in a special issue by knowledge@wharton and Wall Street Journal Rural India.
The Upside of Recessions
The rural poor fare better in India than China says John Lee India's Rising Tide . In Merging Policy with Practice to Help India's Poor ; "In the subtext of India's recent economic success story lies "the stubborn statistic of 400 million to 600 million people living in poverty," according to Shanta Devarajan, chief economist of the World Bank's South Asia region....
Ravi Kuchimanchi, founder of the Association for India's Development (AID), a volunteer movement with 50 chapters in the United States, India and Australia, resists the characterization of pro-poor policies as "subsidies"; rather, in the course of being implemented they become "exploitation." He pointed to the roughly 140 special economic zones being planned across the country, which have triggered controversies over farmlands being acquired to make way for new construction. "The incentives are going to the companies who take the lands from the exploited people," he said.
According to Kuchimanchi, another such "exploitative" program is the government's "Aanganwadi" initiative, which aims to provide basic health care across the country's villages. Funds earmarked for the program are routinely diverted to local officials' personal coffers, and investigations that result from complaints have been a sham, he said.
Devarajan cited additional problems plaguing health care among the poor. India's immunization rates are below those of Kenya, he said. "You expect the public sector to deliver this, but only 8% of such spending goes to the poorest sections. The doctors and nurses are frequently not available; the average absenteeism among doctors is 40%, and this goes up to 60% in Bihar," a northern Indian state. Devarajan said he saw no solution but to "restructure employment policies" and enforce accountability among doctors.
The same level of accountability should hold for teachers, Devarajan added. "Everybody, including the World Bank" takes credit for getting 93% of Indian children in some form of primary school, he said. However, "60% to 65% can't read a sentence in their [native] language, and 55% can't do a two-digit subtraction problem." These statistics came to light two years ago in surveys conducted by Pratham, a nongovernmental organization in India. The surveys found a "high degree of absenteeism among teachers in public schools," from 25% to 40%, Devarajan noted."
There is an interview with Professor Anil Gupta of Honey Bee Network
discussed earlierhere .
India Defies Slump, Powered by Growth in Poor Rural States saya Peter Wonacott, but K. Seeta Prabhu thinks otherwise in How the Financial Crisis Threatens the Rural Indian Boom .
There are some on money at the bottom of the pyramid, micro finance etc which I have not read yet. I found this initiative interesting: Aakash Ganga: Saving Water for a Rainy Day .
Friday, October 09, 2009
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Finest cricketer-writer
It was Jack Fingleton's writings about the 1960 (?) West Indies-Australia series that drew me to cricket even though I did not see any cricket while in school. It is nice to see an appreciation of him in cricketinfo Jack of two trades.
The upside of some economic downturns
From Sciensmagazine discussion The Upside of Recessions of Life and death during the Great Depression:
"Tapia Granados's team found an inverse association between economic health and population health: Life expectancy fell during economic upturns and increased during recessions. Mortality, meanwhile, tended to rise during economic upturns and fall during recessions. Deaths related to flu and pneumonia, for example, fell from about 150 per 100,000 people in 1929 to roughly 100 per 100,000 people in 1930, the researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Suicide was the only cause of death that increased during times of economic turmoil. For life expectancy, the patterns were particularly obvious among nonwhites: Between 1921 and 1926, a period of economic growth, life expectancy declined 8.1 years among nonwhite males and 7.4 years among nonwhite females. During the Great Depression, on the other hand, life expectancy among nonwhites increased by 8 years."
From comment by Peter Coffee
"This seems like utterly unsurprising confirmation of what has previously been seen in data on health in England during and following World War II rationing.
"It is ironic, but understandable, that Britons who were young during those years of food rationing were the healthiest generation on record: you only have to look at photographs of the children—lean but robust. There was little meat, butter or lard to clog their arteries and very little sugar or sweets of any kind to create cavities or rot their teeth. Consequently our diet was low in carbohydrates and saturated fat." (http://www.jewishmag.com/136mag/uk_rationing/uk_rationing.htm)
"As soon as wartime restrictions were lifted people celebrated with good old fashioned self indulgence...Consumed calories soared as people over-reacted to the years of rationing. Obesity in young children become evident as parents tried to ‘make up’ for sugar rationing; while dentists saw a return to almost pre-war levels of tooth decay. Heart disease also increased as consumption of fats hit new heights." (http://www.history.uk.com/1940s/index.php?archive=8)
This seems like independent confirmation of the same behaviors."
More discussion in GNXP and Scientific American
Earlier papers by Jose A Tapia Granados on the relations between economic expansions and mortality in US, Spain, Japan, Sweden are linked in http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/56218/browse?type=title
"Tapia Granados's team found an inverse association between economic health and population health: Life expectancy fell during economic upturns and increased during recessions. Mortality, meanwhile, tended to rise during economic upturns and fall during recessions. Deaths related to flu and pneumonia, for example, fell from about 150 per 100,000 people in 1929 to roughly 100 per 100,000 people in 1930, the researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Suicide was the only cause of death that increased during times of economic turmoil. For life expectancy, the patterns were particularly obvious among nonwhites: Between 1921 and 1926, a period of economic growth, life expectancy declined 8.1 years among nonwhite males and 7.4 years among nonwhite females. During the Great Depression, on the other hand, life expectancy among nonwhites increased by 8 years."
From comment by Peter Coffee
"This seems like utterly unsurprising confirmation of what has previously been seen in data on health in England during and following World War II rationing.
"It is ironic, but understandable, that Britons who were young during those years of food rationing were the healthiest generation on record: you only have to look at photographs of the children—lean but robust. There was little meat, butter or lard to clog their arteries and very little sugar or sweets of any kind to create cavities or rot their teeth. Consequently our diet was low in carbohydrates and saturated fat." (http://www.jewishmag.com/136mag/uk_rationing/uk_rationing.htm)
"As soon as wartime restrictions were lifted people celebrated with good old fashioned self indulgence...Consumed calories soared as people over-reacted to the years of rationing. Obesity in young children become evident as parents tried to ‘make up’ for sugar rationing; while dentists saw a return to almost pre-war levels of tooth decay. Heart disease also increased as consumption of fats hit new heights." (http://www.history.uk.com/1940s/index.php?archive=8)
This seems like independent confirmation of the same behaviors."
More discussion in GNXP and Scientific American
Earlier papers by Jose A Tapia Granados on the relations between economic expansions and mortality in US, Spain, Japan, Sweden are linked in http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/56218/browse?type=title
Monday, September 28, 2009
Effect of Military Aid on Conflicts
From a preliminary report by Oeindrila Dube and Suresh Naidu Bases, Bullets and Ballots: the Effect of Military Aid on Political Conflict in Columbia (via Chris Blattman Your aid dollars at work… suppressing voters):
"The findings suggest that foreign military aid may strengthen the capacity of non-state armed actors, undermining domestic political institutions". They suggest that the paper has clear policy implications in giving military aid to countries where there are informal connections between the armed forces and illegal armed groups and briefly discuss the cases of Iraq, East Timor and Mexico.
More papers by Suresh Naidu and colloborators are available here and Oeindrila Dube's profile here
Another paper by Arindrajit Dube, Naidu and Ethan Kaplan Coups, Corporations, and Classified Information is reported in Slate They Made a Killing:
"With a U.S. puppet back in the president's mansion, UFC's profits were safe. But it appears the company wasn't the only beneficiary of this Cold War cloak-and-dagger diplomacy: A recent study by economists Arindrajit Dube, Ethan Kaplan, and Suresh Naidu argues that those in on the planning process also profited handsomely. By tracking the stock prices of UFC and other politically vulnerable firms in the months leading up to CIA-staged coups in Guatemala, Chile, Cuba, and Iran, the researchers provide evidence that someone—perhaps one of the Dulleses, Cabots, or others in the know—was trading stocks based on classified information of these coups-in-the-making."
P.S Further discussion between Andrew Gellman and the authors in The effects of U.S. military aid on political violence in Colombia: a back-and-forth regarding the strength of the causal evidence.
"The findings suggest that foreign military aid may strengthen the capacity of non-state armed actors, undermining domestic political institutions". They suggest that the paper has clear policy implications in giving military aid to countries where there are informal connections between the armed forces and illegal armed groups and briefly discuss the cases of Iraq, East Timor and Mexico.
More papers by Suresh Naidu and colloborators are available here and Oeindrila Dube's profile here
Another paper by Arindrajit Dube, Naidu and Ethan Kaplan Coups, Corporations, and Classified Information is reported in Slate They Made a Killing:
"With a U.S. puppet back in the president's mansion, UFC's profits were safe. But it appears the company wasn't the only beneficiary of this Cold War cloak-and-dagger diplomacy: A recent study by economists Arindrajit Dube, Ethan Kaplan, and Suresh Naidu argues that those in on the planning process also profited handsomely. By tracking the stock prices of UFC and other politically vulnerable firms in the months leading up to CIA-staged coups in Guatemala, Chile, Cuba, and Iran, the researchers provide evidence that someone—perhaps one of the Dulleses, Cabots, or others in the know—was trading stocks based on classified information of these coups-in-the-making."
