One of the problems with old age for me: I keep remebering songs I heard long ago and it is difficult to find them, particularly when I do not know the language. At one time, I thought that I would never find the. Now with google and various sites I have been able to find many. The above is a Baul song which I thought was sung by Abbasuddin since that was only LP of that type I had in the 70's. The record was duly lost but whenever I met him (mostly in Mumbai but also in Zurich and Princeton), Amit Roy would sing it for me. Even that was years ago and after some trial and error with google, I found the first line. But all the versions I found on the internet, including a Chinese site, are by Purnachandra Das Baul and are not what I remember. And today I found this site with over 4000 Bengali songs but Abbasuddin's version, if there is one, is not there. But the site owner seems to have been in Melbourne until last year and may be I can find the version that I remember.
Rereading books that I enjoyed when I was kid is also interesting. Recently I read Sarat's "Sesh Prasna" and "Pather dabi" and I still like them. But it was surprising to find an anti-Islam piece by the same Sarat who wrote "Mahesh". Tagore's short stories are still good. It is still painful to read Gopichand. Russell, Orwell and Haldane are still good to read. New areas like economics are difficult. Popular books like "The White Man's burden","The Truth About Markets", "The Bottom Billion", "Economics: A Very Short Introduction" and blogs give some glimpses. May be I should sit down and go through a book like Williams' "Weighing the Odds " carefully.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Chris Blattman posts from Liberia
From his recent post:
"Today we sat down with an inter-faith network of Liberian religious leaders to talk about their peace building plans. They are a truly inspiring organization, building local capacity to resolve conflicts, and training mediators to resolve disputes in the community. The countryside is, to some extent, a powder keg, and they are building local early warning systems and rapid response capability to potentially serious conflicts.
Moreover, to reduce tensions in conflict-prone places, these religious leaders--principally Muslims and Christians--do not just aspire to a new social contract, they sit down with ethnic and religious leaders in each village and coax them to actually write one, specifying norms and sanctions.
And they want to know if it's working.
I hum and haw about comparison groups, going through my impact evaluation 101 schpiel. I have serious concerns that one would or could develop a control group, let alone randomize, for such a program. So I dance delicately around the subject.
"Wait a minute," interrupts the Imam, "Are you talking about a randomized control trial?"
I gape.
Oh I see!" says one Reverend Minister, "We need a control group! This is a good idea.""
This is the fourth of his recent posts from Liberia.
P.S.This post of Chris Blattman has also been mentioned by Guru, The Bayesian Heresy ,Dani Rodrik. Guru gives links to program evaluation.
"Today we sat down with an inter-faith network of Liberian religious leaders to talk about their peace building plans. They are a truly inspiring organization, building local capacity to resolve conflicts, and training mediators to resolve disputes in the community. The countryside is, to some extent, a powder keg, and they are building local early warning systems and rapid response capability to potentially serious conflicts.
Moreover, to reduce tensions in conflict-prone places, these religious leaders--principally Muslims and Christians--do not just aspire to a new social contract, they sit down with ethnic and religious leaders in each village and coax them to actually write one, specifying norms and sanctions.
And they want to know if it's working.
I hum and haw about comparison groups, going through my impact evaluation 101 schpiel. I have serious concerns that one would or could develop a control group, let alone randomize, for such a program. So I dance delicately around the subject.
"Wait a minute," interrupts the Imam, "Are you talking about a randomized control trial?"
I gape.
Oh I see!" says one Reverend Minister, "We need a control group! This is a good idea.""
This is the fourth of his recent posts from Liberia.
P.S.This post of Chris Blattman has also been mentioned by Guru, The Bayesian Heresy ,Dani Rodrik. Guru gives links to program evaluation.
Andrew Leonard on Botswana
Andrew Leonard in two posts speculates on Botswana's success. From the first postin 2006:
"A country the size of Texas with a population of 1.6 million, Botswana is no paradise. Inequality and unemployment are high, and AIDS is a nightmare. But in a continent of failed states, Botswana is a beacon. How did it do it? And can its example be copied?
There seems to be near universal agreement that good leadership and sound policy choices were critical to Botswana's success. The first president of Botswana, Seretse Khama, a tribal chieftain educated at Balliol College in the U.K., is widely credited with being a great leader. Taxation rates have historically been low and rule by law effective. The prudent use of revenues from Botswana's lucrative diamond mines to fund government expenditure was also crucial.
But the most interesting question is whether Khama and Botswana benefited from historically contingent forces related to colonialism that ended up giving the country a leg up. "An African Success Story: Botswana," by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson (three economists, two from MIT and one from Harvard), argues that the Tswana tribes enjoyed pre-colonial institutions that encouraged cooperation, tolerated dissent, and in general provided solid support for the development of a mature civil society. Due to a unique set of historical circumstances, those institutions survived the colonial era.
The battle of Dimawe was part of that. But so was Sechele's subsequent plea to Britain to place his nation under its protection, as defense against the Boers. The British resisted for a few decades, then acceded when the German seizure of what later became Namibia threatened their imperial ambitions. But the British never paid much attention to the Protectorate of Bechuanaland. Distracted by the rest of their empire, convinced that there was nothing to be gained from direct exploitation, they left the Tswana essentially to themselves.
......
Historical arguments that attempt to explain economic success (or failure) can rarely be settled, one way or another.
.....
But Botswana does offers a counter-example, a model for what can happen when good leaders make good decisions in an environment where traditional social structures survive intact in the face of Western imperial domination."
From the recent post:
"On March 20, the government of Botswana, the world's largest producer of raw diamonds, and the legendary diamond goliath De Beers announced the opening of the Diamond Trading Company, Botswana, a state-of-the-art processing center for cutting, polishing, marketing and selling diamonds.
....
But even though there's some satisfaction to be taken in this post-colonial triumph, Botswana's success in gaining concessions from De Beers is no guarantee of economic prosperity. The diamond trade has not escaped the pressures of globalization. Once upon a time, Antwerp was the world's center of diamond polishing and cutting, but today India and China increasingly dominate the business, taking full advantage of their brutally competitive juxtaposition of low wages and highly skilled labor. De Beers no longer controls the entire global diamond trade -- upstart Russian and Israeli firms will seek every opportunity to undercut its prices."
According toWikipedia "With its proven record of good economic governance, Botswana was ranked as Africa's least corrupt country by Transparency International in 2004, ahead of many European and Asian countries. The World Economic Forum rates Botswana as one of the two most economically competitive nations in Africa. In 2004 Botswana was once again assigned "A" grade credit ratings by Moody's and Standard & Poor's. This ranks Botswana as by far the best credit risk in Africa and puts it on par with or above many countries in central Europe, East Asia, and Latin America." But "Botswana has been hit very hard by the AIDS epidemic; the average life expectancy in Botswana at birth, 1990: 64 years, 2005: 34 years. "
"A country the size of Texas with a population of 1.6 million, Botswana is no paradise. Inequality and unemployment are high, and AIDS is a nightmare. But in a continent of failed states, Botswana is a beacon. How did it do it? And can its example be copied?
There seems to be near universal agreement that good leadership and sound policy choices were critical to Botswana's success. The first president of Botswana, Seretse Khama, a tribal chieftain educated at Balliol College in the U.K., is widely credited with being a great leader. Taxation rates have historically been low and rule by law effective. The prudent use of revenues from Botswana's lucrative diamond mines to fund government expenditure was also crucial.
But the most interesting question is whether Khama and Botswana benefited from historically contingent forces related to colonialism that ended up giving the country a leg up. "An African Success Story: Botswana," by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson (three economists, two from MIT and one from Harvard), argues that the Tswana tribes enjoyed pre-colonial institutions that encouraged cooperation, tolerated dissent, and in general provided solid support for the development of a mature civil society. Due to a unique set of historical circumstances, those institutions survived the colonial era.
The battle of Dimawe was part of that. But so was Sechele's subsequent plea to Britain to place his nation under its protection, as defense against the Boers. The British resisted for a few decades, then acceded when the German seizure of what later became Namibia threatened their imperial ambitions. But the British never paid much attention to the Protectorate of Bechuanaland. Distracted by the rest of their empire, convinced that there was nothing to be gained from direct exploitation, they left the Tswana essentially to themselves.
......
Historical arguments that attempt to explain economic success (or failure) can rarely be settled, one way or another.
.....
But Botswana does offers a counter-example, a model for what can happen when good leaders make good decisions in an environment where traditional social structures survive intact in the face of Western imperial domination."
From the recent post:
"On March 20, the government of Botswana, the world's largest producer of raw diamonds, and the legendary diamond goliath De Beers announced the opening of the Diamond Trading Company, Botswana, a state-of-the-art processing center for cutting, polishing, marketing and selling diamonds.
....
But even though there's some satisfaction to be taken in this post-colonial triumph, Botswana's success in gaining concessions from De Beers is no guarantee of economic prosperity. The diamond trade has not escaped the pressures of globalization. Once upon a time, Antwerp was the world's center of diamond polishing and cutting, but today India and China increasingly dominate the business, taking full advantage of their brutally competitive juxtaposition of low wages and highly skilled labor. De Beers no longer controls the entire global diamond trade -- upstart Russian and Israeli firms will seek every opportunity to undercut its prices."
According toWikipedia "With its proven record of good economic governance, Botswana was ranked as Africa's least corrupt country by Transparency International in 2004, ahead of many European and Asian countries. The World Economic Forum rates Botswana as one of the two most economically competitive nations in Africa. In 2004 Botswana was once again assigned "A" grade credit ratings by Moody's and Standard & Poor's. This ranks Botswana as by far the best credit risk in Africa and puts it on par with or above many countries in central Europe, East Asia, and Latin America." But "Botswana has been hit very hard by the AIDS epidemic; the average life expectancy in Botswana at birth, 1990: 64 years, 2005: 34 years. "
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Abel prize 2008
goes to John Thompson and Jacques Tits "for their profound achievements in algebra and in particular for shaping modern group theory".
Friday, March 28, 2008
Bloomberg article on Taleb
Taleb Outsells Greenspan as Black Swan Gives Worst Turbulence . Concluding remarks:
"Taleb likens modern-day financial markets to medicine in the 1800s, when going to a hospital in London or Paris multiplied your risk of death by four times, he says. Similarly, quants increase risk by deploying flawed financial tools designed to reduce it, he argues.
For Taleb, the ills besetting financial markets are a vindication of his ideas. Like medicine, though, he isn't offering easy cures. "
Some other economics links:
"Why Did Financial Globalization not Deliver the Goods?", a discussion in 'Naked Capitalism' of Rodrik-Subranian paper of the same title.
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2008/03/27/the_end_of_laissez_faire/index.html, Andrew Leonard links to Mark Thoma's recent post on Keynes. FDR and J.K. Galbraith too seem to back in favour.
The Regulation of the Mixed Economy in Action , Brad DeLong reacts to Martin Wolf and David Wessel on the 'big shift'.
"Taleb likens modern-day financial markets to medicine in the 1800s, when going to a hospital in London or Paris multiplied your risk of death by four times, he says. Similarly, quants increase risk by deploying flawed financial tools designed to reduce it, he argues.
For Taleb, the ills besetting financial markets are a vindication of his ideas. Like medicine, though, he isn't offering easy cures. "
Some other economics links:
"Why Did Financial Globalization not Deliver the Goods?", a discussion in 'Naked Capitalism' of Rodrik-Subranian paper of the same title.
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2008/03/27/the_end_of_laissez_faire/index.html, Andrew Leonard links to Mark Thoma's recent post on Keynes. FDR and J.K. Galbraith too seem to back in favour.
The Regulation of the Mixed Economy in Action , Brad DeLong reacts to Martin Wolf and David Wessel on the 'big shift'.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Links to articles on Indian Bureaucrats
from The Bayesian Heresy. Some articles by a retired I.A.S. officer B.S. Raghavan from 1998 ,from 2007andand March 18, 2008 which is to be concluded. Excerpts from the last article:
" ...implementation, maintenance and service delivery are at the very heart of India’s efforts to sustain and accelerate the pace of growth. And yet, these three precisely are its blind spots, acting as a drag on the economy.
...
Few public functionaries — whether in government, public sector, or local bodies — paid out of taxpayers’ money feel answerable to anyone, least of all to the public, for timely completion of tasks entrusted to them or for performing the services expected of them in a spirit of dedication and with a sense of urgency.
No wonder, the World Bank was forced to use strong language by describing the quality of governance in many Indian states as “appalling”.
This, despite public officials being very generously treated compensation-wise. Mark these words culled from past World Bank reports:
“…even among equivalent jobs the public sector exceeds the private: A factory worker in a wholly central government-owned establishment makes 2.5 times more than in a wholly private establishment, regular public sector teachers earn several times more than the average among private teachers (or than teachers hired directly by communities). In fact, one of the drivers of higher wage inequality in the “liberalising” 1990s was that public sector wages grew much faster than private sector regular job wages or informal casual work. Real wages in the public sector increased by 44 per cent over this period — increasing the public sector premium for (observationally) equivalent workers from 48 to 68 per cent.
Overstaffing
“High wages with little accountability for actual service delivery make public sector agencies an obvious target for patronage hiring, which results at times in massive overstaffing. The Mumbai Municipal Water Corporation has 35 workers per thousand connections, whereas well-functioning utilities have about 3 per thousand. The UP Irrigation Department employs an astonishing 110,000 people…The overstaffing often comes at very low levels of the organisation… about 70 per cent of all government employees are support staff unrelated to public services — drivers, peons, clerks.
“While there are millions of dedicated civil servants — teachers, health workers, policemen, engineers, registration officials —attempting to do their jobs well in spite of the systems that work against this, it also cannot be denied that all too often attempts to seek services from the public sector encounter workers who are absent, incompetent, indifferent, and outright corrupt.”
These reports are a few years old. What with the bounties generously handed by the Central Fifth Pay Commission, and adopted in their entirety by the States for their employees whose duties and responsibilities can by no stretch of imagination be deemed to be on a par with those of the Central Government, the differentials between the public and private sectors would only have further widened in favour of public sector functionaries."
" ...implementation, maintenance and service delivery are at the very heart of India’s efforts to sustain and accelerate the pace of growth. And yet, these three precisely are its blind spots, acting as a drag on the economy.
...
Few public functionaries — whether in government, public sector, or local bodies — paid out of taxpayers’ money feel answerable to anyone, least of all to the public, for timely completion of tasks entrusted to them or for performing the services expected of them in a spirit of dedication and with a sense of urgency.
No wonder, the World Bank was forced to use strong language by describing the quality of governance in many Indian states as “appalling”.
This, despite public officials being very generously treated compensation-wise. Mark these words culled from past World Bank reports:
“…even among equivalent jobs the public sector exceeds the private: A factory worker in a wholly central government-owned establishment makes 2.5 times more than in a wholly private establishment, regular public sector teachers earn several times more than the average among private teachers (or than teachers hired directly by communities). In fact, one of the drivers of higher wage inequality in the “liberalising” 1990s was that public sector wages grew much faster than private sector regular job wages or informal casual work. Real wages in the public sector increased by 44 per cent over this period — increasing the public sector premium for (observationally) equivalent workers from 48 to 68 per cent.
Overstaffing
“High wages with little accountability for actual service delivery make public sector agencies an obvious target for patronage hiring, which results at times in massive overstaffing. The Mumbai Municipal Water Corporation has 35 workers per thousand connections, whereas well-functioning utilities have about 3 per thousand. The UP Irrigation Department employs an astonishing 110,000 people…The overstaffing often comes at very low levels of the organisation… about 70 per cent of all government employees are support staff unrelated to public services — drivers, peons, clerks.
“While there are millions of dedicated civil servants — teachers, health workers, policemen, engineers, registration officials —attempting to do their jobs well in spite of the systems that work against this, it also cannot be denied that all too often attempts to seek services from the public sector encounter workers who are absent, incompetent, indifferent, and outright corrupt.”
