Egalitarianism starts early

Editor's summary in Nature of a recent paper by Fehr and colloborators Cooperation is child's play:
"The way that children interact in specially designed tests (well, games) can illuminate the mechanisms behind human altruism and cooperation. Fehr et al. present evidence that young children's other-regarding preferences (where 'Smarties, jellybabies and fizzers' are the rewards in a sharing game and an envy game) take a particular form — inequality aversion. This behaviour pattern develops between the ages of 3 and 8 years. Aged 3 or 4, most children behave selfishly, while by the age of 7 or 8 the vast majority prefer resource allocations that remove inequality. But if the removal of advantageous inequality involves costly sharing, the egalitarian allocation is chosen less often and children tend to favour members of their own social group. These findings suggest that egalitarianism and parochialism have deep developmental roots."
The summary has links to related papers which need subscription. Nature News also has a summary which does not need subscription Children learn rules of equality by age eight. Excerpts:
"Although this might seem an obvious finding, it's important to confirm anecdotal evidence with experiments, says Matthias Sutter of the University of Innsbruck in Austria, who studies fairness and trust behaviour in children. "Having children myself, I can confirm [that 3-year-olds are selfish]," he says. "But we don't know when the change happens, or the magnitude of the change."

Several other factors influenced how egalitarian the children were. The team found that children without siblings were 28% more likely to share than children with siblings. On the other hand, the youngest children in a family were 17% less willing to share than children who had only younger siblings. Sutter, who is one of five children, thinks these results make sense: "You have to take care that you get some of the pie," he says. "If you're an only child, there's no need for that."

In addition, if children knew that their partner was from the same playgroup or school (an 'ingroup' member), they were more concerned about being fair, and with age this bias increased. This suggests that being nice to people you know – parochialism – is something that develops alongside a sense of equality, says Fehr.

Chimps versus children
The findings are also interesting from an evolutionary perspective, the team suggests. Similar experiments performed on chimpanzees show that the animals aren't willing to provide food for a partner even if it doesn't affect the food they receive2. "Chimps seem not to care about the other's welfare in this game, whereas children at age eight already care a lot, but children at age three care only a little," Fehr says.

Further work along these lines could reveal more about why humans are so bothered about fairness, and the part this has played in building human societies. Without it, says Sutter, "there would be no education, no socialization, no social norms"".

A TedTalk by Sugata Mitra

Can kids teach themselves? (via Bayesianheresy)

Several old Telugu film songs

have been recently uploaded on YouTube. Search under VSVutukuri, Mukkamala2020,
MadhuraGeetalu, TeluguBoss, vjdnld etc. My favourite site for old telugu songs is old Telugu songs. The companion discussion site
has useful comments, particularly by Paruchuri Sreenivas. Some other sites for old (and some new) Telugu songs are:
surasa.net
pathabangaram
chimatamusic
and many more. Videos at saradaga, discussion, songs and videos at జానుతెనుగు సొగసులు . A blog onAnnamacharya Samkirtanalu and one on Natakam. There are many more but these will keep me going for a while.

Sublimal advertising

by Derren Brown from a comment in Found: A Solution to Our Problems!! . More discussion in
Naked Capitalism.

Lalita Mukherjea

passed away a few days ago. Here are a couple of posts randomly selected from her blog:
A caller tune and a story
Sex between sects

Gidugu's birthday

Medepalli seshu from New Delhi just reminded me that today is the birthday of Gidugu Venkata Ramamoorty:
"Sri Gidugu Ramamoorty is the grandfather of “colloquial telugu language movement a.k.a vyavaharika telugu bhasha”. He has brought literary prose to the colloquial language. He explained the beauty and ease in the colloquial telugu."
P.S. From The Hindu report:
"The Andhra Pradesh Official Language Commission has asked the district Collectorates and educational institutions to celebrate Telugu Language Day on August 29, coinciding with the birth anniversary of renowned Telugu language scientist Gidugu Ramamurthy."

A mathematical digression

and possibly a platitude. Recently, I discovered Bernard Cohn when I found a relatively cheap copy of his book "Colonialism and its forms of knowledge" in a book shop and found it very interesting. I then borrowed his "An anthrpologist among the historians" from the library and found it even more interesting. Some of the essays there seem to have become bases for later books by people like Nicholas Dirks and in one of the articles he suggests the choice of topics and methodolgy for research which seems cocrete and useful. But there is demand for all three copies of the book in the library and I was asked to return it before reading it completely. While travelling on the train to return it, I tried to see whether I could still think some mathematics which I have not been doing for a while. Surprisingly I could and it was about a couple of problems that I struggled with in the seventies and both solved now. The solutions suggest a conclusion which ia a platitude but it did not come to me naturally.
Both the problems are related to low dimensional topology and group theory. Before the days of Thurston and Perelman that was what most of us were doing. One of the questions is now a famous theorem "finitely generated three manifold groups are finitely presented" proved by Peter Scott in 1972 (independently by Peter Shalen but unpublished) and second is a theorem of Klaus Johannson that certain three manifolds are completely determined by their fundamental groups.
A group is like integers, both positive, negative and zero. Every element has an inverse (negative of it) so that if you add them, you get the identity element zero. Zero is called the identity since if you add it to any element, it does not change it. Any two elements can be added and addition is associative. Gadgets with these properties are called groups. But integers are a bit special in that the addition is commutative; whether you add a to b or b to a, you get the same result. This is because integers are just generated by one element 1, by adding it to itself repeatedly and taking negatives, one gets all the integers. If one takes gadgets like above with some addition operation which is associative, has identity and negatives, it is called a group. In general they are not commutative and if we start with some objects say a,b,c etc and form words freely and their negatives (usually called inverses when multiplicative notation is used) we get what is called a free group on the objects a,b,c etc. If there are n such, it is called free group on n generators and any group on n generators can be got from it by adding some relations. If the number of relations needed is finite (which we may not know before hand) the group is called finitely presented. Finitely presented groups can be represented by finite spaces and are usually more desirable than the complentary ones.
To show that finitely generated implies finitely presented for 3-manifold groups what one expects is a proposition of this type:
Prposition P: If G is finitely generated and indecomposable (as explained below), then the group obtained by adding sufficiently many finite number of relations is already indecomposable.
That finitely generated three manifold groups are finitely presented was proved in 1972 by Peter Scott (and independently by Peter Shalen, but unpublished). A key technical prposition involves decompositions of groups. The operation forming free groups from infinite cyclic groups generated by a,b,c etc above is called free product formation and the inverse operation 'a free product decomposition'. A group which cannot be decomposed into a free product is called 'indecomposable'. Any finitely generated group G can be written G=G1*G2*...*Gm*G(m+1)*...*G{m+n)where the last n factors are infinite cyclic and the first m factors are indecomposable but not infinite cyclic. The numbers m,n depend only on the group and the ordered pair (m+n,n) is called the complexity c(G) of the group G. A crucial technical proposition that Scott proves is:
Prposition Q: If there is a onto homomorphism from G to H which is one-to-one on the indecomposable factors of G other than the infinite cyclic ones, then c(G) is bigger than or equal to c(H) and equality holds if and only if the map is an isomorphiam (which means G,H are indistinguishable and are the same except in name. A homomorphism is a map which preserves the operations).
Somehow, this was not enough to prove Proposition P which is the natural approach to the original 3-manifold question and some more hard work and trickery was needed. Then after nearly 30 years, I met Thomas Delzant in a conference, and he told me during a lecture I could not follow that Proposition P was true. What all one had to do was to extend the notion of complexity to an onto homomorphism between groups, rather than just for a group.
A similar thing with respect to Johannson's theorem. In 1972, I found a simple proof by reducing it a group problem and showing that a certain group was trivial. There was an obvious relative version which was also useful but I could not prove. Again after 30 years, a colloborator (by some coincidence Peter Scott) insisted that I prove it and it turned out to be equivalent to saying that a cetain homomrphism of groups was trivial (every thing maps to zero).
Looking at both the problems, the crucial change seems to be that instead of looking at an object by itself, one had to look at a relation ( in these cases natural maps which are special cases of relations) between objects. Put this way, it seems to be a platitude but it did not occur to me for nearly 30 years.
It seems that I may have to keep doing mathematics until a copy of Bernard Cohn is available.