P.S Further discussion between Andrew Gellman and the authors in The effects of U.S. military aid on political violence in Colombia: a back-and-forth regarding the strength of the causal evidence.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Mixing populations
Reconstructing Indian population history has been commented on By Dienekes
560K SNP study reveals dual rigin of Indian populations (Reich et al. 2009), Rajib Khan Indians as hybrids (a.k.a Aryan invasion in the house!) , John Hawks SNPtastic India and others. John Hawks is somewhat skeptical but the other two are more positive with some reservations and so it is probably an important paper. Dienekes says:
"The paper does demolish some theories that have been popular in some circles:
There is no evidence of caste as simply social division of labor. This thesis is inconsistent with differential ANI admixture (and distance from Western Eurasians) across the caste hierarchy.
There is no evidence that Indo-Aryan and Dravidian speakers differ only in language. It is now clear that they are different from each other genetically as well, and this difference is not an "internal affair" of India, but is related to populations outside it. Indo-Aryan speakers differ precisely in having a larger ANI component.
There is no evidence that Indo-European languages originated in India. Let us consider what this would entail:
Suppose postulated ancient Indian PIE speakers had a similar genetic makeup as modern Indians (i.e., a mix of ANI and ASI). Then, the absence of the ASI component outside South Asia cannot be explained.
If ancient Indian PIE speakers had a purely ANI makeup, then the absence of the ASI component outside South Asia -as in (1)- can be explained. However, this would entail that sharply differentiated populations (ANI and ASI) co-existed in India without mixing for thousands of years; ANI-like PIEs spread from India with their languages; ANI and ASI admixed afterwards. To say that this scenario is not parsimonious would be charitable.
The only way in which PIE languages may have originated in India would be if they spread without the spread of people. However, before the advent of writing and modern means of transportation and communication, the only way to spread languages was by migration of people."
As far as I can see ASI, ANI are mathematical constructs. From the Supplementary Information which is available online:
"In our data, the hypothesis of mixture emerges naturally from
PCA (Figure 3), which shows that nearly all the Indo-European and Dravidian speaking groups spread out on a one dimensional gradient in a plot of the first versus the second PC.
Modeling the history of many Indian groups as a mixture of two ancestral populations is an oversimplification. In reality, even if ancient mixture did occur, it is likely to have been between substructured populations instead of homogeneous populations, and it is likely to have occurred at multiple times and at multiple geographic locations. However, approximating the history of many Indian groups as a simple mixture of two homogeneous ancestral populations provides a good fit to the summary statistics of allele frequency differentiation, and we believe that in this
sense it is a useful starting point for future analyses that can detect more subtle events."
Rajib says " generally agree with the gist of this. The main issue I would also highlight is that these results only clarify and solidify what was likely from previous analyses of worldwide genetic variation. That is, the populations of Northwest India are closer to those of the Middle East & Europe than those of Southeast India are. It was rather awesome that they confirm that the Onge, who are almost extinct, are a relatively unadmixed ancient population. The Onge branch seems to descend from an ancestral population which also gave rise what is termed in the paper "Ancestral South Indian" (ASI). They exhibit no admixture with "Ancestral North Indians" (ANI). This paper confirmed and clarified as well as that the proportion of West Eurasian related lineages increases both as a function of geography and caste. That is, there is a SE-NW and lower-to-upper caste gradient whereby West Eurasian related lineages become more prevalent. This has long been known, but this paper did it with more SNPs across the genome."
There is some more discussion in Rajib's post The politics of genetic history in India : "Now, let me state something clearly: on average an individual from an Indo-Aryan or Dravidian speaking group in South Asia is going to be more closely related genetically in terms of total genome content to anyone in the Indian subcontinent from Indo-Aryan or Dravidian speaking groups than they are to some from outside the Indian subcontinent."
Law and Other Things wonders in The origins of caste :
"For lawyers, it does. International law and legal institutions have developed to deal with racism. Caste, seen as a one-region problem, has not received similar attention. The issue became controversial in 2001, when the International Conference on Racism in Durban took place. Many dalit groups insisted that casteism was a form of racism; while the government, in keeping with its approach to all international monitoring of human rights, strongly refuted the claim. If caste was indeed race, India would be pulled up by the international institutions that deal with racism."
From Rajib's first post:"Note that upper caste South Indian groups clearly have more ANI than lower caste South Indians, but they have a lower proportion than some North Indian lower castes, and are in the range of one North Indian tribal group." It all seems to be a matter of proportion and perspective.
P.S. The original paper of Reich et all is currently available online:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/faculty-workshops/reich.paper.pdf
The supplements are available at the Nature link. Rajib Khan has two more posts on the topic. In this post he links to a write up by an Indian geologist Suvrat Kher.
P.S. Rajib has given a link to the pdf file of the paper:
http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/indiapaper.pdf
Link to the supplentary information is abve:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/extref/nature08365-s1.pdf
and supplementary appendix:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/extref/nature08365-s2.pdf
560K SNP study reveals dual rigin of Indian populations (Reich et al. 2009), Rajib Khan Indians as hybrids (a.k.a Aryan invasion in the house!) , John Hawks SNPtastic India and others. John Hawks is somewhat skeptical but the other two are more positive with some reservations and so it is probably an important paper. Dienekes says:
"The paper does demolish some theories that have been popular in some circles:
There is no evidence of caste as simply social division of labor. This thesis is inconsistent with differential ANI admixture (and distance from Western Eurasians) across the caste hierarchy.
There is no evidence that Indo-Aryan and Dravidian speakers differ only in language. It is now clear that they are different from each other genetically as well, and this difference is not an "internal affair" of India, but is related to populations outside it. Indo-Aryan speakers differ precisely in having a larger ANI component.
There is no evidence that Indo-European languages originated in India. Let us consider what this would entail:
Suppose postulated ancient Indian PIE speakers had a similar genetic makeup as modern Indians (i.e., a mix of ANI and ASI). Then, the absence of the ASI component outside South Asia cannot be explained.
If ancient Indian PIE speakers had a purely ANI makeup, then the absence of the ASI component outside South Asia -as in (1)- can be explained. However, this would entail that sharply differentiated populations (ANI and ASI) co-existed in India without mixing for thousands of years; ANI-like PIEs spread from India with their languages; ANI and ASI admixed afterwards. To say that this scenario is not parsimonious would be charitable.
The only way in which PIE languages may have originated in India would be if they spread without the spread of people. However, before the advent of writing and modern means of transportation and communication, the only way to spread languages was by migration of people."
As far as I can see ASI, ANI are mathematical constructs. From the Supplementary Information which is available online:
"In our data, the hypothesis of mixture emerges naturally from
PCA (Figure 3), which shows that nearly all the Indo-European and Dravidian speaking groups spread out on a one dimensional gradient in a plot of the first versus the second PC.
Modeling the history of many Indian groups as a mixture of two ancestral populations is an oversimplification. In reality, even if ancient mixture did occur, it is likely to have been between substructured populations instead of homogeneous populations, and it is likely to have occurred at multiple times and at multiple geographic locations. However, approximating the history of many Indian groups as a simple mixture of two homogeneous ancestral populations provides a good fit to the summary statistics of allele frequency differentiation, and we believe that in this
sense it is a useful starting point for future analyses that can detect more subtle events."
Rajib says " generally agree with the gist of this. The main issue I would also highlight is that these results only clarify and solidify what was likely from previous analyses of worldwide genetic variation. That is, the populations of Northwest India are closer to those of the Middle East & Europe than those of Southeast India are. It was rather awesome that they confirm that the Onge, who are almost extinct, are a relatively unadmixed ancient population. The Onge branch seems to descend from an ancestral population which also gave rise what is termed in the paper "Ancestral South Indian" (ASI). They exhibit no admixture with "Ancestral North Indians" (ANI). This paper confirmed and clarified as well as that the proportion of West Eurasian related lineages increases both as a function of geography and caste. That is, there is a SE-NW and lower-to-upper caste gradient whereby West Eurasian related lineages become more prevalent. This has long been known, but this paper did it with more SNPs across the genome."
There is some more discussion in Rajib's post The politics of genetic history in India : "Now, let me state something clearly: on average an individual from an Indo-Aryan or Dravidian speaking group in South Asia is going to be more closely related genetically in terms of total genome content to anyone in the Indian subcontinent from Indo-Aryan or Dravidian speaking groups than they are to some from outside the Indian subcontinent."
Law and Other Things wonders in The origins of caste :
"For lawyers, it does. International law and legal institutions have developed to deal with racism. Caste, seen as a one-region problem, has not received similar attention. The issue became controversial in 2001, when the International Conference on Racism in Durban took place. Many dalit groups insisted that casteism was a form of racism; while the government, in keeping with its approach to all international monitoring of human rights, strongly refuted the claim. If caste was indeed race, India would be pulled up by the international institutions that deal with racism."