These reports are a few years old. What with the bounties generously handed by the Central Fifth Pay Commission, and adopted in their entirety by the States for their employees whose duties and responsibilities can by no stretch of imagination be deemed to be on a par with those of the Central Government, the differentials between the public and private sectors would only have further widened in favour of public sector functionaries."
Monday, March 24, 2008
Raj Kapoor's 'Boot Polish'
Though familiar with the songs from 'Boot Polish', I always thought that it was a remake of Shoeshine. Apparently not according to this 1958 review from Time magazine:
"Boot Polish (R. D. Purie; Hoffberg),the first Indian-made film to be released generally in the U.S., has drawn quick comparison to Shoeshine, Vittorio De Ska's 1947 Italian classic. The comparison, apparently based on the similarity of titles, is unfortunate. The two films move in opposite directions—Shoeshine despairingly toward the lower depths, Boot Polish wistfully toward the light. More importantly, their coupling might becloud the fact that Boot Polish is a nearly flawless little gem of a fable that glows with its own brilliance, without need of outside illumination.
Director Raj Kapoor's hero and heroine are two orphaned children, living with their sadistic prostitute aunt in the slums of Bombay. At her command, they spend their days in the streets and trams of the city, begging money in a squeaky singsong chant. But an old, kindly bootlegger urges them to the slum child's equivalent of the higher life: "You have been given two hands to work with. Start with small things first, and bigger things later."
The two children hide pennies from their aunt until they have saved enough to buy a pair of brushes and three cans of shoe polish. For a short while they prosper, but with the coming of the rains their customers lose interest in shoeshines. Close to starvation, the boy and his sister are accidentally separated; from there the film wanders to an ending that, for all its melodramatic sentimentality, fits perfectly into the picture's curious blend of gutter reality and fairy-tale dreaminess.
The two children. Rattan Kumar and Baby Naaz, flash from delight to fear to solemn determination with startling virtuosity. From her scrawny, seven-year-old frame, Actress Naaz somehow sums up the whole history of her sex, chattering happily as she works with her brother, huddling against him for warmth, patting his arm in a crisis and reassuring him, "I'll manage it somehow." Raj Kapoor trains his camera on them almost without a break, and they have rewarded him by endowing his film with the gentle luster of a miniature masterpiece."
A more recent (2002) review by Howard Schumann here towards the end of the article. Excerpt:
"Some may dismiss the picture as melodrama, but I find it a life-affirming and rich cinematic experience. The love of the children for each other is very real, and their struggle for survival and social respectability is profoundly touching. Filled with positive energy and the "heroic face of innocence," Boot Polish is now more than ever one of my all time favorite films."
There are many popular songs from the film including this unusual song Lapak Jhapak by Manna Dey.
Here is a different version of Lapak Jhapak without the video. We played the first version last night and it rained.
"Boot Polish (R. D. Purie; Hoffberg),the first Indian-made film to be released generally in the U.S., has drawn quick comparison to Shoeshine, Vittorio De Ska's 1947 Italian classic. The comparison, apparently based on the similarity of titles, is unfortunate. The two films move in opposite directions—Shoeshine despairingly toward the lower depths, Boot Polish wistfully toward the light. More importantly, their coupling might becloud the fact that Boot Polish is a nearly flawless little gem of a fable that glows with its own brilliance, without need of outside illumination.
Director Raj Kapoor's hero and heroine are two orphaned children, living with their sadistic prostitute aunt in the slums of Bombay. At her command, they spend their days in the streets and trams of the city, begging money in a squeaky singsong chant. But an old, kindly bootlegger urges them to the slum child's equivalent of the higher life: "You have been given two hands to work with. Start with small things first, and bigger things later."
The two children hide pennies from their aunt until they have saved enough to buy a pair of brushes and three cans of shoe polish. For a short while they prosper, but with the coming of the rains their customers lose interest in shoeshines. Close to starvation, the boy and his sister are accidentally separated; from there the film wanders to an ending that, for all its melodramatic sentimentality, fits perfectly into the picture's curious blend of gutter reality and fairy-tale dreaminess.
The two children. Rattan Kumar and Baby Naaz, flash from delight to fear to solemn determination with startling virtuosity. From her scrawny, seven-year-old frame, Actress Naaz somehow sums up the whole history of her sex, chattering happily as she works with her brother, huddling against him for warmth, patting his arm in a crisis and reassuring him, "I'll manage it somehow." Raj Kapoor trains his camera on them almost without a break, and they have rewarded him by endowing his film with the gentle luster of a miniature masterpiece."
A more recent (2002) review by Howard Schumann here towards the end of the article. Excerpt:
"Some may dismiss the picture as melodrama, but I find it a life-affirming and rich cinematic experience. The love of the children for each other is very real, and their struggle for survival and social respectability is profoundly touching. Filled with positive energy and the "heroic face of innocence," Boot Polish is now more than ever one of my all time favorite films."
There are many popular songs from the film including this unusual song Lapak Jhapak by Manna Dey.
Here is a different version of Lapak Jhapak without the video. We played the first version last night and it rained.
The other Sundarayya library
Trying to follow the news of a recent attack on Sundrayya Vignana Kendram, I came across this May, 2006 news of library stated by Sundarayya in his village:'Alaganipadu, a village in Nellore, that produced a great leader of the working class movement and founder-member of the Communist Party of India Puchalapalli Sundaraiah, will soon be deprived of its famous son's home. It has been in a dilapidated condition for several years. And, the successive Governments have religiously ignored villagers' request to renovate the home.
According to villagers, Sundarayya, popularly known as Comrade PS, converted this house into a library in 1937 and named it after Bala Gangadhar Tilak. It continued to be one of the best libraries in the district till his death in 1985. After his death the maintenance of the library was neglected. Books started gathering dust. Cracks have developed at many places in the building due to improper maintenance, a villager Dasari Venkatakrishnam Raju said.
With no Government help forthcoming, the villagers were forced to shift the library from Sundaraiah's home to the village `chavadi' in 1995. "But the Revenue Department is now pressuring us to shift the library to some other place," said librarian Parankusham Krishnaiah. The villagers are looking for assistance to renovate the library so that it remains a memorial for the late leader for generations to come. "
Here is an old story ofSVK and a links to libraries with major Asia collections.
According to villagers, Sundarayya, popularly known as Comrade PS, converted this house into a library in 1937 and named it after Bala Gangadhar Tilak. It continued to be one of the best libraries in the district till his death in 1985. After his death the maintenance of the library was neglected. Books started gathering dust. Cracks have developed at many places in the building due to improper maintenance, a villager Dasari Venkatakrishnam Raju said.
With no Government help forthcoming, the villagers were forced to shift the library from Sundaraiah's home to the village `chavadi' in 1995. "But the Revenue Department is now pressuring us to shift the library to some other place," said librarian Parankusham Krishnaiah. The villagers are looking for assistance to renovate the library so that it remains a memorial for the late leader for generations to come. "
Here is an old story ofSVK and a links to libraries with major Asia collections.
A neo-colonial enterprise in books?
Australian publisher Henry Rosenbloom in the age articleBrits in the Bad Books:
"The problem starts in the United States, the home of much of the best writing in the English-speaking book world. When US publishers or literary agents try to sell English-language rights to their authors' books, they usually look first to Britain, which has a domestic market of 60 million people — and access to many more. Although Britain is choosy about what it wants, this is where the big bucks are.
The trouble is that British publishers have almost always insisted, when they acquire domestic rights, that so-called "Commonwealth" rights — that part of the globe that used to be coloured red — be included. They have even tended to refuse to consider buying rights in books that originate in Australia.
Why? Because Australia is a highly profitable market for British publishers. They usually do not have to pay for the Commonwealth component when they acquire the rights; they get to pay the authors what are called "export royalties", which are around half of what are known as "home royalties, and they sometimes sell more copies here than they do in their own country. They don't even have to publish the books here — simply distributing moderate quantities is still money for jam. The disproportionate profits go straight to their bottom lines, and help prop up their own ailing industry. This is rent-seeking and coupon-clipping on a grand scale.
.....
I understand very well that the British book trade is in a sorry state, and that UK houses have come to rely on Australia to subsidise their often marginal domestic operations.
But we must put our own interests first. As in all neo-colonial enterprises, British publishers, by protecting their own financial interests, are holding up the development of Australian publishing and the Australian book trade in general. To the extent that they prevent Australian publishing houses from reaching their potential, they weaken the financial base of our industry, and even the prospects of local authors."
I wonder what is the situation in other commonwealth countries.
"The problem starts in the United States, the home of much of the best writing in the English-speaking book world. When US publishers or literary agents try to sell English-language rights to their authors' books, they usually look first to Britain, which has a domestic market of 60 million people — and access to many more. Although Britain is choosy about what it wants, this is where the big bucks are.
The trouble is that British publishers have almost always insisted, when they acquire domestic rights, that so-called "Commonwealth" rights — that part of the globe that used to be coloured red — be included. They have even tended to refuse to consider buying rights in books that originate in Australia.
Why? Because Australia is a highly profitable market for British publishers. They usually do not have to pay for the Commonwealth component when they acquire the rights; they get to pay the authors what are called "export royalties", which are around half of what are known as "home royalties, and they sometimes sell more copies here than they do in their own country. They don't even have to publish the books here — simply distributing moderate quantities is still money for jam. The disproportionate profits go straight to their bottom lines, and help prop up their own ailing industry. This is rent-seeking and coupon-clipping on a grand scale.
.....
I understand very well that the British book trade is in a sorry state, and that UK houses have come to rely on Australia to subsidise their often marginal domestic operations.
But we must put our own interests first. As in all neo-colonial enterprises, British publishers, by protecting their own financial interests, are holding up the development of Australian publishing and the Australian book trade in general. To the extent that they prevent Australian publishing houses from reaching their potential, they weaken the financial base of our industry, and even the prospects of local authors."
I wonder what is the situation in other commonwealth countries.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
CNN.Business recommends
investing in railroad stocks; apparently Warren Buffet is doing it. Excerpt:
"Railroads are far more energy-efficient than their competition. Locomotives today get 80% more mileage from a gallon of diesel than they did in 1980. As a result, trains consume far less fuel than trucks do to move the same amount of freight.
That not only saves on costs, it reduces emissions of greenhouse gases. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency calculates that for distances of more than 1,000 miles, using trains rather than trucks alone reduces fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 65%."
"Railroads are far more energy-efficient than their competition. Locomotives today get 80% more mileage from a gallon of diesel than they did in 1980. As a result, trains consume far less fuel than trucks do to move the same amount of freight.
That not only saves on costs, it reduces emissions of greenhouse gases. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency calculates that for distances of more than 1,000 miles, using trains rather than trucks alone reduces fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 65%."
Friday, March 21, 2008
The decline of the curry industrial complex
will accelerateaccording to Jonathan Guthrie in FT"unless the government modifies its plans for immigration controls. It has already exempted from the requirement to speak fluent English those investors who bring £1m into the country. Chefs who are handy with the cardamom should be granted a similar waiver for fixed-term stays. If need be, they can have time off to wrestle with English at night school.
Mr Rashid, who is president of the Bangladeshi Caterers Association, has suggested a scheme along these very lines to Liam Byrne. “The [immigration] minister approved of our formula but didn’t do anything about it,” said Mr Rashid, who has learnt an important lesson in the ways of politicians. " (via How the World Works)
Mr Rashid, who is president of the Bangladeshi Caterers Association, has suggested a scheme along these very lines to Liam Byrne. “The [immigration] minister approved of our formula but didn’t do anything about it,” said Mr Rashid, who has learnt an important lesson in the ways of politicians. " (via How the World Works)
2008. Intel Science Talent Search winners announced
Fromscience news.The following caught my eye:
"Eric Delgado, 18, of Bayonne, N.J., won fifth place for developing a strategy to disable a pump that bacteria use to flush antibiotics out of their cells."
How do these kids do it? By that age, I was barely coming to terms with what I wanted to do; turned out to be mathematics, after a bit of exposure to Cantor's ideas and reading E.T. Bell's "Men of Mathematics".
P.S. Chandan Sapotka gives links to a talk and work of Neil Turok in the post Educating the next African Einstein! .
"Eric Delgado, 18, of Bayonne, N.J., won fifth place for developing a strategy to disable a pump that bacteria use to flush antibiotics out of their cells."
How do these kids do it? By that age, I was barely coming to terms with what I wanted to do; turned out to be mathematics, after a bit of exposure to Cantor's ideas and reading E.T. Bell's "Men of Mathematics".
P.S. Chandan Sapotka gives links to a talk and work of Neil Turok in the post Educating the next African Einstein! .
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Abi writes about link rot
Abi posts on link rot :'web pages that are no longer available at their old URLs -- and the inconvenience it causes to internet users'. This is a problem, particularly somebody like me, who uss the blog mainly for learning and modifying my views. Since I cannot do much about it, I try to include some crucial parts of the linked article in the post. If the link does not work after a while, passages from the article seem to help locating the article or some thing equivalent. Of course, this does not work all the time, is a bit of pain and I usually get distracted by other articles along the way.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
An example from "The Bottom Billion"
Paul Collier's "The Bottom Billion" has drawn acclaim from several quarters. I found parts of the book, particularly later chapters strange, but the book very intersting. Here is Ethan Zucherman's review which is enthuastic with some reservations.
Chris Blattman in his post What to Read on Development says:
"Then there is Paul Collier's book. It offers, in my opinion, very confident conclusions based on still preliminary research and a partial reading of the literature. The book is very popular in the development agencies. If you know intimately the papers on which the conclusions are based, however, I think you can't help but be less sanguine. But to a non-expert, those challenges may not be obvious."
One of the problems with either aid or government garnts seems to be service delivery problems, particularly due to corruption in the bureaucracy. A chapter in William Easterley's The Whiteman's Burden is entitled 'The Rich Have Markets, the Poor Have Bureaucrats'. Some countries like Brazil have programmes like Bolsa familiato circumvent the bureaucracy. Here is a different type of strategy from 'The Bottom Billion' on page 150.
" The story begins with Ritva Reinikka devising a survey to survey public expenditure. She initially devised it for Uganda, where it came up with rather depressing results: only around 20 percent of the money that the Ministry of Finance released for primary schools, other than teachers' salaries, actually reached the schools. In some socities the government would have tried to suppress information like this, but in Uganda, far from suppressing it, Tumusiime-Mutebile used it as a springboard for action. Obviously, one way would have been to tighten the top-down system of audit and scrutiny, but they already been trying that and it evidently wasn't working well. So Tumusiime-Mutebile decided to try a comletely different approach: scrutiny from the bottom up. Each time the Ministry of Finance released money it informed the local media,and it also sent a poster to each school setting out what it should be getting.
... three years later he repeated the the tracking survey. Now instead of only 20 percent getting to schools, 90 percent was getting through."
Chris Blattman in his post What to Read on Development says:
"Then there is Paul Collier's book. It offers, in my opinion, very confident conclusions based on still preliminary research and a partial reading of the literature. The book is very popular in the development agencies. If you know intimately the papers on which the conclusions are based, however, I think you can't help but be less sanguine. But to a non-expert, those challenges may not be obvious."
One of the problems with either aid or government garnts seems to be service delivery problems, particularly due to corruption in the bureaucracy. A chapter in William Easterley's The Whiteman's Burden is entitled 'The Rich Have Markets, the Poor Have Bureaucrats'. Some countries like Brazil have programmes like Bolsa familiato circumvent the bureaucracy. Here is a different type of strategy from 'The Bottom Billion' on page 150.
" The story begins with Ritva Reinikka devising a survey to survey public expenditure. She initially devised it for Uganda, where it came up with rather depressing results: only around 20 percent of the money that the Ministry of Finance released for primary schools, other than teachers' salaries, actually reached the schools. In some socities the government would have tried to suppress information like this, but in Uganda, far from suppressing it, Tumusiime-Mutebile used it as a springboard for action. Obviously, one way would have been to tighten the top-down system of audit and scrutiny, but they already been trying that and it evidently wasn't working well. So Tumusiime-Mutebile decided to try a comletely different approach: scrutiny from the bottom up. Each time the Ministry of Finance released money it informed the local media,and it also sent a poster to each school setting out what it should be getting.