Coment

by somebody about somebody whose posts and articles were puzzling to me:
"C is a master of the vague platitude"

Some food related articles

Jo sends this from UK Rich countries once used gunboats to seize food. Now they use trade deals.
From SciDev.net Capitalism could counter its impact on obesity, a response to Obesity researchers must understand how capitalism works. Solution seems to be probiotics, like yogurt.
Andrew Leonard links to interesting articles on soil management in Peak Dirt, the 'terra petra' mentioned there seems similar to 'pati matti' in Andhra.

"Western leaders blew the chance for peace"

says Paul Keating in this Age report:
"Western leaders had failed to grasp a potential "new era of peace and co-operation" created by the end of the Soviet Union in 1990, and failed to find a place for Russia in the global "strategic fabric".

"(Former US president) George H. Bush talked about a New World Order, then lost to Bill Clinton. And what happened then? Well, nothing happened then! The Americans cried victory and walked off the field."

The Clinton administration "rashly decided to ring-fence Russia" by inviting former Soviet-dominated states to join NATO. "By doing so, the US failed to learn one of the lessons of history - that the victor should be magnanimous with the vanquished," he said.

As a result, NATO states now were on the borders of Russia, which kept its nuclear arsenal on full alert. "This posture automatically carries with it the possibility of a Russian nuclear attack by mistake," Mr Keating said.

Russia had allowed its nuclear surveillance and early warning systems to "ossify". To compensate, it kept its nuclear arsenal on full alert."

Transcript of the full speach from Melbourne Writers Festival here.

Lant Pritchett's book

Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labor Mobility is still available online from Centre for Global Development site. From the blurb:
"In an increasingly liberalized and integrated global economy, with more open capital and goods and services markets, the highly restricted and heavily regulated markets for global labor are an oddity. In this controversial book, CGD non-resident fellow Lant Pritchett examines the potentials and perils of greater cross-border mobility of unskilled labor -- within poor world regions and between poor and rich countries. Pritchett argues that irresistible demographic forces for greater international labor mobility are being checked by immovable anti-immigration ideas of rich-country citizens. He highlights the difficult political and ethical issues that the movement of people across national borders presents to the current system and proposes breaking the gridlock through policies that support development while also being politically acceptable in rich countries. These include greater use of temporary worker permits, permit rationing, reliance on bilateral rather than multilateral agreements, and protection of migrants' fundamental human rights. Pritchett's discussion of ways to break the deadlock is a provocative contribution to the growing debate on one of the most important and difficult issues of the 21st century."
Lant Pritchett spent three years in India and one of the authors of 2006 World Bank report "Inclusive Growth and Service Delivery: Building on India's Success" is available here .
I found his recent paper "Is India a Flailing State? Detours on the Four Lane Highway to Modernization" very interesting; this paper and many of his other papers are available from his site .

Science miscellany

From Farms in Brazil and India must adapt or roast in heat:
"For a temperature increase of 3.5% from late 20th-century averages, the model predicts that India will lose between 7 and 17% of its income from farming.
Studies that focus on the biological relationship between weather and crop yield instead of the economic connection between weather and farming revenue, on the other hand, predict a 30 to 40% loss of yield.
Survival tactics
"Our forecast is lower, but I think it's also more realistic," says Mendelsohn. "By studying how well farmers do financially, we take adaptation into account. The income from farming will depend not only on the direct effect of the weather on the crops and livestock but also on whatever the farmers do to cope with this," he says.
Brazil is predicted to lose 10 to 30% of its farming income under the same scenario. The difference between the countries is most likely due to India's agriculture being less sensitive to climate-dependent changes in rainfall because agriculture there relies more heavily on irrigation, argue the researchers.
However according to the World Bank, farming makes up a whopping 23% of Indian GDP as opposed to only 6% of Brazilian GDP, so the country as a whole may be hit harder by a more modest loss in income from agriculture."
FromWorld's farmers turn to raw sewage for irrigation:
"Half of urban fields are irrigated with sewage, suggesting that a tenth of the world’s food is already grown this way. IWMI’s director Colin Chartres warned this week: “This figure is bound to increase as growing cities coincide with escalating food shortages to create a squeeze on agricultural water supply.”
Theoretically, irrigating food crops with untreated wastewater is banned in many countries, one reason why there is virtually no research on the practice. But “while it may be theoretically forbidden, it is unofficially tolerated”, says the report’s authors, who found that city authorities in Faisalabad in Pakistan auction untreated sewage to farmers during droughts."

From Remembrance of viruses past:
"Nearly a century after the 1918 influenza pandemic claimed 50 million lives, survivors continue to produce powerful antibodies against the virus, researchers have found......The results suggest that the antibodies could be used therapeutically should an outbreak of a similar virus occur. What’s more, one of the antibodies reacted not only with the 1918 flu strain, but with several other strains as well. "It’s probably binding to something that’s really important for the flu virus – possibly so important that the virus can’t change it to avoid immunity," says immunologist Patrick Wilson of the University of Chicago. "As a target for drug development, that would be ideal.""

From More Women at the Top:
"Few programs address the leaks as women progress at midcareer level and beyond. One is the Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program for Women, within the Institute for Women's Health and Leadership at Drexel University College of Medicine. When ELAM welcomed its first class in 1995, it was a trailblazer and is now viewed by many as a virtual prerequisite for women aspiring to high-level leadership positions in academic health centers.
In addition to the widespread belief that participation in the ELAM program is highly beneficial to a woman's career, there is a growing body of evidence to demonstrate that ELAM works at the institutional level as well.
First, there are the statistics. ELAM alumnae currently represent nearly 30% of the female deans of schools of medicine, dentistry, and public health in the United States and Canada. About 25% of ELAM graduates hold a variety of high-level positions in university administration, industry, foundations, and organizations. Additionally, from its inception ELAM has emphasized rigorous research and impact evaluation. In a longitudinal study, ELAM graduates were compared with a matched cohort of women from the Association of American Medical Colleges' Faculty Roster and with a group of women who applied but were not accepted into the AAMC program. ELAM graduates scored higher on 15 of 16 leadership indicators than did the women in the other two groups; for 12 of the 15 indicators, the difference was significant."

From A New State of Mind:
"New research is linking dopamine to complex social phenomena and changing neuroscience in the process." As usual, an excellent article by Jonah Lehrer.
See also the same issue of Seed for the portraits five young researchers crossing disciplinary boundariesRevolutionary Minds. And Handle With Care on possible dangerous technologies.

Ajay Shaw on Inequality

In Inequality , Ajay Shaw discusses unequality and links to some interesting articles, one of which is Does Inequality Matter? by Michael Warton. One of the questions considered is whether income inequality leads to inequality in opprtunity and as far as I can see, the articles are inconclusive. In Rising Inequality Hinders Upward Mobility, Lane Kenworthy considers the possibilty in US of the effect of income inequality on social mobility. The article by Anirudh Kriskna and Eric Heglund mentioned in the previous post Effectively Participating Population feel that their results have important implications for social mobility: "These results have important consequences for social mobility in general. In fact, a case can be made for promoting mobility as the wider objective, with poverty reduction being subsumed as a component part."

Effectively Participating Population

India's lack of success in Olympics is discussed in various places: Rediff, Chrumuri and Marginal revolution. Marginal Revolution links to an interesting article by Anirudh Krishna and Eric Haglund which is discussed in An Academic View of India. For me, this article is more interesting than olympics and it may form a basis for further study in different areas of development. Excerpts from the article:
"Not only for Olympics, but also in regard to Nobel Prizes, mathematical and scientific excellence, winning patents, etc, enlarging the pool of effective participants can be importantly applied. In this analysis, we consider two separate arenas, one related to sports and the other to social mobility. In both cases, we examine the plausibility of an explanation based on effective participation rates. Since the numbers of effective participants are not readily available – this concept, like some other valuable ones, such as democracy, social capital and human well-being is not easy to pin down in terms of a precise metric – we rely in our analysis on two sets of surrogate evidence.
....
The macro as well as the micro part of the analysis show that public information matters a great deal....But we find that public information still has an important effect. Enhancing public information will deepen and widen the pool of effective participants, enabling individuals to find positions more commensurate with their abilities, and simultaneously enabling countries to ratchet up their performance in
diverse arenas.
....
The Olympic Games, while important enough in and of themselves, also served here as a useful metaphor, a starting point for an analysis concerning other and more pressing livelihood concerns. Thus, we view success in the Olympics as an indicator more broadly of the provision of opportunity to a country’s populations. Countries which enable a higher fraction of potential athletes to achieve the ultimate success of winning an Olympic medal are likely to be similarly successful in developing and fostering talent in other areas. Where the fraction of effective contestants for positions in national sports teams is very low, the prospects of social mobility generally are also likely to be disappointing.
....
Advancing information and enabling access are as much a critical part of raising Olympic achievement as they are of enhancing development success and other achievements. In general, information and access are crucial for effective participation. Where more people are able to participate more effectively – in the economy, in competitive sports, in public decision-making, and in other walks of life – the country will grow faster and more citizens will benefit."
P.S. There is a lot of emphasis on access to information in the article. Access to information may not mean access to opportunities. My son-in-law is an Anglo-Indian who lived in several places in India until the age of 16-17. He was a keen swimmer those days and was never selected even to represent a club after winning the local events. In the very first year of his arrival in Australia he was selected for olympic trials but his swimming career was unfortunately cut short due to an accident.