From Rajib's first post:"Note that upper caste South Indian groups clearly have more ANI than lower caste South Indians, but they have a lower proportion than some North Indian lower castes, and are in the range of one North Indian tribal group." It all seems to be a matter of proportion and perspective.
P.S. The original paper of Reich et all is currently available online:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/faculty-workshops/reich.paper.pdf
The supplements are available at the Nature link. Rajib Khan has two more posts on the topic. In this post he links to a write up by an Indian geologist Suvrat Kher.
P.S. Rajib has given a link to the pdf file of the paper:
http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/indiapaper.pdf
Link to the supplentary information is abve:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/extref/nature08365-s1.pdf
and supplementary appendix:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/extref/nature08365-s2.pdf
Friday, September 25, 2009
some follow up links
Push to change foreign student laws:
"COLLEGES could face limits on how many foreign students they enrol, or how many students they take from a single country, under possible changes to the laws governing Australia's $15 billion international education industry."
Felix salmon on The uses of Kiva with a link to his views on micro finance Don’t invest in microfinance. Take away sentence: "I’m a fan of genuinely local, bottom-up microfinance."
Alex Tabarrok on Teacher Absence in the Developing World and Teacher Absence in the United States
"COLLEGES could face limits on how many foreign students they enrol, or how many students they take from a single country, under possible changes to the laws governing Australia's $15 billion international education industry."
Felix salmon on The uses of Kiva with a link to his views on micro finance Don’t invest in microfinance. Take away sentence: "I’m a fan of genuinely local, bottom-up microfinance."
Alex Tabarrok on Teacher Absence in the Developing World and Teacher Absence in the United States
Thursday, September 24, 2009
S.Varalakshmi
Actress -singer S. Varalakshmi passed away on 22nd Sepember:
"One of the last in a long line of talented actors such as Bhanumathi and Savithri, Varalakshmi, however, opted for roles that offered her scope to sing and act as well. "Many of her songs, such as Manam Kanintharul' (in Veerapandiya Kattabhomman') were huge hits," said film historian Randor Guy. "Although many actors and actresses sang in films, Varalakshmi's singing was a class apart,"said film chronicler, Film News Anandhan.
Before entering the world of films as a child star, Varalakshmi received vigorous tutoring in Carnatic music and this strong foundation not only gave her an alternate career she was a concert performer but also formed the basis for a strong friendship with M S Subbulakshmi. The two frequently exchanged notes during the shooting of Seva Sadhanam' a film by K Subrahmanyam, in which M S was the heroine and Varalakshmi was her friend.
Although she got a break as a heroine in 1948 in the Telugu film Balaraju' which featured A Nageshwara Rao, in Tamil she was content to play character roles, such as that of the wife of Veerapandiya Kattabomman' played by Sivaji' Ganesan. She had memorable roles in Ayiram Thalai Vangiya Apoorva Chintamani,' Raja Raja Cholan', Panama Pasama', Kandhan Karunai', Maattukara Velan' and Poova Thalaya' among others. In a career spanning several decades and over 500 films in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada, she acted with all the top stars, including M G R and Jayalalithaa.
In her condolence message, Jayalalithaa recalled fond memories when, as a four year old, her family moved into the house next to that of Varalakshmi. "I used to spend all my time playing in her house and used to be mesmerised by her singing," she said in a press release.
Although she was a successful actor, Varalakshmi, who married the late A L Srinivasan (brother of poet Kannadasan), briefly fell upon hard times, and it was M G R who sought matronly roles for her. Varalakshmi was conferred the Kalaimamani Award and the Kalai Vithagar' Kannadasan award, the latter in 2004."
Her film 'Balraju' was the very first film I saw and still remember her song "O bAlarAjA ". Though she had a very good voice and was trained singer, she did not seem to be lucky (in terms of the number of remembered songs) in the songs offered to her in Telugu. In the 1961 song "navanIta chOruDu ", she more than matches the more popular singer Jikki. Both are available
in oldtelugusongs.
P.S. GollapudiMaruti Rao write up ఎస్.వరలక్ష్మి అస్తమయం
From Eenadu write up by Cheekolu Sundarayya
Obituary from Prajasakti ఆ స్వరం ఇక వినబడదు.. య'స్వర'లక్ష్మికి నివాళులు
P.S. A more recent tribute by Paruchuri Sreenivas సహజ గాయని ఎస్. వరలక్ష్మి with links to a few of her songs.
A photograph from one of her first films with M. S. Subbulakshmi
"One of the last in a long line of talented actors such as Bhanumathi and Savithri, Varalakshmi, however, opted for roles that offered her scope to sing and act as well. "Many of her songs, such as Manam Kanintharul' (in Veerapandiya Kattabhomman') were huge hits," said film historian Randor Guy. "Although many actors and actresses sang in films, Varalakshmi's singing was a class apart,"said film chronicler, Film News Anandhan.
Before entering the world of films as a child star, Varalakshmi received vigorous tutoring in Carnatic music and this strong foundation not only gave her an alternate career she was a concert performer but also formed the basis for a strong friendship with M S Subbulakshmi. The two frequently exchanged notes during the shooting of Seva Sadhanam' a film by K Subrahmanyam, in which M S was the heroine and Varalakshmi was her friend.
Although she got a break as a heroine in 1948 in the Telugu film Balaraju' which featured A Nageshwara Rao, in Tamil she was content to play character roles, such as that of the wife of Veerapandiya Kattabomman' played by Sivaji' Ganesan. She had memorable roles in Ayiram Thalai Vangiya Apoorva Chintamani,' Raja Raja Cholan', Panama Pasama', Kandhan Karunai', Maattukara Velan' and Poova Thalaya' among others. In a career spanning several decades and over 500 films in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada, she acted with all the top stars, including M G R and Jayalalithaa.
In her condolence message, Jayalalithaa recalled fond memories when, as a four year old, her family moved into the house next to that of Varalakshmi. "I used to spend all my time playing in her house and used to be mesmerised by her singing," she said in a press release.
Although she was a successful actor, Varalakshmi, who married the late A L Srinivasan (brother of poet Kannadasan), briefly fell upon hard times, and it was M G R who sought matronly roles for her. Varalakshmi was conferred the Kalaimamani Award and the Kalai Vithagar' Kannadasan award, the latter in 2004."
Her film 'Balraju' was the very first film I saw and still remember her song "O bAlarAjA ". Though she had a very good voice and was trained singer, she did not seem to be lucky (in terms of the number of remembered songs) in the songs offered to her in Telugu. In the 1961 song "navanIta chOruDu ", she more than matches the more popular singer Jikki. Both are available
in oldtelugusongs.
P.S. GollapudiMaruti Rao write up ఎస్.వరలక్ష్మి అస్తమయం
From Eenadu write up by Cheekolu Sundarayya
Obituary from Prajasakti ఆ స్వరం ఇక వినబడదు.. య'స్వర'లక్ష్మికి నివాళులు
P.S. A more recent tribute by Paruchuri Sreenivas సహజ గాయని ఎస్. వరలక్ష్మి with links to a few of her songs.
A photograph from one of her first films with M. S. Subbulakshmi
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Econospeak posts about the green revolution
Norman Borlaug's Death and Did the Green Revolution Succeed in India?:
raise some questions. One of the comments:
"A massive, complex intervention into human and natural systems like the Green Revolution can't be understood even within a 40-year time frame. It should still be seen as an experiment. It has had some undeniable benefits, but the jury is out on its long run net effect. This is especially true for its reliance on pesticides and irrigation."
raise some questions. One of the comments:
"A massive, complex intervention into human and natural systems like the Green Revolution can't be understood even within a 40-year time frame. It should still be seen as an experiment. It has had some undeniable benefits, but the jury is out on its long run net effect. This is especially true for its reliance on pesticides and irrigation."
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Some economics links, Sepember 22
Why The World's Poor Refuse Insurance . Excerpt:
"It might seem logical to partner with established microlenders, yet insurers are finding that their policies as microloan tagalongs come with their own set of problems. In its Pakistan health-care trial, Swiss Re has seen many fewer claims than expected submitted by people receiving insurance as part of a loan. Giné, who has observed similar results in the Philippines, suspects loan officers sweep the added benefit under the rug. Reason? They fear that potential customers will walk if they feel they're paying for something they didn't ask for. So they never know about the coverage they have."
Some recent opinions:
A former head of the Reserve Bank of Australia's research department says in Outside the bubble:
"In an asset price bubble, Gruen points out, investors expecting to earn 15 or 20 per cent returns on their funds are unlikely to be deterred by increases in official interest rates of half a percentage point.
''If you tighten monetary policy early and the bubble keeps growing, what do you do then? You've managed to slow the economy down, unemployment has risen a bit, and the bubble is still growing.
''You can't drive the economy into the ground,'' he says.
The way forward may not be clear, but in the end this physiologist turned macro-economist has a disarmingly modest aspiration for how economics might develop in the wake of the crisis.
''The hope is that the discipline will be invigorated and find the real world interesting again - rather than being stuck in that windowless cabin.''"