... three years later he repeated the the tracking survey. Now instead of only 20 percent getting to schools, 90 percent was getting through."
Gulzar Natarajan applies "Two Bus Theory"
Vijayawada Municipal Commissioner Gulzar Natarajan explains in the post Reforms in Adminstration their experiment with the 'Two Bus Theory' of Jim Collins. Excerpts:
"...Collins' book 'Good to Great', where he argues that to create a good company you need to "get the right people on the bus, wrong people off the bus, right people on right places and then figure out where to drive the bus".
....
A detailed analysis of both departments revealed both administrative excess and human resource deadwood, at the cutting edge. The numbers of sanitation and revenue divisions were found to be on the higher side. Given the difficulty in hiving off or retrenching staff in Government, we decided to have two buses - with all the right people in one bus and all the wrong people in the other bus.
.....
The results have been spectacular. Revenue collection efficiency has gone past 90% (used to be 75-80% previously), and the large private defaulters have all paid their dues. Tax revenues have increased by more than 60% since the experiment has been tried out. The revenue assessment, collection, and monitoring work has become more professional and standardized. The sanitation complaints reflected in a toll free complaints cell, 103, has declined sharply and this has been acknowledged by the City receiving the CRISIL award for sanitation in 2007. "
Read also the comments and his earlier post A recession in the rent seeking economy where he explains that in some situations an incorruptible official at the highest level can make a difference.
"...Collins' book 'Good to Great', where he argues that to create a good company you need to "get the right people on the bus, wrong people off the bus, right people on right places and then figure out where to drive the bus".
....
A detailed analysis of both departments revealed both administrative excess and human resource deadwood, at the cutting edge. The numbers of sanitation and revenue divisions were found to be on the higher side. Given the difficulty in hiving off or retrenching staff in Government, we decided to have two buses - with all the right people in one bus and all the wrong people in the other bus.
.....
The results have been spectacular. Revenue collection efficiency has gone past 90% (used to be 75-80% previously), and the large private defaulters have all paid their dues. Tax revenues have increased by more than 60% since the experiment has been tried out. The revenue assessment, collection, and monitoring work has become more professional and standardized. The sanitation complaints reflected in a toll free complaints cell, 103, has declined sharply and this has been acknowledged by the City receiving the CRISIL award for sanitation in 2007. "
Read also the comments and his earlier post A recession in the rent seeking economy where he explains that in some situations an incorruptible official at the highest level can make a difference.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
An interesting site for books
(via J.K. Mohana Rao in the discussion group racchabanda)From the site Forgotten Books:
"Welcome to ForgottenBooks.org! From here you can read thousands of books FREE online (100% viewable) and purchase the books you like as high-quality paperbacks at wholesale prices.
We specialize in historical writings, this includes works such as: classical fiction, philosophy, science, religion, folklore, mythology and sacred texts, in addition to secret and esoteric subjects, such as: occult, freemasonry, alchemy, hermetic and ancient knowledge. Fiction and non-fiction books.
It is our mission to find hidden knowledge and preserve lost knowledge, from antiquity to the present day, and make this information freely available to the world. If you like any of our books, they are all for sale on Amazon.com for little over the cost of the printing. Please take a look."
There are translations of poems of Kabir, Vemana, of vedas etc. There is a useful feature. When I searched for Bates, it gave the references with page numbers in all the listed books of various bates. There are two from Darwin's book for Walter Bates.
As mentioned before Arvind Gupta's site Toys and Books has many downloadable books of current interest from children's books to those on sustainable development.It has also many books by I.Asimov and D.D. Kosambi. It has some by J.B.S. Haldane, E.F. Schumacher and the leftist classic "Man's Worldly Goods" by Leo Huberman.
"Welcome to ForgottenBooks.org! From here you can read thousands of books FREE online (100% viewable) and purchase the books you like as high-quality paperbacks at wholesale prices.
We specialize in historical writings, this includes works such as: classical fiction, philosophy, science, religion, folklore, mythology and sacred texts, in addition to secret and esoteric subjects, such as: occult, freemasonry, alchemy, hermetic and ancient knowledge. Fiction and non-fiction books.
It is our mission to find hidden knowledge and preserve lost knowledge, from antiquity to the present day, and make this information freely available to the world. If you like any of our books, they are all for sale on Amazon.com for little over the cost of the printing. Please take a look."
There are translations of poems of Kabir, Vemana, of vedas etc. There is a useful feature. When I searched for Bates, it gave the references with page numbers in all the listed books of various bates. There are two from Darwin's book for Walter Bates.
As mentioned before Arvind Gupta's site Toys and Books has many downloadable books of current interest from children's books to those on sustainable development.It has also many books by I.Asimov and D.D. Kosambi. It has some by J.B.S. Haldane, E.F. Schumacher and the leftist classic "Man's Worldly Goods" by Leo Huberman.
Migrant contributions
From the New York Times article on the work and views of Dilip Ratha:
"There are about 200 million migrants worldwide, supporting as many if not more people at home. That suggests that remittances may reach almost a tenth of the world’s population.
India ($27 billion), China ($26 billion) and Mexico ($25 billion) are the leading beneficiaries. But in relative terms, small countries gain the most, with some increasing their national incomes by more than 20 percent. Egypt gets more from remittances than it does from the Suez Canal.
Most of the money is spent on consumption — food, clothing or a birthday bash — which leads some economists to discount its impact on development. But Mr. Ratha argues migrants would invest more if they had better options. And he regards higher consumption among the poor as a very good thing.
“It’s not just about economics,” he said. “Having someone who’s doing well abroad brings confidence to the family. They can hold their heads high.
....
In subsequent work, Mr. Ratha has argued that the importance of the money exceeds its sheer size. Unlike foreign aid, it cannot be skimmed by potentates. Unlike investors who flee crises, migrants increase their giving during hard times. The money is directed to the needy. And Mr. Ratha contends it is well-monitored, too, by intimates on the sending end. “It comes with a lot of goodwill, advice, knowledge and punishment if necessary — keeping in mind the welfare of the recipient,” he said. ”
I too noticed and heard similar things from many families in coastal Andhra but do not know the quantitative estimates or in which years this was most significant. In this area, many students in the public schools are from poor families. I know one NGO group ( breadsocietyindia) which gives scholarships to poor students of merit without considerations of caste or creed. After struggling for several years, the organization took off from funds given by NRIs from USA. After some experimentation they chose a simple criterion to determine poor students; essentially those going to public schools.
In curious ways, foreign migrants also contributed to more girls going to school. In one school, there is a large enrollment of muslim girls from a nearby village. Apparently many of the local muslim men working in the gulf countries are now insisting on brides who have some minimal education.
Here is an inspiring story of Prakasam Tata's 60 year struggle against filaria in his native Vizianagaram. Excerpts:
"In the 1940s, as a little boy living in Vizianagaram, Andhra Pradesh, I wondered why my aunt had legs like those of an elephant ...
With the seed that was laid in me in rural West Bengal, and the follow-up education and training in the USA under my mentors, eminent Profs. H. Heukelekian and Norman Dondero, of Rutgers University in New Jersey that earned me a doctoral degree in 1966, my dream continued with much more clarity.
....
These annual pilgrimages to visit my mother gave me many opportunities to witness the progressive deterioration of the condition of Pedda Cheruvu. As I had plenty of time at my disposal during these visits I met with anybody and organizations such as Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce, Lions Club, local colleges etc., whosoever was willing to listen and invited me to talk about how one could go about remediating the pollution of Pedda Cheruvu. While we enjoyed the snacking sessions at the end of each of such meetings, what pained me most were the discouraging comments and unsolicited suggestions by some that I should not waste either my time or money. The assumption of these well-wishing but chronic pessimists was that it would be next to impossible to move the district and municipal administration to do anything with regard to purifying the water in Pedda Cheruvu, because of the lackadaisical attitude and corrupt mentality of the bureaucracy.
...
It was in February 2003, when the United States Asia Environmental Partnership (USAEP) invited me to participate in a workshop on Decentralized Wastewater Treatment Systems conducted in the four major cities of India. It was during this sojourn that I took the opportunity to meet the very dynamic and mission oriented District Collector of Vizianagaram, Dr. Rajat Kumar.
....
Although the monsoon of 2003 heavily impacted the construction of the pond system, Dr. Rajat Kumar kept the pressure on the contractors to complete its construction at somewhat less than the estimated cost of Rs. two crores. The previously laid out designs would have costed roughly three times this cost. The treatment system was commissioned on April 15/16, 2004. "
P.S. The last link does not seem to be working now but the article is available here here and a few other places by googling 'Dreaming in Color- Dr. Prakasam Tata'.
Some views of the 'pedda cheruvu" on youtube http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=yXhyOm2A7Jc
"There are about 200 million migrants worldwide, supporting as many if not more people at home. That suggests that remittances may reach almost a tenth of the world’s population.
India ($27 billion), China ($26 billion) and Mexico ($25 billion) are the leading beneficiaries. But in relative terms, small countries gain the most, with some increasing their national incomes by more than 20 percent. Egypt gets more from remittances than it does from the Suez Canal.
Most of the money is spent on consumption — food, clothing or a birthday bash — which leads some economists to discount its impact on development. But Mr. Ratha argues migrants would invest more if they had better options. And he regards higher consumption among the poor as a very good thing.
“It’s not just about economics,” he said. “Having someone who’s doing well abroad brings confidence to the family. They can hold their heads high.
....
In subsequent work, Mr. Ratha has argued that the importance of the money exceeds its sheer size. Unlike foreign aid, it cannot be skimmed by potentates. Unlike investors who flee crises, migrants increase their giving during hard times. The money is directed to the needy. And Mr. Ratha contends it is well-monitored, too, by intimates on the sending end. “It comes with a lot of goodwill, advice, knowledge and punishment if necessary — keeping in mind the welfare of the recipient,” he said. ”
I too noticed and heard similar things from many families in coastal Andhra but do not know the quantitative estimates or in which years this was most significant. In this area, many students in the public schools are from poor families. I know one NGO group ( breadsocietyindia) which gives scholarships to poor students of merit without considerations of caste or creed. After struggling for several years, the organization took off from funds given by NRIs from USA. After some experimentation they chose a simple criterion to determine poor students; essentially those going to public schools.
In curious ways, foreign migrants also contributed to more girls going to school. In one school, there is a large enrollment of muslim girls from a nearby village. Apparently many of the local muslim men working in the gulf countries are now insisting on brides who have some minimal education.
Here is an inspiring story of Prakasam Tata's 60 year struggle against filaria in his native Vizianagaram. Excerpts:
"In the 1940s, as a little boy living in Vizianagaram, Andhra Pradesh, I wondered why my aunt had legs like those of an elephant ...
With the seed that was laid in me in rural West Bengal, and the follow-up education and training in the USA under my mentors, eminent Profs. H. Heukelekian and Norman Dondero, of Rutgers University in New Jersey that earned me a doctoral degree in 1966, my dream continued with much more clarity.
....
These annual pilgrimages to visit my mother gave me many opportunities to witness the progressive deterioration of the condition of Pedda Cheruvu. As I had plenty of time at my disposal during these visits I met with anybody and organizations such as Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce, Lions Club, local colleges etc., whosoever was willing to listen and invited me to talk about how one could go about remediating the pollution of Pedda Cheruvu. While we enjoyed the snacking sessions at the end of each of such meetings, what pained me most were the discouraging comments and unsolicited suggestions by some that I should not waste either my time or money. The assumption of these well-wishing but chronic pessimists was that it would be next to impossible to move the district and municipal administration to do anything with regard to purifying the water in Pedda Cheruvu, because of the lackadaisical attitude and corrupt mentality of the bureaucracy.
...
It was in February 2003, when the United States Asia Environmental Partnership (USAEP) invited me to participate in a workshop on Decentralized Wastewater Treatment Systems conducted in the four major cities of India. It was during this sojourn that I took the opportunity to meet the very dynamic and mission oriented District Collector of Vizianagaram, Dr. Rajat Kumar.
....
Although the monsoon of 2003 heavily impacted the construction of the pond system, Dr. Rajat Kumar kept the pressure on the contractors to complete its construction at somewhat less than the estimated cost of Rs. two crores. The previously laid out designs would have costed roughly three times this cost. The treatment system was commissioned on April 15/16, 2004. "
P.S. The last link does not seem to be working now but the article is available here here and a few other places by googling 'Dreaming in Color- Dr. Prakasam Tata'.
Some views of the 'pedda cheruvu" on youtube http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=yXhyOm2A7Jc
Friday, March 14, 2008
Scientists on conflicts
John Horgan in Discover Magazine collects the views of Frans de Waal, Robert Spolosky, Douglas Fry, Richard Wrangham, Steven LeBlanc and writes:
"Despite the signs of progress against our belligerent side, all these scientists emphasize that if war is not inevitable, neither is peace. Major obstacles include religious fundamentalism, which not only triggers conflicts but also contributes to the suppression of women; global warming, which might produce ecological crises that spur social unrest and violence; overpopulation, particularly when it produces a surplus of unmarried, unemployed young men; and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Moreover, all the solutions to war come with caveats. Sapolsky suggests that eliminating poverty, while an important goal in its own right, may not extinguish war in all regions. Among baboons, lions, and other animals, aggression sometimes “goes up during periods of plenty because you have the energy to waste on stupid stuff rather than just trying to figure out where your next meal is coming from.”
...
A crucial first step toward ending war is to reject fatalism, in ourselves and in our political leaders. That is the view of the Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson,
...."
Intersting article with lots of inks (Link via 3quarksdaily).
"Despite the signs of progress against our belligerent side, all these scientists emphasize that if war is not inevitable, neither is peace. Major obstacles include religious fundamentalism, which not only triggers conflicts but also contributes to the suppression of women; global warming, which might produce ecological crises that spur social unrest and violence; overpopulation, particularly when it produces a surplus of unmarried, unemployed young men; and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Moreover, all the solutions to war come with caveats. Sapolsky suggests that eliminating poverty, while an important goal in its own right, may not extinguish war in all regions. Among baboons, lions, and other animals, aggression sometimes “goes up during periods of plenty because you have the energy to waste on stupid stuff rather than just trying to figure out where your next meal is coming from.”
...
A crucial first step toward ending war is to reject fatalism, in ourselves and in our political leaders. That is the view of the Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson,
...."
Intersting article with lots of inks (Link via 3quarksdaily).
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Some posts from development bloggers
Chris Blattman has two posts, the first one responding to students who want to conduct research in post-conflict areas and a second one on Development Tourism. Excerpts from the second post:
"Can you "do development" in a two week trip? Unless you're a star surgeon or possess some other ultra-skill, my answer is an emphatic 'no'.
...
In Uganda, I see NGO workers, even heads of office, swing in and out in less than a year. Short tours of duty are understandable in true 'emergencies'. In any other context, this is cowboy development at its worst. Few emergencies are over in nine months. Neither, in that case, should be the positions.
One solution: hire more locals to senior positions. I've seen too little effort to train and promote local staff in too many international organizations. The glass ceiling is nearly opaque in some cases. The promotion of locals to senior positions is one of the few things I admire about UN field offices."
On the otherhand, I have seen some development work in Andhra from NRIs who spend very little time there. The NRIs mainly provide funds and work through local contacts they know like relatives and friends. Some of them seem to work well but A.P. leads in a black list of NGOs. I was recently talking to a friend working in a educational scholarship programme which also monitors the recepients of scholarships. He said that money was not a problem for them but the main problem is to find personnel to tour to do the monitoring work.
