Latest from Jayaprakash Narayan

The April 10 post from the much admired Jayaprakash Narayan of Loksatta makes a strange reading:
http://jayaprakashnarayan.blogspot.com/
He first describes his conversion to market economics:
"It is now universally acknowledged that the ‘invisible hand’ of the market is a greater force of common good than the benevolence of the rulers. But even 30 years ago, this was not so obvious. I entered government service as a starry-eyed socialist with great faith in the power and intentions of the State. Then, in early 80’s, my stint as special officer of Visakhapatnam Steel Project, then India’s largest public sector project (Rs 8000 crore), looking after land acquisition, rehabilitation, labour relations and public order issues, cured me of my illusions. I learnt to my consternation that public sector in India is largely the private sector of those in public office, giving endless opportunities for pelf, privilege, patronage and petty tyranny. Mercifully, things have improved since then with progressive expansion of competition and choice. The communications and consumer goods revolution, and accelerated growth are two obvious gains of liberalization."
He then goes on to say that market cannot be the panacea to all problems and pins his fath on philanthropy:
"But that is not how the capitalist West behaves! The charities of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are known to all. The great North American Universities of Harvard, Yale, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Stanford, McGill, Duke, Illinois Institute of Technology and Vassar College were all built through private charities. Smithsonian Museum, and several foundations – Ford, Kellogg, Rockefeller, Mellon, Carnegie and Kresge – are all promoting public causes with private funds. Those wealth creators understood the best value their money could get, and pursued public causes with vigour."
See http://alternativeperspective.blogspot.com/2007/04/behind-veil-csr-corporate-philanthropy.html for some of the problems with this approach. The approach of Loksatta of fighting corruption , raising public awareness, building social capital have been much admired and according to World Bank reports have reduced corruption in many cases. I am not sure whether faith in philanthropy is a substitute for the more difficult path which JP followed earlier.

Blogs that make you think

Peter Klein has a list of five blogs that make him think:
http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2007/04/26/five-blogs-that-make-me-think/
Robin Verghese of http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/followed up with his own list. Many blogs seem predictable after a while. I keep shifting. Some that I have been visiting regularly in the recent weeks (whether they make me think or not is not clear) are 3qurakedaily, Andrew Leonard's "How the world works" at salon.com (http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/index.html), Madhukar Shukla's AlternativePerspective, Rajshekhar's fracturedearth and Mark Thoma's Economists's view. No offence meant to others whom I visited in the past and am likely visit again.

Dani Rodrik wins the first Albert O. Hirschman prize

From http://www.ssrc.org/press/firstprize/ :
"I’m delighted with the choice of Dani Rodrik as the first recipient of the SSRC’s new Albert Hirschman Prize,” said Craig Calhoun, president of the SSRC. “Professor Rodrik’s work on development economics exemplifies the kind of social science values and engagements evident in Albert Hirschman’s work, as well as the kind of necessary knowledge the Social Science Research Council aims to bring to public affairs.”"
An excerpt from the Rodrik-Subramanian paper " From 'Hindu rate of groth' to productivity surge: The mystery of the Indian growth transition" (http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~drodrik/IndiapaperdraftMarch2.pdf):

"Our analysis focuses on the transition to high growth in the 1980s, and we have little to say about the 1991 reforms and the experience of the 1990s. We take the view that igniting growth and sustaining it are distinct challenges, requiring different sets of policies and approaches (Rodrik 2003, Hausmann et al. 2004). This paper is concerned exclusively with the challenge of igniting growth and the story of how India seems to have overcome it.
I. THE FACTS
A key fact that we establish at the outset of this paper is that the turnaround in this performance—the decisive break with the Hindu past—occurred around 1980 and not in the 1990s as most accounts have it. We are not the first to make this point: De Long (2003) and Williamson and Zagha (2002) have both emphasized that the approximate doubling of India’s growth rate took place a full decade before the 1991 reforms. Nonetheless, it is impossible to read the standard policy-oriented accounts and not leave with the impression that it is the reforms of the 1990s that have brought superlative economic performance to
India (Ahluwalia, 2002; Srinivasan and Tendulkar, 2003)."
T.N.Srinivasan's response to the above paper:
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/staffp/2004/00-00/sriniv.pdf

One version of Ahluwalia's views is here: http://casi.ssc.upenn.edu/research/papers/Ahluwalia_2002.pdf

Dani Rodrik has recently started a blog: http://rodrik.typepad.com/
UPDATE: Rodrik-Subramanian reply to Srinivasan's comments here http://www.imf.org/External/Pubs/FT/staffp/2005/02/rodrik2.htm (coutesy of http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/2005/09/hindu_growth_th.html). See also http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/09/rodrik_and_subr.html

A digger's story

From The Age on Anzac Day the story of a digger who gave his all and more:
"SOLDIER, prisoner of war and butcher, Ernest Brough has had more cause than most to think about life. For a start, at 87, he has lived a lot of it. Of one thing he is certain: it is worth more than mere money.

He lives humbly in a small, cluttered house in the Geelong suburb of Belmont, with the layers of his life piled around him.

When he sold his country block outside Geelong last year, he donated most of the proceeds — $300,000 — to St Vincent's Hospital for a new heart machine. "Money doesn't count much when you get old." he said. "I'm doing all right without the $300,000. I get a disability pension. I'm OK." "
Much more in the article. Onlt a few days ago, there was a story of businessman planning to spend around 7 million dollars for his 70th birthday bash.

Science and religion meet

in Bihar. From (via HUB) http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070418/hl_nm/india_polio_priests_dc_1:
"Hindu priests are blessing children with polio drops instead of traditional holy water, sweets or fruits to help eradicate the crippling disease in an eastern Indian state, an official said on Wednesday."

Lalita Mukherjea has a new blog

Lalita, a daughter of the Arudra couple and wife of a mathematician friend Kalyan has a new blog
http://roudrisms.blogspot.com
where she started posting her poems in Telugu and English.

Latest from orgtheory.net

The post http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2007/04/21/what-did-i-miss/ gives a sampling of previous posts which have links to some important and often readble articles. I found the articles from the post "what economists should learn from sociologists' and a few others that I have been able to read quite interesting. There are also some reading recommendations on economics books from http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/04/naked-economics.html. Enjoy.

Larry Sumners in Asia

Following Larry Sumners Speech in New Delhi"Ramgopal Agarwala, the senior adviser to R.I.S., or the Research and Information System for Developing Countries, quoted Mr. Summers extensively in a proposal that all Asian countries contribute to a fund that diverts money away from United States Treasury bills and into Asian infrastructure.

“If exposure to the United States deficit is not managed well, we cannot rule out a possible global recession, even depression,” said Mr. Agarwala, a former World Bank economist based in China, adding that Asia has a crucial role to play in correcting these imbalances.

The governments of China and India have both announced that they will invest their foreign exchange reserves in new areas, which will divert them from United States Treasury bills.

Subir Gokarn, the chief economist at Crisil, a ratings agency in India, said that Mr. Summers’s remarks about “the race to the bottom, and the adverse effects of globalization” strike a chord in Asia." See also Brad DELong' remarks in his weblog;
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/04/larry_summers_t.html and the comments there.

Some ideas of William Easterly

In view of the recent Easterly-Sachs debates, it may be useful to go back to Amartya Sen's review of Easterly's "The White Man's Burden" and Easterly's response.
From Sen's review:

“All of this is a great pity, since Easterly's book offers a line of analysis that could serve as the basis for a reasoned critique of the formulaic thinking and policy triumphalism of some of the literature on economic development. The wide-ranging and rich evidence -- both anecdotal and statistical -- that Easterly cites in his sharply presented arguments against grand designs of different kinds deserves serious consideration. In a less extreme form, they could have yielded an illuminating critical perspective on how and why things often do go wrong in the global efforts to help the world's poor.
………
The challenge is to respond to the plight of the hopelessly impoverished without neglecting to insist that help come in useful and productive forms.

In fact, Easterly makes exactly that point once the blast of rhetoric is turned down: "The good news about the noisy anti-globalization protesters, the hard-working NGOs, the rock bands and the movie stars, and the rich-country governments' increased interest in the Rest coming after 9/11 is that the constituency for the poor is growing. It's time for the rich-country public to insist that aid money actually reach the poor." Although not coming until after page 200, those sentences provide a better summary of the contribution of The White Man's Burden than do the rather extreme slogans to which Easterly chooses to give pride of place.
……
On the basis of his own investigations, Easterly is in an excellent position to systematize such insights. But this does not quite happen here, despite Easterly's occasional suggestions for how to make international aid more effective and less wasteful.
…..
Perhaps the weakest link in Easterly's reasoning is his almost complete neglect of the distinctions between different types of economic problems
……
There is much of merit in Easterly's perceptive vision about initiatives, incentives, and communication. We should be grateful to Easterly for the wealth of material he has presented, thereby enriching the development literature. We may have less reason to celebrate -- or even to accept -- the diagnosis of idiocy and obduracy he gives to those whom he calls "planners." But there is a strong case for judging a book by its best contributions, not its weakest points. My hope is that the "searchers" among the readers of The White Man's Burden will look for the convincing arguments Easterly does provide rather than for those he does not.”
From Easterly’ response to Sen:
“I have two responses: first, a "rhetorical drubbing" can promote accountability; second, the book does in fact offer positive alternatives to the conventional approach being drubbed.”
A drastic example of the sort that Easterly fears from Martin Walker’s review of “The White Man’s Burden”:
“From the air, one curious fact became clear. The vast swath of scrubland known as the Sahel, which translates as “the shore,” marks the transition from the true desert to the fertile lands of the south that are watered by the Volta and Niger rivers. It was dotted with recently built wells, and with their pumps and concrete rims these new wells were the epicenters not of the drought but of the death of the land around them. Great pans of dried mud and rutted dust stretched out in vast circles from each one. So after endless interviews with aid workers and local people and farmers, the real dimensions of this tragedy became clear. The drought was a man-made disaster, a tragedy of good intentions and of foreign aid.