Links to water purification methods

in Videos: Creativity in facing the water crisisfrom globalvoices; see also the comments.

Some links to Grothendieck.

A recent article Who is Alexander Grothendieck? by Winfried Scharlau fills in the work of Grothendieck in poltics, religion and mysticism since the 70's. There is a spate of articles about Grothendieck since he turned 80 this year.
From the very readable 2004 articles by Allyn Jackson"Comme Appelé du Néant: As If Summoned from the Void: The Life of Alexandre Grothendieck":
"The work of Alexandre Grothendieck has had a profound impact on modern mathematics and, more broadly, ranks among the most important advances in human knowledge during the twentieth century. The stature of Grothendieck can be compared to that of, for example, Albert Einstein. Each of them opened revolutionary new perspectives that transformed the terrain of exploration, and each sought fundamental, unifying connections among phenomena.”

Changing balance?

Brad Setser in The changing balance of global financial power:
"To me, one of the world’s greatest ironies is that US dependence on authoritarian governments for financing has soared over the last four year. US rhetoric hasn’t matched financial reality.

Though I guess it is equally ironic that Russian purchases of Treasuries over the past few months have helped to finance the current US aid mission to Georgia."
Interesting comments too.

Recent articles on D.D.Kosambi

in EPW are uploaded in arvindguptatoys under the English Books section. Links to DDK's books and the above articles are towards the bottom of the section under 'Books by D.D. Kosambi'. There is also a link to the first few sections of 'Combined Methods in Indology and other Writings' edited by Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya, including the excellent introduction by the editor.

A blog on dalit history and problems

by a an Andhra researcher and lecturer Untouchable Spring .... అంటరాని వసంతం . The latest post is on Tsundur.

A Narla Venkateswara Rao website

here. Outstanding journalist, editor and writer. I still carry some of his writings like 'Kottagadda', a collection of plays about farmers.

Thoughts for a rainy day

From Is There Anything Good About Men?:
"...culture relies on men to create the large social structures that comprise it. Our society is made up of institutions such as universities, governments, corporations. Most of these were founded and built up by men. Again, this probably had less to do with women being oppressed or whatever and more to do with men being motivated to form large networks of shallow relationships. Men are much more interested than women in forming large groups and working in them and rising to the top in them."
This article caused considerable discussion in the blogs last year which continue. Some of the links are in the article Male Bias or Female Choice?.
In another article The Lowdown on High Self-Esteem Roy Baumeister says:
"After all these years, I’m sorry to say, my recommendation is this: Forget about self-esteem and concentrate more on self-control and self-discipline."
Here is a site for some downloadable research articles by Roy Baumeister and colleagues.

Arvind Subramanian on possible reforms

in a Voxeu article says:
"But the desirable (tackling inflation) is probably infeasible. And the feasible (financial sector reforms) is not ambitious enough for the current circumstances and risks squandering, yet again, the Prime Minister’s political capital.
There is, however, an alternative, ambitious possibility. Economic and political decentralisation, combined with the rise of coalition politics, have sharply reduced the central government’s domain of economic influence.
But the one area where it retains influence – or rather strangling control with disastrous economic consequences – is higher education. This last bastion of the licence-quota-permit raj is crying out for reform.
There is political, administrative and regulatory interference on virtually every aspect of higher education:

* admissions policies,
* internal organisation,
* fees and salaries, and
* the structure of courses and funding.

In higher education, deregulation, liberalisation, and globalisation are the way forward.
There may well be a continuing role for state provision, and especially state funding, of higher education, but a much greater role and freedom for the private sector are both desirable and unavoidable."
Devesh Kapur and Pratp Bhanu Mehta in 'Mortgaging the future? Indian education reforms', an article quoted in the above paper, paint a very bleak picture of Indian education:
"Despite impressive reforms elsewhere, Indian higher education sector remains the most tightly controlled and least reformed sector. Deep ideological and vested interests have made reform in India’s Higher Education sector all but impossible."
The reason for Arvind Subramanian's optimism seems to be the recent political victory of Manmohan Singh.

Rahul Banerjee's book

Recovering the Lost Tongue is now out. More information in A Reader's Words.

System of Rice Intensification

videos from World Bank . More updates at the Cornell SRI site. Some of the efforts in Andhra Pradesh can be found by google under Dr. Alapati Satyanarayana. An earlier post on the same topic here.
P.S. Some of the peer reviewed papers that I have seen contradict each other and there are two comments from actual practioners in Entertaining Research..

A Kalleda girl is going to Beijing

Story in Outlook of Pranitha selected for Beijing Olympics: Taut As A Bow String .
Glenn Davis Stone write up on Kalleda Rural School where she studied.
Some pictures of Kalleda in the image section ofGlenn Davis Stone website

An online library

with a section India-history-20th century from u.penn. It has special sections :A Celebration of Women Writers -- Banned Books Online -- Prize Winners Online. I found it while looking for an online version of Eaton, Richard M.: The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 .

Baobab tree in India

EU approved the extract of the baobab fruit as an ingredient in foods in the European marketand Malapati Raja Sekhar of Rural Development of India Blog thinks that "Rajasthan or Indian government can promote this fruit as food security for our nation".
Clicking on Baobab (on the appropriate picture) on the left, gives the Indian names:
"Common name: Baobab • Hindi: Gorakh imli गोरख इमली • Marathi: Gorakh chinch गोरख चिंच • Gujarati: Bukha • Telugu: Brahmaaamlika • Bengali: Gadhagachh • Tamil: Papparappuli பப்பரப்புளி • Sanskrit: Sarpadandi
Botanical name: Adansonia digitata Family: Bombacaceae (baobab family)"
Though this video says that it is almost extinct in India, they seem to grow in several places in India including these wonderful specimens in Savanur. Some more information about Baobab here and here.

"Comin Thro' the Rye"

Animation in Scots brogue. The lyrics on the right (click 'more information') also include later additions by Burns. Some of these additional lines are in the Ava Gardner's version in Mogambo.

Miscellaneous, 31st July, 2008

Inching towards perennial wheat? Dr.Stan Cox of the Land Institute describes the status of research..
There seems to be very little research in this direction in India. Some of the problems for scientists from developing countries are discussed by Priya Shetty in
Comment: The developing world needs its own science journals.
T.V. Padma on development and obesity. Apparently, a Study finds Chinese obesity rates soaring.
The July 26 EPW has several articles on D.D.Kosambi. M.S.Raghunathan in Artless innocents and ivory-tower sophisticates: Some personalities on the Indian mathematical scene mentions Andre Weil's admonition: ‘Young man, I find that people who know nothing about Kosambi want to talk about him! Let me tell you this: he was one of the finest intellects to come out of your country.’ Raghunathan also describes the work of K. Chandrasekharan in developing modern mathematics in India; Raghunathan's opinions are close to my own. But I also feel that for right persons to build in the early stages of development is easier than when the numbers are greater and special interests are entrnched and the institutions begin to reflect the general culture outside. A sure sign of warning is when parents and children start working in the same institutes.

Andrew Leonard on Obama

In the course of a review of John Talbot's Obanomics Andrew Leonard says:
"The real promise of an Obama presidency may lie not so much in the details of his platform as it is documented on his Web site, but in his apparent character. If you take the time to read or listen to his speeches or his books, you are likely to acknowledge, unless utterly blinded by partisanship, that he is a smart, perceptive guy who is able to articulate a complex understanding of the world to a degree that few other modern American politicians can even begin to approach.....
it seems unlikely that he will metamorphose into a blithering idiot or a corporate tool.

To be smart, and to be able to see both sides now, are rare qualities in contemporary American politics. "Obamanomics," then, is not a platform but a person. And here is where John Talbott does nail what might be the most important attribute of Barack Obama. A smart, pragmatic guy who cares about fairness just might be able to get people to cooperate."
P.S. John Pilger has a different view. Ryan Lizza'sarticleseems to be the most factual. We always hope before elections. If Obama's books are any indication, I go along with Andrew Leonard's views.