From the journalist Mark Wade in Resilient India defies downward trend:
"''The global downturn did not affect India to the same extent as many other countries - for us it has just caused a slowdown,'' says R. Venkatesan, a senior fellow at the Indian Council of Applied Economic Research. ''This is because India overall is not as integrated into the world economy as most other economies in Asia.''
This relative isolation is reflected in India's exports, which accounted for only 15 per cent of gross domestic product in 2008, compared with more than 30 per cent in China.
The nature of the banking sector added another layer of insulation. Most of India's banks are still publicly owned and adopt very conservative investment strategies. India's financial sector had little exposure to the toxic assets that caused so much trouble on international financial markets.
As a result India did not face the systemic shock to its financial system experienced in other parts of the world.
Another unexpected positive has come from the remittances sent home by the large Indian diaspora. An expected slump in this lucrative source of foreign exchange did not materialise.
Economist Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar wrote in the Times of India that remittances from overseas Indians hit a record a record $46.4 billion in 2008-09, up from $43.5 billion the previous year. Swaminathan estimates the 2008-09 flow was worth 4 per cent of GDP."
From a Scientific Advisor to the Economic Studies Directorate at the French Ministry of the Environment A “modest” intellectual discipline:
"Economic knowledge is diffused throughout society and eventually affects the behaviour of economic agents. This in turn alters the working of the economy. Therefore, a model can only be correct if it is consistent with its own feedback effect on how the economy works. An economic theory that does not pass this test may work for a while, but it will turn out to be incorrect as soon as it is widely believed and implemented in the actual plans of firms and consumers. Paradoxically, the only chance for such a theory to be correct is for most people to ignore it.
One example of a consistent theory is the Black-Scholes option pricing model. Upon its introduction, the theory was adopted by market participants to price options, and thus became a correct model of pricing precisely because people knew it. This is so because such a pricing rule is consistent with the “efficient markets” hypothesis, meaning that no profitable arbitrage opportunity is left once the rule is applied. By contrast, any theory of pricing that leaves arbitrage opportunities would instantaneously be defeated by the markets as soon as they believe it. The attempts by participants to make profits by exploiting the arbitrage opportunity would alter prices in a direction that will invalidate the theory."
P.S. Colander's testimony. Is it Models or the Economists? Statement by David Colander has a link to the full testimony before the House Science and Technology Committee.
"It might seem logical to partner with established microlenders, yet insurers are finding that their policies as microloan tagalongs come with their own set of problems. In its Pakistan health-care trial, Swiss Re has seen many fewer claims than expected submitted by people receiving insurance as part of a loan. Giné, who has observed similar results in the Philippines, suspects loan officers sweep the added benefit under the rug. Reason? They fear that potential customers will walk if they feel they're paying for something they didn't ask for. So they never know about the coverage they have."
Some recent opinions:
A former head of the Reserve Bank of Australia's research department says in Outside the bubble:
"In an asset price bubble, Gruen points out, investors expecting to earn 15 or 20 per cent returns on their funds are unlikely to be deterred by increases in official interest rates of half a percentage point.
''If you tighten monetary policy early and the bubble keeps growing, what do you do then? You've managed to slow the economy down, unemployment has risen a bit, and the bubble is still growing.
''You can't drive the economy into the ground,'' he says.
The way forward may not be clear, but in the end this physiologist turned macro-economist has a disarmingly modest aspiration for how economics might develop in the wake of the crisis.
''The hope is that the discipline will be invigorated and find the real world interesting again - rather than being stuck in that windowless cabin.''"
From the journalist Mark Wade in Resilient India defies downward trend:
"''The global downturn did not affect India to the same extent as many other countries - for us it has just caused a slowdown,'' says R. Venkatesan, a senior fellow at the Indian Council of Applied Economic Research. ''This is because India overall is not as integrated into the world economy as most other economies in Asia.''
This relative isolation is reflected in India's exports, which accounted for only 15 per cent of gross domestic product in 2008, compared with more than 30 per cent in China.
The nature of the banking sector added another layer of insulation. Most of India's banks are still publicly owned and adopt very conservative investment strategies. India's financial sector had little exposure to the toxic assets that caused so much trouble on international financial markets.
As a result India did not face the systemic shock to its financial system experienced in other parts of the world.
Another unexpected positive has come from the remittances sent home by the large Indian diaspora. An expected slump in this lucrative source of foreign exchange did not materialise.
Economist Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar wrote in the Times of India that remittances from overseas Indians hit a record a record $46.4 billion in 2008-09, up from $43.5 billion the previous year. Swaminathan estimates the 2008-09 flow was worth 4 per cent of GDP."
From a Scientific Advisor to the Economic Studies Directorate at the French Ministry of the Environment A “modest” intellectual discipline:
"Economic knowledge is diffused throughout society and eventually affects the behaviour of economic agents. This in turn alters the working of the economy. Therefore, a model can only be correct if it is consistent with its own feedback effect on how the economy works. An economic theory that does not pass this test may work for a while, but it will turn out to be incorrect as soon as it is widely believed and implemented in the actual plans of firms and consumers. Paradoxically, the only chance for such a theory to be correct is for most people to ignore it.
One example of a consistent theory is the Black-Scholes option pricing model. Upon its introduction, the theory was adopted by market participants to price options, and thus became a correct model of pricing precisely because people knew it. This is so because such a pricing rule is consistent with the “efficient markets” hypothesis, meaning that no profitable arbitrage opportunity is left once the rule is applied. By contrast, any theory of pricing that leaves arbitrage opportunities would instantaneously be defeated by the markets as soon as they believe it. The attempts by participants to make profits by exploiting the arbitrage opportunity would alter prices in a direction that will invalidate the theory."
P.S. Colander's testimony. Is it Models or the Economists? Statement by David Colander has a link to the full testimony before the House Science and Technology Committee.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
A brain boosting video game
Tetris is FOR KIDS: A brain-boosting video game says Science News.
For another interesting piece of information about kids, see What do children remember from a museum? in Marginal Revolution.
For another interesting piece of information about kids, see What do children remember from a museum? in Marginal Revolution.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
From an old article on development
The Ideology of Philonthrophy :
"The ideology of the dominant developmental theory stands in clear relief in Latin America. Bodenheimer writes how the theory devalues the importance of class differences, thereby practically eliminating the problem of stratified power relationships. An analysis of the problems of Latin America that ignores the importance and implications of widening social-class differences is, to put it generously, myopic. But because the theory is dedicated to the concepts of order and stability, and because class conflicts invariably threaten these, the dominant theory is ill-equipped to raise the possibility that only a radical reorganization of existing social relations can lead to meaningful development. Instead, the theory "projects a pious hope that development can be achieved without paying the high cost of removing the social and economic obstacles, that the impoverished masses can somehow be upgraded without infringing on the interests of the established elites." 82 Such an attempt is consistent with the foundations' sincere efforts to alleviate the misery of the masses through gradual, ameliorative reform, while at the same time leaving society's direction -- at home and abroad -- in the hands of a carefully nurtured elite.
DiBona's study of the impact of Western development theory in India reaches similar conclusions. 83 He notes the influence on Indian educational planning of the American economists of the human resource school, particularly Schultz, Harbison, Myers, Denison, Anderson, and Bowman. Their emphasis on the training of high-level manpower for developmental purposes has influenced Indian economists to argue in favor of generous funding for institutions of higher learning. Because of the scarcity of resources available in the Indian economy, however, this emphasis on higher education has led to reduced levels of support for primary education, particularly in rural areas. The vast majority of Indians, of Course, are village dwellers. The increasing proportion of educational expenditures on higher education -- which is generally available exclusively in urban areas -- only widens the gap between the urban elites and the rural peasantry.
An increasing number of commentators have raised questions about the direction of conventional developmental theory, its efficacy, and its impact on traditional societies. Ford Foundation vice-president Francis Sutton has noted the inability of this theory and of existing Western social science to address the problems faced by most developing countries, particularly the establishment of "governments that have extensive control over their economies and are broadly socialist in character." 84 Former Secretary of State Kissinger, in discussing the overthrow of the regime of the Shah of Iran, recently alluded to a problem of conventional development theory. "The enlightened view," he said, "was that there was a sort of automatic stabilising factor in economic development. That has turned out to be clearly wrong." "
"The ideology of the dominant developmental theory stands in clear relief in Latin America. Bodenheimer writes how the theory devalues the importance of class differences, thereby practically eliminating the problem of stratified power relationships. An analysis of the problems of Latin America that ignores the importance and implications of widening social-class differences is, to put it generously, myopic. But because the theory is dedicated to the concepts of order and stability, and because class conflicts invariably threaten these, the dominant theory is ill-equipped to raise the possibility that only a radical reorganization of existing social relations can lead to meaningful development. Instead, the theory "projects a pious hope that development can be achieved without paying the high cost of removing the social and economic obstacles, that the impoverished masses can somehow be upgraded without infringing on the interests of the established elites." 82 Such an attempt is consistent with the foundations' sincere efforts to alleviate the misery of the masses through gradual, ameliorative reform, while at the same time leaving society's direction -- at home and abroad -- in the hands of a carefully nurtured elite.