The Sahel tragedy would fit perfectly into William Easterly’s new book, The White Man’s Burden, whose real message is in its long subtitle—“Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good.”
…..
The grand project to make the Sahel more fertile, for example, began in the late 1950s when most of West Africa was under French rule, and the French built hundreds of wells to tap the underground aquifers. They also built rural health clinics, which meant that more babies survived and fewer adults died. A population explosion then followed, of humans because of the health system, and of livestock because of the wells and the need to feed the extra human mouths. Families that had two cows and a camel and a dozen goats very quickly became wealthy with new herds, a process that could be measured in the rise of the bride-price from one cow in the 1950s to a dozen by 1970.

But these extra animals, while plentifully supplied with water, also had to eat, and the Sahel was too fragile an ecology to feed them. So they ate everything, the scrubby thorn trees and the sparse grasses that stopped the thinnest of topsoil from being blown away in the Sahara winds. And the first places to be overgrazed into desert were the areas around the new wells. So while it was true that the Sahara was advancing by fifty kilometers a year and more, it was jumping from the dead zone of one new well to the next. The French aid program, while a short-term triumph, produced an ecological disaster, and the Sahel drought was nature’s way of killing off the population explosion and restoring the delicate balance between the Sahel’s limited supply and the voracious demands of the animals and humans.

The humanitarian airlifts and aid funds that were triggered by the heartrending reporting of this disaster could not do much for the livestock, but they helped save a lot of lives—at a further price. The food and medical aid centers were set up near the big cities where the roads were reasonable, and so towns like Agadez and Niamey, Ougadougou and Timbuktu, became surrounded by vast refugee camps for people who had nothing in the Sahel to return to. The Tuareg and the other Sahel nomads stayed, to become a burden to the fragile governments of poor and newly independent countries like Niger, Mali, and Upper Volta. Political tensions inevitably arose between Muslim nomads and the Christian blacks of the south, and scuffles over grazing rights for the few camels that were left to the nomad refugees turned into skirmishes and even gunfights. It was not what the French had bargained for.”
A more recnt article by Easterly on Africa here. Easterly and collaborators wonder whether thewealth of the nations was already determined by 1000BC.

Latest from fracturedearth

Rajshekar studies microfinance and women's empowerment in a somewhat cryptic study. The first part studies the transormation of MFIs (Micro Finance Institutions). Excepts:
"A brief backgrounder now before I discuss how the business changed for them: MFIs do not operate like traditional banks. That is, they are not classified as depository institutions that take client deposits and use them as lending capital. They focus on lending. The problem with this approach is that it isn’t easy to generate capital for lending purposes. Most of the capital they lend, especially in the early stages, comes in the form of contributions by governments, from philanthropic organizations and individuals, and as loans from governments and institutions that incur interest at below market rates. As an MFI matures, it can start borrowing from banks, and then on-lend it further at its own risk. This is clearly preferable from an operational basis as it demonstrates an ability to exist outside of the unreliable world of voluntary contributions.(26) Now, with the financial constraint lifted, the MFIs were free to expand as rapidly as they like.
It is pertinent to mention here that the rapid growth in MFI lending took place after 2003, with the introduction of ICICI Bank’s ‘partnership’ model. In this model, the MFI becomes an agent of the commercial bank.
.......This pressure to achieve institutional sustainability reflects in policy decisions to expand the scale of the programme, to increase the volume of loans disbursed per borrower, increase interest rates, tighten repayment discipline by enforcing punitive strategies and offer minimalist credit programmes. Minimalist, incidentally, refers to an approach which focuses only on providing financial services, as opposed to the more holistic “microfinance plus” approach which seeks to also provide livelihood support, or so-called “business development” services. Minimalist MFIs (the vast majority, says Ghate) recognise the importance of livelihood support services but take the view they are best provided by specialist NGOs and the public sector.(32)"
"To sum up. If they are to scale up, MFIs need funds from the commercial sector. But, this being commercial capital, the MFIs need to invest these funds in a sustainable, risk-averse. Which means that the MFIs will have to either abjure from lending to the very poor or accompany every loan with very strict conditionalities. In Andhra, so far, they have opted for the latter approach. And that, as we have seen, can hurt the women. An empowered woman would be in a position to resist changes that go against her interests. And yet, if the suicides, in India and Bangladesh, are anything to go by, the borrowers are not always in a position to resist the MFIs."
The second part, which I found more difficult, is about the empowerment of women. Excerpts:
"Much of the euphoria over microfinance as a silver bullet to solve the two problems of poverty and gender inequity rests upon two assumptions. One, pushing up the earnings of poor women by making available enough credit to engage in gainful occupations will help them gain greater bargaining power within their households; and, two, bringing together women in groups will not only strengthen their earning capacities, but also create an institutional space from where they can articulate their interests.(42) Mayoux calls this a virtuous spiral — women’s access to micro-credit leads to more well-being for families leading to greater bargaining power for women within the household, which then is seen to lead to greater empowerment in the public as a group.(43)
Whether this claim stands up to scrutiny has been the subject of much debate. According to Mayoux, for many women, (microfinance’s) impact on social and economic empowerment does appear to be marginal, and some women might be disempowered.(44) That is echoed by the findings of Goetz and Sen Gupta in Bangladesh. They found that on average women retained full or significant control over loan use in just 37% of the cases; nearly 22% of respondents were either unable to give details of loan use, or were aware of how their husbands or other male household members had used loans, but were not themselves involved in the productive process; about 43% of the cases, they found, fell into three categories of partial, very limited, or no control: indicating a fairly significant pattern of loss of direct control over credit.(45)
.......
Schemes like Kudumbashree, they aver, define ‘women’s empowerment’ as increasing their capacity to improve the well-being of their families. Empowerment here, they say, does not mean revolutionary change in power structures, but merely the creation of greater space and flexibility for the poor within the existing limits, postponing the more far-reaching changes to a distant future hopefully reached through the ‘virtuous spiral’.
This, they say, is not good enough. It cannot be. That puts the women in a very defenceless position vis:a:vis the development apparatus – be it the MFIs or the state government.
To challenge patriarchy, one needs to transform economic structures. And so, they write, a feminist interventionist micro-finance programme would define empowerment very differently. In such a context, it would be defined as the women acquiring the capability to transform the newly created opportunities and spaces so that the very limits of existing institutions, public and domestic, are challenged.(57)
The question is whether minimalist microfinance is good enough to deliver that."

An argument of Sir Arthur Cotton

From http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/bline/2002/10/14/stories/2002101400650900.htm:
"n 1878, Arthur Cotton had to appear before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on India Affairs consisting of 18 members (not one of them an engineer) to justify and vindicate his stand that irrigation expansion any day deserves a better investment than railways: "... the railways cannot carry either the quantities, or at the price, that is essential in India, ... or nothing can be more certain than that in the present case the future of India's millions depends greatly upon whether money is still expended upon Railways, to cost £9,000 a mile and carry 30,000 tons at one penny, or upon canals to cost from £2,000 to £8,000 and carry two or three million tons at one twentieth of a penny, and whether districts are to be put into the state of Tanjore, Kistna and Godavari, or left in the state of the rest of the Carnatic last year and of Orissa, Bihar and Central India a few years ago... " "
See the rest of the article for a plan of Sonti Ramamurthi which has not been followed up.

Some cleaning hints from Ecofriend

aboutremoving stains,
cleaning toilets and
natural air purifiers.

The boy who played chess with Kurt Vonnegut

Andrew Leonard writes about Vonnegut:
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/04/12/vonnegut/index.html
Several more links about Vonnegut at 3quarksdaily. Andrew Leonard writes frequently about India in his blog (he is the same chap who praised Madhular Shukla and wrote about Glenn Davis Stone's work on Indian agriculture). Enjoy.

When everybody wore No.42 uniform

From Age Sports.:
" All over the major leagues, on the 60th anniversary of his first major league game, dozens of players, including the Los Angeles Dodgers team that won 9-3 against the San Diego Padres, wore uniforms with his No. 42 on the back in honour of Jackie Robinson Day.

..............

Wherever the Dodgers played, especially in St Louis and Cincinnati, black people from all over the South travelled to cheer him. But not everybody accepted him. Early in the 1951 season, the Dodgers arrived in Cincinnati after a life-threatening letter was delivered to the Reds' offices.

"Our manager, Charlie Dressen, got up and read the letter to us about how if Jackie took the field, he'll be shot," Carl Erskine, a revered Dodger right-hander of that era, recalled.

