Now I have a reason for feeling happy....

Common points between Narendra Modi's Gujrat and Buddhadeb Bhattacharya's Bengal?

THE COMMUTWITS’ TRIUMPH - Nandigram is supposed to have taught the reactionaries a lesson

Writing on the Wall - Ashok V. Desai From the Telegraph of 20th Nov, 2007. Apologies for copying your article.

In Godhra, some people detached a bogie of a train in February 2002, locked in the passengers and burnt them. The perpetrators were never conclusively identified. The Hindutwits claimed that the murderers were Muslims, and called for retribution. It started the next day. Hindu mobs killed thousands of Muslims, looted and destroyed Muslim businesses, and in three days, turned Muslims into the new scheduled caste of Gujarat — poor, deprived and maligned. In Nandigram, some people forced local supporters of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to leave, destroyed bridges, dug up roads, and isolated Nandigram from the rest of West Bengal. No one knows who they were. It is widely believed that they were local villagers. The CPI(M) said they were members of the Trinamul Congress, Naxalites, or both, and called for retribution. Armed commutwit mobs invaded Nandigram, killed and wounded hundreds, destroyed their homes, and turned them into the new scheduled caste of West Bengal. This is not a coincidence; it is transfer of the technology of violence. In the Eighties, the BJP was exasperated; however hard it tried, it just could not get itself elected in any numbers, let alone come to power. And there, in the east, was CPI(M), an equally committed, ideologically-focused party, which simply could not be driven out of power. How did they do it? The Hindutwits diligently studied the secret of communist hegemony. They worked out that the secret lay in the creation of a captive mob. Till the Sixties, West Bengal used to be India’s most industrialized state. It was the home of the jute industry, India’s largest industry next only to textiles. It was a leader in engineering; in those days of import substitution, anyone who could not get a machine or a part headed for Calcutta, where workshops could reproduce the most complicated engineering goods. Then arrived bulk handling and cheap plastics. Pourable goods such as cereals began to be transported in containers in the United States of America. Railways acquired new wagons to transport containers; the first container ship was built in the US in 1956, if I remember right. Soon, bulk transportation spread across all the oceans, and increasingly along railway lines. And if small quantities of pourable goods had to be stored, plastic bags were more sturdy than gunny bags, and gave better protection. So over the Sixties and Seventies, life slowly seeped out of Calcutta’s jute industry. And the slump of 1965 hit its engineering industry hard. That was when the CPI(M) found a niche amongst the embattled industrial workers. Citu started organizing them; it developed the technology of bringing them out in processions and paralysing Calcutta. It taught workers to abuse and attack managers. In a pyrrhic victory, it drove industry out of West Bengal, but captured the unemployed workers — and young men who never had any jobs. They became the CPI(M)’s foot-soldiers. They developed a rough-and-ready social insurance system: they intimidated and collected money from whoever was making a living — shopkeepers, hawkers, farmers, whoever wanted a peaceful life and could pay for it. If the victims belonged to the Congress, so much the better. Within ten years, the musclemen taught West Bengal that it was unprofitable to belong to the Congress — and that supporting CPI(M) minimized costs. This is how the commutwit monopoly of power was created in West Bengal. Having learnt this technology, the Hindutwits reproduced it in Gujarat. In every village, every community, they collected musclemen and set up branches. But in one respect, they had it easier than the commutwits. Gujarat is more commercialized and industrialized than West Bengal; there were many more rich men to tap, and, correspondingly, the tribute to be collected from each was smaller — so small that many of them would not mind paying. Besides, many of these rich men could be asked to give jobs to the faithful, in which case those believers did not have to be paid a dole at all. But how were those moneybags to be persuaded that Muslims were their enemies? Right into the Nineties, 600 tons — 600,000,000 grams — of gold used to be smuggled into India. So was most of synthetic cloth. So were thousands of watches. All these goods used to be loaded into fast boats in Dubai, carried across the sea, and land on Gujarat’s coast. They were a source of great convenience for consumers fed up with the rigours of the socialist state, and a source of prosperity for those involved in smuggling and selling the goods; most of whom were Muslims. Once in a while some smugglers were caught; their names were predominantly Muslim. Sometimes the smugglers fought and murdered one another; those caught were again Muslims. Thus there arose an impression in Gujarat that Muslims were smugglers and thieves. So when the Hindutwits offered to sanitize Gujarat of the Muslim criminals, they found ready clients. When they removed Muslim competitors from business, their services were all the more appreciated by Hindu shopkeepers. When the commutwits sanitized West Bengal, they created an economic desert. When the Hindutwits sanitized Gujarat, some flowers went missing, but business continued to bloom. This is where the difference lies. Year after year, Gujarat grows faster than West Bengal. West Bengal, once one of the richest states, has fallen behind until it is just about average today; Gujarat, once average, has advanced upwards. No ruler of West Bengal who attends meetings in the South and North Blocks of Delhi, who can read figures, can ignore West Bengal’s decline. That is why the commutwits are in a hurry. But they cannot bring back the capitalists whom they scared away in the Sixties. Nor can they tolerate the emergence of thousands of small industrialists, for whom trade unions would be anathema. What would be compatible with Citu’s prosperity? Obviously, industries that pay workers well. So the commutwits’ first answer was information technology. They laid out the red carpet for IT moguls. Some came, but on the whole they preferred the South; it has a huge output of graduates with good English, and they do not mind people from other states coming in. So today, West Bengal’s IT employment is still in thousands — no higher than that of Gujarat. Now the commutwits have thought of big industries like steel and car-making. These require large tracts of land, and the commutwits are determined to clear land of obstructive human beings, however much blood they have to shed. The Hindutwits think that the post-Godhra riots taught Muslims a lesson; the commutwits think that Nandigram has taught the reactionaries a lesson. And if it has not, they will teach it again, in battlegrounds galore. Mamata, take guard! Each lesson will reduce the number of industrialists that would be prepared to invest in West Bengal; Buddhadeb will have to travel ever farther to find an investor. But it is a quest in the right direction — for making West Bengal India’s richest state. It may take some time, and many lives, but so what? Revolutions cannot be made without bloodshed. In the meanwhile, the prime minister will continue to monitor the situation closely — from Moscow, Washington, Cape Town, from his eyrie on Race Course Road.