DiBona's study of the impact of Western development theory in India reaches similar conclusions. 83 He notes the influence on Indian educational planning of the American economists of the human resource school, particularly Schultz, Harbison, Myers, Denison, Anderson, and Bowman. Their emphasis on the training of high-level manpower for developmental purposes has influenced Indian economists to argue in favor of generous funding for institutions of higher learning. Because of the scarcity of resources available in the Indian economy, however, this emphasis on higher education has led to reduced levels of support for primary education, particularly in rural areas. The vast majority of Indians, of Course, are village dwellers. The increasing proportion of educational expenditures on higher education -- which is generally available exclusively in urban areas -- only widens the gap between the urban elites and the rural peasantry.
An increasing number of commentators have raised questions about the direction of conventional developmental theory, its efficacy, and its impact on traditional societies. Ford Foundation vice-president Francis Sutton has noted the inability of this theory and of existing Western social science to address the problems faced by most developing countries, particularly the establishment of "governments that have extensive control over their economies and are broadly socialist in character." 84 Former Secretary of State Kissinger, in discussing the overthrow of the regime of the Shah of Iran, recently alluded to a problem of conventional development theory. "The enlightened view," he said, "was that there was a sort of automatic stabilising factor in economic development. That has turned out to be clearly wrong." "
In the zone
From an interview with Virender Sehwag 'I've never been in the zone' :
"What about being in the zone? Tendulkar said that what people call the zone, he calls the subconscious mind. "… All you need to do is look at the ball and play and the body is going to react. The concentration is such that you don't think of anything else." What's your definition of being in the zone?
I have asked him many times what the zone is. He tells me that's when "I see nothing except the ball". I ask how that is possible. I have never felt something like that. I have asked Rahul Dravid the same thing. He says sometimes when he is in really good form, he sees only the ball - and not the sightscreen, the non-striker, the umpire or who is bowling, he just sees only the ball. But I have never entered that zone even if I've scored triple-centuries twice. Maybe I will enter that zone they talk about in future.
Perhaps you are always in the zone?
You can say that, maybe. Perhaps the definition of zone is different for me. They have both experienced what I have never experienced. Right from the time I was growing up there would be people moving along the sightscreen, but I would never get distracted. But if somebody shouts and says there is someone near the sightscreen then I will stop and move the guy. "
"What about being in the zone? Tendulkar said that what people call the zone, he calls the subconscious mind. "… All you need to do is look at the ball and play and the body is going to react. The concentration is such that you don't think of anything else." What's your definition of being in the zone?
I have asked him many times what the zone is. He tells me that's when "I see nothing except the ball". I ask how that is possible. I have never felt something like that. I have asked Rahul Dravid the same thing. He says sometimes when he is in really good form, he sees only the ball - and not the sightscreen, the non-striker, the umpire or who is bowling, he just sees only the ball. But I have never entered that zone even if I've scored triple-centuries twice. Maybe I will enter that zone they talk about in future.
Perhaps you are always in the zone?
You can say that, maybe. Perhaps the definition of zone is different for me. They have both experienced what I have never experienced. Right from the time I was growing up there would be people moving along the sightscreen, but I would never get distracted. But if somebody shouts and says there is someone near the sightscreen then I will stop and move the guy. "
Another Telugu film song
with nice lyrics cheMgula ala mIda by Malladi Ramakrishna Sastry is available from the oldtelugusongs site. The lyrics:
"చెంగున అలమీద మిడిసి పోతది మీను
చినవాడు ఎదురైతే మరచీ పొతవు మేను
కాదంటావా చినదానా
వల్లమాలిన మమత కమ్మతెమ్మెర లాగ
కమ్ముకున్నది నిన్ను చినదానా
సమ్మతైన వాడు సరసనే ఉన్నాడు
పల్లకుంటావేలే చినదానా
చినికిన చినుకెల్ల మంచి ముత్యము కాదు
మెరిసిన మెరుపులో లేత వెన్నెల లేదు
అందని చందమామ కోసమని
ఆశాశ పడినావె చినదానా నీవు
అల్లాడి పోయినావే చినదానా
చివురంటి వయసున చక్కని జీవితాన
చివరకు మిగిలింది చీకటేనా
చినదానా కారు చీకటేనా"
పుస్తకము (vina vedula, Malladi's film songs, published by RK Books, Nallakunta, Hyderabad, 2005)లో 'పల్లకుంటావేలే' బదులు 'వల్లకుంటావేలే' ఉన్నది. ణేను మొదటి
మాట యుక్తమనుకుంటున్నాను.
There is a translation here:
http://www.crazyfinger.org/2006/09/chengoona-ala-m.html
but I thnk that crazyfinger misinterpreted some words.
"చెంగున అలమీద మిడిసి పోతది మీను
చినవాడు ఎదురైతే మరచీ పొతవు మేను
కాదంటావా చినదానా
వల్లమాలిన మమత కమ్మతెమ్మెర లాగ
కమ్ముకున్నది నిన్ను చినదానా
సమ్మతైన వాడు సరసనే ఉన్నాడు
పల్లకుంటావేలే చినదానా
చినికిన చినుకెల్ల మంచి ముత్యము కాదు
మెరిసిన మెరుపులో లేత వెన్నెల లేదు
అందని చందమామ కోసమని
ఆశాశ పడినావె చినదానా నీవు
అల్లాడి పోయినావే చినదానా
చివురంటి వయసున చక్కని జీవితాన
చివరకు మిగిలింది చీకటేనా
చినదానా కారు చీకటేనా"
పుస్తకము (vina vedula, Malladi's film songs, published by RK Books, Nallakunta, Hyderabad, 2005)లో 'పల్లకుంటావేలే' బదులు 'వల్లకుంటావేలే' ఉన్నది. ణేను మొదటి
మాట యుక్తమనుకుంటున్నాను.
There is a translation here:
http://www.crazyfinger.org/2006/09/chengoona-ala-m.html
but I thnk that crazyfinger misinterpreted some words.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Jashuva children poems sung by Ghantasala
గుర్రం జాషువా పాపాయి పద్యాలు: విష్ణుభొట్ల లక్ష్మన్న .
Some more moving lines about children in a different context by Jashua: స్మశాన వాటిక :
"ఆలోకించిన గుండియల్గరగు; నాయా పిల్లగోరీలలో
నేలేబుగ్గల సౌరు రూపరియెనో! యేముద్దు నిద్రించెనో!
యే లీలావతి గర్భగోళమున వహ్నిజ్వాల జీవించునో?
యీ లొకంబున వ్రిద్ధిగాదగిన యేయే విద్యలల్లాడునో?"
Some more moving lines about children in a different context by Jashua: స్మశాన వాటిక :
"ఆలోకించిన గుండియల్గరగు; నాయా పిల్లగోరీలలో
నేలేబుగ్గల సౌరు రూపరియెనో! యేముద్దు నిద్రించెనో!
యే లీలావతి గర్భగోళమున వహ్నిజ్వాల జీవించునో?
యీ లొకంబున వ్రిద్ధిగాదగిన యేయే విద్యలల్లాడునో?"
Interviews with Murray Gell-Mann
Discover Interview The Man Who Found Quarks and Made Sense of the Universe (via 3quarksdaily). Excerpts:
"Then how did you settle on physics?
After my father gave up on engineering, he said, ‘How about we compromise and go with physics? General relativity, quantum mechanics, you will love it.’ I thought I would give my father’s advice a try. I don’t know why. I never took his advice on anything else. He told me how beautiful physics would be if I stuck with it, and that notion of beauty impressed me. My father studied those things. He was a great admirer of Einstein. He would lock himself in his room and study general relativity. He never really understood it. My opinion is that you have to despise something like that to get good at it.
Why is that?
If you admire it sufficiently, you’ll be in awe of it, so you’ll never learn it. My father thought it must be very hard, and it will take years to understand it, and only a few people understand it, and so on. But I had a wonderful teacher at Yale, Henry Margenau, who took the opposite attitude. He thought relativity was for everybody. Just learn the math. He’d say, “We’ll prepare the math on Tuesday and Thursday, and we’ll cover general relativity on Saturday and next Tuesday.” And he was right. It isn’t that bad.
You’ve known some of the greatest physicists in history. Whom do you put on the highest pedestal?
I don’t put people on pedestals very much, especially not physicists. Feynman [who won a 1965 Nobel for his work in particle physics] was pretty good, although not as good as he thought he was. He was too self-absorbed and spent a huge amount of energy generating anecdotes about himself. Fermi [who developed the first nuclear reactor] was good, but again with limitations—every now and then he was wrong. I didn’t know anybody without some limitations in my field of theoretical physics.
......
When you think about people like Feynman or Einstein or some of the other physics legends, do you think of them as geniuses? Is there such a thing?
Einstein was very special—I mean, creating that theory, general relativity [which describes gravity as a product of the geometry of space and time]. To do it today or to do it 34 years ago would be striking, remarkable, an utterly remarkable achievement. But to do it when he did, in 1915, that’s just unbelievable.
When you were at the Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein was also there, although he was near the end of his life. Were you able to absorb anything from him?