Ethan Zuckermanin in his Ted2008 series posted about Paul Collier's talk at Ted2008 and his book "The Bottom Billion" in the post TED2008: Paul Collier - Compassion and enlightened self-interest. He recommends the book but since it costs 45 Aus. dollars, for the time being, I will confine myself to his comments:
"“Now the challenge is different - reversing the divergence of the bottom billion. Is this easier or harder?” Collier advises we focus on governance, because money isn’t the problem. There’s a huge natural resource boom taking place - Uganda and Ghana have both discovered oil, and Guinea has a huge discovery of iron. “These new revenue flows dwarf aid.” In Angola, new oil revenues are $50 billion a year - total aid flows to the bottom billion nations is $34 billion a year.
So how do we ensure these flows of money make life better? Historically, they don’t - economists talk of “the resource curse.” In the short term, oil makes everyone a bit better off… and in the long-term, countries tend to end up worse off. The critical issue, he tells us, is the initial level of governance. “If your governance is good enough, there’s no resource boom.” That’s happened in places like Norway, Australia, and Canada. “The resource curse is entirely confined to a threshhold of governance.” Nigeria is a great example of what can go wrong if you don’t have enough governance. You need a level of governance around where Portugal was in the 1980s.
So, is the bottom billion above or below that threshhold? Collier hoped that the spread of democracy would help some of these nations. “And democracy has sigificant effects. But they’re adverse effects - democracies make even more of a mess of these booms than autocracies.” While Collier tells us he was tempted to give up his research at this point, he made a critical discovery. Democracies involve both elections and checks and balances. “It’s the electoral competition that does damage, but strong checks and balances make booms good.” Unfortunately, new democracies don’t have these checks and balances - they’re “instant democracies”.
There’s now an intense struggle to bring in these checks and balances. We need international standards, voluntary ones. He refers to resource extraction transparency standards that are currently being pushed in the developing world. Nigerian reformers printed some of these standards in local newspapers - there was so much interest that circulation in newspapers spiked.
What are these standards? Instead of letting an oil company fly in and meet with a minister, making a deal that’s good for the company, good for the minister, and not good for the country, why not have transparent auctions? The British treasury estimated that the rights to the 3G mobile spectrum were worth $2 billion - it sold at auction for $20 billion. “If the British treasury got it that wrong. imagine how the government of Sierra Leone will do.” And so the government of Sierra Leone immediately asked for help with running resource auctions.
Collier tells us that “unless we have an informed society, politicans will get away with gestures.” To build an informed citizenry, Collier “broke all the professional rules and wrote an Economics book you could read on a beach.” He tells us that a blogger once commented “Collier is not charismatic. But his arguments are compelling.” And that’s why, “if you agree with that comment, you realize that I need you.”
I disagree with that blogger. Collier may have been the best speaker at TED this year, despite some seriously stiff competition - powerful ideas presented compactly and compellingly. Read the damn book."
Finally M.Rajshekar in A development chronology of tihi has "...this latest sporadic offering to the blogging gods will focus on the agrarian history of tihi. it is the incidental outcome of some time I spent chatting with village elders, trying to understand what this hamlet was like in the days gone by. later, during a trip to delhi, i corroborated what they told me about crop prices and wage levels, famines and epidemics, forests and water levels, with the old district gazetteers."
"Can you "do development" in a two week trip? Unless you're a star surgeon or possess some other ultra-skill, my answer is an emphatic 'no'.
...
In Uganda, I see NGO workers, even heads of office, swing in and out in less than a year. Short tours of duty are understandable in true 'emergencies'. In any other context, this is cowboy development at its worst. Few emergencies are over in nine months. Neither, in that case, should be the positions.
One solution: hire more locals to senior positions. I've seen too little effort to train and promote local staff in too many international organizations. The glass ceiling is nearly opaque in some cases. The promotion of locals to senior positions is one of the few things I admire about UN field offices."
On the otherhand, I have seen some development work in Andhra from NRIs who spend very little time there. The NRIs mainly provide funds and work through local contacts they know like relatives and friends. Some of them seem to work well but A.P. leads in a black list of NGOs. I was recently talking to a friend working in a educational scholarship programme which also monitors the recepients of scholarships. He said that money was not a problem for them but the main problem is to find personnel to tour to do the monitoring work.
Ethan Zuckermanin in his Ted2008 series posted about Paul Collier's talk at Ted2008 and his book "The Bottom Billion" in the post TED2008: Paul Collier - Compassion and enlightened self-interest. He recommends the book but since it costs 45 Aus. dollars, for the time being, I will confine myself to his comments:
"“Now the challenge is different - reversing the divergence of the bottom billion. Is this easier or harder?” Collier advises we focus on governance, because money isn’t the problem. There’s a huge natural resource boom taking place - Uganda and Ghana have both discovered oil, and Guinea has a huge discovery of iron. “These new revenue flows dwarf aid.” In Angola, new oil revenues are $50 billion a year - total aid flows to the bottom billion nations is $34 billion a year.
So how do we ensure these flows of money make life better? Historically, they don’t - economists talk of “the resource curse.” In the short term, oil makes everyone a bit better off… and in the long-term, countries tend to end up worse off. The critical issue, he tells us, is the initial level of governance. “If your governance is good enough, there’s no resource boom.” That’s happened in places like Norway, Australia, and Canada. “The resource curse is entirely confined to a threshhold of governance.” Nigeria is a great example of what can go wrong if you don’t have enough governance. You need a level of governance around where Portugal was in the 1980s.
So, is the bottom billion above or below that threshhold? Collier hoped that the spread of democracy would help some of these nations. “And democracy has sigificant effects. But they’re adverse effects - democracies make even more of a mess of these booms than autocracies.” While Collier tells us he was tempted to give up his research at this point, he made a critical discovery. Democracies involve both elections and checks and balances. “It’s the electoral competition that does damage, but strong checks and balances make booms good.” Unfortunately, new democracies don’t have these checks and balances - they’re “instant democracies”.
There’s now an intense struggle to bring in these checks and balances. We need international standards, voluntary ones. He refers to resource extraction transparency standards that are currently being pushed in the developing world. Nigerian reformers printed some of these standards in local newspapers - there was so much interest that circulation in newspapers spiked.
What are these standards? Instead of letting an oil company fly in and meet with a minister, making a deal that’s good for the company, good for the minister, and not good for the country, why not have transparent auctions? The British treasury estimated that the rights to the 3G mobile spectrum were worth $2 billion - it sold at auction for $20 billion. “If the British treasury got it that wrong. imagine how the government of Sierra Leone will do.” And so the government of Sierra Leone immediately asked for help with running resource auctions.
Collier tells us that “unless we have an informed society, politicans will get away with gestures.” To build an informed citizenry, Collier “broke all the professional rules and wrote an Economics book you could read on a beach.” He tells us that a blogger once commented “Collier is not charismatic. But his arguments are compelling.” And that’s why, “if you agree with that comment, you realize that I need you.”
I disagree with that blogger. Collier may have been the best speaker at TED this year, despite some seriously stiff competition - powerful ideas presented compactly and compellingly. Read the damn book."
Finally M.Rajshekar in A development chronology of tihi has "...this latest sporadic offering to the blogging gods will focus on the agrarian history of tihi. it is the incidental outcome of some time I spent chatting with village elders, trying to understand what this hamlet was like in the days gone by. later, during a trip to delhi, i corroborated what they told me about crop prices and wage levels, famines and epidemics, forests and water levels, with the old district gazetteers."
What's holding India back?
An excerpt from an interesting article in The Economist:
"For years, it pottered along, weighed down by the regulations that made up the licence raj, producing only a feeble “Hindu” rate of growth. But over the past 15 years it has been transformed into a far more powerful beast. Its companies have become worldbeaters. Without India's strength, the world economy would have had far less to boast about.
Sadly, this achievement is more fragile than it looks. Many things restrain India's economy, from a government that depends on Communist support to the caste system, power cuts and rigid labour laws. But an enduring constraint is even more awkward: a state that makes a big claim on a poor country's resources but then uses them badly.
The state's cage
It is not unusual for a country's bureaucrats and politicians to be less efficient than its businesspeople; and the Indian civil servant, with his forms in triplicate, has been a caricature for so long that it is easy to forget the impossibility of many of the jobs involved (see article). But India's 10m-strong civil service is the size of a small country, and its unreformed public sector is a huge barrier to two things a growing population needs. The first is a faster rate of sustainable growth: the government's debts and its infrastructure failings set a lower-than-necessary speed-limit for the economy. The second is to spread the fruits of a growing economy to India's poor. By the government's own admission, most development spending fails to reach its intended recipients."
Similar threads appear in the discussion India: The Emerging Giant briefly discussed here.
"For years, it pottered along, weighed down by the regulations that made up the licence raj, producing only a feeble “Hindu” rate of growth. But over the past 15 years it has been transformed into a far more powerful beast. Its companies have become worldbeaters. Without India's strength, the world economy would have had far less to boast about.
Sadly, this achievement is more fragile than it looks. Many things restrain India's economy, from a government that depends on Communist support to the caste system, power cuts and rigid labour laws. But an enduring constraint is even more awkward: a state that makes a big claim on a poor country's resources but then uses them badly.
The state's cage
It is not unusual for a country's bureaucrats and politicians to be less efficient than its businesspeople; and the Indian civil servant, with his forms in triplicate, has been a caricature for so long that it is easy to forget the impossibility of many of the jobs involved (see article). But India's 10m-strong civil service is the size of a small country, and its unreformed public sector is a huge barrier to two things a growing population needs. The first is a faster rate of sustainable growth: the government's debts and its infrastructure failings set a lower-than-necessary speed-limit for the economy. The second is to spread the fruits of a growing economy to India's poor. By the government's own admission, most development spending fails to reach its intended recipients."
Similar threads appear in the discussion India: The Emerging Giant briefly discussed here.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Bumper crop
From Times of India:
" The extent to which desis have made an impact in the US was reeled off in the Rajya Sabha — as many as 12% scientists and 38% doctors in the US are Indians, and in Nasa, 36% or almost 4 out of 10 scientists are Indians.
If that's not proof enough of Indian scientific and corporate prowess, digest this: 34% employees at Microsoft, 28% at IBM, 17% at Intel and 13% at Xerox are Indians."
True?
P.S. Seems to be wrong:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indians_in_NASA_Govt_falls_for_net_hoax/articleshow/2856295.cms
" The extent to which desis have made an impact in the US was reeled off in the Rajya Sabha — as many as 12% scientists and 38% doctors in the US are Indians, and in Nasa, 36% or almost 4 out of 10 scientists are Indians.
If that's not proof enough of Indian scientific and corporate prowess, digest this: 34% employees at Microsoft, 28% at IBM, 17% at Intel and 13% at Xerox are Indians."
True?
P.S. Seems to be wrong:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indians_in_NASA_Govt_falls_for_net_hoax/articleshow/2856295.cms
Sunday, March 09, 2008
First 20/20 game?
This Cricinfo story about Usman Qadir links to the score card of a 20/20 exhibition match between India and Pakistan: 18-ball63 in which Sachin Tendulkar scored a 18-ball 63 but India lost the match.
Fear of snakes
What does this video tell us about the fear of snakes? This is from a discussion in Evo.Psych. group where this example was considered as a proof that humans have no instinctive fear of snakes. I thnk that, as usual, the problem is more complex.
Susan Mineka has pubished papers since 1980 on this topic. A short description of her experiments is here: "Mineka, along with University of Wisconsin psychologist Michael Cook, put the theory to a test in six rhesus monkeys. Reared in the lab, the animals had no prior exposure to snakes. The psychologists showed a videotape of wild-reared monkeys reacting with horror to snakes. Within 24 minutes, the lab monkeys acquired a fear of snakes.
The psychologists then edited fake flowers, a toy snake, a toy rabbit, and a toy crocodile into the video. Tests later showed that after 40 to 60 seconds of exposure to each object, the monkeys feared only the toy snakes and crocodiles."This work is also described by Matt Ridley in 'Nature via Nurture' Here is a recent
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/peterson/psy334/Ohman%20A%20Malicious%20Serpe\
nt%20Current%20Directions%202003.pdf
paper on the topic by Susan Mineka and Arne Ohman.
P.S. The last link does not seem to work. Googling under 'The Malicious Serpent: Snakes as a Prototypical Stimulus ' sometimes gives the link. The paper appeared i 'Current Directions in Psychological Science', vol. 12, issue 1, pages 5-9, February 2003. Abstract here.
Susan Mineka has pubished papers since 1980 on this topic. A short description of her experiments is here: "Mineka, along with University of Wisconsin psychologist Michael Cook, put the theory to a test in six rhesus monkeys. Reared in the lab, the animals had no prior exposure to snakes. The psychologists showed a videotape of wild-reared monkeys reacting with horror to snakes. Within 24 minutes, the lab monkeys acquired a fear of snakes.
The psychologists then edited fake flowers, a toy snake, a toy rabbit, and a toy crocodile into the video. Tests later showed that after 40 to 60 seconds of exposure to each object, the monkeys feared only the toy snakes and crocodiles."This work is also described by Matt Ridley in 'Nature via Nurture' Here is a recent
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/peterson/psy334/Ohman%20A%20Malicious%20Serpe\
nt%20Current%20Directions%202003.pdf
paper on the topic by Susan Mineka and Arne Ohman.
P.S. The last link does not seem to work. Googling under 'The Malicious Serpent: Snakes as a Prototypical Stimulus ' sometimes gives the link. The paper appeared i 'Current Directions in Psychological Science', vol. 12, issue 1, pages 5-9, February 2003. Abstract here.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Some old telugu songs
On a recent trip to Andhra, I acquired some old telugu songs through some kind acquintances. I do not remember many of them or their background (year, lyricist, private or film song etc). I like most of the songs as well as the lyrics and it would be nice to know more about them. But the purpose here is to bring to the attention of other Telugus some old songs which seem nice to me. Some of these may be available in the standard sites. Here is a first list.
'Pasidi merugungula thalathalalu' by P.Bhanumati and B.Rajanikantharao
'ekkevura' by B.Rajanikantharao(sounds like a bhatiyali)
"Dorikenamma vennadonga' by Chittaranjan
"Chaligaali veechindi' by Videhi (sounds like Rao Balasaraswati Devi}
"Evaru Thandri' by A.V.Savithi
'Oopare oopai vuyyala' by H.Hemavathi
'Adunu dachina vayasulo' by M.S. Ramarao
'Chekku chedarani paapa' by M.S. Ramarao
'Cheli talupu muyagane' by M.S. Ramarao
'Eteru ninu cheredo' by M.S. Ramarao
'Nalo korkelu intele' by M.S. Ramarao
'Ninnakkada nedikkada' by M.S. Ramarao
'Pongeti chandana'by M.S. Ramarao
'thandanan bhala thandanana' by M.S. Ramarao
'ee samudra thatana' by M.S. Ramarao
'Pasidi merugungula thalathalalu' by P.Bhanumati and B.Rajanikantharao
'ekkevura' by B.Rajanikantharao(sounds like a bhatiyali)
"Dorikenamma vennadonga' by Chittaranjan
"Chaligaali veechindi' by Videhi (sounds like Rao Balasaraswati Devi}
"Evaru Thandri' by A.V.Savithi
'Oopare oopai vuyyala' by H.Hemavathi
'Adunu dachina vayasulo' by M.S. Ramarao
'Chekku chedarani paapa' by M.S. Ramarao
'Cheli talupu muyagane' by M.S. Ramarao
'Eteru ninu cheredo' by M.S. Ramarao
'Nalo korkelu intele' by M.S. Ramarao
'Ninnakkada nedikkada' by M.S. Ramarao
'Pongeti chandana'by M.S. Ramarao
'thandanan bhala thandanana' by M.S. Ramarao
'ee samudra thatana' by M.S. Ramarao
Thursday, March 06, 2008
High praise from Charles Darwin
Through Dilip D'Souza' blog Death Ends Fun, I came across this wonderful article-review of Henry Walter Bates's "The Naturalist on the River Amazons." Among other things ALEX SHOUMATOFF discusses the work of Wallace and has this passage quoting Darwin's comments: "Darwin urged Bates to write a memoir of his years in the Amazon and introduced him to the publisher John Murray, and in 1863 Murray brought out Bates's "The Naturalist on the River Amazons." (Bates preferred a literal translation of the river's Portuguese name, Rio Amazonas. The Amazons were a legendary female tribe said to have attacked the first Europeans to navigate the river.) The book was a tremendous success. It went through many editions and was translated into several languages. Darwin wrote Bates, "It is the best work of Natural History Travels ever published in England. Your style seems to me admirable. Nothing can be better than the discussion on the struggle for existence, and nothing better than the description of the Forest scenery. It is a grand book, and whether or not it sells quickly, it will last." John Gould, the American ornithologist and bird painter, who had been yearning to go to the Amazon, wrote, "Bates, I have read your book-I've seen the Amazons." Bates, typically, deprecated the achievement. He said he would rather spend another eleven years in the jungle than have to go through the ordeal of writing another book".