Look, now they define who is a Hindu!

From today's Statesman..

London school defines a Hindu

Indo-Asian News Service
LONDON, Nov. 20: Britain's first state-funded Hindu school has come up with a unique definition of “practising Hindus” as part of its admissions policy ~ those who pray daily, do voluntary work at temples, follow a vegetarian diet and don't get intoxicated.
The school, named Krishna-Avanti Primary School, is located in the London borough of Harrow, which has the highest concentration of Hindus in any council in Britain: 40,000. The school is promoted by a charity organisation called the I-Foundation.
The admission process has started for the intake of the first batch of students in September 2008. Places are limited to 30 and are expected to be heavily over-subscribed. The official faith advisor to the school is Iskcon UK, which will advise on aspects of how the Hindu faith can be integrated and taught within the school. According to the admissions policy, among the criteria to be used while considering applications are: “Looked after children from Hindu families, 10 nominations by Bhaktivedanta Manor of practising Hindu families, children from practising Hindu families, children from Hindu families who are broadly following the tenets of Hinduism."
According to the policy, "broadly following" the tenets of Hinduism is defined as: at least monthly visits to the temple, attendance of key festival programmes (Diwali, Janmashtami and Ramnavami) at a local temple, following a vegetarian diet and avoidance of intoxication.
Asked if children of Hindu families who preferred non-vegetarian food or may not be ritualistic Hindus or who followed traditions within Hinduism that went against the school’s definition of practising Hindus would be ineligible for admission, a spokesman of the I-Foundation told IANS: "The rules do not exclude anyone who does not qualify under the criteria. The policy is not meant to exclude people... Under the rules of funding of faith schools, the school is obliged to have a set of criteria for admission that is relevant to the faith.”