I could have. I could have made an appointment with his secretary, the formidable Helen Dukas, and gone in and talked with him. I could have asked him some questions about the old days. If it were today I would do it in a moment. But all I could see then was that he was past it. He didn’t believe in quantum mechanics, didn’t know about the particles that we were studying. And he didn’t know about this and that. If I showed him what I was doing, he wouldn’t make anything of it. And if he showed me what he was doing, I wouldn’t believe it. So I didn’t do anything. I would say: “Hello. Good morning.” And he would say, “Guten morning.” That was about it."
Another interview in Science News also discusses his views on linguistics Interview: Murray Gell-Mann . Further discussion and comments in The Holy Patron of String Theory and its Holy Grail (Not Even Wrong) and Murray Gell-Mann: 80th birthday and interview (The Reference Frame). The later has links to news of several other important physicists.
P.S. More from Edge.
"Then how did you settle on physics?
After my father gave up on engineering, he said, ‘How about we compromise and go with physics? General relativity, quantum mechanics, you will love it.’ I thought I would give my father’s advice a try. I don’t know why. I never took his advice on anything else. He told me how beautiful physics would be if I stuck with it, and that notion of beauty impressed me. My father studied those things. He was a great admirer of Einstein. He would lock himself in his room and study general relativity. He never really understood it. My opinion is that you have to despise something like that to get good at it.
Why is that?
If you admire it sufficiently, you’ll be in awe of it, so you’ll never learn it. My father thought it must be very hard, and it will take years to understand it, and only a few people understand it, and so on. But I had a wonderful teacher at Yale, Henry Margenau, who took the opposite attitude. He thought relativity was for everybody. Just learn the math. He’d say, “We’ll prepare the math on Tuesday and Thursday, and we’ll cover general relativity on Saturday and next Tuesday.” And he was right. It isn’t that bad.
You’ve known some of the greatest physicists in history. Whom do you put on the highest pedestal?
I don’t put people on pedestals very much, especially not physicists. Feynman [who won a 1965 Nobel for his work in particle physics] was pretty good, although not as good as he thought he was. He was too self-absorbed and spent a huge amount of energy generating anecdotes about himself. Fermi [who developed the first nuclear reactor] was good, but again with limitations—every now and then he was wrong. I didn’t know anybody without some limitations in my field of theoretical physics.
......
When you think about people like Feynman or Einstein or some of the other physics legends, do you think of them as geniuses? Is there such a thing?
Einstein was very special—I mean, creating that theory, general relativity [which describes gravity as a product of the geometry of space and time]. To do it today or to do it 34 years ago would be striking, remarkable, an utterly remarkable achievement. But to do it when he did, in 1915, that’s just unbelievable.
When you were at the Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein was also there, although he was near the end of his life. Were you able to absorb anything from him?
I could have. I could have made an appointment with his secretary, the formidable Helen Dukas, and gone in and talked with him. I could have asked him some questions about the old days. If it were today I would do it in a moment. But all I could see then was that he was past it. He didn’t believe in quantum mechanics, didn’t know about the particles that we were studying. And he didn’t know about this and that. If I showed him what I was doing, he wouldn’t make anything of it. And if he showed me what he was doing, I wouldn’t believe it. So I didn’t do anything. I would say: “Hello. Good morning.” And he would say, “Guten morning.” That was about it."
Another interview in Science News also discusses his views on linguistics Interview: Murray Gell-Mann . Further discussion and comments in The Holy Patron of String Theory and its Holy Grail (Not Even Wrong) and Murray Gell-Mann: 80th birthday and interview (The Reference Frame). The later has links to news of several other important physicists.
P.S. More from Edge.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
More on foreign students in Australia
Just beginning to make it to the local papers in MelbourneMelbourne attack reignites Indians' fears and Video from NDTV Yet another attack on Indian s in Australia
Raid discovers 37 students in Qld house
Raid discovers 37 students in Qld house
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
Minsky on capitalism
From Boston Globe Why capitalism fails:
"By the end of the 20th century, the financial system that Minsky had warned about had materialized, complete with speculative borrowers, Ponzi borrowers, and precious few of the conservative borrowers who were the bedrock of a truly stable economy. Over decades, we really had forgotten the meaning of risk. When storied financial firms started to fall, sending shockwaves through the “real” economy, his predictions started to look a lot like a road map.
“This wasn’t a Minsky moment,” explains Randall Wray. “It was a Minsky half-century.”
................
To prevent the Minsky moment from becoming a national calamity, part of his solution (which was shared with other economists) was to have the Federal Reserve - what he liked to call the “Big Bank” - step into the breach and act as a lender of last resort to firms under siege. By throwing lines of liquidity to foundering firms, the Federal Reserve could break the cycle and stabilize the financial system. It failed to do so during the Great Depression, when it stood by and let a banking crisis spiral out of control. This time, under the leadership of Ben Bernanke - like Minsky, a scholar of the Depression - it took a very different approach, becoming a lender of last resort to everything from hedge funds to investment banks to money market funds.
Minsky’s other solution, however, was considerably more radical and less palatable politically. The preferred mainstream tactic for pulling the economy out of a crisis was - and is - based on the Keynesian notion of “priming the pump” by sending money that will employ lots of high-skilled, unionized labor - by building a new high-speed train line, for example.
Minsky, however, argued for a “bubble-up” approach, sending money to the poor and unskilled first. The government - or what he liked to call “Big Government” - should become the “employer of last resort,” he said, offering a job to anyone who wanted one at a set minimum wage. It would be paid to workers who would supply child care, clean streets, and provide services that would give taxpayers a visible return on their dollars. In being available to everyone, it would be even more ambitious than the New Deal, sharply reducing the welfare rolls by guaranteeing a job for anyone who was able to work. Such a program would not only help the poor and unskilled, he believed, but would put a floor beneath everyone else’s wages too, preventing salaries of more skilled workers from falling too precipitously, and sending benefits up the socioeconomic ladder.
While economists may be acknowledging some of Minsky’s points on financial instability, it’s safe to say that even liberal policymakers are still a long way from thinking about such an expanded role for the American government. If nothing else, an expensive full-employment program would veer far too close to socialism for the comfort of politicians. For his part, Wray thinks that the critics are apt to misunderstand Minsky. “He saw these ideas as perfectly consistent with capitalism,” says Wray. “They would make capitalism better.”
But not perfect. Indeed, if there’s anything to be drawn from Minsky’s collected work, it’s that perfection, like stability and equilibrium, are mirages. Minsky did not share his profession’s quaint belief that everything could be reduced to a tidy model, or a pat theory. His was a kind of existential economics: capitalism, like life itself, is difficult, even tragic. “There is no simple answer to the problems of our capitalism,” wrote Minsky. “There is no solution that can be transformed into a catchy phrase and carried on banners.”"
But A Year Later, Little Change on Wall St. and Economic Donkeys
P.S. A discussion of the article in Economist's view Who Has All the Answers? with a strange comment by Mark Thoma "We don't know, and until we do, I will continue to use the model I think gives the best answer to the question being asked."
Another discussion in The Big Picture (American)
"By the end of the 20th century, the financial system that Minsky had warned about had materialized, complete with speculative borrowers, Ponzi borrowers, and precious few of the conservative borrowers who were the bedrock of a truly stable economy. Over decades, we really had forgotten the meaning of risk. When storied financial firms started to fall, sending shockwaves through the “real” economy, his predictions started to look a lot like a road map.
“This wasn’t a Minsky moment,” explains Randall Wray. “It was a Minsky half-century.”
................
To prevent the Minsky moment from becoming a national calamity, part of his solution (which was shared with other economists) was to have the Federal Reserve - what he liked to call the “Big Bank” - step into the breach and act as a lender of last resort to firms under siege. By throwing lines of liquidity to foundering firms, the Federal Reserve could break the cycle and stabilize the financial system. It failed to do so during the Great Depression, when it stood by and let a banking crisis spiral out of control. This time, under the leadership of Ben Bernanke - like Minsky, a scholar of the Depression - it took a very different approach, becoming a lender of last resort to everything from hedge funds to investment banks to money market funds.
Minsky’s other solution, however, was considerably more radical and less palatable politically. The preferred mainstream tactic for pulling the economy out of a crisis was - and is - based on the Keynesian notion of “priming the pump” by sending money that will employ lots of high-skilled, unionized labor - by building a new high-speed train line, for example.
Minsky, however, argued for a “bubble-up” approach, sending money to the poor and unskilled first. The government - or what he liked to call “Big Government” - should become the “employer of last resort,” he said, offering a job to anyone who wanted one at a set minimum wage. It would be paid to workers who would supply child care, clean streets, and provide services that would give taxpayers a visible return on their dollars. In being available to everyone, it would be even more ambitious than the New Deal, sharply reducing the welfare rolls by guaranteeing a job for anyone who was able to work. Such a program would not only help the poor and unskilled, he believed, but would put a floor beneath everyone else’s wages too, preventing salaries of more skilled workers from falling too precipitously, and sending benefits up the socioeconomic ladder.