"There was complete silence. But then Gene Hermanski (the Dodgers left-fielder at the time) "piped up: 'Hey, Skip, I've got an idea. If we all wore 42 out there, they won't know who to shoot.' " Everybody laughed, especially Robinson.

When the Dodgers went out to warm up, Robinson was standing near Reese who joked: "You mind moving over a little, Jack, this guy might be a bad shot."

Robinson's trailblazing in baseball pre-dated the civil rights movement, which he later championed.

But until Sunday, Hermanski's joke was the only time it had been suggested that No. 42 should be worn by all the Dodgers, much less by dozens of other major leaguers. It should happen more often than once every 60 years."

Two interesting posts about China

one at Angry Bear and another at Brad Sester's blog.. Check also the comments, paericularly those by Dave Chiang in the second. One of Dave Ciang's comments:
"At this economic juncture, Chinese economic strategy in regards to its cache of US Dollar foreign reserves, is to minimize the damage to its economy when the dollar-centered global financial regime unravels. China is certainly recycling some of what it earns from trade surpluses to buy natural resources, companies, technology and oil wells abroad. But more investment flows are coming into China than are leaving it; this is what finances the factories that dot the Chinese landscape and the skyscrapers sprouting everywhere in its cities. Meanwhile, China’s current-account surplus translates into a vast build-up of dollar holdings. Whatever else China’s leaders may think about the United States, they can have no illusions that the dollars they have accumulated can ever be redeemed for anything close to their current purchasing power values. The Chinese also hope that when the dollar-centered global financial regime unravels, they will have an economy sufficiently developed to withstand the economic shock. With booming inter-regional Asian trade, unless the US Economy plunges into a depression, the continental Chinese economy is rapidly rising to the critical mass for self-sustaining domestic growth. That will allow it to deal with the collapse in American purchasing power when the US is finally forced to live within its means. The political fallout is another question entirely. The collapse of the dollar will take with it the US global hegemony project; the United States will be hard-pressed to sustain its global military reach in a world where it must earn euros or yen to pay its foreign creditors rather than print more Federal Reserve paper."

Euler's 300th birthday

celebration is drawing several articles particularly about his beautiful equation:
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070414/mathtrek.asp
He was one of those who could work on any area of mathematics on any day and in the days when proofs were not always sound could feel his way through most complicated concepts and computations. Some say that he and Jacobi were the only two comparable to Srinivasa Ramanujam for their feel for astonishing formulae and he was probably the first to realize the many valuedness of the logarithmic function. He was also a religious man and there is this 'story' of his proof for the existence of god. If you sum the series 1-1+1-1+1-1+1... by one grouping (1-1)+(1-1)+...you get 0 and if you sum it 1+(-1+1)+(-1+1)+..., you get 1. Apparently this was how god created something out of nothing. The precise notion of infinite sums, called convergence, became clearer only with Cauchy but Euler got away with playing around with non-convergent series.

Rain forests sold for bags of sugar?

See http://www.guardian.co.uk/congo/story/0,,2054203,00.html

Some articles on consciousness

For some reason, questtion about god, consciouness and happiness do not seem to bother me (though having been poor off and on, poverty does); may be they will when I am older. I seem to read article son these topics only if they are short and readable and then forget them. Here are three such:
“The Society of selves” by Nicholas Humphry:
http://www.humphrey.org.uk/papers/2007SocietyOfSelves.pdf
from http://www.humphrey.org.uk/papers_available_online.htm
Paul Bork’s review of Nicholas Humphry’s “Seeing Red:A Study of Consciousness”
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=8612
V.S. Ramachandran's latest in Edge:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran07/ramachandran07_index.html

I would like to believe this

From New Scientist:
"People with Parkinson's disease are less likely to be smokers and coffee drinkers than their healthy siblings, according to a study of family members. The finding adds to a growing body of evidence that some substance in tobacco might protect the brain against this devastating neurological disorder and sheds new light on coffee's effects on the disease."
Twice, when I gave up smoking for a while, my psoriatic arthritis increased.

Getting dirty

may lift your mood:
"Treatment of mice with a 'friendly' bacteria, normally found in the soil, altered their behavior in a way similar to that produced by antidepressant drugs, reports research published in the latest issue of Neuroscience.
These findings, identified by researchers at the University of Bristol and colleagues at University College London, aid the understanding of why an imbalance in the immune system leaves some individuals vulnerable to mood disorders like depression."

Science Trains

and Science circuses planned in China (via 3quarksdaily):
"As part of its 15-year plan to develop nationwide science and technology literacy, particularly among farmers and migrant workers, Beijing has rolled out an 860 million renminbi ($111 million) initiative to introduce China's vast, rural adult population to science. Formally established last year, the program uses unusual means such as "science trains" and "science circuses" to deliver its message. Academics and educators now tour the country, traversing even remote areas of Inner Mongolia and Gansu provinces, where they greet locals, hand out materials and books translated into the nation's minority languages, and unfurl red banners that read "Spread the Scientific Spirit."
"There is a recognition within science policy-making structures that at a time when the level of investment [in science] is rising so rapidly, there is a need to bring people with them in that endeavor," says James Wilsdon, director of the science and innovation program for United Kingdom consultancy Demos, who recently spent five months in China interviewing science officials. "It's important that the vast hinterland of the Chinese population feels that this push for scientific development is about doing stuff that will improve the quality of their lives."

As China pours money into ambitious initiatives like nanotechnology, supercomputers, and its space program, surveys suggest that as much as 98 percent of the population lacks the education necessary to comprehend the basics of science. But scientific achievement is increasingly part of modern China's nationalism, and so the country's uneducated workers—traditional allies in government-engendered nationalism—must comprehend science. President Hu Jintao called recently on government workers to "on all fronts vigorously publicize scientific development...and to instill it in the hearts of the people.""

2007 Reith lectures

by Jeffrey Sachs start on 11th April, 2007. Further information at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2007/

Message from karmayog.com

At www.karmayog.org/citizenservices/ , see

-- Process to Obtain: Birth Certificate, Caste Certificate, Death
Certificate, Domicile Certificate, Driving Licence, Marriage Certificate,
Tribe Certificate, etc.

-- Process to Apply for: Inclusion of name in the Electoral Rolls, Passport,
PAN Card, Ration Card, TAN, etc.

- Process to Check / Track: Agricultural Market Prices Online, Causelist of
Indian Courts, Court Judgements, Exam Results, Land Records, Speed Post
Status, Status of Stolen Vehicles, etc.

-- Process to Complain to Central Vigilance Commission, etc.

If you know of other useful online information pertaining to Citizens, do
let us know.

Regards,
Vinay
www.karmayog.org

Linguistic Nationalism etc from Language Log

Somewhat incoherent post on linguistic nationalism from Language Log but it has lot of references and comments. As the author Max Liberman says "At some point, I really should arrange all these comments on the political history of language policies into a coherent overall framework...".

Summary of IPCC Report from BBC

is available here. Excerpts:
"Billions of people face shortages of food and water and increased risk of flooding, experts at a major climate change conference have warned.
....

"It's the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
...
Key findings of the report include:


75-250 million people across Africa could face water shortages by 2020

Crop yields increase could increase by 20% in East and Southeast Asia, but decrease by up to 30% in Central and South Asia

Agriculture fed by rainfall could drop by 50% in some African countries by 2020

20-30% of all plant and animal species at increased risk of extinction if temperatures rise between 1.5-2.5C

Glaciers and snow cover expected to decline, reducing water availability in countries supplied by melt water
The report states that the observed increase in the global average temperature was "very likely" due to man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The scientific work reviewed by IPCC scientists includes more than 29,000 pieces of data on observed changes in physical and biological aspects of the natural world.

Eighty-nine percent of these, it believes, are consistent with a warming world."
This is the second IPCC report , the third is due in May and a final summing up in November.

UPDATE: More on the climate divide here. Excerpt:
"In almost every instance, the people most at risk from climate change live in countries that have contributed least to the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases linked to the recent warming of the planet.

Those most vulnerable countries also tend to be the poorest. And the countries that face the least harm - and are best equipped to deal with the harm they do face - tend to be the richest.

To advocates of unified action to curb greenhouse gases, this growing realization is not welcome news.

"The original idea was that we were all in this together, and that was an easier idea to sell," said Robert Mendelsohn, an economist at Yale University.

"But the research is not supporting that. We're not in it together."

The large industrialized countries are more resilient partly because of geography; they are mostly in mid-latitude regions with Goldilocks climates - neither too hot nor too cold.

Many enjoy gifts like the thick rich soil and generous growing season of the American corn belt or the forgiving weather of France and New Zealand.

But a bigger factor is their wealth - wealth built at least partly on a century or more of burning coal, oil and the other fossil fuels that underlie their mobile, industrial, climate-controlled way of life."

ILO-WTO study: Trade and Employment

is available online here. See neweconomist blogfor more information.