I don't think that Hinduism is a doctrine driven faith which needs to be regulated like many others are. As a Hindu who does not mind the occasional tipple, I object most strongly to a bunch of Iskon people to tell me whether I am a 'suitable' Hindu or not. This is straight an easy route to giving imperfect people, untrained in logic, dialectic and philosophy the power to pass judgment over their peers. Hindu priests have long been a revered group, who guide in matters of the spirit (pun totally unintentionally). This will make them no different from their Christian and Muslim brethren. That is regrettable.

The sky is falling!! Privatisation woes.

Our national carrier is suffering from the blues. There is competition at all levels: the premium segment of the market has been captured by Mallya's Kingfisher Air and the discount ticket business is dominated by Air Deccan. Amidst this looming crisis, Air India, already losing money each day indulges VIPs and other fluff. This is part of the reason why they are bleeding so much money. I include here, two Statesman reports:

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=1&theme=&usrsess=1&id=176956

and

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=1&theme=&usrsess=1&id=176957

I have the following suggestions:
1. Make VIPs pay. Stop giving perks to MPs, MLAs, their cousins, mistresses and Board Members of the airline.
2. Start a rationalised fare structure with complete internet booking facilities. Cut out the middlemen.
3. Reduce turnaround time at airports. This reduces terminal fees. If people cannot turn up in time to catch their flights, screw them.
4. If you want to run a premium segment, then do so. But brand that differently, make sure that if people are paying four times what the discount fares cost, they should get their money's worth.
5. Stop treating company Directors like gods. They can pay for their own rented cars: stop proving limo services.

Lastly, this is the most radical solution: allow all longterm employees to buy into Air India stock via pension funds/provident funds. If one is literally invested in where one works, one will work a little better. And steal less.

And if Air India cannot make a difference in, say a year... let Laloo Prasad Yadav take over. He did it for the Railways, he can do it for Air India as well.

Zap!!! The EMP Strikes Back (and featuring the return of the Shelby GT500)

So... here is the deal, cops might try to use a contraption which delivers a powerful electromagnetic pulse that disables the electronic systems running in a criminal's car and (hopefully) brings said criminal from 200 mph to a coasting, slightly impotent halt. So... apart from the immediate problem.. what if the EMP zaps the electronic steering and not the engine... then you have a car chase turning into a Michael Bay production on the I94...... well, what about shielding?

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19699/?a=f

The skin depth for microwave radiation is about 0.8 um for Aluminium. That means that an EM pulse at 10GHz will decrease to 1/e of its original amplitude within 0.8 micrometers of an Al sheet. So, painting the interior of the car, or just the housing for the CPU with a 4 um think Al coating will do the trick. Incidentally, this was seen during Broken Arrow where a powerful EM Pulse generated by exploding a nuke underground zaps a helo out of the sky. Radical.

Concert pictures.

I have already posted some of these pictures.. but it is time to post the whole lot of them...
concert pictures are not the easiest to do: the lighting is either too dim or harsh and unflattering. For danseuses, motion is what is the essence of beauty in the narrative form of dance. Motion is also the bane of a photographer working under dim light. But then again, it can also be used to great effect, when motion blur is used as an artistic tool. But I can go on about technicalities for ever. Let me just finish by putting up the links to the three concerts and performances over the last couple of weeks.

Swaranjali 2007, an ICMD show.

Rhythms of Hope - an Asha Ann Arbor concert featuring Odissi exponent Ms. Sreyashi Dey and a Sitar performance by Mr. Rajan Sachdeva accompanied on the Tabla by Mr. Amol Khanapurkar.