More ALEX SHOUMATOFF's dispatches here.
More ALEX SHOUMATOFF's dispatches here.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Another resource curse?
Chris Blattman has an interesting discussion on the article 'Oil, Islam and Women' by Michael Ross. Excerpt:
"If you ignore oil, Islam tends to be associated (statistically) with poor women’s rights. After accounting for oil, that Islam-women’s rights correlation goes away. Variation in oil production seems to explain much of the variation in women’s rights within the Middle East, as well as between the Middle East and the rest of the world."
I was reminded of Srinivasulu's paper Caste, Class and Social Articulation in Andhra Pradesh.. which suggested that the prosperity from the 'green revolution' paved the way for class conflicts in some regions and caste conflicts in others. Blattman concludes "Short story: programs seeking to increase worker wages and rights in the developing world (an important cause) may have need to strike a careful balance between rights and wages for a few now, versus rights and wages for many later. This is yet another example of the conundrums that makes the process of development so complex, difficult, and ethically vexing."
"If you ignore oil, Islam tends to be associated (statistically) with poor women’s rights. After accounting for oil, that Islam-women’s rights correlation goes away. Variation in oil production seems to explain much of the variation in women’s rights within the Middle East, as well as between the Middle East and the rest of the world."
I was reminded of Srinivasulu's paper Caste, Class and Social Articulation in Andhra Pradesh.. which suggested that the prosperity from the 'green revolution' paved the way for class conflicts in some regions and caste conflicts in others. Blattman concludes "Short story: programs seeking to increase worker wages and rights in the developing world (an important cause) may have need to strike a careful balance between rights and wages for a few now, versus rights and wages for many later. This is yet another example of the conundrums that makes the process of development so complex, difficult, and ethically vexing."
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Media and information
From Ethan Zuckerman's post Ted2008: Alisa Miller on Media Attention:
"The map is striking, and gets a round of applause immediately. It’s dominated by the US - which got 79% of news minutes - and by Iraq. Attention to India, Russia and China totalled less than 1% of stories. She points out that there were amazing international stories, including Indonesian flooding, international evidence of global warming, North Korean nuclear crises… and basically nothing but Iraq got picked up.
....Unfortunately, Miller sees similarities in internet news as well - the top 24 stories on network news were the same ones studies saw on Google and Yahoo News."
Here is Alisa Miller's presentation. This type of distortion seems naural, for example, I would guess that India's small farmers will be more concerned with and have time only news about weather, prizes of seeds, pesticides, government programmes etc than global news even if it affects them sooner or later. What is more worrying is too much information, wrong information, conflicting information or information to promote policies of interest to certain groups. Even internet and blogs do not seem to be free from this. Chris Blattman's post The Bloggy Way links a picture in which there are a few thousand core blogs (Chris Blattman changes this to 'about a thousand')and other blogging communities connect to the core in one-way links. Zuckerman has also another post in his wonderful Ted 2008 posts about 'how much do people trust the media, old or new, and how does the media shape our view of the world.' Daniel Gilbert has an interesting comment:
"Gilbert is worried about people’s capacity to consume bad news. He offers an analogy to people’s eating habits: We know people have an unlimited appetite for fat and sugar. We evolved that way. We don’t want to take away anyone’s right to make high-fat icecream. The government has tried to level the playing field - information labels on food. We need to do as much for our information diet as we do for our physical diet. (This is an excellent idea, and something we’re trying to do at Berkman in the next few months - stay tuned.)"
"The map is striking, and gets a round of applause immediately. It’s dominated by the US - which got 79% of news minutes - and by Iraq. Attention to India, Russia and China totalled less than 1% of stories. She points out that there were amazing international stories, including Indonesian flooding, international evidence of global warming, North Korean nuclear crises… and basically nothing but Iraq got picked up.
....Unfortunately, Miller sees similarities in internet news as well - the top 24 stories on network news were the same ones studies saw on Google and Yahoo News."
Here is Alisa Miller's presentation. This type of distortion seems naural, for example, I would guess that India's small farmers will be more concerned with and have time only news about weather, prizes of seeds, pesticides, government programmes etc than global news even if it affects them sooner or later. What is more worrying is too much information, wrong information, conflicting information or information to promote policies of interest to certain groups. Even internet and blogs do not seem to be free from this. Chris Blattman's post The Bloggy Way links a picture in which there are a few thousand core blogs (Chris Blattman changes this to 'about a thousand')and other blogging communities connect to the core in one-way links. Zuckerman has also another post in his wonderful Ted 2008 posts about 'how much do people trust the media, old or new, and how does the media shape our view of the world.' Daniel Gilbert has an interesting comment:
"Gilbert is worried about people’s capacity to consume bad news. He offers an analogy to people’s eating habits: We know people have an unlimited appetite for fat and sugar. We evolved that way. We don’t want to take away anyone’s right to make high-fat icecream. The government has tried to level the playing field - information labels on food. We need to do as much for our information diet as we do for our physical diet. (This is an excellent idea, and something we’re trying to do at Berkman in the next few months - stay tuned.)"
Saul Alinsky, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama
I have not been paying much attention to the US primaries but Dreams from Obama gives the impression that Obama may be a different type of leader.
From today's Age articleby Guy Rundle:
"Clinton's bad luck was to be a candidate of the 1960s, or more particularly of the whole postwar period of confidence and forward-looking that crashed sometime around the late '70s. What made the '50s and '60s more similar than different — and what makes Clinton closer in many ways to John McCain than to Obama — was a belief that history was moving forward, that people were capable of shaping their collective destiny. This optimism was grounded in the fact that people's lives were still set within solid social connections: work, neighbourhood, unions, church and much more. Clinton's message presumes both that optimistic spirit, and that her audience has a reasonable grasp of how society works, a picture of it in their head.
Obama is of a different era, and he is talking to a different world. Most importantly, he knows it. Having trained as a community organiser in the southside Chicago group founded by the legendary organiser Saul Alinsky, he understands what has happened to the American public in the past 20 years. Put simply, society has collapsed, and with it, many people's sense of connection to others, and their ability to see themselves as an active force in their own world.
Alinsky taught that, before any political organisation of such people can take place, their sense of possibility must be revived, that they must be reached at their point of despair. Thus, what sounds like homily to the ears of a more professional political audience — "there is a time in history and the time is now, the fierce urgency of the present" and so on — is news to the vast numbers who have long felt that society is something that happens outside them, that they are simply a human surplus.
There is no need to specify a detailed program to them, because it is implicit in what "hope" is — of a health system where people are not sent home to die of easily curable diseases, of a minimum wage that is liveable, affordable study, an end to meaningless wars, and more.
It wouldn't matter what Clinton put up against this, or how good her organisation was, she simply doesn't have anything to match it."
From the Wikipedia article on Saul Alinsky:
"Alinsky was the subject of Hillary Rodham's senior honors thesis at Wellesley College, "There Is Only The Fight...": An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.[8] Rodham commented on Alinsky's "charm," but rejected grassroots community organizing as outdated. Once Hillary Rodham Clinton became First Lady of the United States, the thesis was suppressed by the White House for fear of being associated too closely with Alinsky's ideas.[9]
Alinsky also had a significant influence on Barack Obama, who is a United States Senator and candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.[8] Obama particularly used Alinsky's techniques while participating in Chicago community organizations in the 1980s."
From today's Age articleby Guy Rundle:
"Clinton's bad luck was to be a candidate of the 1960s, or more particularly of the whole postwar period of confidence and forward-looking that crashed sometime around the late '70s. What made the '50s and '60s more similar than different — and what makes Clinton closer in many ways to John McCain than to Obama — was a belief that history was moving forward, that people were capable of shaping their collective destiny. This optimism was grounded in the fact that people's lives were still set within solid social connections: work, neighbourhood, unions, church and much more. Clinton's message presumes both that optimistic spirit, and that her audience has a reasonable grasp of how society works, a picture of it in their head.
Obama is of a different era, and he is talking to a different world. Most importantly, he knows it. Having trained as a community organiser in the southside Chicago group founded by the legendary organiser Saul Alinsky, he understands what has happened to the American public in the past 20 years. Put simply, society has collapsed, and with it, many people's sense of connection to others, and their ability to see themselves as an active force in their own world.
Alinsky taught that, before any political organisation of such people can take place, their sense of possibility must be revived, that they must be reached at their point of despair. Thus, what sounds like homily to the ears of a more professional political audience — "there is a time in history and the time is now, the fierce urgency of the present" and so on — is news to the vast numbers who have long felt that society is something that happens outside them, that they are simply a human surplus.
There is no need to specify a detailed program to them, because it is implicit in what "hope" is — of a health system where people are not sent home to die of easily curable diseases, of a minimum wage that is liveable, affordable study, an end to meaningless wars, and more.
It wouldn't matter what Clinton put up against this, or how good her organisation was, she simply doesn't have anything to match it."
From the Wikipedia article on Saul Alinsky:
"Alinsky was the subject of Hillary Rodham's senior honors thesis at Wellesley College, "There Is Only The Fight...": An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.[8] Rodham commented on Alinsky's "charm," but rejected grassroots community organizing as outdated. Once Hillary Rodham Clinton became First Lady of the United States, the thesis was suppressed by the White House for fear of being associated too closely with Alinsky's ideas.[9]
Alinsky also had a significant influence on Barack Obama, who is a United States Senator and candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.[8] Obama particularly used Alinsky's techniques while participating in Chicago community organizations in the 1980s."
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Hinglaj
seems to be a meeting place of many threads ancient and modern. I came to know of Hinglaj through Lalita's post which owes a bit to my friend Kalyan's wonderful memory. From the Wikipedia article on Hinglaj: "Despite the partition and the increasing Islamic stance of the Pakistani Government and society, Hinglaj has survived and is in fact revered by local Muslims who call it 'Nani ki Mandir'. Muslims offer red or saffron clothes, incense, candles and a sweet preparation called 'Sirini' to the deity. The Muslims protected sites like Hinglaj which are the last vestiges of the Hindu society which once straddled the area.
Hingula means cinnabar (HgS Mercuric Sulphide). It was used in ancient India to cure snakebite and other poisonings and is still employed in traditional medicine. The Goddess Hingula is thus believed to possess powers which can cure poisoning and other diseases. The Muslim name 'Nani' is an abbreviation of the name of the ancient Goddess "Nanaia", whose Persian name is "Anahita"."
Some articles say that it is possibly a pre-Hindu place of worship. Lalita also links to this informative article on the connections to Bengal through a travelogue, a film and possibly due the presence a number of shaktipeethas in Bengal. Here are some wonderful photographs of a trip from Pakistan Animal Welfare Society and earlier photos from BBC News. Note the last one on bonded labourers.
Hingula means cinnabar (HgS Mercuric Sulphide). It was used in ancient India to cure snakebite and other poisonings and is still employed in traditional medicine. The Goddess Hingula is thus believed to possess powers which can cure poisoning and other diseases. The Muslim name 'Nani' is an abbreviation of the name of the ancient Goddess "Nanaia", whose Persian name is "Anahita"."
Some articles say that it is possibly a pre-Hindu place of worship. Lalita also links to this informative article on the connections to Bengal through a travelogue, a film and possibly due the presence a number of shaktipeethas in Bengal. Here are some wonderful photographs of a trip from Pakistan Animal Welfare Society and earlier photos from BBC News. Note the last one on bonded labourers.
Raguram Rajan's overview of Indian economic development
from ADB LLectures(via Bayesianheresy). From the concluding remarks of India: The Past and Its Future:
"Let me conclude with lessons I draw from India’s highly regulated past. First, India’s past policies relating to science and education, no matter how distorted, gave it capabilities in skilled manufacturing and in services, where its comparative advantage now lies. India should not sacrifice this advantage in a blind attempt to follow the East Asian path of unskilled, labor-intensive manufacturing. In particular, it should remove distortions that hold back its areas of strength: the overregulated higher education system and the sclerotic legal system. But it also needs to remove the disincentives for the creation of unskilled jobs, not just by getting rid of archaic job protection while building a genuine safety net for all workers, but also by improving infrastructure, especially in laggard states and rural areas so that they connect better to the larger economy.
Second, the government cannot simply legislate outcomes or achieve them by offering resources or subsidies, especially as the economy becomes more market-oriented. Indeed, such direction can be counterproductive. What the government intends and what materializes can be very different because of the way people react to policy. The government must focus instead on getting the environment right, and thus spread opportunity.
Third, the government, by and large, will not refocus in a vacuum. I do not believe that there will be a revolutionary change in government attitudes, because Indian society is not ready for it. Instead, I see a more evolutionary change⎯as more and more people in India obtain access and see opportunity in the market economy, they will press for a more enabling government, and Indian democracy will respond. The sooner this happens though⎯and reformers in government can play a role here in expanding access⎯the better it will be for India. For better governance and wider opportunity, rather than turning back from market-oriented reforms, will be the way to social justice and a more prosperous, fairer, India."
Bayesianheresy also links to Shanta Devarajan's post on "Why is service delivery particularly poor in India?". Excerpt:"First, especially compared with Bangladesh, India is an extremely heterogeneous society, with many castes, ethnic groups, languages and religions. There is some evidence that polarized societies find it more difficult to build political support for public goods. Second, to the extent that these services are transactions-intensive (a teacher has to spend time with students, docthttp://kufr.blogspot.com/2008/01/more-socialist-than-swedes.html#linksors with patients), caste or other differences may stand in the way of publicly-provided services working for some people. Low-caste people, for instance, have been excluded from some public schools and public clinics. They are able to obtain services in the private sector—because they pay for these services. Paradoxically, therefore, the fact that the Indian government mandated free and universal public education and health, and decided to finance and provide it from the public sector, may be the reason poor people are largely obtaining these services in the private sector."
P.S.(29th. Feb.) See Kuffir's response to Shanta Devarajan's post.And more here.
"Let me conclude with lessons I draw from India’s highly regulated past. First, India’s past policies relating to science and education, no matter how distorted, gave it capabilities in skilled manufacturing and in services, where its comparative advantage now lies. India should not sacrifice this advantage in a blind attempt to follow the East Asian path of unskilled, labor-intensive manufacturing. In particular, it should remove distortions that hold back its areas of strength: the overregulated higher education system and the sclerotic legal system. But it also needs to remove the disincentives for the creation of unskilled jobs, not just by getting rid of archaic job protection while building a genuine safety net for all workers, but also by improving infrastructure, especially in laggard states and rural areas so that they connect better to the larger economy.
Second, the government cannot simply legislate outcomes or achieve them by offering resources or subsidies, especially as the economy becomes more market-oriented. Indeed, such direction can be counterproductive. What the government intends and what materializes can be very different because of the way people react to policy. The government must focus instead on getting the environment right, and thus spread opportunity.
Third, the government, by and large, will not refocus in a vacuum. I do not believe that there will be a revolutionary change in government attitudes, because Indian society is not ready for it. Instead, I see a more evolutionary change⎯as more and more people in India obtain access and see opportunity in the market economy, they will press for a more enabling government, and Indian democracy will respond. The sooner this happens though⎯and reformers in government can play a role here in expanding access⎯the better it will be for India. For better governance and wider opportunity, rather than turning back from market-oriented reforms, will be the way to social justice and a more prosperous, fairer, India."