Sarojini Naidu introduces M.S. Subbalaxmi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnW_BO4MkT4
(in Hindi and English)and other interesting videos on youtube my Mukkamala2020. There is one of ANR on Savithri, a Gollabhabhama video and song by Eelapata Raghuramaiah and Krishnaveni and many other old Telugu and Hindi videos. The quality of videos is not great but a few aare rare ( I have not seen them before) and give a glimpse of different eras. A glimpse of recent tastes (of some)here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8O6gJfHvDk&feature=related
The beginning of the video has an interesting take off on a Malliswari song. The singer seems very talented.
Most of the Telugu songs are also available at http://www.oldtelugusongs.com/ and surasa.net and new sites like http://www.chimatamusic.com/ and http://pathabangaram.com/forums/index.php
P.S. The first link has disappeared. Try
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5GzAh5XgGo&feature=player_embedded

Ma Telugu Talliki

a perennial favourite of Telugus by Tanguturi Suryakumari at the age of 60 uploaded by 'Anagabhyru'(via oldtelugusongs). The original version ia available at http://surasa.net/ but has some background distortions. Anagabhyru is a practicing doctor in U.K. who originally wanted to be a playback singer. He has also uploaded a perfomance by P. Bhanumati at the age of 59.
I saw some of her films in the 40's. She was the first Miss Madras (1952) and soon moved to USA and then UK and I lost track. Here is an obituary in The Guardian.

Indians and shoes

I do not remember wearing shoes or slippers until I finished high school, though my parents said that they bought me shoes when I was a baby. Rainy season used to be a problem with mud and hidden thorns until we moved to sandy village where summers were difficult. I remember running from one patch of grass to another while going to school. The first pair I got was when I went to University and those days they were called 'belt boots'. It was painful wearing shoes for the first time. Since then I guess that I got used to shoes and slippers, though a few years ago arthritis and corns made both walking and wearing shoes painful. Then I found Roebuck walking shoes and life has been reasonably pleasnt since then. But now the particular brand is no longer imported by Australia but they are still available in some US stores and I have been managing through relatives and friends visiting from US. So, what all I know about shoes is the pain or comfort of wearing shoes. A comment in a recent post in Blogbharti hints that there may be more to wearing shoes than just comfort. This made me go back to Bernard Cohn's Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India , one of the very few history type books that I have read. I tried to see whether there is any special significance to Indians of wearing shoes. There are several passages scattered throughout the book and I could not understand some of them. Here are some of the passages.
On page 43, after quoting from J.B. Gilchrist's 'East India Guide' (1825) Cohn says " The wearing of shoes by Indians in the houses of Europeans was seen as a part of a larger effort on the part of some Indians to establish equality or even superiority-not only in relation to Europeans but also with respect other Indians, by appearing to be on a footing of equality with Europeans".
From page 133: "In the 1830's, F.J. Shore, a judge in upper India .... explained to his European readers they should not allow Indians in their presence with shoes. If Indians did so, the sahib should explain to them that:
"Nations have different customs; ours is to uncover head-yous to uncover feet, as a token of respect. You should not presume to walk into the sitting-room of another native with your shoes on; why do you treat me with disrespect you would not show to one of your countrymen? I am not prejudiced, and it is quite immaterial to me whether you take off your shoes or turban, but I must insist on one or other mark of civility if you wish me to receive your visits." This is unanswerable by the native and those English who have acted in this manner, have been decidedly more respected by the people"
By 1854, so many Indians in Bengal, particularly in Calcutta,had taken to wearing European shoes and stockings that the Governor_General in Council passed a resolution allowing native gentlemen" on official and semi-official occasions... to appear in the presence of the servants of the British government" wearing European boots and shoes".
On page 161, the discussion is abstract and not very clear to me: " As the head is the locus of power and superior forms of knowledge the feet become the opposite. The feet are "sources of downward and outward currents of inferior matter"...Shoes and slippers were dirty, not just from being used to walk around in, but as the repositories of base substances flowing from weare's body...".
Coming back to Blogbharti post, may be there are some technical reasons for asking people to leave shoes outside some of these places or may be some of the old concepts of purity, respect are adopted by the new professionals. In any case, Cohn's is an interesting book which indicates how some institutions, however vague or prevalent they might have been, tranformed during the British rule, sometimes with active or covert participation from Indians.
Since I read very few history type books, I do not know how authoritative Cohn's account is or whether there are any authoritative accounts. Partha Chatterjee has interesting things to say about what makes particular explanations persuasive.

Diffusion of science centres

The July 24 issue of Nature has several articles on china. China: The end of the science superpowers by(Rogers Hollingsworh and colleagues (reuires subscription)is reported in Historian predicts the end of 'science superpowers'. From the article: "Each former giant of science emerged when the society's economy became extraordinarily robust by world standards. As the French, German and British economies declined relative to the world's most dynamic centres of fiscal growth, so did their science systems. The independence and flexibility that once characterized their research systems diminished markedly. Each former scientific power, especially during the initial stages of decline, had the illusion that its system was performing better than it was, overestimating its strength and underestimating innovation elsewhere. The elite could not imagine that the centre would shift.

Meanwhile, fundamental changes over the past few decades in economics, funding, communication, organizational structure, and specialization could mean that the United States is not simply poised to cede its scientific throne to a national successor such as China. Rather, the end of America's era as the scientific hegemon could also be the end of the era of scientific hegemons."
From the Physorg report: "Hollingsworth and his co-authors - UW-Madison senior scientist Ellen Jane Hollingsworth and Karl H. Muller, director of the Vienna Institute for Social Science Documentation and Methodology - assert that U.S. science is still strong and performs at a high level. For example, U.S. researchers still account for more than half of the top 1 percent of most-cited papers in the world.

But the global proliferation of science will present new challenges to the United States. Hollingsworth says that the biggest threat to U.S. science competitiveness may be the massive size of major research universities, which produce a high volume of published work but not a corresponding increase in "major breakthroughs." For example, Hollingsworth says that almost 50 percent of papers published by U.S. scientists are not cited by other scientists, which raises the question of whether the high volume of publishing "is really enhancing our stock of knowledge."

"I think we have become too obsessed with quantitative measures of science - the volume of papers published, where they're published and the number of grants attained," he says.

"To thrive in this transition from a science hegemony to a global competitive landscape, the biggest need will be to become more flexible and more adaptive," he adds. "And if you're not adaptive, you can see what happens with the examples of the auto industry and steel industry in America."

Hollingsworth recommends a major investment in a new type of nimble and interdisciplinary science in the United States by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. He says the creation of more than two-dozen smaller-scale research institutes that would be autonomous from, but adjacent to, current universities could have great results. These would operate with little bureaucracy and without the constraints of conventional academic departments, and be more likely to fuel creative thinking, he says.

These institutes would mirror the successes of smaller-scale campuses such as Rockefeller University in New York, the Salk Institute in California and the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. Each of these campuses, Hollingsworth says, produces a high percentage of breakthrough research advances despite their small size, and their successes stem from an organizational culture and structure that is nimble, collaborative and cross-disciplinary."
Satyajit Das of eurointelligence on US economy:"We interrupt regular programming to announce that the United States of America has defaulted …" Part 2
(via Naked Capitalism)

Trump Jr. is coming to India

Trump Jr. Plans $1 Billion Fund for India Property Acquisitions
says Bloomberg:
"Real estate prices in India have climbed for five straight years, boosted by a six-year equity market boom and rising incomes.

The rally in property prices may end this year as a falling stock prices and rising interest rates slow sales and make it tougher for smaller developers to borrow money. The 14-stock Bombay Stock Exchange Realty Index has declined 63 percent this year, almost double the 32 percent drop in the benchmark Sensex.

``The pendulum has started shifting back a little bit to the point where prices have started to become a bit more reasonable,'' said Trump. ``It will allow companies such as ours to justify buying land. It's a good opportunity for us.'' "
via Naked Capitalism which also links to another Bloomberg article on emerging economies Emerging-Market Currency Rally Dies as Inflation Hits (Update3):"India's rupee will weaken 8 percent, its worst year in a decade, while the South African rand will lose 22 percent, its worst performance since 2001, the Bloomberg surveys show.

