on Government debt as a fraction of tax revenues (see Table).
This macroeconomic rot originated with the Indira Gandhi-PN Haksar capriciousness and mismanagement, which coincided with the start of Dr Singh’s career as India’s best known economic bureaucrat.

The author is Contributing Editor, The Statesman.

I am relieved.

Because as it turned out, this experimental data I was analyzing had been giving me nightmares this last week. I was rather apprehensive that the data was ratty. Turns out that the issue was human error. The human in question being, of course, yours truly. Yes, I was quite spectacularly stupid. But that is easier to correct than ratty data.

Calculations

I am notoriously lazy. So lazy, in fact that I had not computed my share of the expenses of a couple of roadtrips .. a semester ago! Anyway, I finally got that out of the way yesterday and it that has been a good thing. One might think that I have overdosed on Procastin X.

Friday, February 02, 2007

And while on the theme of Harry Potter

I would like to recommend a particular work of fanfiction to you. In case, you are a complete neophyte and have no idea what fanfiction is... here is a definition from Wikipedia:
Fan fiction (also commonly spelled as fanfiction and frequently abbreviated to fanfic or occasionally just fic) is a broadly-defined term for fiction about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creators. Fan fiction usually describes works which are uncommissioned by the owner of the work, and usually (but not always) works which are not professionally published. Fan fiction is defined against original fiction, which exists with its own discrete universe, and against canon works within the universe. Most fan fiction writers assume that their readers have knowledge of the canon universe in which their works are based .

So I am taking the liberty to divide fanfic into certain categories... this is my definition and my interpretation.. you are free to agree, but of course, you are wrong, and I am right (on this blog at the very least.):

1. Plot extension: same characters, same story, extending the tale. Very much seen in ongoing works.. where it assumes a speculative air about what the next genuine volume will contain... such as in the HP series.
2. Alternate Universe: quite obvious. Same characters, but plot development follows quite different lines. Subcategories may include crossover genres where two major works of fiction may be combined.. in some hilarious cases, HP and LOTR.
3. Prequel: sometimes written so as to be self consistent with the bona fide literature, while talking about events leading up to the actual story. May sometimes consist of the histories of specific people who may/may not be central to the bona fide story.

The story that I am about to recommend is by the Wolfie Twins, and is called the Call of the Wild. It is available here. Do read it. It is somewhat long, but the writing is quite good and is rather erudite. There is much to discover and very little that is trivial. It is a must read for lycanophiles. Does that pique your interest? It should. Remus Lupin fans, attention! Read!

Ok, so this particular work deals with Lupin and what made him the man, or rather werewolf he is.

Alternate Harry Potter titles

Alternate Titles:

Harry Potter and the Pasta Disaster
Harry Potter and the Unmentionable Itch
Harry Potter and the Eating Disorder
Harry Potter and the PTA
Harry Potter and the Broken DVD
Harry Potter and the Friday Night Incident
Harry Potter and the Killers of Kathmandu
Harry Potter and the Jailbirds
Harry Potter and the Graduate Student
...
the list will continue... contributions are also welcome...

Pratul and Baborer Prarthona.

I was in Chicago last week and Sutirtha-da got me to listen to 'Baborer Prarthona' sung by Pratul Mukhopadhyay (of 'Aami Banglaye Gaan Gai' fame). This song is available here. Listen to it. A few minutes on the net also got me this poetry page. Check out.