Bayesianheresy also links to Shanta Devarajan's post on "Why is service delivery particularly poor in India?". Excerpt:"First, especially compared with Bangladesh, India is an extremely heterogeneous society, with many castes, ethnic groups, languages and religions. There is some evidence that polarized societies find it more difficult to build political support for public goods. Second, to the extent that these services are transactions-intensive (a teacher has to spend time with students, docthttp://kufr.blogspot.com/2008/01/more-socialist-than-swedes.html#linksors with patients), caste or other differences may stand in the way of publicly-provided services working for some people. Low-caste people, for instance, have been excluded from some public schools and public clinics. They are able to obtain services in the private sector—because they pay for these services. Paradoxically, therefore, the fact that the Indian government mandated free and universal public education and health, and decided to finance and provide it from the public sector, may be the reason poor people are largely obtaining these services in the private sector."
P.S.(29th. Feb.) See Kuffir's response to Shanta Devarajan's post.And more here.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
LanguageLog urges caution
while reading science articles and reports.From an article on Nature nurture studies of ToM:
"Theory of mind is a term introduced by Premack and Woodruff (1978) to refer to a set of abilities that may be uniquely human: to attribute mental states such as beliefs, knowledge and emotions to self and others; to recognize that the mental states of others many differ from one's own; to use these attributed states to explain and predict behavior; and to predict how such mental states would be affected by hypothetical actions.
....there are many reasons to be interested in "twin studies" that are designed to tease apart the genetic and environmental influences on ToM abilities. And if such studies are set up to distinguish ToM abilities from general verbal abilities, so much the better.
Unfortunately, as we've mentioned a number of times recently, such studies are quite difficult to interpret. And in the course of looking for something else, I recently stumbled over a really suprising example of these problems.
....
I'm going to leave the detailed analysis for another post. But today, I want to set the stage by quoting the quantitative conclusions of two studies with the same first author, published six years apart, which used the same experimental design (ToM and verbal IQ tests on monozygotic vs. dizogotic twins) and the same statistical method (analysis of variance), but came up with radically different estimates of the genetic contribution to individual differences in ToM abilities."
"Theory of mind is a term introduced by Premack and Woodruff (1978) to refer to a set of abilities that may be uniquely human: to attribute mental states such as beliefs, knowledge and emotions to self and others; to recognize that the mental states of others many differ from one's own; to use these attributed states to explain and predict behavior; and to predict how such mental states would be affected by hypothetical actions.
....there are many reasons to be interested in "twin studies" that are designed to tease apart the genetic and environmental influences on ToM abilities. And if such studies are set up to distinguish ToM abilities from general verbal abilities, so much the better.
Unfortunately, as we've mentioned a number of times recently, such studies are quite difficult to interpret. And in the course of looking for something else, I recently stumbled over a really suprising example of these problems.
....
I'm going to leave the detailed analysis for another post. But today, I want to set the stage by quoting the quantitative conclusions of two studies with the same first author, published six years apart, which used the same experimental design (ToM and verbal IQ tests on monozygotic vs. dizogotic twins) and the same statistical method (analysis of variance), but came up with radically different estimates of the genetic contribution to individual differences in ToM abilities."
Change in play, change in kids
Alix Spiegel in Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills(via Evo. Psych. discussion group):
"But during the second half of the 20th century, Chudacoff argues, play changed radically. Instead of spending their time in autonomous shifting make-believe, children were supplied with ever more specific toys for play and predetermined scripts. Essentially, instead of playing pirate with a tree branch they played Star Wars with a toy light saber. Chudacoff calls this the commercialization and co-optation of child's play — a trend which begins to shrink the size of children's imaginative space.
But commercialization isn't the only reason imagination comes under siege. In the second half of the 20th century, Chudacoff says, parents became increasingly concerned about safety, and were driven to create play environments that were secure and could not be penetrated by threats of the outside world. Karate classes, gymnastics, summer camps — these create safe environments for children, Chudacoff says. And they also do something more: for middle-class parents increasingly worried about achievement, they offer to enrich a child's mind.
Change in Play, Change in Kids
Clearly the way that children spend their time has changed. Here's the issue: A growing number of psychologists believe that these changes in what children do has also changed kids' cognitive and emotional development.It turns out that all that time spent playing make-believe actually helped children develop a critical cognitive skill called executive function. Executive function has a number of different elements, but a central one is the ability to self-regulate. Kids with good self-regulation are able to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.
....
Sad because self-regulation is incredibly important. Poor executive function is associated with high dropout rates, drug use and crime. In fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's IQ."
And much more.
See also Getting Serious About Play.
"But during the second half of the 20th century, Chudacoff argues, play changed radically. Instead of spending their time in autonomous shifting make-believe, children were supplied with ever more specific toys for play and predetermined scripts. Essentially, instead of playing pirate with a tree branch they played Star Wars with a toy light saber. Chudacoff calls this the commercialization and co-optation of child's play — a trend which begins to shrink the size of children's imaginative space.
But commercialization isn't the only reason imagination comes under siege. In the second half of the 20th century, Chudacoff says, parents became increasingly concerned about safety, and were driven to create play environments that were secure and could not be penetrated by threats of the outside world. Karate classes, gymnastics, summer camps — these create safe environments for children, Chudacoff says. And they also do something more: for middle-class parents increasingly worried about achievement, they offer to enrich a child's mind.
Change in Play, Change in Kids
Clearly the way that children spend their time has changed. Here's the issue: A growing number of psychologists believe that these changes in what children do has also changed kids' cognitive and emotional development.It turns out that all that time spent playing make-believe actually helped children develop a critical cognitive skill called executive function. Executive function has a number of different elements, but a central one is the ability to self-regulate. Kids with good self-regulation are able to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.
....
Sad because self-regulation is incredibly important. Poor executive function is associated with high dropout rates, drug use and crime. In fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's IQ."
And much more.
See also Getting Serious About Play.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Economics of regret
From Learning with Regret:
"Marchiori and Warglien used neural network models that incorporate "regret" to predict the outcomes of games played by humans. In this context, regret refers to the difference between outcomes attained and the best outcomes that might have been attained if the actor had chosen differently. The models' predictions are based not on conventional, forward-looking expectations of gain, the notion so long at the heart of economic theorizing, but instead on the action propensities that develop through a backward-looking learning process that is driven by regret.
This is an important step in the development of a workable new synthesis. Marchiori and Warglien show that a very simple, parameter-free model can do an excellent job of fitting the long-run tendencies of players in 21 different economic gaming experiments."
Abstract of the Marchiori-Warglien paper here. Unfortunately both the papers need subscription.
"Marchiori and Warglien used neural network models that incorporate "regret" to predict the outcomes of games played by humans. In this context, regret refers to the difference between outcomes attained and the best outcomes that might have been attained if the actor had chosen differently. The models' predictions are based not on conventional, forward-looking expectations of gain, the notion so long at the heart of economic theorizing, but instead on the action propensities that develop through a backward-looking learning process that is driven by regret.
This is an important step in the development of a workable new synthesis. Marchiori and Warglien show that a very simple, parameter-free model can do an excellent job of fitting the long-run tendencies of players in 21 different economic gaming experiments."
Abstract of the Marchiori-Warglien paper here. Unfortunately both the papers need subscription.
Social interaction
Abstract of Mental Exercising Through Simple Socializing: Social Interaction Promotes General Cognitive Functioning:
"Social interaction is a central feature of people’s life and engages a variety of cognitive resources. Thus, social interaction should facilitate general cognitive functioning. Previous studies suggest such a link, but they used special populations (e.g., elderly with cognitive impairment), measured social interaction indirectly (e.g., via marital status), and only assessed effects of extended interaction in correlational designs. Here the relationbetween mental functioning and direct indicators of social interaction was examined in a younger and healthier population. Study 1 using survey methodology found a positive relationship between social interaction, assessed via amount of actual social contact, and cognitive functioning in people from three age groups including younger adults. Study 2 using an experimental design found that a small amount of social interaction (10 min) can facilitate cognitive performance. The findings are discussed in the context of the benefits social relationships have for so many aspects of people’s lives."
While the results are appealing, they seem to be depend on the choice of indicators for social interaction and cognitive performance. As the authors say towards the end "One issue that remains unclear from the present research is whether all types of social interaction can have a positive effect on cognitive performance. Some available research, although varying in method from the present research, suggests that some social interactions can be cognitively depleting (Finkel et al., 2006; Richeson & Trawalter, 2005; Richeson, Trawalter, &Shelton, 2005). For example, using a measure of inhibition, Richeson et al. (2005) showed that individualshigh in prejudice or who had concerns about being viewed as prejudiced were worse at inhibiting interfering responses on a Stroop task."
Another paper The effect of hours of work on social interaction on the decline of special types of social interaction has drawn several comments here and here."
"Social interaction is a central feature of people’s life and engages a variety of cognitive resources. Thus, social interaction should facilitate general cognitive functioning. Previous studies suggest such a link, but they used special populations (e.g., elderly with cognitive impairment), measured social interaction indirectly (e.g., via marital status), and only assessed effects of extended interaction in correlational designs. Here the relationbetween mental functioning and direct indicators of social interaction was examined in a younger and healthier population. Study 1 using survey methodology found a positive relationship between social interaction, assessed via amount of actual social contact, and cognitive functioning in people from three age groups including younger adults. Study 2 using an experimental design found that a small amount of social interaction (10 min) can facilitate cognitive performance. The findings are discussed in the context of the benefits social relationships have for so many aspects of people’s lives."
While the results are appealing, they seem to be depend on the choice of indicators for social interaction and cognitive performance. As the authors say towards the end "One issue that remains unclear from the present research is whether all types of social interaction can have a positive effect on cognitive performance. Some available research, although varying in method from the present research, suggests that some social interactions can be cognitively depleting (Finkel et al., 2006; Richeson & Trawalter, 2005; Richeson, Trawalter, &Shelton, 2005). For example, using a measure of inhibition, Richeson et al. (2005) showed that individualshigh in prejudice or who had concerns about being viewed as prejudiced were worse at inhibiting interfering responses on a Stroop task."
Another paper The effect of hours of work on social interaction on the decline of special types of social interaction has drawn several comments here and here."
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Very Very Special
From Outlook:
"Hyderabad franchise too had wanted VVS Laxman as their icon player before withdrawing the demand a day before the players' auction. "Laxman has been named the captain of the Hyderabad team. He put the team interest before his own and gave away the icon status (which the franchise owners had demanded from the IPL Governing Council) as he wanted Hyderabad to have a larger budget (for buying players). He showed fine sportsman's spirit," P K Iyer, the managing director of franchise owners Deccan Chronicle, said after buying the veteran cricketer for USD 375,000."
Peter Roebuck: Franchises best for game in decline.
"Hyderabad franchise too had wanted VVS Laxman as their icon player before withdrawing the demand a day before the players' auction. "Laxman has been named the captain of the Hyderabad team. He put the team interest before his own and gave away the icon status (which the franchise owners had demanded from the IPL Governing Council) as he wanted Hyderabad to have a larger budget (for buying players). He showed fine sportsman's spirit," P K Iyer, the managing director of franchise owners Deccan Chronicle, said after buying the veteran cricketer for USD 375,000."
Peter Roebuck: Franchises best for game in decline.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Abbas Raza writes about
Muhammad Ali. There are lots of links and poem (apparently Ali describing how he prepared for the 'rumble in the jungle')that I did not know:
"I have wrestled with an alligator,
I have tussled with a whale,
I have handcuffed lighting,
Thrown thunder in jail.
Yesterday, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick.
I'm so mean I make medicine sick!"
"I have wrestled with an alligator,
I have tussled with a whale,
I have handcuffed lighting,
Thrown thunder in jail.
Yesterday, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick.
I'm so mean I make medicine sick!"
Special issue on cities
in Sciencemagazine. Unfortunately the articles need subscription, but one can read the abstracts by clicking on some of the the articles. For example, clicking on Urbanization and the Wealth of Nations gives:
"Urbanization and the Wealth of Nations
David E. Bloom,* David Canning, Günther Fink
The proportion of a country's population living in urban areas is highly correlated with its level of income. Urban areas offer economies of scale and richer market structures, and there is strong evidence that workers in urban areas are individually more productive, and earn more, than rural workers. However, rapid urbanization is also associated with crowding, environmental degradation, and other impediments to productivity. Overall, we find no evidence that the level of urbanization affects the rate of economic growth. Our findings weaken the rationale for either encouraging or discouraging urbanization as part of a strategy for economic growth. "
and Urbanization and the Wealth of NationsGlobal Change and the Ecology of Cities gives:
"Global Change and the Ecology of Cities
Nancy B. Grimm,1* Stanley H. Faeth,1 Nancy E. Golubiewski,2 Charles L. Redman,3 Jianguo Wu,1,3 Xuemei Bai,4 John M. Briggs1
Urban areas are hot spots that drive environmental change at multiple scales. Material demands of production and human consumption alter land use and cover, biodiversity, and hydrosystems locally to regionally, and urban waste discharge affects local to global biogeochemical cycles and climate. For urbanites, however, global environmental changes are swamped by dramatic changes in the local environment. Urban ecology integrates natural and social sciences to study these radically altered local environments and their regional and global effects. Cities themselves present both the problems and solutions to sustainability challenges of an increasingly urbanized world. "
"Urbanization and the Wealth of Nations
David E. Bloom,* David Canning, Günther Fink
The proportion of a country's population living in urban areas is highly correlated with its level of income. Urban areas offer economies of scale and richer market structures, and there is strong evidence that workers in urban areas are individually more productive, and earn more, than rural workers. However, rapid urbanization is also associated with crowding, environmental degradation, and other impediments to productivity. Overall, we find no evidence that the level of urbanization affects the rate of economic growth. Our findings weaken the rationale for either encouraging or discouraging urbanization as part of a strategy for economic growth. "
and Urbanization and the Wealth of NationsGlobal Change and the Ecology of Cities gives:
"Global Change and the Ecology of Cities
Nancy B. Grimm,1* Stanley H. Faeth,1 Nancy E. Golubiewski,2 Charles L. Redman,3 Jianguo Wu,1,3 Xuemei Bai,4 John M. Briggs1
Urban areas are hot spots that drive environmental change at multiple scales. Material demands of production and human consumption alter land use and cover, biodiversity, and hydrosystems locally to regionally, and urban waste discharge affects local to global biogeochemical cycles and climate. For urbanites, however, global environmental changes are swamped by dramatic changes in the local environment. Urban ecology integrates natural and social sciences to study these radically altered local environments and their regional and global effects. Cities themselves present both the problems and solutions to sustainability challenges of an increasingly urbanized world. "
Monday, February 18, 2008
Patterns in corruption
Michael Moynihan writes about Ben Olken's work in 'The American' (via The Bayesian Heresy):
"In his paper “The Simple Economics of Extortion,” co-written with Patrick Barron of the World Bank, Olken again traveled to Indonesia to study “if the way in which we think about pricing for firms also applies to corrupt officials.” In other words, do the crooked respond to market forces in the way a corporation would? To test this, Olken and Barron looked at the number of roadside checkpoints—which act, essentially, as illegal toll booths where the motorist is required to pay a bribe—in Aceh, a region on the northwestern tip of Sumatra long engaged in a guerilla war with separatist rebels.
“I looked at what happens when there is a change in the number of checkpoints along the road in Aceh. When I started data collection, you had to stop at, say, 90 checkpoints along a 600-kilometer route,” Olken says. “A lot of the checkpoints were associated with the military occupation. But when the peace agreement was signed [in 2005], the military pulled out, and the number of checkpoints declined. The question is: how do the prices at the remaining checkpoints change?”