``The shock of higher food and energy costs has exposed the major shortcomings of emerging economies in controlling inflation,'' said Stephen Jen, chief currency strategist at Morgan Stanley in London and a former Federal Reserve economist. ``I'm not sure emerging markets will respond to inflation shocks.'' "
Much more in the two articles.

Q-Drum

Interview with Pieter Hendrikse maker of Q-Drum with lots of pictures and a video:
"The idea of the Q Drum originated in response to the needs of rural people in developing countries for clean and potable water and easing the burden of conveying it. The uniqueness of the Q Drum lies in the idea and design of the longitudinal shaft or doughnut hole which is acknowledged by the fact that worldwide patents (including the US, 2 patents and Europe) had been granted for the concept, thus confirming the novelty and inventiveness of the design. The drum is pulled along using a rope run through the shaft. There are no removable or breakable handles and the rope can be replaced by means available everywhere such as a leather thong or rope woven from plant material. This simplicity of the Q Drum makes it an ideal tool for the African Continent and other developing countries where even a hammer and a nail are scarce commodities and its durability has been proven by extensive actual use in some rural areas of Southern Africa."
(via Rural Development of India which has many such interesting news items).
See also a piece of South-South 'colloboration' Clay Filters for water purification in Sri Lanka which were first mass produced in Nicaragua.

I learnt a new technique today

It is pruning season in Melbourne and since gardening services have become expensive I decided to buy a chainsaw and do some heavy pruning myself. But I was told by Chris (short for Ramakrishna) and other friends that I should not fool around with chainsaws at my age. So I bought an 'Alligator' which is a sort of enclosed chainsaw (thanks to Chinese exports, many of these seem affordable now). Chris and I managed some heavy pruning of two medium sized trees. The problem next was to cut the branches in to small pieces to fit in to the bin. Again Chris had an idea. After separating some of main hard wood, we just ran the lawnmower over the branches to mulch them(a mulcher is somewhat expensive and there is no room to keep it). It worked though I am not sure how long the lawnmower will last.

'Glacier man' Chewang Norphel

brings water to Ladakh:
"Norphel's watershed intervention -- the 'artificial glacier' -- came from the simple observation that "while there was such a shortage of water at the start of the cropping season, a lot of water was being wasted during winter". He noticed that in winter water taps were left open to stop the water from freezing in the pipes. The water flowed into the drains surrounding the taps and froze. "And it is then that it occurred to me: why not try and make artificial glaciers in the vicinity of the village so that local farmers get a real headstart when they need it most," says Norphel.

Norphel used to work with the Jammu and Kashmir rural development department making zings (small tanks fed by run-off from melting glaciers). A year after he retired from government service, in 1996, he joined as project manager for watershed development for the Leh Nutrition Project, a local civil society organisation. This gave him the opportunity to try out his 'artificial glacier' idea to trap and freeze water for future use.

Norphel's technique uses a network of pipes to capture and channel precious snowmelt that would otherwise be wasted. No crops are grown during Ladakh's severe winters; the little water there is in the mountain streams generally goes waste.

Using some local ingenuity, Norphel built his 'artificial glacier' from stone embankments and a few hundred metres of iron pipe. First, water from an existing stream was diverted through iron pipes to a shady area of the valley. From there, the water was made to flow out onto a sloping hill at regular intervals along the mountain slope. Small stone embankments impede the flow of water, creating shallow pools. During the winter, as temperatures drop steadily, the water in these small pools freezes. Once this cycle has been repeated over many weeks, a thick sheet of ice forms, resembling a long, thin glacier.

Norphel managed to freeze water in pipes as well. "I noticed in Leh that water sometimes did not freeze in the channels but did so in the thin iron pipes. As the pipes are made of metal and are very thin, they lose heat quite rapidly," he explains.

There are several advantages of an artificial glacier over a natural one. To start with, it's closer to the village and at a comparatively lower altitude. Natural glaciers, on the other hand, are located way up in the mountains and they melt slowly in summer, releasing water to the villages quite late. Early water release from an artificial glacier comes as a bonus for farmers. It enables them to get water a whole month before the snow starts melting on the mountain tops. This is particularly useful to start sowing, as the sowing season ends before water from natural glaciers begins to flow down the mountain.
The largest artificial glacier Norphel has built so far is near the village of Phuktsey. About 1,000 feet (300 metres) long, 150 feet (45 metres) wide, and four feet (1 metre) deep, it supplies irrigation water to the entire village of around 700 people. Norphel says the glacier was built at a cost of about Rs 90,000, which is about a tenth of what it would have cost to build a reservoir with similar storage capacity.

This technology has become immensely popular with the people of Ladakh, not only because it is effective but also because it is simple and affordable and makes use of local resources and skills. And there's minimal maintenance required. "The villagers can understand this," Norphel says. "This is optimum utilisation of water by using the simplest technique, at a low cost. It also helps recharge groundwater and nearby springs."

Sonam Dawa, executive director of the Ladakh Ecological Development Group in Leh, describes Norphel's innovation as a "novel technique, which offers an elegant solution for the most critical first watering of the crop".

As more and more glaciers are being constructed all over Ladakh, more and more barren land is coming under cultivation, providing better opportunities to poor and marginalised communities in the region. Norphel hopes that solving Ladakh's water problems will help slow down the migration of young people to the plains. Improving the economic viability of farms, he says, will sustain village communities and also preserve the ancient Buddhist heritage of his people.

Norphel's efforts have been tracked in a film by docu-filmmaker Fayaz Rizvi, titled A Degree of Concern, which was recently screened in New Delhi on World Environment Day, June 5, 2006."


CNN also has this news as well as that of a Nigerian civil engineerDr Joseph Adelegan :
"He firmly believes that the world's future fuel demands can be met through renewable energy.
And he is using increasingly innovative methods to achieve these results.
Three years ago Adelegan won plaudits for his "Cows to Kilowatts" project, which use effluents and waste products from abattoirs to produce cooking gas.
....
This time he's back with another groundbreaking idea to use waste from the cassava plant, a staple food of Nigeria, to generate electricity.
His project "Power to the Poor: Off-Grid Lighting from Cassava Waste in Nigeria," was awarded a $250,000 grant in May from the World Bank after being named one of the best projects in Africa."

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

says Nouriel Roubini:
"... here is a summary and significant extended update of my views that this will turn out to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and the worst US recession in decades…".
P.S. July 27. Brad Seser's assessment:
Too big to fail? Or too large to save? Thinking about the US one year into the subprime crisis.

The Public Life of History

in Four articles on Indian history Rohit Copra links to some recent articles on Indian history of which I found Dipesh Chakrabarty's "The Public Life of History: An Argument out of India" in Public Culture (20: I, 143-168)very interesting. The full article needs subscription but Chprs gives link to an excerpt:
here. Dipesh Chakraborty asks " If one could think of the life of this discipline within the university—composed of classrooms, courses, examinations, seminars, conferences, journals, and so on—as its "cloistered life," as it were, then by its "public life" one could mean the connections that such a discipline might forge with institutions and practices outside the university and official bureaucracy. Can this discipline have a public life in my sense of the term when the public actually debates the past?
....
Given their expertise, it is only understandable that historians in India should seek a role in adjudicating disputes about the past in India. But what prevents them from realizing this aspiration? It is to answer this question that I provide a history of history in India before returning, in conclusion and with some comparative glances at relevant debates in Australia and the United States, to the larger concern from which this essay arises: can history, the academic discipline, have a public life in a situation when the past is a matter of contestation in everyday life?"
My guess is 'probably not'. For one thing, official histories including many records on which they rely seem to be written by winners at the given moments. When it comes to current readings of the past, they often depend on the school or country of the writers and it takes a lot of effort to even it digest different views. In contrast, the current views of many seem to be decided by current political or market realities and often by leadership which does not care that much for hitorical truths based on facts (on many issues such 'facts' seem doubtful anyway). On the other hand, there are many theses,articles from universities and institutes about identity effects in business and politics ( a small sample like the ones by John Harriss in LSE Working Papers or Jeffrey Witsoe in CASI 'India in Transition' Papers many papers in IDS or EPW )which seem to give an indication of how things work now. But this is an outsider's view. Possibly more careful discussions will take place in Rohit Chopra' blog which already has several thoughtful posts on Nandigram and other issues.

Rahul Banerjee tastes some success

Rahul Banerjee's efforts seem to be bearing fruit. FromDown To Eath article 'Seed Restoration':
"Waterless wheat makes central India’s farmers smile

Time was when Malwa, a region spanning central India, grew wheat that required no irrigation. What it required instead was careful nurturing of the soil to retain its moisture. That was then. Soil preparation began months in advance; chemical fertilizers were unknown and green mulch was the principal soil nutrient.