Two articles on academic research in India

particularly in social science and humanities. The first by Harsh Sethi is inIndian Express and a follow up by Arun Thiruvengadam is in Law and Otherthings Blog . From Harsh Sethi's article:
"Alongside the horror of what seems to have transpired in Nandigram, though verifiable details are still awaited, is the deep disappointment with the attempt of some prominent Left intellectuals to ‘rationalise’ and contextually locate the actions of the Left Front government in West Bengal.
......
The end result is not only the paucity of quality research — exceptions apart — in the social sciences and humanities, but worse, ex-ante postulations, over-reliance on experiential insights and ideological biases marking public debate, often to the detriment of public policy. Without falling prey to xenophobia, it is time that we ask ourselves why so often some of the best analysis of Indian problems, both past and present, is available in the work of the foreign or non-resident Indian scholar.
.......
How often do we come across examples of involvement with student learning, mentoring younger researchers or translating key texts in non-English Indian languages. So why be surprised if there is considerable scepticism about the constant carping about work loads, salary scales and retirement benefits? Let’s face it, once tenured in public institutions, there is little demand for performance. More than a shortage of resources, far too many of our academics are lazy; they can get away without working.
As one of my senior colleagues once pointed out, the Indian intellectual environment is characterised by a skewed bi-modal distribution. Most academics do not have the wherewithal to engage in meaningful intellectual tasks. Those that do, once they have made their reputations or established their networks, are chased by a plethora of clients. For them it is a seller’s market. Quality invariably suffers."
Arun is concerned about the paucity of quality research on the reservations problem and says:
"Hopefully, the debate over the case will spur more academic legal research on the issue of reservations in India. It is clear that policy-makers and judges in India will greatly benefit from such research."
Even though many of the foreign researchers are very professional and seem thorough, it is not always clear what their interests are. Again we may need some help and study to sort such things out. See, for example the articles on GM seeds by various experts. In this context, I found the format of some of the articles in Current Anthropology useful. For example the article by Glenn Davis Stone "Agricultural Deskilling..." (http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/research/stone/stone480102.web.pdf) has substantial comments by other experts and Davis' response at the end. This kind of format brings together diverse opinions, researches and references so that the reader has a wide choice and research to base his/her opinions.

Regulating SMS content providers

From The Age :
"Snowballing complaints about "premium" SMS services - paid content such as ringtones, games, news and information sent to your mobile phone - have resulted in new rules for telephone companies and content providers, including the introduction of a universal "STOP" command. Disputed charges for premium SMS were described as the "stand-out issue" in the billing category in the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman's most recent annual report. Complaints in this area jumped from 1708 issues in 2004-05 to 5890 12 months later. Many of the complaints involved consumers disputing SMS charges on the basis they didn't knowingly subscribe to a service or because they'd been unable to stop a service.

The ombudsman's annual report gives the example of one complainant whose son faced a bill for more than $2000 for a premium SMS service he had been unable to stop. In an effort to end the service, the son had contacted the telephone company, who passed on contact details for the content provider.

"However, when he dialled the numbers, they didn't connect successfully and he was unable to stop the messages," the report says."

But there are signs a new industry scheme aimed at preventing such problems is having an effect. Premium services on "19" numbers are regulated by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, which last year ruled the industry had to come up with a self-regulatory scheme covering such services."

This case study is fairly close to what happened to us; in our case the phone was lost/stolen and whoever had the phone subscribed to the services and we kept getting the bills. We could not terminate the telephone service since it was contracted for two years. And so on.

Unnatural order on natural numbers

The February 2007 issue of Americam Mathematical Monthly has another short proof of Sharkowski's (Sakowskii's) Theorem. We all know that a continuous map of the closed interval I=[0,1] to itself has a fixed point, that is number x in [0,1] with f(x)=x ( this is one version of Intermediate Value Theorem). Since f(x) ia also in I, we can apply f to f(x) and keep interating . Call the nth interate f^n (x). If f^n (x)=x but not for a smaller integer, then x is called a periodic point of order n for f. The Sharkowski Theorem gives a strange order on the natural numbers asserts that if f has a periodic point of order n, then f has a periodic point of order m for every m less than n in the Sharkowski order. The Sharkowski order is the following: First take odd numbers in the reverse order 3>5>7>.., the multiples of these numbers by 2 in the reverse order 2.3>2.5>2.7>..., then 4.3>4.5>4.7>...>8.3>8.5>8.7>...16.3>16.5>...and finally all powers of two in the usual order 32>16>8>4>2>1. The number one is considered the zeroth power of 2.
That is the strange theorem; I came across it in 80's when some economists wanted me to explain the proofs. Most proofs are elementary but the above seems to be very short (the author thanks Sharkowski for suggestions). The theorem in particular asserts that if f has a periodic point of order 3, then it has a periodic point of every order. This corollary became famous as the statement "period three implies chaos". Some connections are explained in the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarkovskii's_theorem. Another generalization of the above version of the Intermediate Value Theorem is the Brouwer Fixed Point Theorem. This again has a nice constructive proof (which finds approximate fixed points) by economists Scarf and Eves.

Paul Cohen's Obituary by Barkley Rosser

The conomist John Barkley Rosser Jr. has an obituary of Paul Cohen in his blog:
http://maxspeak.org/mt/archives/002961.html#more
Rosser Sr. was a famous logician.

Two articles on 'reverse globalization'

From Brad Setser’s Blog;
http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/setser/186514
“The phrase the “uphill flow of capital” seems to have caught on. It is a vivid way of describing a world where poor countries finance rich countries. Or, a bit more accurately, China and some no-longer-all-that-poor oil exporting countries finance the US.

I wonder if the term “reverse globalization” will also catch on. Nasser al-Shaali, chief executive of the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC) Authority, recently used the term "reverse globalization" to describe one likely long-term consequence of the uphill flow of capital: Emerging markets will be buying companies – not just bonds – in the developed world.

"Reverse globalization - when you have emerging market players going out and acquiring developed institutions - is a tide that no matter how you try to swing against it, will be very very prevalent in the years to come," he [Shaali] said.

You can quibble about the term. Globalization as a term could easily describe a two-way flow of funds around the globe. Call it financial integration. That is basically how the transatlantic economy works. US firms invest in Europe. European firms invest in the US. Their respective positions basically balance each other out.”
Setser concludes:
“Remember, creditors – not debtors – traditionally have set the rules of the global financial game. Right now the US is a debtor – a big one. But the US still expects to set the rules, more or less. My guess is that most US business circles still think globalization means something close to the global Americanization of finance and business. It may. But it also may not.
Reverse globalization may not be a bad term.
From Tina Rosenberg’s article “Reversing Foreign Aid”:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/magazine/25wwlnidealab.t.html?
“Historically, the global balance sheet has favored poor countries. But with the advent of globalized markets, capital began to move in the other direction, and the South now exports capital to the North, at a skyrocketing rate. According to the United Nations, in 2006 the net transfer of capital from poorer countries to rich ones was $784 billion, up from $229 billion in 2002. (In 1997, the balance was even.) Even the poorest countries, like those in sub-Saharan Africa, are now money exporters.
…..
No one planned the rapid swelling of reserves. Other South-to-North subsidies, by contrast, have been built into the rules of globalization by international agreements. Consider the World Trade Organization’s requirements that all member countries respect patents and copyrights — patents on medicines and industrial and other products; copyrights on, say, music and movies. As poorer countries enter the W.T.O., they must agree to pay royalties on such goods — and a result is a net obligation of more than $40 billion annually that poorer countries owe to American and European corporations.

There are good reasons for countries to respect intellectual property, but doing so is also an overwhelming burden on the poorest people in poorer countries. After all, the single largest beneficiary of the intellectual-property system is the pharmaceutical industry. But consumers in poorer nations do not get much in return, as they do not form a lucrative enough market to inspire research on cures for many of their illnesses. Moreover, the intellectual-property rules make it difficult for poorer countries to manufacture less-expensive generic drugs that poor people rely on. The largest cost to poor countries is not money but health, as many people simply will not be able to find or afford brand-name medicine.”

Terence Tao has a blog

at http://terrytao.wordpress.com/. It is probably of interest mainly to mathematicians but the recent post on Navier-Stokes may be of intertest to others too.

No comments for a while

This blog has been a desultory effort to keep track of what I have been reading some of which I keep going back to off and on. One of the topics that started me off was 'farmers suicides in India'. This led topics of globalization, corporations, evolution of morality etc. I seem to have found some interesting papers worth studying in some detail like the papers of Glenn Davis Stone on farmers' problems: http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/blurb/b_gds.html, David Labaree's on education and some books on Marx. There is not enough time to read these and also engage in intense discussions. Though I will be posting on what seem interesting to me, there will not be any discussions in this blog for some time to come.

GTIR

From http://www.weforum.org/en/index.htm :
For the first time, Denmark tops the rankings of The Global Information Technology Report 2006-2007 ’s “Networked Readiness Index ”, as a culmination of an upward trend since 2003. Sweden, Singapore and Finland follow, while the United States loses ground in networked readiness, falling 6 places to 7th position. With record coverage of 122 economies, the GITR has become the world’s most respected assessment of the impact of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) on the development process and the competitiveness of nations.
The rankings are here: http://www.weforum.org/pdf/gitr/rankings2007.pdf
USA is 7th, Australia 15th, India 44th and China 59th.
According to BBC news: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6502725.stm, India dropped four places from last year and China dropped 9 places.