There are three theories on how prices are set, he says. Is the bribe purely the product of cultural norms, influenced by customs specific to the region? Is the bribe simply an individual transaction, not affected by culture? Or is the bribe economy embedded within a bigger market? “Just as if there was a firm running a toll booth,” Olken says, “the firm would balance off how much revenue they are getting from the tolls, versus the fact that if they were charging more for the tolls there would be fewer cars driving through; they’ll be making an optimal trade-off. So, in fact, that bribe is the equilibrium of a firm’s price-setting decision.”
Olken and Barron found that when the number of checkpoints decreases, prices increase: “So it looks like the guys are behaving like a firm would behave.”
So what does all of this mean to institutions, like the World Bank, struggling against endemic corruption? There is often an understandable desire to go after “the big fish” in corrupt societies, thus making an example of those whose pockets are fullest. “What this paper shows is that there is a potential cost of doing it that way. If corruption is decentralized, the model predicts that the total amount of bribes is going to be higher than if there was a single, centralized person coordinating all the checkpoints.” Such results have broad implications for countries mired in corruption: “One policy that has been advocated in a lot of countries is simplifying the process of business registration. This theory predicts that that would be a good thing to do in reducing corruption because you would be moving from a decentralized corruption, where bribes are set independently, to a single, centralized person, and the total amount you would pay would be less.”
Olken also has looked at graft and corruption in road projects in Indonesia. In his April 2007 paper, “Monitoring Corruption: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia,” he sought to determine the best method of reducing theft and graft in public works projects by doing controlled field experiments in 608 Indonesian villages.
Some village leaders involved in the building of roads were told that, upon completion of the project, they would be visited by government auditors, which increased “the probability of an external government audit in those villages from a baseline of about 4 percent to essentially 100 percent.” Other villages were chosen to participate in grassroots “accountability meetings,” during which project coordinators would publicly account for the use of government funds in a town-hall-like venue. Villagers would be offered anonymous forms to report graft.
Olken’s conclusion was that “increasing government audits…reduced missing expenditures, as measured by discrepancies between official project costs and an independent engineer’s estimate of costs, by eight percentage points. By contrast, increasing grassroots participation in monitoring had little average impact…. Overall, the results suggest that traditional top-down monitoring can play an important role in reducing corruption.” In short, to reduce the amount of corruption, it’s cost-effective to do more audits, not to trust the grassroots.
What’s the practical use of these results? Can they be applied to, say, corrupt countries in Africa? The study seems to suggest, Olken says, that, even in developing countries, “audit agencies might be more useful than people would have otherwise thought.” A widely held presumption was that auditors too were corrupt, and that they would only end up extracting more bribes, making the situation significantly worse.
The Indonesian study, he argues, might “suggest that that assumption is actually incorrect” and that when formulating an anti-corruption strategy, governments and institutions “shouldn’t dismiss the auditors out of hand.” Since minimizing corruption is often a key prerequisite in the development of democratic institutions, campaigners for clean government would do well to heed Olken’s advice."
Ben Olken has also written on whether leaders matter and on the effects of television on social capital. Links to Ben Olken's work discussed in popular press and Ben Olken's Home Page.
"In his paper “The Simple Economics of Extortion,” co-written with Patrick Barron of the World Bank, Olken again traveled to Indonesia to study “if the way in which we think about pricing for firms also applies to corrupt officials.” In other words, do the crooked respond to market forces in the way a corporation would? To test this, Olken and Barron looked at the number of roadside checkpoints—which act, essentially, as illegal toll booths where the motorist is required to pay a bribe—in Aceh, a region on the northwestern tip of Sumatra long engaged in a guerilla war with separatist rebels.
“I looked at what happens when there is a change in the number of checkpoints along the road in Aceh. When I started data collection, you had to stop at, say, 90 checkpoints along a 600-kilometer route,” Olken says. “A lot of the checkpoints were associated with the military occupation. But when the peace agreement was signed [in 2005], the military pulled out, and the number of checkpoints declined. The question is: how do the prices at the remaining checkpoints change?”
There are three theories on how prices are set, he says. Is the bribe purely the product of cultural norms, influenced by customs specific to the region? Is the bribe simply an individual transaction, not affected by culture? Or is the bribe economy embedded within a bigger market? “Just as if there was a firm running a toll booth,” Olken says, “the firm would balance off how much revenue they are getting from the tolls, versus the fact that if they were charging more for the tolls there would be fewer cars driving through; they’ll be making an optimal trade-off. So, in fact, that bribe is the equilibrium of a firm’s price-setting decision.”
Olken and Barron found that when the number of checkpoints decreases, prices increase: “So it looks like the guys are behaving like a firm would behave.”
So what does all of this mean to institutions, like the World Bank, struggling against endemic corruption? There is often an understandable desire to go after “the big fish” in corrupt societies, thus making an example of those whose pockets are fullest. “What this paper shows is that there is a potential cost of doing it that way. If corruption is decentralized, the model predicts that the total amount of bribes is going to be higher than if there was a single, centralized person coordinating all the checkpoints.” Such results have broad implications for countries mired in corruption: “One policy that has been advocated in a lot of countries is simplifying the process of business registration. This theory predicts that that would be a good thing to do in reducing corruption because you would be moving from a decentralized corruption, where bribes are set independently, to a single, centralized person, and the total amount you would pay would be less.”
Olken also has looked at graft and corruption in road projects in Indonesia. In his April 2007 paper, “Monitoring Corruption: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia,” he sought to determine the best method of reducing theft and graft in public works projects by doing controlled field experiments in 608 Indonesian villages.
Some village leaders involved in the building of roads were told that, upon completion of the project, they would be visited by government auditors, which increased “the probability of an external government audit in those villages from a baseline of about 4 percent to essentially 100 percent.” Other villages were chosen to participate in grassroots “accountability meetings,” during which project coordinators would publicly account for the use of government funds in a town-hall-like venue. Villagers would be offered anonymous forms to report graft.
Olken’s conclusion was that “increasing government audits…reduced missing expenditures, as measured by discrepancies between official project costs and an independent engineer’s estimate of costs, by eight percentage points. By contrast, increasing grassroots participation in monitoring had little average impact…. Overall, the results suggest that traditional top-down monitoring can play an important role in reducing corruption.” In short, to reduce the amount of corruption, it’s cost-effective to do more audits, not to trust the grassroots.
What’s the practical use of these results? Can they be applied to, say, corrupt countries in Africa? The study seems to suggest, Olken says, that, even in developing countries, “audit agencies might be more useful than people would have otherwise thought.” A widely held presumption was that auditors too were corrupt, and that they would only end up extracting more bribes, making the situation significantly worse.
The Indonesian study, he argues, might “suggest that that assumption is actually incorrect” and that when formulating an anti-corruption strategy, governments and institutions “shouldn’t dismiss the auditors out of hand.” Since minimizing corruption is often a key prerequisite in the development of democratic institutions, campaigners for clean government would do well to heed Olken’s advice."
Ben Olken has also written on whether leaders matter and on the effects of television on social capital. Links to Ben Olken's work discussed in popular press and Ben Olken's Home Page.
Donkey suicides?
From Chris Blattman's blog: http://chrisblattman.blogspot.com/2008/02/suicidal-donkeys-indian-peacekeepers-in.html
For Indian Army peacekeepers in the Sudan, the plight of the simple donkey has gone unnoticed by an international community preoccupied with ending mass killing and the destruction of a nation.
This neglect ended in tragedy this week with the unexpected suicide of two donkeys. A new UN mission report by Major Shambhu Saran Singh, reported by the Indian Express, describes the unfolding donkitarian crisis:
A donkey, who had decided to end his miserable and wretched life, ran towards the Nile. As he approached the banks, he plunged into the river and moved towards the current and the strong current of the mighty river swept it to a watery grave.
In a second instance reported by Major Singh, an overworked donkey preferred to be beaten to death by his master rather than pulling a heavily loaded cart through the market.
Indian army veterinarians are urging the people and government of Sudan to provide donkeys with a week's rest and a good diet of grain to drive away the “suicidal tendencies”. After 20 years of war and displacement, and amidst daily human rights violations , experts warn that donkey welfare will not get the attention it deserves.
Fortunately, Indian peacekeepers, who comprise close to one third of the 10,000-strong peacekeeping force in sourthern Sudan, appear to be making donkey welfare a chief priority
For Indian Army peacekeepers in the Sudan, the plight of the simple donkey has gone unnoticed by an international community preoccupied with ending mass killing and the destruction of a nation.
This neglect ended in tragedy this week with the unexpected suicide of two donkeys. A new UN mission report by Major Shambhu Saran Singh, reported by the Indian Express, describes the unfolding donkitarian crisis:
A donkey, who had decided to end his miserable and wretched life, ran towards the Nile. As he approached the banks, he plunged into the river and moved towards the current and the strong current of the mighty river swept it to a watery grave.
In a second instance reported by Major Singh, an overworked donkey preferred to be beaten to death by his master rather than pulling a heavily loaded cart through the market.
Indian army veterinarians are urging the people and government of Sudan to provide donkeys with a week's rest and a good diet of grain to drive away the “suicidal tendencies”. After 20 years of war and displacement, and amidst daily human rights violations , experts warn that donkey welfare will not get the attention it deserves.
Fortunately, Indian peacekeepers, who comprise close to one third of the 10,000-strong peacekeeping force in sourthern Sudan, appear to be making donkey welfare a chief priority
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Some micro finance beneficiaries
I have uploaded a few photographs of the beneficiaries of the microfinance programme organized by Benjamin Kaila and Rev. P. Sundar. Some of the work was described in earlier posts like 'A micro effort'.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
A story from Baba Amte's life
Churumuri links to an article of L.C. Jain on Baba Amte at http://churumuri.wordpress.com/2008/02/14/the-sickening-weight-on-the-backs-of-outcasts/. I repeat their quote:
"He once organised a scavengers’ (night soil collectors) union, but when they struck for higher wages while he was still vice chairman of the municipality, he refused their demands because the town committee lacked funds. The strikers charged he was unsympathetic because he had never carried a pan of night soil on his head.
“Imagine our plight during the monsoon,” they pleaded.
They challenged him to do the job and then reconsider. Baba Amte accepted the challenge and was assigned 40 latrines. Daily he collected the steel pans of excrement from the backs of houses and carried them on his head to the disposal sites. It was revolting and sickening labour and affected him profoundly, deepening his regard for, and commitment to, these outcasts. The scavengers received their raise."
"He once organised a scavengers’ (night soil collectors) union, but when they struck for higher wages while he was still vice chairman of the municipality, he refused their demands because the town committee lacked funds. The strikers charged he was unsympathetic because he had never carried a pan of night soil on his head.
“Imagine our plight during the monsoon,” they pleaded.
They challenged him to do the job and then reconsider. Baba Amte accepted the challenge and was assigned 40 latrines. Daily he collected the steel pans of excrement from the backs of houses and carried them on his head to the disposal sites. It was revolting and sickening labour and affected him profoundly, deepening his regard for, and commitment to, these outcasts. The scavengers received their raise."
Why companies should hire female stars
From Harvard Business Review (via Evolutionary Psychology discussion group):
"About four years ago, with the war for talent in high gear, my colleagues and I wrote an article in these pages warning managers of the risks in hiring star performers away from competitors. After studying the fortunes of more than 1,000 star stock analysts, we found that when a star switches companies, not only does his performance plunge, but so does the market value of his new company. What’s more, these players don’t tend to stay with their new organizations for very long, despite the generous pay packages that lured them in. Everybody loses out.
But further analysis of the data, which I’ve done over the past three years, reveals that it’s not that simple. One group of analysts reliably maintained their stardom after changing employers: women. Unlike their male counterparts, female stars (189 star women, 18% of the star analysts in the original study) who switched firms performed just as well, in the aggregate, as those who stayed put. And while investors appear to believe that companies are overpaying for male stars or anticipate a drop in performance for men, this is not so for female stars. Firms acquiring male stars experienced a significant share-price loss of 0.93%, whereas the acquisitions of female stars generated a nonsignificant share-price increase of 0.07%."
"About four years ago, with the war for talent in high gear, my colleagues and I wrote an article in these pages warning managers of the risks in hiring star performers away from competitors. After studying the fortunes of more than 1,000 star stock analysts, we found that when a star switches companies, not only does his performance plunge, but so does the market value of his new company. What’s more, these players don’t tend to stay with their new organizations for very long, despite the generous pay packages that lured them in. Everybody loses out.
But further analysis of the data, which I’ve done over the past three years, reveals that it’s not that simple. One group of analysts reliably maintained their stardom after changing employers: women. Unlike their male counterparts, female stars (189 star women, 18% of the star analysts in the original study) who switched firms performed just as well, in the aggregate, as those who stayed put. And while investors appear to believe that companies are overpaying for male stars or anticipate a drop in performance for men, this is not so for female stars. Firms acquiring male stars experienced a significant share-price loss of 0.93%, whereas the acquisitions of female stars generated a nonsignificant share-price increase of 0.07%."
Some reports on 'Sorry'
From ABC News:
"More than 1,000 people braved pouring rain to gather outside the local Community Centre in the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern to watch the national apology to the Stolen Generations on a giant screen.
They were at the local community centre, not far from the Block and from where Paul Keating gave his famous speech on reconciliation back in 1992.
There was of course a heavy representation of Indigenous people in the crowd but there were also people of all ages and all ethnic mixes.
Some were dressed casually and some were in suits, presumably on their way to work.
Three schoolgirls travelled to Redfern from one of Sydney's more affluent areas.
"We study our regional studies and also it's a day of history," one said. "We want to be here to see it happening. We support it really."
"I personally think it is a really important issue and it has been a long time coming and I just think it is really important that everyone gets to come out see it happen," another said.
"I think it is definitely a starting point to head towards the future because at least now we are heading towards a common goal ... for reconciliation."
Redfern's history
Residents viewed today's apology through the suburb's place in Aboriginal history, particularly in relation to the landmark Redfern speech by Mr Keating, 16 years ago.
In 1992, Mr Keating admitted wrong. He did not say sorry but he prepared the way for saying sorry.
Resident Shireen Malamoo says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd should be applauded for building on Mr Keating's work.
"The Labor Party had a big hand in these previous policies towards Aboriginal people," she said.
"You know what, Aboriginal people have always wondered about this cautiousness about the truth."
However she says Mr Rudd came to terms with the truth today.
"I think that was marvellous, that was marvellous, and people would be content,' she said.
However she says there is still the issue of reparation, and she is concerned that Mr Rudd stopped short of offering compensation.
"To a lot of people, sorry means reparation too," she said."
Another report here.
"More than 1,000 people braved pouring rain to gather outside the local Community Centre in the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern to watch the national apology to the Stolen Generations on a giant screen.
They were at the local community centre, not far from the Block and from where Paul Keating gave his famous speech on reconciliation back in 1992.
There was of course a heavy representation of Indigenous people in the crowd but there were also people of all ages and all ethnic mixes.
Some were dressed casually and some were in suits, presumably on their way to work.
Three schoolgirls travelled to Redfern from one of Sydney's more affluent areas.
"We study our regional studies and also it's a day of history," one said. "We want to be here to see it happening. We support it really."
"I personally think it is a really important issue and it has been a long time coming and I just think it is really important that everyone gets to come out see it happen," another said.
"I think it is definitely a starting point to head towards the future because at least now we are heading towards a common goal ... for reconciliation."
Redfern's history
Residents viewed today's apology through the suburb's place in Aboriginal history, particularly in relation to the landmark Redfern speech by Mr Keating, 16 years ago.
In 1992, Mr Keating admitted wrong. He did not say sorry but he prepared the way for saying sorry.
Resident Shireen Malamoo says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd should be applauded for building on Mr Keating's work.
"The Labor Party had a big hand in these previous policies towards Aboriginal people," she said.
"You know what, Aboriginal people have always wondered about this cautiousness about the truth."
However she says Mr Rudd came to terms with the truth today.
"I think that was marvellous, that was marvellous, and people would be content,' she said.