While economists may be acknowledging some of Minsky’s points on financial instability, it’s safe to say that even liberal policymakers are still a long way from thinking about such an expanded role for the American government. If nothing else, an expensive full-employment program would veer far too close to socialism for the comfort of politicians. For his part, Wray thinks that the critics are apt to misunderstand Minsky. “He saw these ideas as perfectly consistent with capitalism,” says Wray. “They would make capitalism better.”
But not perfect. Indeed, if there’s anything to be drawn from Minsky’s collected work, it’s that perfection, like stability and equilibrium, are mirages. Minsky did not share his profession’s quaint belief that everything could be reduced to a tidy model, or a pat theory. His was a kind of existential economics: capitalism, like life itself, is difficult, even tragic. “There is no simple answer to the problems of our capitalism,” wrote Minsky. “There is no solution that can be transformed into a catchy phrase and carried on banners.”"
But A Year Later, Little Change on Wall St. and Economic Donkeys
P.S. A discussion of the article in Economist's view Who Has All the Answers? with a strange comment by Mark Thoma "We don't know, and until we do, I will continue to use the model I think gives the best answer to the question being asked."
Another discussion in The Big Picture (American)
More on online courses
College for $99 a Month says "The next generation of online education could be great for students—and catastrophic for universities." (via 3quarksdaily).
Abi has more links and excerpts in Annals of online education and says:
"Key take-aways:
internet will do to universities what they have already done to newspapers -- either decimate them or make their (commercial) life miserable.
these are early days, so expect a lot of experiments [I especially like the comparison -- I don't recall where I saw it -- with TV's early days when radio programs were beamed with a picture]."
Abi has more links and excerpts in Annals of online education and says:
"Key take-aways:
internet will do to universities what they have already done to newspapers -- either decimate them or make their (commercial) life miserable.
these are early days, so expect a lot of experiments [I especially like the comparison -- I don't recall where I saw it -- with TV's early days when radio programs were beamed with a picture]."
Saturday, September 12, 2009
A comment on 'sumatisatakam'
From the introduction to Colonial Lists, Indian Power by Michael Katten (available online):
"Long before a postcolonial, centralized Indian bureaucratic state arrogated to itself controls over the allowable uses of specific labels referring to groups in society, the Sumati Satakam and those who recited it changed the ways they depicted various sectors of that society. A number of the verses of the Satakam are not used today because they stereotype and denigrate a variety of Telugu játi communities. But the changes in a few particular verses, prior to the relatively recent center-imposed censoring, indicate the power of category and identity formation, and the ways in which epistemologies of játi in society were subject to changes introduced from below.
అల్లుని మంచి తనంబును
గొల్లని సాహిత్య విద్య,కోమలి నిజముం
పొల్లున దంచిన బియ్యము
తెల్లని కాకులును లేవు తెలియర సుమతీ
A good son-in-law,
A learned Golla, a truthful woman,
Rice produced by pounding the paddy husk alone,
A white crow: the wise person knows there are no such things.
This is the verse as it has been printed in the late twentieth century, amid what has become a standard ordering of the verses, and fairly consistent versions of each. But examination of a number of palm-leaf versions reveals that earlier versions of this particular verse used (Kómati, a játi name) instead of (kómali, "woman"), almost exclusively. The substitution of "woman" for a játi group name indicates the lack of control a dominant sector of society (Bráhmans)–certainly of literary society–had over the use of categories. In other verses we see such changes as the substitution of the phrase "bad person" for "Sudra" and ఖలునకు ("bad man") for (Velama, another játi name), as later versions of the Satakam were produced.
Of course, one counterpoint to this interpretation has been that ("Golla") is still in the verse. Bráhmans and those who continue to recite this verse explain that "Golla" no longer refers to the group that may have at one time lived as shepherds, but instead means someone who is a dullard–"golla" with a lowercase "g." In fact, the use of that word in this verse is now being contested in contemporary society, to the extent that the verse cannot be freely cited. The removal of "Kómati" early on (in the version cited here, and certainly by the beginning of the twentieth century) shows that meanings applied to terms referring to groups were becoming closed. This reflected the fact that labeling for communities had become a source of empowerment for those groups who sought to be referred to in particular ways, including those instances of the use of játi names. That there were political and power valences to the terms meant that those terms would no longer be open for use as disparaging labels in general. This is exactly the reason for the importance of categories that I will try to show throughout this work. It is also the reason that categories, and group identity in particular, are so important in our being able to see the flow of power from all sectors in society, while it is not usually evident in overt forms such as the records and other printed texts."
In one more note about this verse, here it is significant that "woman" can be substituted for a játi group name. This is consistent with Chatterjee and Mani (women became markers for control by men over the cultural domain), but mostly it reveals the general intent and structure of this verse genre. The Sumati Satakam is a means of reinscribing control over society in general. As a text of this sort it is one item in the larger set of discursive media available to Bráhmans. It is a normative text. And it performs its normativizing function through its existence as a satakam (a "traditional" literary form), and by locating–reifying the categories relating to–those whom Bráhman males, and other dominant groups who might recite such a work, would choose to contain. The changes in the text, including that of "woman" for Kómati or "bad man" for Velama, very likely represent the assertion of the power of the articulation of categories–játis–that made certain terms no longer available for use in such a set of signifying verses. Alternatively, Gollas as a group had not yet reached the point of being able to assert játi in the same way. So the printed twentieth-century versions of the Sumati Satakam represent intermediate steps in this particular reflection of changing epistemologies."
"Long before a postcolonial, centralized Indian bureaucratic state arrogated to itself controls over the allowable uses of specific labels referring to groups in society, the Sumati Satakam and those who recited it changed the ways they depicted various sectors of that society. A number of the verses of the Satakam are not used today because they stereotype and denigrate a variety of Telugu játi communities. But the changes in a few particular verses, prior to the relatively recent center-imposed censoring, indicate the power of category and identity formation, and the ways in which epistemologies of játi in society were subject to changes introduced from below.
అల్లుని మంచి తనంబును
గొల్లని సాహిత్య విద్య,కోమలి నిజముం
పొల్లున దంచిన బియ్యము
తెల్లని కాకులును లేవు తెలియర సుమతీ
A good son-in-law,
A learned Golla, a truthful woman,
Rice produced by pounding the paddy husk alone,
A white crow: the wise person knows there are no such things.
This is the verse as it has been printed in the late twentieth century, amid what has become a standard ordering of the verses, and fairly consistent versions of each. But examination of a number of palm-leaf versions reveals that earlier versions of this particular verse used (Kómati, a játi name) instead of (kómali, "woman"), almost exclusively. The substitution of "woman" for a játi group name indicates the lack of control a dominant sector of society (Bráhmans)–certainly of literary society–had over the use of categories. In other verses we see such changes as the substitution of the phrase "bad person" for "Sudra" and ఖలునకు ("bad man") for (Velama, another játi name), as later versions of the Satakam were produced.
Of course, one counterpoint to this interpretation has been that ("Golla") is still in the verse. Bráhmans and those who continue to recite this verse explain that "Golla" no longer refers to the group that may have at one time lived as shepherds, but instead means someone who is a dullard–"golla" with a lowercase "g." In fact, the use of that word in this verse is now being contested in contemporary society, to the extent that the verse cannot be freely cited. The removal of "Kómati" early on (in the version cited here, and certainly by the beginning of the twentieth century) shows that meanings applied to terms referring to groups were becoming closed. This reflected the fact that labeling for communities had become a source of empowerment for those groups who sought to be referred to in particular ways, including those instances of the use of játi names. That there were political and power valences to the terms meant that those terms would no longer be open for use as disparaging labels in general. This is exactly the reason for the importance of categories that I will try to show throughout this work. It is also the reason that categories, and group identity in particular, are so important in our being able to see the flow of power from all sectors in society, while it is not usually evident in overt forms such as the records and other printed texts."
In one more note about this verse, here it is significant that "woman" can be substituted for a játi group name. This is consistent with Chatterjee and Mani (women became markers for control by men over the cultural domain), but mostly it reveals the general intent and structure of this verse genre. The Sumati Satakam is a means of reinscribing control over society in general. As a text of this sort it is one item in the larger set of discursive media available to Bráhmans. It is a normative text. And it performs its normativizing function through its existence as a satakam (a "traditional" literary form), and by locating–reifying the categories relating to–those whom Bráhman males, and other dominant groups who might recite such a work, would choose to contain. The changes in the text, including that of "woman" for Kómati or "bad man" for Velama, very likely represent the assertion of the power of the articulation of categories–játis–that made certain terms no longer available for use in such a set of signifying verses. Alternatively, Gollas as a group had not yet reached the point of being able to assert játi in the same way. So the printed twentieth-century versions of the Sumati Satakam represent intermediate steps in this particular reflection of changing epistemologies."