Discover interviews Jane Goodall

Discover interview of Jane Goodall . Surprisingly, there is a bit about development and microfinance. Excerpts:
"I didn’t care about a degree—I just wanted to learn."

"What is wrong with current African aid programs?

People are given cash. I think the reason our reforestation and education program, TACARE [Lake Tanganyika Catchment Reforestation and Education], has worked so well is that we don’t do this. We’ve invested money into projects but only after sitting down with the locals—our Tanzanian team members do the talking, not us, not white people. So the villagers buy into our projects; they choose them. Microcredit [loans of less than $200] is the way forward, as long as you determine that the project these poor villagers want to develop is environmentally sustainable—that’s key.

How do you persuade people who barely have enough to eat that they need to lead “environmentally sustainable” lives?

TACARE works to improve the people’s lives through better farming, getting scholarships for girls to go to secondary school, HIV-AIDS information, family planning, health care, and especially helping women and children—because all around the world as women’s education improves, family size goes down. Right now more people are living on the land than it can support. And we do our youth program, Roots & Shoots, both inside and outside the villages. As a result, the villagers are now allowing the tree stumps that look dead to regenerate instead of hacking away at them for firewood. We’ve already seen trees coming back around many of these villages. The whole plan is to persuade the villagers to leave not their best but their worst land—land that chimps can travel through. Then our Gombe chimps will no longer be trapped within the tiny park."

Center for Global Development

From a comment on a previous post:
" I wanted to let you and your readers know they can submit a question for Nancy (on Globalization and Inequality) to answer this week through our new online tool, Ask CGD: http://ask.cgdev.org/. The live answer session will be on Friday March 30, from 11am-12noon EST. We also posted a short clip of Nancy giving an overview of the topic on YouTube:http://tinyurl.com/223msb".
Update: Just noticed that William Easterly worked for a brief period in CGD and there is a lecture by him and discussions about his ideas on aid at CGD:
http://www.cgdev.org/content/article/detail/6926/
Andrew Leonard gives links to Easterly-Sachs debates ( also to some programmes of Abhijit Banerjee on development) in:
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2006/12/20/poor/index.html
Nancy above refers to Nancy Birdsall of CGD (http://www.cgdev.org/) whose article in Boston Globe was linked in a previous post.

Gandhi's advice to Arjun Rao

From http://www.bfg-muenchen.de/goralife.htm (Gora's Life:An Outline):
"At Sevagram Gandhi told Arjun, "You should become like Ambedkar. You should work for the removal of untouchability and caste. Untouchability must go at any cost." "
More of Gora (Goparaju Ramachandra Rao) and Gandhi can be found in: "An Atheist with Gandhi" at http://www.positiveatheism.org/india/gora12.htm

Pictures from Warangal District

are available in the 'images' section of http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/blurb/b_gds.html
See in particular Kalleda 2004 and Samkranti 2005.

Race is on for global warming riches

See Yahoo News for the bonzana that may be waiting in the Arctic. Most of Antarctica is already claimed by Australia and a few other countries; India has a little stake too.

S.R.S. Varadhan wins Abel Prize

S.R.S.Varadhan wins Abel Prize:


By John Simpson
ScienceNOW Daily News
22 March 2007
Srinivasa Varadhan, a researcher at New York University (NYU) in New York City, has won the 2007 Abel Prize for mathematics. The $975,000 award--bestowed by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters--honors Varadhan's contributions to the field of probability theory, a branch of mathematics concerned with the analysis of random phenomena. The Abel citation credits Varadhan for fundamental work that has "greatly expanded our ability to use computers to simulate and analyze the occurrence of rare events."

Fittingly, in the manner of a random event, the prize announcement on Thursday caught Varadhan by surprise. "It was a shock. I couldn't believe it. It's still like a dream," he told Science.

Born in Madras, India, Varadhan began to work on probability theory as an undergraduate at Madras' Presidency College in 1959. After receiving his Ph.D. from the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata in 1963, his studies brought him to New York City later that year. Since 1966, he has taught at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Among Varadhan's other prizes are the Birkhoff Prize in 1994, the American Mathematical Society's Leroy Steele Prize in 1996 and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Varadhan's work on probability has implications for quantum field theory, population dynamics, finance, and traffic engineering. Probability theory is used increasingly today to help simulate random processes, Varadhan explains. "One would think the laws of physics would determine everything. But there are always things that are unpredictable," he says. For example, the probability of a catastrophic flood or an asteroid colliding with Earth might be small, but the consequences could be devastating, which makes it important for researchers to figure out such likelihoods.

Daniel Stroock, a mathematics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who has collaborated with Varadhan, says Varadhan's research has been a blessing to scientists in various disciplines: For instance, evolutionary biologists could rely on his work to calculate the chance that a specific mutation might impart a selective advantage to a species. "He's very talented and an extremely decent person, which is a rare event, itself a large deviation" from the ordinary, says Stroock.

Varadhan remains modest. "My feeling is you shouldn't let things like this get to your head. A lot of people deserve it, but so few can get it." This marks the second time in three years an NYU mathematician has won the Abel Prize. In 2005, it was given to Professor Peter Lax of the Courant Institute.
Update: Abel prize citation is available at the Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._R._Srinivasa_Varadhan

Nancy Birdsall on Inequality

An excerpt from Nancy Birdsall's article in Boston Review:
"Subsequent work by many economists has strengthened my conviction that while inequality may be constructive in the rich countries—in the classic sense of motivating individuals to work hard, innovate, and take productive risks—in developing countries it is likely to be destructive. That is especially true in Latin America, where conventional measures of income inequality are high. It also may well apply in other parts of the developing world, where our conventional indicators are not so high but there are plentiful signs of other forms of inequality: injustice, indignity, and lack of equal opportunity.
Distinguishing between constructive and destructive inequality is useful. To clarify the distinction: inequality is constructive when it creates positive incentives at the micro level. Such inequality reflects differences in individuals’ responses to equal opportunities and is consistent with efficient allocation of resources in an economy. In contrast, destructive inequality reflects privileges for the already rich and blocks potential for productive contributions of the less rich."

And much more in the article (via 3quarksdaily).

Links 23/3/07

There is a lot about primary education in India( there is also an interesting post by Naveen Mandava in the Indian Economy Blog. It has links to a number of empirical studies) in Abhijit Banerjee's article on New Developmental Economics. An excerpt:
"A wonderful example of delving into the bowels of the machine can be found in a recent paper by Esther Duflo and Stephen Ryan of mit and Rema Hanna of nyu. Seva Mandir, an ngo in Western India, had long been concerned about the fact that in many of the primary schools they run there were reports that teachers do not come to school. The problem was that these were one-teacher schools, so if the teacher was not there, no one other than the children and their parents would know. And they tended to be in relatively remote areas, so arranging for someone to routinely check on them was out of the question. What could they do?

When Seva Mandir explained this challenge to Duflo, who had worked with them before, she had a brain wave. Cameras were getting cheaper all the time. Why not tell the teacher to get a child to take a picture of him and the class at the beginning of each day and at the end, with a time-and-date stamp on each picture. That way you will know at least that he was there at two points in a given day. Seva Mandir agreed to give it a try; and to make the teachers take it seriously, they announced that salaries would be tied to the pictures: teachers would be paid 50 rupees for every day for which they had two pictures. The 50-rupee number was chosen to give a teacher who showed up for 20 days a month what he used to get under the old system (1,000 rupees). There was some concern that teachers would resist the new system, but on the whole it was surprisingly well received: the teachers liked it because it put their destiny in their own hands.

Duflo, Hanna, and Ryan carried out a randomized evaluation of this program. The results showed that teacher absences (measured by unannounced visits by monitors to both experimental and control schools) were 42 percent in the control schools and 22 percent in the schools where the cameras were being used—and at the end of the year, children in the camera schools performed much better on their exams. Moreover, given how responsive teachers seemed to be to the incentives, Duflo, Hanna, and Ryan concluded that it would be worth raising the daily payment by 5 rupees, to 55 rupees per day.