Vatsa Vaani: a concert by the Indian Classical Music and Dance(ICMD) Group at UM for the benefit of PACE, a group which raises funds to provide education and community empowerment amongst the underprivileged in India.







Many thanks to...
1. Asha Ann Arbor
2. PACE and Inner PACE
3. ICMD, UM
4. Ms. Sreyashi Dey
5. Mr Rajan Sachdeva
6. Mr Amol Khanapurkar

Waay too much work..

Oh dear me, this has been a very hectic time... all around fun, teaching, several birthdays, photographing concerts and other fun. Also a certain amount of protein spectroscopy and a fairly huge amount of grading. But the most fun part was watching Tarantino's 'Deathproof' and Rodriguez's 'Planet Terror'. Go see them if you haven't.

Submarine movies.

I have not seen Das Boot. I have heard that it is Wolfgang Peterson's best film, and possibly the greatest submarine film ever. Having said this.... my personal favourite so far is probably Crimson Tide.

But this has much to do with my personal admiration for Mr. Washington as an excellent actor (although somewhat stereotyped.... Training Day was such a refreshing change..), and the fairly decent support by Gene Hackman. The music accompanying was good enough to sometimes distract from the palpable tension.

My second favourite.. with a certain amount of thought is Hostile Waters. This was a made for TV movie (HBO films, which has made other very watchable movies like the 'Tuskegee Airmen'). With a surprisingly good cast.. Martin Sheen as a USN commander and Rutger Hauer as an anguished SSBN captain who is forced to make decisions which will certainly kill his men, but avert a potentially greater disaster.. this movie hits very hard. It is worth thinking about the Kursk disaster in 2000 when the pride of Russia's submarine fleet, an Oscar II class ballistic missile nuclear submarine went down with all hands in the Barent's Sea. Hostile Waters brings to your mind the horrific claustrophobia and the ever present feeling of being entombed with the carriers of death.

Why this discussion? Because I am going to watch 'The Hunt for Red October' tonight, frequently called the best Hollywood sub movie.

Of parties, pictures and movies, of looking at cars and thinking about binary search as a tool for finding a girlfriend.

This has been a totally crazy weekend, with an equally crazy week before it... last week I bummed out after running close on to one and a half days of experiments with a crummy lock on ze spektrometer. Needless to say, I was suitably morose. Anyway, the experiments have been run, this time, properly (I hope).. so the advancement of science has not been delayed too much!! The weekend before last, I was taking pictures for the ICMD concert.. and the link is here.

The 30th evening saw my friends Rachna and Pradeep drop in at 11.45 and demand to be entertained until midnight, at which point I was to cut a birthday cake and celebrate. It had been a horrific day with labwork and teaching, and I am sure it was not a leisurely day for my friends either. Moral- I have great, wonderful, precious friends.

The 31st saw my roomie Young Saumen having organized another cake party with a whole bunch of youngsters... yes, at this point its worth mentioning that I turned 26 last week. Not a happy event... apart from the failed experiments.. there is the overwhelming realisation of a life mostly filled with pedestrian achievements... to wit, Asimov had published his greatest work, 'Nightfall' when he was .. what 21? Lawrence Bragg was a joint winner of the Nobel prize at the age of 25 for his work on XRD. Alexander started his conquest of most of the known world when he was hardly into his twenties. Chandragupta Maurya defeated this exact same Macedonian Empire and created the first unified Indian Empire when he was 20. I am in graduate school, for what looks like a large fraction of eternity. There is something relativistic about this.. my friends in the real world have jobs, usually on their second jobs by now. Well, apropos the previous statement.. I have good friends. There are nice things.

Anyway, we had a fairly large potluck with all these friends on Friday night.. which went on into the wee hours of Saturday. The food was pretty uniformly excellent... as was the 'surapaan'. Saturday was devoted to looking at cars and Nandi discoursing upon the use of binary search to look for girlfriends. But much more on that later..