All that changed with the Green Revolution. The indigenous varieties of the area gave way to high yield hybrid strands that required five to seven rounds of irrigation and a good amount of chemical fertilizers.

The cost of these inputs kept increasing, which the farmers of the Malwa region could afford less and less.

Finding it increasingly difficult to manage the economics of food production, Soji Ram took a risk. Soji Ram is a Barera tribal from Madhya Pradesh’s Katkut village in Khargon district. He took the risk more out of compulsion than as a result of any calculation.

Soji Ram sowed Amrita wheat in the beginning of rabi season last year; it is a contemporary version of the indigenous Malwi strand, over 0.3-hectare (ha) last rabi season. Amrita has been developed by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (icar) at its Indore wheat research station. Amrita does not need much soil preparation; what it needs is only two rounds of irrigation.

Other farmers in Soji Ram’s village, including his brothers, sowed the hybrid Lok1 variety. All of them never missed an opportunity to tell him that he was being foolhardy. After all, he was going by the word of just one person: Rahul Banerjee of the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath, an ngo working with farmers in the region. Soji Ram dedicated half his farm to this new seed. He was willing to try it out because low irrigation requirements made it more affordable than Lok1 wheat that needed at least five rounds for a decent harvest.

The harvest was far from decent this year for most farmers in Khargon. Only Soji Ram had something to smile about. He harvested 300 kg of wheat from 30 kg of seed on his 0.3-ha field. “Soji Ram got the output from a single round of irrigation. Another round could have fetched him 450-600 kg of wheat,” says Banerjee.
....
Last year, Banerjee could persuade only Soji Ram and two other farmers from neighbouring districts to opt for Amrita. As they reaped a good harvest this year, more farmers made up their mind to follow their example. Nobody thinks it is foolhardy anymore."

Square watermelons

From Lessons of the Square Watermelon (via Rural Development of India) , the story is from Japan):
"The solution to the problem of round watermelons wasn’t nearly as difficult to solve for those who didn’t assume the problem was impossible to begin with and simply asked how it could be done. It turns out that all you need to do is place them into a square box when they are growing and the watermelon will take on the shape of the box.

This made the grocery stores happy and had the added benefit that it was much easier and cost effective to ship the watermelons. Consumers also loved them because they took less space in their refrigerators which are much smaller than those in the US - which resulted in the growers being able to charge a premium price for them."

Reading

Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" after finishing his "Dreams from my father". He can write. It seems that he would have been doing good work at some level or other.
P.S. Interesting article in The Guardian (via 3quqrksdaily)Taking Obama as well read. Excerpt:
"If the Obama list is more charged and complicated, that's because it reflects the more charged and complicated image of the man behind it. It speaks of a serious student of American society, a man steeped in race relations and a politician who comes with questions as well as answers.

Ultimately there's something weirdly unapologetic about it. Triangulation be damned. Obama is preaching to the converted, chatting with the fan-base. Those who already have him filed as some dubious leftist egghead will peruse the shelves of this library and have their prejudices set in stone. By the same token, those who see him as the spokesman for a more curious, humane and thoughtful America will come away reassured. Love Obama, love his books."
The Guardian article follows up an article by Laura Miller Barack by the books which among other things discusses both the books by Barack Obama.
P.S.2(July 11)Just finished reading the second book which as expected is more about practical poliyics and not as interesting as the first biik. There are several links to interesting articles about Barack Obama in Wikipedia. The follwing artcles What Makes Obama Run? from 1995 and The Phenomenon from 2006 seem to describe Obama well around the time the two books were written.

Ajit Varki

on Primate Evolution and Human Disease (youtube about 51 absorbing minutes). Interview from Expert Interview Transcripts . Recent article Human evolution: Details of being human in Nature News by Bruce Lieberman.

Links July,2

Why Indian farmers lust after genetically modified eggplant:
"I have no idea how representative that last farmer's attitudes are of Indian eggplant farmers in general. But the basic calculus seems pretty clear. If Indian farmers can simultaneously cut their costs by cutting their pesticide expenses and boost yields by fending off the fruit and shoot borer, they will pay a premium price for genetically modified eggplant seeds. In a world where all kinds of agricultural inputs are drastically rising in price, that same calculus will likely play out elsewhere, with other farmers and other crops."
Strong comments and a related news An impossible coexistence: Transgenic and organic agriculture from Spain.
Energy Transitions Past and Future
from 'The Oil Drum':
"The debate about "peak oil" aside, there are relatively abundant remaining supplies of fossil fuels. Their quality is declining, but not yet to the extent that increasing scarcity will help trigger a major energy transition like wood scarcity did in the 19th century. The costs of wind, solar and biomass have declined due to steady technical advances, but in key areas of energy quality—density, net energy, intermittancy, flexibility, and so on—they remain inferior to conventional fuels. Thus, alternative energy sources are not likely to supplant fossil fuels in the short term without substantial and concerted policy intervention. The need to restrain carbon emissions may provide the political and social pressure to accelerate the transition to wind, biomass and solar, as this is one area where they clearly trump fossil fuels. Electricity from wind and solar sources may face competition from nuclear power, the sole established low-carbon power source with significant potential for expansion. If concerns about climate change drive a transition to renewable sources, it will be the first time in human history that energetic imperatives, especially the the economic advantages of higher-quality fuels, were not the principal impetus."

Gulzar Natarajan on Survey on corruption in India :
"It is ironical that the departments administered directly by the three All India Services officers - IAS, IPS and IFS (land records, police, and forest) are the three most corrupt departments!"
Rahul Siddharthan on Pen Pricks. This one was quickly found to be be fake. But there are others which seem to go on like the about a Forbes news item on Samskrit being the best language for computers. Others, after the usual cycle of few days are not pursued.
Several interesting pieces in the Seed magazine, in particular, Cultural Evolution and Tom Wolfe + Michael Gazzaniga.

The unsutainable has run its course

says Bank of International Settlements (via John Quiggin at CT and http://johnquiggin.com/). Excerpts from the overview of their annual report:
"After a number of years of strong global growth, low inflation and stable financial markets, the situation deteriorated rapidly in the period under review. Most notable was the onset of turmoil in the US market for subprime mortgages, which rapidly affected many other financial markets and eventually called into question the adequacy of capital at a number of large US and European banks. At the same time, US growth slowed markedly, reflecting setbacks in the housing market, while global inflation rose significantly under the particular influence of higher commodity prices.

This sudden change in financial conditions was blamed by some on shortcomings in the extension of the long-standing originate-to-distribute model to new mortgage products in recent years. Others, however, noted that the sudden deterioration in both financial and macroeconomic conditions looked more like a typical “bust” after a credit “boom”. Indeed, several factors seem to support this second hypothesis: the previous rapid growth of global monetary and credit aggregates; an extended period of low real interest rates; the unusually high price of many assets (both financial and real); and the way in which spending patterns in different countries (the United States and China in particular) reflected their different stages of financial development (encouraging consumption and investment respectively).

While central banks in all the major financial centres took action to reliquefy financial markets, the setting of policy rates diverged markedly in light of domestic macroeconomic circumstances. Some central banks were more concerned about actual inflation and raised policy rates, whereas others focused on the disinflationary pressures likely to emerge as growth slowed, and lowered policy rates instead.
....
Perhaps the principal conclusion to be drawn from today's policy challenges is that it would have been better to avoid the build-up of credit excesses in the first place. In future, this could be done through the establishment of a new macrofinancial stability framework, which would call for both monetary and macroprudential policies to "lean against the wind" of the credit cycle. Recognising that cycles can be attenuated but not eliminated, a number of preparatory steps are also suggested that would allow periods of financial turmoil or crisis to be more effectively managed."
P.S. Brad Setserrecommends reading the report.

Interview with Duncan Green, Oxfam Head

Making Poverty History; the interview about Oxfam's new book "From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States Can Change the World" and the interview has a link to the book:
http://www.oxfam.org/en/policy/from_poverty_to_power/fp2ptext.htm
(via Chandan Sapkota.)

A recommendation from scidev.net

From Science journalism urged to be more locally relevant :
""The larger amount of international science news makes readers think science is irrelevant to their life, especially among those in extreme rural poverty," Joubert said.

Massarani also found that articles were reluctant to criticise information sources, particularly those from the developed world. A high percentage of stories also reprinted from news agencies, without any attempt to add local context or double check the accuracy of the information.