Seva Mandir considered the experiment a success, and the program continues. But now that they have seen the benefits of giving the teachers incentives, they have begun to wonder whether there are cheaper options, and ones that are more unobtrusive. The plan is to think of new ways to appeal to the teachers’ motivations. The last time I was at Seva Mandir, I watched Duflo, her colleague Sendhil Mullainathan from Harvard, and Neelima Khetan from Seva Mandir debating how teachers would react to being confronted by empty pages in a child’s notebook, left empty to show that the teacher was not there. I thought I saw a new economics being born. "
Webcast and interviews on Has the civilization gone too far?.
Some of Glenn Davis Stone's papers are here. The 2002 paper "Both sides now..." comes with a backgrounder. The papers that appeared in 'Current Anthropology" have comments by others at the end and Stone's responses. The paper "Agricultural deskkilling etc...' has comments by Ronald J. herring some of whose artcles appeared in Indian magazines.
Current Biology has an online article which gives a 'new' twist to the Cooperation puzzle. It may be online for a few more days
Title:Cooperation Peaks at Intermediate Disturbance
Authors:Michael A. Brockhurst, Angus Buckling, and Andy Gardner
Abstract:
Explaining cooperation is a challenge for evolutionary biology [1, 2]. Surprisingly, the role of extrinsic ecological parameters remains largely unconsidered. Disturbances [3, 4] are widespread in nature and have evolutionary consequences [5]. We develop a mathematical model predicting that cooperative traits most readily evolve at intermediate disturbance. Under infrequent disturbance, cooperation breaks down through the accumulation of evolved cheats. Higher rates of disturbance prevent this because the resulting bottlenecks increase genetic structuring (relatedness [6, 7, 8]) promoting kin selection for cooperation. However, cooperation cannot be sustained under very frequent disturbance if population density remains below the level required for successful cooperation. We tested these predictions by using cooperative biofilm formation by the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens[9, 10]. The proportion of biofilm-forming bacteria peaked at intermediate disturbance, in a manner consistent with model predictions. Under infrequent and intermediate disturbance, most bacteria occupied the biofilm, but the proportion of cheats was higher under less frequent disturbance. Under frequent disturbance, many bacteria did not occupy the biofilm, suggesting that biofilm dwelling was not as beneficial under frequent versus intermediate disturbance. Given the ubiquity of disturbances in nature, these results suggest that they may play a major role in the evolution of social traits in microbes.

more from Sciencedaily

Tomatos grow wellin diluted salt water:
“The controlled use of alternative water resources, such as diluted seawater, could be a valid tool to face drought in the Mediterranean region,” the researchers say in a report scheduled for the April 4 issue of ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication.
“Our results show that the antioxidant-related nutritional value of tomatoes is significantly improved when the fruits are picked at the red-ripe stage and when the plants are exposed to moderate salinity stress conditions, such as those determined by the application of diluted seawater (10 percent).”
From Mother Nature's Medicine Cabinet:
"In the study, the National Cancer Institute’s David J. Newman and Gordon M. Craig conclude that only 30 percent of the critically important “new chemical entities (NCEs)” introduced between 1981 and mid-2006 were synthetic and not based on a naturally-occurring compound. NCEs are totally new drugs, never before available, rather than modified versions of existing medications sometimes termed “me-too” drugs. The remaining 70 percent of the NCEs introduced during the last 25 years were natural products — medicines obtained from sources such as plants and animals, derived from natural products or chemically designed to mimic natural products.
Natural products range from aspirin (originally obtained from the willow tree) to taxol, the anti-cancer drug discovered in the Pacific yew tree. About half of all anti-cancer drugs introduced since the 1940s are either natural products or medicines derived directly from natural products, the study notes."
May be some of the traditional medicines are effective and found by trial and error and should not be ignored until further research is done. Apparently the Indian Govt. has funded a database for traditional medicine.
And this one on imitation learning.

Reducing the spread of elephantiasis

From Sciencedaily:
"Now, a new review of existing research suggests that enriching a community’s salt with a drug could treat and prevent the condition without any adverse effects.
But it remains a challenge to get governments to enrich their salt with the drug, diethylcarbamazine, or DEC.
“Biologically and medically, it’s a great tool. Operationally and socially, it’s a challenge to put it into place,” said Eric Ottesen, M.D., director of the Lymphatic Filariasis Support Center in Decatur, Ga. Ottesen was not involved with the research but is familiar with the review’s findings.
To gauge the effectiveness of enriching salt with DEC, researcher Srividya Adinarayanan of the Vector Control Research Center in Pondicherry, India, and her colleagues examined 21 studies in a new systematic review.
The review appears in the current issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research. Systematic reviews like this one draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing medical trials on a topic.
.........................
Drug treatments are fairly effective at getting rid of adult worms and very good at killing off the baby worms, which transmit the disease to other people through mosquitoes. But when tens of millions of people are infected, it can be difficult to provide care to individuals.
Enter the drug DEC, which kills the baby worms, known as microfilariae. Since the drug only works if people take it repeatedly, some health officials have put it in salt supplies so people could get a regular dose.
According to the reviewers, the studies suggest that DEC-medicated salt is effective at reducing transmission of the disease if maintained for at least six months. They added that the salt treatment can eliminate transmission entirely if used over a long period of time.
The reviewers also suggest that a very low dose of DEC over an extended period — perhaps six months — is better than bigger doses given at once.
A couple of caveats exist. For one, the reviewers say that widespread use of DEC could lead to resistance to the drug, although there’s been little research into this possibility. The reviewers add that “political and administrative commitment and community motivation is a necessity for community programs to be successful.”
Indeed, while China has eliminated filariasis with the help of DEC, regulatory hurdles have prevented many countries from enriching their salt despite research suggesting that DEC is effective, Ottesen said."

Pretty picture

See the pretty picture of E_8 root system at AIM and news of some recent developments. Thye Mandala like picture on the right can be enlarged.

The Trap

Via Evolutionary Psychology group. Usually, the moderator and fellow Australian Robert Karl Stonjek posts on many of the latest developments in science But this one about the BBC seies "The Trap" by Adam Curtis came from some other regular contributors:The Trap on youtube. Synopses are coming out at blairwatch. The first two are here and here.

Catalyst to turn carbon dioxide to fuel?

This seems too good to be true but I saw it both in New Scientist and ecofriend. Excerpt from New Scientist:
 
"A new catalyst that can split carbon dioxide gas could allow us to use carbon from the atmosphere as a fuel source in a similar way to plants.
"Breaking open the very stable bonds in CO2 is one of the biggest challenges in synthetic chemistry," says Frederic Goettmann, a chemist at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany. "But plants have been doing it for millions of years."
Plants use the energy of sunlight to cleave the relatively stable chemical bonds between the carbon and oxygen atoms in a carbon dioxide molecule. In photosynthesis, the CO2 molecule is initially bonded to nitrogen atoms, making reactive compounds called carbamates. These less stable compounds can then be broken down, allowing the carbon to be used in the synthesis of other plant products, such as sugars and proteins.
In an attempt to emulate this natural process, Goettmann and colleagues Arne Thomas and Markus Antonietti developed their own nitrogen-based catalyst that can produce carbamates. The graphite-like compound is made from flat layers of carbon and nitrogen atoms arranged in hexagons.
The team heated a mixture of CO2 and benzene with the catalyst to a temperature of 150 ºC, at about three times atmospheric pressure. In a first step, the catalyst enabled the CO2 to form a reactive carbamate, like that made in plants."

Andrew Leonard on Gujarat cotton experiments

Andrew Leonard followed up the article mentioned in the previous post with this article. Excerpts:
"But it's what has happened after the ban on Navbharat151 that is really intriguing. As farmers are wont to do, they saved their seeds, and discovered that the second generation was also resistant to bollworm depredation. Some even experimented with interbreeding the Navbharat151 genetic line with other strains of cotton particularly suited to Gujarat conditions, and came up with new strains that proved effective. Local seed companies sprang up to commercialize the descendant breeds. And even though Mayhco-Monsanto has since been allowed to sell its own cotton seeds, the local bootlegged versions have proved more popular. And why not? According to reports, they're much cheaper, and, from the point of view of local farmers, perform as well or better than the "official" alternatives.
..........
If what Stone labels the "anarcho-capitalism" of Gujarat is an indication of what is likely to transpire in the future (and it seems that a somewhat similar scenario may have played out in Brazil with transgenic soybeans), then what this all adds up to, frankly, is an incredible mess. Corporations will be unable to control how their biotech is used. Green activists won't be able to stop its spread. Governments, no matter how well-meaning, are unlikely to effectively implement biosafety protocols that are 100 percent certain to screen out all possible risks. In some cases, as in Gujarat, farmers will take advantage of new technologies and mix and match with what they know how to do best........
.....Should we be dismayed by this profusion of complexity, or heartened? One encouraging lesson is that while the Monsantos of the world are extraordinarily powerful, they are not all powerful. Another could be the observation that transgenic biotech can indeed make a positive difference in the lives of farmers, especially when they are given the freedom to experiment and adapt. Yet another is that farmers are not automatically helpless pawns in the face of corporate capital -- they can coopt new technologies and create new agricultural practices.

Still another is that the situation on the ground is changing, all the time, and with great speed, and we had better keep paying very close attention."

A science of the gray

I have been browsing through "Agricultural Deskilling and the Spread of Genetically Modified Cotton in Warangal" by Glenn Davis Stone. It seemed much more balanced than many other accounts that I have read and I googled to see whether any one commented on it. I find that Andrew Leonard at salon.com has already commented on the paper and has given several more links. These seem useful material for those interested in BT cotton controversies in India.

Different views of slums

Jeremy Harding reviews'Planet of Slums'and 'Buda's Wagon' by Mike Davis( via 3qurksdaily). Sightseeing tours of the biggest slum in Asia(via HUB) Dharavi. It seems that 80% of the proceeds will be donated to local NGOs.
Update: More on Dharavi http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20070321/wl_csm/omumbai

Jochim Wieler on Irena Sendlerowa

Even my Polish friends, the Wysockis did not tell me bout her. Today following up a story from BBC news, I saw this story of the social worker Irena Sendlerowa who saved 2500 Jewish children and who was sentenced to death twice. The story apprently came out of a school assignment in Kansas:

„…In the fall of 1999, Mr. Conard encouraged four students to work on a year long National History Day project which would among other things; extend the boundaries of the classroom to families in the community, contribute to history learning, teach respect and tolerance, and meet our classroom motto, ‘He who changes one person, changes the world entire.’