However she says there is still the issue of reparation, and she is concerned that Mr Rudd stopped short of offering compensation.
"To a lot of people, sorry means reparation too," she said."
Another report here.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
A new BPA study
From Science News:
"or the new study, scientists analyzed urine from some 2,500 people who had been recruited between 2003 and 2004 for the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Roughly 92 percent of the individuals hosted measurable amounts of BPA, according to a report in the January Environmental Health Perspectives. It's the first study to measure the pollutant in a representative cross-section of the U.S. population."
"or the new study, scientists analyzed urine from some 2,500 people who had been recruited between 2003 and 2004 for the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Roughly 92 percent of the individuals hosted measurable amounts of BPA, according to a report in the January Environmental Health Perspectives. It's the first study to measure the pollutant in a representative cross-section of the U.S. population."
Only known recording of a live Woody Guthrie performance restored
From Mathtrek :
"What she finally heard was a bootleg recording of her father singing a live performance in 1949. It was the first time she had ever heard him perform in front of a live audience. He had developed Huntington's chorea and stopped performing when she was a child, and she thought he had never been recorded live.
So she was determined to preserve the recording. For the first step, she and a team of engineers transferred it into digital format. It was a hair-raising experience. "The wire was really flimsy," says Jamie Howarth, a sound engineer on the job. "It was frustratingly, maddeningly fragile." It snapped over and over, and with every snap, a moment of the recording was lost. And when it didn't snap, it kinked and snarled.
.....
Fortunately, math can help. Howarth had developed algorithms to correct these recordings.
....
"When it was done, we were all just awed by this recording," Howarth says. "It was miraculous." Despite all the difficulties in the process, the wire recording was in many ways surprisingly good. "It sounds really, really, really good for its time," he says."
"What she finally heard was a bootleg recording of her father singing a live performance in 1949. It was the first time she had ever heard him perform in front of a live audience. He had developed Huntington's chorea and stopped performing when she was a child, and she thought he had never been recorded live.
So she was determined to preserve the recording. For the first step, she and a team of engineers transferred it into digital format. It was a hair-raising experience. "The wire was really flimsy," says Jamie Howarth, a sound engineer on the job. "It was frustratingly, maddeningly fragile." It snapped over and over, and with every snap, a moment of the recording was lost. And when it didn't snap, it kinked and snarled.
.....
Fortunately, math can help. Howarth had developed algorithms to correct these recordings.
....
"When it was done, we were all just awed by this recording," Howarth says. "It was miraculous." Despite all the difficulties in the process, the wire recording was in many ways surprisingly good. "It sounds really, really, really good for its time," he says."
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Michael Leunig on education
The Age cartoonist Michael Leunig has an article on education which is close to what I feel about education. Here is an excerpt from the article:
"Schooling does not necessarily foster wisdom or conscience, nor does it promise courage, compassion or integrity — in fact, it often diminishes such capacities because somewhere along the line, in spite of all the claims, a school may ever-so-nicely require a student to forsake their unique, intuitive joy: a developmental disaster that produces a frustrated, repressed and compliant swat in the system, a clever, "successful" and fearful seeker after status and security.
It is said that many people sell their souls and live with good conscience on the proceeds. I know for a fact there are rats in good schools.
But education excellence or not, intelligence suits us all, and intelligence may be just another word for sensitivity as far as I can understand.
You have to grow it whenever and wherever you can and sometimes you have to survive an education system, an academy or any web of convention, authority or conformity to do it. Life's a long time and that's the achievement, that's what matters in the end — to come through, not necessarily with excellence and brilliance, but with soul."
Links to some more articles by Leunig here.
"Schooling does not necessarily foster wisdom or conscience, nor does it promise courage, compassion or integrity — in fact, it often diminishes such capacities because somewhere along the line, in spite of all the claims, a school may ever-so-nicely require a student to forsake their unique, intuitive joy: a developmental disaster that produces a frustrated, repressed and compliant swat in the system, a clever, "successful" and fearful seeker after status and security.
It is said that many people sell their souls and live with good conscience on the proceeds. I know for a fact there are rats in good schools.
But education excellence or not, intelligence suits us all, and intelligence may be just another word for sensitivity as far as I can understand.
You have to grow it whenever and wherever you can and sometimes you have to survive an education system, an academy or any web of convention, authority or conformity to do it. Life's a long time and that's the achievement, that's what matters in the end — to come through, not necessarily with excellence and brilliance, but with soul."
Links to some more articles by Leunig here.
Friday, February 08, 2008
News from Khasi society
From Freakonmics Blog:
"Their results are summarized as follows:
Our experimental results reveal interesting differences in competitiveness: in the patriarchal society women are less competitive than men, a result consistent with student data drawn from Western cultures. Yet, this result reverses in the matrilineal society, where we find that women are more competitive than men. Perhaps surprisingly, Khasi women are even slightly more competitive than Maasai men, but this difference is not statistically significant at conventional levels under any of our formal statistical tests."
Via BBC and Evolutionary Psychology group:
"An Indian politician has been stripped of his status as a tribesman and may be barred from contesting elections because he took his father's surname.
Leaders of the Khasi tribe in the north-east Indian state of Meghalaya have told Waibha Kyndiah that he has "ceased" to be a Khasi.
The Khasis are a matrilineal society and their legal code does not recognise anyone who uses a paternal surname.
Mr Kyndiah was planning to contest an assembly seat reserved for tribes."
"Their results are summarized as follows:
Our experimental results reveal interesting differences in competitiveness: in the patriarchal society women are less competitive than men, a result consistent with student data drawn from Western cultures. Yet, this result reverses in the matrilineal society, where we find that women are more competitive than men. Perhaps surprisingly, Khasi women are even slightly more competitive than Maasai men, but this difference is not statistically significant at conventional levels under any of our formal statistical tests."
Via BBC and Evolutionary Psychology group:
"An Indian politician has been stripped of his status as a tribesman and may be barred from contesting elections because he took his father's surname.
Leaders of the Khasi tribe in the north-east Indian state of Meghalaya have told Waibha Kyndiah that he has "ceased" to be a Khasi.
The Khasis are a matrilineal society and their legal code does not recognise anyone who uses a paternal surname.
Mr Kyndiah was planning to contest an assembly seat reserved for tribes."
Social monogamy
From http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080206/full/451617a.html:
By traditionalist standards, prairie-vole couples may enjoy the ideal relationship: the rodents form lifelong partnerships — a highly unusual practice in mammals. Males help raise the children; females help build the nest. As for their sex life, let's just say it far exceeds the efforts required for procreation.
But the respectable public behaviour of North American prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster ) may hide a bed-hopping double life. Paternity tests published last week indicate that the animals touted as paragons of monogamy frequently cheat on their partners (A. G. Ophir et al. Anim. Behav. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.09.022; 2008). “Ironically”, the study's authors conclude, “the dissociation of social and sexual fidelity leads us to suggest that prairie voles are even better models of human attachment than has been appreciated.”
Studies on prairie voles have led scientists to look at the role of hormones such as vasopressin and oxytocin in strengthening human relationships. Revelations of infidelity in the creatures will not change the significance of that research, but may make the voles a little less popular among political agitators for sexual abstinence. (Eric Keroack, who headed a government family-planning committee in the United States, even used the monogamous voles as evidence to support his view that people who have extramarital sex damage their oxytocin signalling mechanisms.)
“Humans want to believe in sexual monogamy.”
Over the past few decades researchers have learned to distinguish between 'social monogamy' — in which a pair lives and tends their young together — and 'sexual monogamy', in which a couple mates exclusively with each other. “You may have a partner you come home to every night,” says Alexander Ophir, a biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, “but that's not necessarily the one that you're mating with.”
Ophir and his colleagues found that infidelity had no effect on reproductive success: a cheating vole was just as likely to reproduce as a faithful one, so long as the cheater maintained a socially monogamous relationship. Sue Carter, a biologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says that these findings highlight the importance of social bonding. “Humans want to believe in sexual monogamy,” says Carter. That focus may have distracted people from the relative importance of social monogamy, she says.
Carter has observed philandering voles in her own lab, and notes that the infidelity did not disrupt pre-existing partnerships. When a female initiates contact with an outside male, for example, the relationship remains strictly sexual. “She mated with him,” says Carter, “and then she attacked him, ran him off and went back to her established partner.”
By traditionalist standards, prairie-vole couples may enjoy the ideal relationship: the rodents form lifelong partnerships — a highly unusual practice in mammals. Males help raise the children; females help build the nest. As for their sex life, let's just say it far exceeds the efforts required for procreation.
But the respectable public behaviour of North American prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster ) may hide a bed-hopping double life. Paternity tests published last week indicate that the animals touted as paragons of monogamy frequently cheat on their partners (A. G. Ophir et al. Anim. Behav. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.09.022; 2008). “Ironically”, the study's authors conclude, “the dissociation of social and sexual fidelity leads us to suggest that prairie voles are even better models of human attachment than has been appreciated.”
Studies on prairie voles have led scientists to look at the role of hormones such as vasopressin and oxytocin in strengthening human relationships. Revelations of infidelity in the creatures will not change the significance of that research, but may make the voles a little less popular among political agitators for sexual abstinence. (Eric Keroack, who headed a government family-planning committee in the United States, even used the monogamous voles as evidence to support his view that people who have extramarital sex damage their oxytocin signalling mechanisms.)
“Humans want to believe in sexual monogamy.”
Over the past few decades researchers have learned to distinguish between 'social monogamy' — in which a pair lives and tends their young together — and 'sexual monogamy', in which a couple mates exclusively with each other. “You may have a partner you come home to every night,” says Alexander Ophir, a biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, “but that's not necessarily the one that you're mating with.”
Ophir and his colleagues found that infidelity had no effect on reproductive success: a cheating vole was just as likely to reproduce as a faithful one, so long as the cheater maintained a socially monogamous relationship. Sue Carter, a biologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says that these findings highlight the importance of social bonding. “Humans want to believe in sexual monogamy,” says Carter. That focus may have distracted people from the relative importance of social monogamy, she says.
Carter has observed philandering voles in her own lab, and notes that the infidelity did not disrupt pre-existing partnerships. When a female initiates contact with an outside male, for example, the relationship remains strictly sexual. “She mated with him,” says Carter, “and then she attacked him, ran him off and went back to her established partner.”
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Gurram Jashua
Gurram Jashuva was one of father's favourite poets and I remeber attending with my father a 'kanakabhishekam' ceremony for him around 1952. Recently I went to study a micro finance project in Modukuru and was pleased to find that the only library in the village is named after himand is in the Dalit part of the village. Eecerpt from the Wikipedia article:
"Gurram Jashuva or G Joshua (b. 28 September 1895-d. 24 July 1971) was a popular Telugu poet, born into a poor Christian family in Vinukonda, Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh, India. He was discriminated as an untouchable in school, college and professional life.
Jashuva was born to Virayya and Lingamma. Because of the intercaste alliance of his parents, their poverty and their caste, his childhood was spent in alienation from close relatives, undergoing severe hardships and being subjected to inhuman treatment from the society which considered his caste untouchable. His parents raised him as a Christian. In spite of this, Jashuva often drew his inspiration from Hinduism and Hindu mythological epics. This angered his Christian society, which was quick to proscribe Jashuva's family from their community. This did not deter Jashuva who continued to write excellent poetry in Telugu."
Trying to see whether there is some follow up of his work, I found that his daughter Hemalata married Gora's son Lavanam and both Lavanam and Hamalata carried on their parents' work:
An autobiographical account of Lavanam and some of their work. Earlier posts with links to Gora and Gandhi.
A recent blog postabout Gurram Jashuva. Three poems including 'smasanavatika'
and Andhra mata
English translations of some of his poems by Velcheru Narayana Rao are in
'Hibiscus on the Lake'.
"Gurram Jashuva or G Joshua (b. 28 September 1895-d. 24 July 1971) was a popular Telugu poet, born into a poor Christian family in Vinukonda, Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh, India. He was discriminated as an untouchable in school, college and professional life.
Jashuva was born to Virayya and Lingamma. Because of the intercaste alliance of his parents, their poverty and their caste, his childhood was spent in alienation from close relatives, undergoing severe hardships and being subjected to inhuman treatment from the society which considered his caste untouchable. His parents raised him as a Christian. In spite of this, Jashuva often drew his inspiration from Hinduism and Hindu mythological epics. This angered his Christian society, which was quick to proscribe Jashuva's family from their community. This did not deter Jashuva who continued to write excellent poetry in Telugu."
Trying to see whether there is some follow up of his work, I found that his daughter Hemalata married Gora's son Lavanam and both Lavanam and Hamalata carried on their parents' work:
An autobiographical account of Lavanam and some of their work. Earlier posts with links to Gora and Gandhi.
A recent blog postabout Gurram Jashuva. Three poems including 'smasanavatika'
and Andhra mata
English translations of some of his poems by Velcheru Narayana Rao are in
'Hibiscus on the Lake'.
Monday, February 04, 2008
John Howard's parting gift?
From BBC News:
"To others, the award of extra points to fluent English speakers is more sinister, with shades of the monocultural "white Australia policy", the umbrella term for a swathe of policies and laws engineered to limit non-white immigration which finally petered out in the early 1970s.
"I do see this as an attack on multiculturalism," complains Kate Gauthier, from the group A Just Australia.
................
Australia claims to be the most successfully multicultural country in the world. According to the 2001 census, 23% of the population were born overseas, while 43% of the population were either born overseas or had at least one parent born overseas.
But gaining citizenship is just about to get tougher, and applicants will be soon required to take a test on the country's history and values.
......
For British applicants, Australia is about to become more welcoming - but is it at the cost of migrants from other countries? "
"To others, the award of extra points to fluent English speakers is more sinister, with shades of the monocultural "white Australia policy", the umbrella term for a swathe of policies and laws engineered to limit non-white immigration which finally petered out in the early 1970s.
"I do see this as an attack on multiculturalism," complains Kate Gauthier, from the group A Just Australia.
................
Australia claims to be the most successfully multicultural country in the world. According to the 2001 census, 23% of the population were born overseas, while 43% of the population were either born overseas or had at least one parent born overseas.
But gaining citizenship is just about to get tougher, and applicants will be soon required to take a test on the country's history and values.
......
For British applicants, Australia is about to become more welcoming - but is it at the cost of migrants from other countries? "
Tabula Rasa looks back
In the post 'Rear-view', Tabula Rasa contemplates on some of his favourite posts. I missed some of them but remember fondly this and this. Some of the travel posts are on my reading list.
A link to the past
and may be to the future too. Following up a post in 'churumuri' on R.K. Karnanjia, I came across three interesting articles by Alexander Cockburn in the series 'Travels with Sainath'. I seem to have been in the some of the places travelled by Sainath at different times: coastal Andhra, Madras Layola College, Bombay and Delhi. Anyway, here are the pieces.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
'Dark Hope' by David Dean Shulman
Avishai Margalit's reviews David Shulman's 'Dark Hope' in New York Review of Books. Excerpt from the book:
"There is something infuriating about the notion that we can go on as usual,teaching our irrelevancies, drinking coffee in the faculty club, reading Telugu poetry, sitting on committees, whatever, and next door to us - a Palestian ghetto of our own - that is, the army's - making."
Another review of different books about Israel.
Here is a list of books by David Dean Shulman and a couple of articles in Hindu about him
here and here.
P.S.Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman won theA.K. Ramanujam tranlation prize in 2004 for their"Classical Telugu Poetry: An Anthology".
"There is something infuriating about the notion that we can go on as usual,teaching our irrelevancies, drinking coffee in the faculty club, reading Telugu poetry, sitting on committees, whatever, and next door to us - a Palestian ghetto of our own - that is, the army's - making."
Another review of different books about Israel.
Here is a list of books by David Dean Shulman and a couple of articles in Hindu about him
here and here.
P.S.Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman won theA.K. Ramanujam tranlation prize in 2004 for their"Classical Telugu Poetry: An Anthology".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)