Joubert says that it is difficult for the developing world to establish enough science news sources to feed local media — but there are still ways to make science journalism in these countries more locally applicable. Comments from local scientists or members of the public for example about the local applications of research will shorten the distance between science and local readers, she told SciDev.Net.

And links to local culture — for example traditional medicine — should also be used to make science news more relevant.

"Some [traditional medicine] might be wrong, but telling the readers how science comes to this conclusion, or how scientists are researching traditional medicine, could be an effective way to spread scientific knowledge among people familiar with this form of indigenous knowledge," says Joubert."

Weeds

Interesting article in NYTimes Can Weeds Help Solve the Climate Crisis? . Excerpt:
"Ziska says that he worries about mankind’s ability to feed itself in a fast-changing future. Paradoxically, it is weeds, he says, that can provide solutions. They have helped us deal with lesser crises in the past. When diseases and pests overwhelmed our domesticated food crops, it was to their wild relatives — plants that mankind has been battling for millennia — that plant breeders turned. Because weeds have more diverse genomes, it is easier to find one with the proper genetic resistance to a given threat — and then to create a new hybrid by breeding it with existing crops. An answer to the Irish potato blight of 1845-6 was eventually found among the potato’s wild and weedy relatives; a wild oat found in Israel in the 1960s helped spawn a more robust, disease-resistant strain of domesticated oats.

Weedy ancestors of our food crops, Ziska predicts, will cope far better with coming climatic changes than their domesticated descendants. Coping, after all, is what weeds have always done best. As last year’s climate- change panel report, Climate Change 2007, made clear, we have already set in motion far-reaching and unstoppable changes in regional temperatures and precipitation and in the composition of our atmosphere. No matter what actions we take, these changes will continue for decades. If we are to avoid disaster, experts agree, we will need to be tenacious but flexible, ready to identify and exploit any opportunity in what will be a challenging, even hostile situation. In this new world that we have made, weeds, our old adversaries, could be not only tools but mentors."

Rethinking GDP

The post Science Envy/ in 'Stumbling and Mumbling' led via Brian Appleyard to 'United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation' hearings on
Rethinking the Gross Domestic Product as a Measurement of National Strength in March, 2008. It has interesting testimonies, particularly by Robert Frank and Jonathan Rowe.
Rowe's GDP Testimony describes the origins of the concept of GDP and some of the later developments in US. Here are some excerpts:

"“The welfare of a nation can, therefore, scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined above.”

That’s what the man who invented the GDP – its predecessor, more precisely – told Congress regarding the use of his invention. Yet Congress has done exactly what Kuznets urged it not to do. Congress and everybody else.

How exactly that came about is another long story. It began with the gradual seep of the new accounts into the political arena. In his 1936 re-election campaign, Franklin Roosevelt noted that the economy – as defined by the national accounts – had increased under his watch. It was a number: who could resist?
........
Then came World War II, when the national accounts played a central role in the
mobilization effort. A bitter debate erupted in Washington over the nation’s
production goals. Corporate leaders insisted that the mobilization must come out of the existing level of production They didn’t want to be stuck with excess capacity when the war was over. Kuznets and others argued to the contrary that the U.S. had vast troves of untapped capacity; and they used the national accounts to prove it.

FDR sided with the “all-outers” as this group was called. They appealed to his belief in the energizing effects of challenges; Roosevelt took their high estimates
and made them even higher, the better to make his point. (The planners then had to shift gears argue the case for system limits, which the national accounts also helped them do.) Then the accounts helped to coordinate the war production so as to prevent bottlenecks and snafus. By 1944 war production alone had surpassed the nation’s entire output just ten years before.

It was as close as the nation ever has come to pure economic planning; and much reviled, it helped to win the war. Post-war surveys revealed that Germany had no such planning tool, and Hitler’s production program had been greatly hindered as a result. America had become the “arsenal of democracy” in part through a top-down approach made possible by the national accounts. A paper published by the Russell Sage Foundation called the use of these “one of the great technical triumphs in the history of the economics discipline.”

This was heady stuff, and it was just a start. As the war was winding down, the
accounts served again to guide the shift back to a peacetime basis without relapse into the dreaded Depression. Consumption was the key; the Cold War, with its Pentagon spending, was not yet in prospect. As war production diminished, shoppers would have to pick up the slack. The national accounts showed exactly how it could be done. As John Kenneth Galbraith put it in a series of articles for Fortune Magazine, “One good reason for expecting prosperity after the war is the fact that we can lay down its specifications.”

The new Keynesian economists such as Galbraith were now the Merlins of prosperity, and the national accounts were their magic wand. Consumption itself was taking on a heroic stature; the returning troops were handing off the mantle of national purpose to the shoppers who would replace them in keeping the industrial machinery in motion. (The heroic imagery persists in media accounts today, as when we read that consumers will provide the “engine” for recovery, or that they will “pull” the nation out of its recession.)"
Another discussion comparing GDP and GNP/I in Dissent.

A petition

Dear Friends,

I have just read and signed the online petition:

"Condemn the arrest of Andhrajyothy Editor and journalists"

hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com, the free online petition
service, at:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/AJ062508/

I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might
agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider
signing yourself.

Best wishes,

Gadde Anandaswarup

Children concerned by parents' web habits

says The Local, Sweden's News in English (via Naked Capitalism):
"Children in Sweden are becoming increasingly concerned by their parents' internet habits, according to a new report from Children's Rights in Society (Barnens Rätt i Samhället - BRIS)."

Ramguha's latest

Will India Become A Superpower? in 'The Outlook'. A long article and any excerpt will not convey its full thrust, but here is one:
"The challenge of the Naxalites; the insidious presence of the Hindutvawadis; the degradation of the once liberal and upright centre; the increasing gap between the rich and the poor; the trivialisation of the media; the unsustainability, in an environmental sense, of present patterns of resource consumption; the instability and policy incoherence caused by multi-party coalition governments—these are the seven reasons why India will not become a superpower. To this, so to say objective judgement of the historian, I will now add the subjective desires of a citizen—which is that India should not even attempt to become a superpower.
.............
To follow the Naxalites is to plunge India into decades of civil war; to follow the Hindu right is to persecute and demonise large numbers of one’s own countrymen; to follow the market fundamentalists is to intensify the divisions between the consuming and the surviving classes (and to destroy the global environment in the process). Rather than nurture or act upon these utopian fantasies, the Indian patriot must focus instead on the tasks of gradual and piecemeal reform. We need to repair, one by one, the institutions that have safeguarded our unity amidst diversity, and to forge, also one by one, the new institutions that can help us meet the fresh challenges of the 21st century. It will be hard, patient, slow work—that is to say, the only kind of work that is ever worth it."

A key to better drugs to fight toxoplasmosis

From a Physorg report ( via Evol. Psych. discussion group):
"An estimated 60 million people in the United States are infected with the toxoplasmosis parasite, but for most infection produces flu-like symptoms or no symptoms at all. However, for people with immune system problems – such as those undergoing chemotherapy or people with AIDS – the disease can cause serious effects including lung problems, blurred vision and seizures. Also, infants born to mothers who are infected during or shortly before pregnancy are at risk for severe complications, miscarriages or stillbirths.
Medications to treat Toxoplasma gondii are effective but too toxic for extended use, and they don't affect the cyst form, said Dr. Sullivan.

"A healthy immune system can keep this parasite in the cyst state. Without a healthy immune system, this organism can run rampant," said Dr. Sullivan. "This can be a very serious problem for people with AIDS."

The discovery linking this stress-response mechanism to cyst formation and maintenance not only offers a possible target for new drugs, but it could also lead to a preventative vaccine – for animals.

The Toxoplasma gondii parasite can infect most animals and birds, but it reproduces in cats, which can shed the parasite in their feces. Humans can be infected through contact with the infected feces or litter. People can also become infected by consuming undercooked meat.

A vaccine to prevent infection in cats and livestock could prevent a significant proportion of human infections, Dr. Sullivan said."
An earlier post with some links here.