Three ninth grade girls, Megan Stuart, Elizabeth Chambers, and Jessica Shelton, and an eleventh grade girl, Sabrina Coons, accepted the challenge and dedicated to enter their project in the National History Day program. Mr. Conard showed them a short clipping from a March 1994 issue of News and World Report, which said,’Irena Sendler saved 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942-43’. He told the girls the article might be a typographical error, since he had not heard of this woman or story…” (Internet: http://www.irenasendler.org: The Project – See also: www.dzieciholocaustu.org: Concerning Irena Sendlerowa).
An excerpt from Wieler's 'interview':
"Soon, I had the feeling that she was not so interested in my general proclamations. She told me that she “sometimes wondered why there is so much fuss about ‘heroic acts’. It is something that came rather naturally as a result of my early upbringing and education. When you know that something is basically at stake, like real life, you do everything to save it. You don’t talk about it and discuss it. You do it. – Once a journalist asked me if I would have saved only Jewish children. I found this to be a strange question. How do you feel about that?” „Well”, I replied, „I feel the same way – very strange! But I have not been in such an extreme situation. Yet, I wonder how someone can distinguish between children or even adults.” I also added my sincerely felt apology for the brutality that was inflicted on her by people from Germany, people of my parents’ generation. Irena Sendler slowly nodded her head."

Cool video on hyperbolicity

There may be more hyperbolicity in the world than we think. Watch this video from the Discover Magazine. See also this article by Erica Klareich, a student of a student of William Thurston, a modern master of hyperbolic geometry.

Primary education in India

There is an interesting article in the Indian Economy Blog:
http://indianeconomy.org/2007/03/09/the-unknown-education-revolution-in-india/
It has links to other articles and some empirical studies. In addition, there are several scholarly studies from:
http://www.esocialsciences.com/home/index.asp

Gripes about Telugu Usage

Ambika Ananthreviews a book on Telugu usage (via languagelog) :
TELUGU BHASHALO MELAKUVALU: T. Sanjeevarao; Sunanda publications, 57, Prasanna Vinayakar Koil Street, Mylapore, Chennai-600004.
Excerpt:
"TO THE author of this book, working with zeal to instill in students clarity and flawlessness while writing and speaking Telugu the prescribed textbooks in schools came as a shock. Misspellings and grammatical errors are in plenty. Further he also observed erroneous usage of the language in newspapers, magazines and the electronic media. Writers, journalists and poets are also not above board. A serious study of this resulted in a series of essays and this volume is a compilation of those articles. The errors are classified as those of ignorance, of carelessness and those arising due to misconceived notions. By repeated usage in print and in day-to-day speech some of the bloomers gained general approval."
All seem correct to me and even official digital libraries are doing a bad job. Even now very few dictionaries are available on line; probably Brown's dictionary is the best available. Very few on technical usage. Much better work seems to have been done in Tamil and Kannada.
Recently there have been agitations to declare Telugu an ancient language and strangely many Telugus think that Telugu is derived from Samskrit. Arudra quotes from an ancient poet (pages 1-2 of Samagra Andhra Sahityam, vol. 1): "These people are equally fond of beautiful women and war, they are good looking and good eaters. I saw them coming, saying 'atu, putu, ratu'". Arudra goes on to say that these qualities still persist. Painstaking work does not seem to be one of these qualities. More drastic comments are made by Rallapalli Ananthakrishna Sarma in his "Vemana".

Prizes for anti-corruption ideas

Pl. check http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/146/competition/guidelines

Hunterwali comes to Melbourne

From the Age Report on Cinema India exhibition in Melbourne:

"Cast first in a small role, Nadia so impressed that she was made the lead in the Wadias' next film, Hunterwali, in which she performed swashbuckling stunts like a female Douglas Fairbanks, J. B. H's idol. It became the biggest-grossing Indian film of the time and earned Nadia her "fearless" moniker.

As her profile grew, so, too, did the scope of her battles. In The Diamond Queen, Nadia defeats the protagonists who try to subvert an education program in order to continue using child labour in the diamond mine. "Nadia finishes beating the guys into submission and then gives them a lecture on women's rights, feminism and literacy programs — straight after beating them up, but it's pure slapstick," says Benson. "J. B. H's films still have this comic element, which makes them popular, but he was always feeding in this political message. I think that's what makes Nadia more interesting than historians have given her credit for, because of that tone in the movies." "

Social capital and innovation; a Canadian study

From the abstract of Susan McDaniel's paper "Where Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators Hit the Road and Roadblocks":
" In this paper evidence is amassed on what is known about the social, cultural and institutional factors that create and foster climates for technological innovation"

Labaree on the success of American Universities

David Labaree discusses the 'success' of American universities in a very interesting article (available in the recent papers section of http://www.stanford.edu/~dlabaree/). Excerpts:
"In most countries around the world, higher education is under direct control of the state, but U.S. colleges and universities are able fend off state control by acting as semi-independent entrepreneurs in the market.
.....
The market came late in world history, but it was there at the beginning of American history.
....
By 1910, we had nearly a thousand colleges and universities with a third of a million students at a time when the 16 universities in France enrolled altogether about 40,000 students, a number nearly equaled by the American faculty members at the time.
....
The market environment, Trow argues, fostered a peculiar kind of organization and governance in American colleges from the very start. Unlike their European counterparts, early American colleges emerged as corporate nonprofit entities, with state
charters but only modest state support. By the middle of the 19th century, states had founded a number of colleges and universities, which quickly became the growth sector in American higher education; but these formally public institutions received only a portion of their funding from the state. By the start of the 21st century, a state university is blessed if half of its income derives from state appropriations; major public research universities may receive as little as 10 percent from this source. The rest comes from donations, endowment, research grants, patents, and, most important, tuition. All of these
other sources of revenue are largely independent of state control, and pursuing them calls for a form of organization that allows, even mandates, leaders of institutions of higher education to operate like entrepreneurs in the educational marketplace. To survive and prosper, a college or university needs to be adept at attracting the tuition dollars of students, the donations of these students after graduation, and a variety of other revenue streams like grants and patents. In the 18th
and 19th centuries, the primary source of market-based revenue was students, and this has continued to be the case in recent years, even after other sources of income have grown substantially. "
"A market-oriented system of higher education has a special dynamic that leads to a high degree of stratification.
....
This stratified structure of higher education arose in a dynamic market system, in which the institutional actors had to operate according to four basic rules.
Rule One:
Age trumps youth. It is no accident that the oldest American colleges are overrepresented in the top tier of institutions today.
.....
Rule Two:
Rewards go to those at the top of the system. This means that every institution below the top tier has a strong incentive to move up the ladder. It also means that top institutions have a strong incentive to fend off competitors and preserve their
advantage.
....
Rule Three:
It pays to imitate your betters. This means: the way to get ahead is to adopt the behaviors of those above you.
.....
Rule Four:
At a certain point, it is more prudent to expand the system by creating new schools rather than increasing enrollments at existing schools. ....Concerned about protecting their institutional advantage, they have no desire to sully their hard-won distinction by admitting the unwashed.
....
these rules have shaped the historical process that produced the present stratified structure of higher education. This structure has four tiers."
"The Ivy League colleges emerged in the colonial period, followed by a series of flagship state colleges in the early and mid 19th century. These institutions, along with a few social climbers that emerged later, grew to become the core of elite research universities that make up the top tier of the system. Schools in this tier are the most influential, prestigious, well funded, exclusive, research-productive, and graduate-oriented – in the U.S. and in the world. The second tier emerged from the land grant colleges that began to appear in themid to late 19thcentury. They were created to fill a need not met by existing institutions,expanding access for a broader array of students and offering programs with practical application in areas like agriculture and engineering.......The third tier arose from the normal schools, established in the late 19th century to prepare teachers......The fourth tier emerged from the junior colleges that first arose in the early 20th century and eventually evolved into an extensive system of community colleges......each of these institutional types occupies a particular market niche with its own parallel hierarchy, ranging from low to high status, from inclusive to exclusive. ....As a market
driven system, American higher education has developed a four-tiered hierarchy of institutions. These tiers are distinguished from each other by degree of access (which is greatest at the bottom) and degree of social advantage (which is greatest at the top). But one thing the three top tiers have in common is convergence around a single organizational ideal, the research university. "
There is quite a bit more detail and comparisons with the medival universities and also a discussion of William Clark's "Academic Charisma and the origins of the Research University."
His concluding paragraphs:
"In this paper, I have chosen to focus on the reasons for the success of American higher education, where success is narrowly defined as its ability to attain a dominantposition internationally in institutional rankings, financial and human resources, and
academic drawing power. Success in these terms, of course, does not come without consequences. The complexity of the American system, its emphasis on institutional autonomy, its dependence on the market, its adoption of contradictory political goals, and its governance by mixed models of organizational authority combine to produce a set of
educational and social problems that I have not examined here. This structure leads to an extreme form of stratification in American higher education, which preserves social privilege at the same time that it provides social opportunity and which often puts a premium on getting ahead rather than getting an education. It protects the university from overly intrusive and confining state control, but it does so by leaving the universityat the mercy of the consumer. In combination with the extreme stratification of the system, dependency on the consumer leads to an emphasis on acquiring socially salient credentials more than gaining socially useful learning, especially at the undergraduate level. It leads to a grossly inefficient system of higher education, in which our extraordinary investment of public and private funds in the university often subsidizes private ambition more than social need. And it creates a glut of university graduates, whose numbers frequently do more to increase the credential requirements for existing jobs than to increase the productive skills of American workers or the political
capabilities of American citizens. This kind of critical analysis the American system of higher education and its consequences is readily available elsewhere, including in my own work (Labaree, 1997; 2004). But even if you admit the social and educational pathologies of the system, as I do, I think you may also want to admit, however grudgingly, that the evolution of this system has been a remarkable institutional success story."
Labaree's collected papers are recently published under the title "Education, Markets and the Public Good" but I have not seen this book yet.