I missed this

Despite trying to follow the developments in agriculture, I missed The SYSTEM of
RICE INTENSIFICATION (SRI). The only recent post in the blogs I can find is from
Gururajan. And there is a very interesting 2006 article by Dr. C. Shambu Prasad about the adoptations of SRIin India(http://www.cgiar-ilac.org/downloads/references/SRI_India_innovation_institutions.pdf). This article is also available at the SRI site in the articles section. If anybody knows more about this, please let me know.
P.S.
I wrote three journalists and writers in India. Here are some of their comments.
1)D.R.
"SRI has been around for quite some time now. The state government and some NGOs like WASSAN & Timbaktu have been promoting it. While the initial results are encouraging, the adoption of this new method seem to be abysmally low. Excessive weed seems to be one of the major problems. Lack of training is another issue.
May be its not that easy to change the mindset that has developed over centuries..."
2)R.P.
"Evidently such info should percolate down to those who would benefit from it."
3)R.B.
"sri is indeed the future revolution. in fact it can be tried with other crops like wheat also. only thing it involves more labour and so farmers are slow at going for it. however, things are slowly moving forward."
P.S.2
More recent discussions and articles available at Farmerfirst.

Some posts on migration

New Economist Blog has a few posts on migration. The postSkilled migration boosts innovation discusses paper of Jennifer Hunt: "In this paper I have demonstrated the important boost to innovation per capita provided by skilled immigration to the United States in 1950-2000. A calculation of the effect of immigration in the 1990-2000 period puts the magnitudes of the effects in context." I thought that I noticed this and also in a few cases that I know the immigrants seem to perform better in adopted countries than their native countries. I do not have any real evidence for the second part of the statement except a few cases.
The second is about How rural villages have gained from China's great migration
and a third is about Why people emigrate.
In Rural Development of India , Malapati Raja Sekhar draws attention to a Business India report Urbanisation of rural India which may have implications to urban migration .

Palli Samaj under a communist govt.

Dayabati Roy studies two villages in west Bengal in an EPW article Whither the Subaltern Domain?
– An Ethnographic Enquiry. Abstract:
"Decentralisation of power and the institution of the panchayati raj system in West Bengal have been expected to aid the disappearance of subalternity (or a state of
powerlessness) by way of caste, class and gender. On the contrary, an ethnographic investigation in a village panchayat reveals that divisions between the elite and the subaltern continue to exist in a complex form despite grassroots democracy in the state."

Talat sings a Rafi song

Chal Ud Ja Re Pancchi (via Namburi Ramakrishna). Telugu version of the song by GhantasalaPayaninche O Chiluka.

'The Sea of Poppies'

by Amitav Ghosh is reviewed in The Outlook by William Darlymple.
Darlymple finds 'lack of nuance unusual in Ghosh’s writing' in parts of the novel but "Poppies remains a hugely absorbing and enjoyable book. Ghosh has abandoned the sophisticated literary experimentation that marked his superb early books such as The Shadow Lines and The Circle of Reason, and is now channelling his creative energies into the skilful story-telling and pacey narrative development which made The Glass Palace such a wonderfully gripping tale."
I am not much of a fiction reader but I found 'In an Antique Land' wonderful and was disappointed by 'The Glass Palace'. Writing one's own view of historical episodes seems to be a bit of cop out since it does not allow much discussion. The success of the effort depends on how nuanced the effort is. The balance was there in "In an Antique Land" but there were already hints of anger at the violence that the west brought to the 'gentle' international trade and of latent patriotism in his outburst with the Imam. The characters of 'The glass place' seemed more one dimensional and the events described are the author's own version of history. May be such novels will make good Bollywood but it is not clear how useful they are to understand historical events.
Darlymple comments
"This is a world, familiar from Bollywood movies like Mangal Pandey, where the Indian characters are invariably drawn vulnerable and big-hearted, while the English are uniformly unfeeling brutes.

Cumulatively this shows a lack of nuance unusual in Ghosh’s writing: after all, anyone who reads the letters of the British in India in the 1830s will certainly find plenty of ruthless racists, but among them there were also many sympathetic Indophiles—gentle converts to Hinduism like General Charles "Hindoo" Stuart who during the period in which this novel is set was writing a long series of articles in the Calcutta Telegraph trying to persuade the Bengali memsahibs to adopt the sari (something he believed would, especially when wet, "eminently contribute to keeping the bridal torch for ever in a blaze"), or wonderful writers like Fanny Parkes whose book Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque, again dealing exactly with the time period of this novel, expresses a deep and perceptively informed love for India and its inhabitants. There were also a surprisingly large number of mixed marriages in this period: after all, as recently as the beginning of the 19th century one in three British wills in India left everything to an Indian woman or an Anglo-Indian child. None of this complexity is even hinted at in the novel, which is almost Manichean in its racial profiling."
This time, it is not clear to me whether such Britishers or children of mixed marriages had any effect on the general thrust of the empire or in Indian 'development'. There are some characters like Bharati in 'Pather Dabi', Kamala in 'Sesh Prasna' but the overall effect of such characters seems mimimal(People like George Orwell are considered more British than Anglo Indian). Despite his deep prejudices (recall his anti-Islam papmphlet) Sarat seems to have brought a fine balance to his novels and stories like Mahesh and I think that this balance is missing in Ghosh's historical novels like 'The Glass Palace'.
P.S.See also 'The Ghazipur And Patna Opium Factories Together Produced The Wealth Of Britain' and It Just Isn’t Manufactured History.
Excerpt fromthe first:"The novel as a form allows you this incredible freedom, it allows you to put in anything you want."
Update (June 23): Anotherinterview (via Churumuri)

From World Bank blogs

The Global Food Crisis: Will Investments in Agricultural Technology be enough?:
"During the early 1990s, Bangladesh experienced widespread diffusion of green revolution technology in rice, its main crop. As a result, rice production has more than doubled since the early 1970s. The spread of green revolution technology is usually expected to boost wages for farm workers. But we found regional differences in rural wages that run counter to the traditional argument.
The North-West region of Bangladesh (Rajshahi Division) has some of the highest agroecological endowments in the country (Figure 1). But, surprisingly, real agricultural wages were much lower in the Rajshahi Division (Figure 2). Similarly, the probability of employment in the high-wage, non-farm sector was also lower in the North-West (Figure 3). This is puzzling in light of the traditional argument that productivity growth in agriculture raises agricultural wages and also boosts non-farm employment through various production, consumption and labor market linkages. These linkages between the farm and non-farm sectors are assumed to create a virtuous cycle of growth and development in rural areas.
Our study found that access to large urban markets (as in Dhaka and Chittagong) is by far the most important determinant of high-return, non-farm activities: people are more likely to be employed in better paid wage employment and self employment in the non-farm sector if they are closer to urban centers. The impact of agricultural potential depends on how far the village is from the main urban centers: those who are further away from these centers are even less likely to be in well-paying non-farm jobs even if they are living in areas with greater agricultural potential. This suggests that poor connectivity to major urban markets greatly weakens farm-non-farm linkages. And lack of expansion of better paid non-farm jobs in turn slows down the movement of workers from agriculture to other activities, depressing agricultural wages and impeding long-term growth in agricultural productivity itself."
From Wade into the paddy field yield figures at your peril...:
"Most sources (FAO and USDA both pdf files) indicate an average rice yield of a little under 5 tons/hectare (or 5t/ha) in Vietnam in 2006/2007. My rice farmers claimed to be harvesting twice that amount per season: 1ton per "cong" or 10t/ha."
Apparently the discrepancy comes partly from difference of measuring straight paddy or milled rice, measuring in different seasons, location and size of plots used in the samples etc. There is also link to a nice slideshow 'describing the impact of a Bank-financed water resources management project in the Mekong Delta.'

Paul Romer comments in a blog

A quote fromPaul Romer explains why we need more science PhDs than we think we do:
"Whenever the social return to some activity is greater than the private return, there is a clear justification for subsidizing the activity."

Paul Romer is one of the stalwarts of 'New Growth Theory' and some of his ideas are presented here,here and here.

Peter Roebuck on Chanderpaul

Even Peter Roebuck struggles to describe Shivnarine Chanderpaul . Excerpt:
"Shivnarine Chanderpaul provides a notable counterpoint to the contemporary game. At once he is inimitable and timeless - no more a product of his period than a kitchen clock, and yet not a creature of the past either, for he has scored runs yesterday and today and will score runs tomorrow. Just that he goes about it in his own sweet and deceptively frail way, relying on deflections and glides, hands as opposed to forearms, a wand as opposed to a tree trunk, persuasion and perseverance as opposed to power. He is a rubber man put among concrete pillars. In short, he is a reminder that, even now, cricket has many faces and talent can take many.
......
Although lacking the force of personality needed to hold the team together, he has often prevented the batting from falling apart. Perhaps the bad times were his making. After all fishermen, like farmers, are a resilient lot. Certainly they do not expect more from life than it is prepared to offer."