Story of a private university

Story of a private university from New York Times:
"The University of Phoenix became the nation’s largest private university by delivering high profits to investors and a solid, albeit low-overhead, education to midcareer workers seeking college degrees.
But its reputation is fraying as prominent educators, students and some of its own former administrators say the relentless pressure for higher profits, at a university that gets more federal student financial aid than any other, has eroded academic quality.
According to federal statistics and government audits, the university relies more on part-time instructors than all but a few other postsecondary institutions, and its accelerated academic schedule races students through course work in about half the time of traditional universities. The university says that its graduation rate, using the federal standard, is 16 percent, which is among the nation’s lowest, according to Department of Education data. But the university has dozens of campuses, and at many, the rate is even lower.
....
When the book, “Earnings from Learning: the Rise of For-Profit Universities,” was published last year, it said the university’s academic model was convenient for working students, but included a “cautionary note” saying the recruiting scandal had raised “disturbing questions.”

Those questions are likely to dog the university as it defends itself in the lawsuit, which a district court had dismissed but an appellate court reinstated in September. The university could be forced to repay hundreds of millions of dollars if it loses. It asked the Supreme Court last month to review the appellate ruling, arguing that an adverse outcome in the lawsuit could expose it to “potentially bankrupting liability.” "

Build inland!

From a report by the environmental editor of the Guardian:
"An international panel of scientists has proposed that all countries cease building on coastal land that is less than a metre above high tide so as to avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change."

Globalization rhetoric

Robin Verghese at 3quarksdaily gives links to an exchange between Jeff Faux and Brad De Long on globalization and trade with China. There are links to other articles and a follow up in Crooked Timber. The arguments and some of the comments are interesting but I am left with the same feeling as somebody who said:
"Mr. DeLong,

Please tell me how you would move forward.

I keep reading and this sounds more like the squabbles we readers have with each other than respectful disagreement between learned individuals. Do you guys have the ability to downrate each other???

I see the arguments on both sides, but the clear level of distrust you may be hearing is that for all of globalization's benefits to the world, the abject poor are still not being recognized. If the promises of globalization are to be realized, it seems that some intervening actions must be taken by the civil societies that are not strictly economic."

Greenhouse emissions and economy

From NYT report by Andrew Revkin:
“Since 1990, for every 1 percent increase in emissions the economy has grown about 3 percent,” Mr. Ebell said. “That’s good, and it’s better than the European Union’s performance.”

Money in education

This reportfrom BBC News indicates the possibilities of India marketing itself as a place for affordable education both in terms of online tution and schools:
"Many foreign students attend because India's burgeoning economy has brought their parents to jobs in Bangalore. For others, it's the lure of an affordable boarding school education."
About online tution:
"Mr Ganesh estimates the online tutoring market is potentially worth $12bn. He plans to expand his own operations to South Korea, China, Australia and western Europe."
The report also says that in US online tution is offered to some underprivileged students. I wonder whether similar efforts can be made in India in regions where there is teacher scarcity at primary school level.

Godmothers of 'The Namesake'

An interesting article from Harvard Magazine via 3quarksdaily. Excerpt:
"Mira Nair ’79 met Sooni Taraporevala ’79 in the Lowell House dining room in the fall of 1976. The two women, both of Indian descent, became friends and, nine years later, began working together on the 1988 film Salaam Bombay!—Nair as director, Taraporevala as screenwriter. Later they collaborated on Mississippi Masala (1991) and My Own Country (1998). But none of their movies so directly mirrors their own life experiences as this year’s The Namesake, based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel. Having read the book en route, Nair arrived in Taraporevala’s hometown of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) in March 2004 and bluntly told the screenwriter, “Sooni, we were born to make this film.” "
For me, even the book paled off compared to Pankaj Mishra's review and the passage from the review I keep going back to:
"This is the melancholy awareness that suffuses Lahiri's catalogs of desirable things and people. And so while such obvious underdogs as Nazneen and Chanu arouse pity and indignation, an overprivileged immigrant like Ni-khil leaves one with more disturbing feelings: an intimation, such as the one his father once had, of "all that was irrational, all that was inevitable about the world"; a suspicion that "all men are mild lunatics engaged in pursuits that seem to them very important while an absurdly logical force keeps them at their futile jobs." It is as if we have been given a glimpse not so much of an unjust social or political setup as of what Nabokov, writing about "The Overcoat," called "flaws in the texture of life itself." "

Old Telugu Film posters

Some available here (thanks to Sri J.K.Mohana Rao). It works sometimes.
P.S. Added on August 28, 2011
Check also
http://gallery.oneindia.in/main.php?g2_itemId=503349
http://www.idlebrain.com/movie/photogallery/vintageposters/pages/image000.html
http://www.fieldi.com/somupadma/
or google

US to talk to Iran and Syria

After several reports that US may go to war with Iran, we now have reports that the US will join talks that include Syria and Iran. This surprising change is attributed in International Herald Tribune to the new Iraqi Oil Law:
"Iraqi officials had been pushing for such meetings for months now, but Bush officials refused to sign on until the Iraqi government reached agreement on guidelines for nationwide distribution of oil revenues and foreign investment in the country's immense oil industry, administration officials said."
One version of the draft is available here.
From dailykos:
"First, according to Article 1 all oil and gas in Iraq is controlled by the new Iraqi Federal Oil and Gas Council. And according to Chapter II, Article 5 the purpose of this Council will be to "To assist the Council of Ministers in creating Petroleum policies and related plans, arranged by the ministry in coordination with the producing provinces and regions, and to put important legislations for exploration and production..." There's nine other responsibilities of this council, all basically insuring that any exploration, development, and production of any oil/gas in Iraq is controlled by this group.

Now who will sit on this Council? Here's the fun part, it will be headed by the Prime Minister with other members consisting of:
"1- Federal Government’s Ministers from the ministries of oil, treasury, planning, and cooperative development.
2- The director of the Iraqi central bank
3- A regional government minister representing each region.
4- A representative from each producing province not included in a region
5- Executive managers from important related petroleum companies including the national Iraqi oil company and the oil marketing company
.....
Yes, that's right. Oil company executives will sit at the table to decide how to develop Iraq's oil/gas fields. And the Iraqi national oil company is just one of many oil executives with a seat at the table--they don't receive any preferential treatment. I mean why should they?--they're only the Iraqi national oil company and we're only talking about developing Iraqi oil and gas? If you want to see some fantastic corporate profits, imagine if Exxon sat on the board that controlled the third largest oil fields in the world..."
More reports here, here, and here.
Oil seems to be still a large part of the game. Since Bush has less than two years to go, who will continue the game? Presumably the national interests.
Update 1: More at maxspeak.
Update 2:Suzanne Goldenberg atThe Guardian has a different interpretation. Excerpt:
"It is being called George Bush's Come to Jesus moment. As in the midlife realisation that led Mr Bush to give up alcohol and embrace Christianity, the president in his sixth year in the White House has undergone another radical conversion, abandoning an ideological foreign policy for a more pragmatic approach, foreign policy experts say."

Ancient Islamic Tilings

similar to Penrose Tilings were found in various Islamic buildings by a graduate student Peter J. Lu. Penrose Tilings are described here. Roger Penrose patented them in 1979 and a company which used them on toilet paper was apparently sued. I wonder what happens now.

Scidev.net editorial 2/22/07

From the recent scidev.net editorial:
"The scientific community is particularly prone to this one-dimensional approach. Arguing that heavy investment in research and development is enough to promote economic growth naturally appeals to those keen to see scientific laboratories flourish across the developing world.

But experience has shown that such investment is only part of the solution. The real challenge lies in embedding science in all spheres of government policy, and introducing educational, regulatory and fiscal measures to enable innovation to flourish across the economy.

Until this happens, demands for more money for science will inevitably be seen as little more than self-interested pleading from the scientific community."

Academic stories-2

The recent plagiarism bit in Mashelkar Committee report reminded me of an old story. When X confronted Y about plagiarizing from Z's work, Y's response was "Z is impossible to improve ; I did not want to waste my time". All are distinguished scientists. The only problem was Z's book was not available in the library where as Y's was.

Academic stories-1

Just recd. this from an old friend: :"Thanks. You are really keeping track of my papers. I remember your walking into my office and telling me that my paper is referred as "seminal" etc and that my name is in "who is who" and I tried to order for library and our great friend "BR" stopped it!"