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Articles on financial services to the poor
From Debunking Myths about the Poor and Financial Services by Suyash Rai and Sona Varma ( via India Development Blog):
"The poor are not sophisticated in using financial services, so access to finance may end up damaging their livelihoods: On the contrary, research on the use of financial services by the poor shows that given the complexity in their financial lives, the poor are very sophisticated in their use of financial instruments. Due to the absence of well-designed formal services, they end up creating a complex mesh of informal financial mechanisms around their lives. It seems this is the only way they can meet multiple needs using informal instruments. For example, financial diaries of the poor show how they creatively use a variety of loan sources to deal with the irregularity in their incomes and expenditures. Research also shows quite convincingly that on an average the chronic poor, i.e. those who fail to move out of poverty, do take initiatives to change their conditions. Failure to move out of poverty is primarily because of lack of access to capital and relevant networks. The recent evaluation of a micro credit program in India shows how entrepreneurial households consistently use credit to start successful new businesses or improve the profitability of existing businesses."
Chris BlattmanThe main problem with living on $2 a day…:
"The central finding: cash management is even more important for the poor than it is for you and me. Every household had both savings and debt, and often those savings and debt were scattered about 4 or 5 or 10 different people and places. They spread out their risk. This built a portfolio of the poor.
Unfortunately, they’re miserable about it. Informal financial obligations are unpleasant and insecure, but the poor don’t have any alternative.
This raises an important point: people value microfinance even if it doesn’t lead to rising incomes and development (like some recent evidence might suggest). They like it because microfinance helps them manage their day to day cash problems without the messy social obligations or discomfit. They want their financial intermediation to be impersonal.
It’s a nice point, convincingly made."
Brief summaries with links some micro finance studies by Duflo, Banerjee et all( a study from the slums of Hyderabad), Karlan and Zinman ( a study in Philippines)and an article by Dennis Rodman on self help groups are in these two posts from India Development Blog:
Apples and Jackfruit?
New Light for SHGs?
"The poor are not sophisticated in using financial services, so access to finance may end up damaging their livelihoods: On the contrary, research on the use of financial services by the poor shows that given the complexity in their financial lives, the poor are very sophisticated in their use of financial instruments. Due to the absence of well-designed formal services, they end up creating a complex mesh of informal financial mechanisms around their lives. It seems this is the only way they can meet multiple needs using informal instruments. For example, financial diaries of the poor show how they creatively use a variety of loan sources to deal with the irregularity in their incomes and expenditures. Research also shows quite convincingly that on an average the chronic poor, i.e. those who fail to move out of poverty, do take initiatives to change their conditions. Failure to move out of poverty is primarily because of lack of access to capital and relevant networks. The recent evaluation of a micro credit program in India shows how entrepreneurial households consistently use credit to start successful new businesses or improve the profitability of existing businesses."
Chris BlattmanThe main problem with living on $2 a day…:
"The central finding: cash management is even more important for the poor than it is for you and me. Every household had both savings and debt, and often those savings and debt were scattered about 4 or 5 or 10 different people and places. They spread out their risk. This built a portfolio of the poor.
Unfortunately, they’re miserable about it. Informal financial obligations are unpleasant and insecure, but the poor don’t have any alternative.
This raises an important point: people value microfinance even if it doesn’t lead to rising incomes and development (like some recent evidence might suggest). They like it because microfinance helps them manage their day to day cash problems without the messy social obligations or discomfit. They want their financial intermediation to be impersonal.
It’s a nice point, convincingly made."
Brief summaries with links some micro finance studies by Duflo, Banerjee et all( a study from the slums of Hyderabad), Karlan and Zinman ( a study in Philippines)and an article by Dennis Rodman on self help groups are in these two posts from India Development Blog:
Apples and Jackfruit?
New Light for SHGs?
Pallavi Aiyar on India and China
Interview and links here:Smoke and Mirrors: China and India. One of the links has links to excepts from her book :SMOKE & MIRRORS WINS THE VODAFONE CROSSWORD POPULAR BOOK AWARD, 2008.
An article in Asia TimesIn the men's room, China leaves India standing and a longer article:India' Untouchables and China's Internal Migrants.
From :China through Indian eyes:
"But were I one of the millions-strong legions of cleaners, sweepers, janitors or night soil workers in India, I would probably prefer by some twist of karma to have been born Chinese.
But on other days I felt differently. There were days when I spent hours hunting for a Chinese source amongst the country’s think tanks, universities and research institutes for fresh insight or an alternative point of view on an issue for a story I had been working on. It was always such dishearteningly hard work."
An article in Asia TimesIn the men's room, China leaves India standing and a longer article:India' Untouchables and China's Internal Migrants.
From :China through Indian eyes:
"But were I one of the millions-strong legions of cleaners, sweepers, janitors or night soil workers in India, I would probably prefer by some twist of karma to have been born Chinese.
But on other days I felt differently. There were days when I spent hours hunting for a Chinese source amongst the country’s think tanks, universities and research institutes for fresh insight or an alternative point of view on an issue for a story I had been working on. It was always such dishearteningly hard work."
Monday, September 07, 2009
SRI in Tiruchi
From System of rice intensification technique boosts paddy yield :
"The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has helped farmers in Tiruchi district to cope with an unreliable monsoon and shortage of farm labour, according to the district administration.
Speaking to The Hindu, District Collector T. Soundiah said the production cost of paddy under the new cultivation technique is in the range of Rs.2,000-3,000 a hectare, whereas it is close to Rs.10,000 under traditional cultivation methods. Where traditional methods of paddy cultivation yielded about two tonnes of paddy a hectare, under SRI farmers are able to get up to 6.7 tonnes a hectare.
The use of SRI is spreading in Tiruchi: the technique is being successfully implemented here on 20,000 ha out of a total of 70,000 ha under cultivation, according to data provided by the district administration.
“For many farmers, this has meant an additional income of Rs.25,000-30,000 per acre,” according to S. Sivaraj, Deputy Director, Agriculture, Central Government Schemes.
The SRI helps economise on resources use while maximising the yield.
“It requires a high level of farmland manure and a minimum quantity of seeds,” Mr. Sivaraj said. Only 2 kg of seeds were required per acre. The minimum age of seedlings would be eight to 12 days.
“Other important factors include wider spacing between seedlings and the use of the Cono-Weeder four times during the crop cycle,” Mr. Sivaraj said. Most important, SRI requires minimal use of water, according to Mr. Soundiah.
“The aim is to maintain the soil by wetting, not by flooding the fields as traditional cultivation methods suggest,” he said.
The district administration is implementing subsidy schemes for harvester and weeder machines to further boost productivity."
Earlier posts on SRI here and here.
SRIHome page.
"The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has helped farmers in Tiruchi district to cope with an unreliable monsoon and shortage of farm labour, according to the district administration.
Speaking to The Hindu, District Collector T. Soundiah said the production cost of paddy under the new cultivation technique is in the range of Rs.2,000-3,000 a hectare, whereas it is close to Rs.10,000 under traditional cultivation methods. Where traditional methods of paddy cultivation yielded about two tonnes of paddy a hectare, under SRI farmers are able to get up to 6.7 tonnes a hectare.
The use of SRI is spreading in Tiruchi: the technique is being successfully implemented here on 20,000 ha out of a total of 70,000 ha under cultivation, according to data provided by the district administration.
“For many farmers, this has meant an additional income of Rs.25,000-30,000 per acre,” according to S. Sivaraj, Deputy Director, Agriculture, Central Government Schemes.
The SRI helps economise on resources use while maximising the yield.
“It requires a high level of farmland manure and a minimum quantity of seeds,” Mr. Sivaraj said. Only 2 kg of seeds were required per acre. The minimum age of seedlings would be eight to 12 days.
“Other important factors include wider spacing between seedlings and the use of the Cono-Weeder four times during the crop cycle,” Mr. Sivaraj said. Most important, SRI requires minimal use of water, according to Mr. Soundiah.
“The aim is to maintain the soil by wetting, not by flooding the fields as traditional cultivation methods suggest,” he said.
The district administration is implementing subsidy schemes for harvester and weeder machines to further boost productivity."
Earlier posts on SRI here and here.
SRIHome page.
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Higher education in developing countries, Pakistan experiment
discussed in 3quarks daily Pakistan's Higher Education Reform Experiment. There have been several posts in Nanopolitan about Indian higher education. Anoop Kumar has some relevant comments here. See in particular Pervez Hoodbhoy's letter in 3quarksdaily:
""Pakistan's Reform Experiment" (Nature, V461, page 38, 3 September 2009) gives the impression of providing a factual balance sheet of Pakistan's higher education under General Pervez Musharraf's former government. Unfortunately, several critical omissions indicate a partisan bias.
Mention of the billions wasted on mindless prestige mega-projects is noticeably absent. Example: nine new universities were hastily conceived and partially constructed, but abandoned and finally scrapped after it became obvious that it was impossible to provide them with the most crucial ingredient - trained faculty. Similarly, fantastically expensive scientific equipment, imported with funds from the Higher Education Commission, remain hopelessly under-utilized many years later. They litter the country's length and breadth. For instance, my university has been
forced to house a "souped-up" Van de Graaf accelerator facility, purchased in 2005 with HEC funds. A research purpose is still being sought in 2009.
The authors conveniently choose not to mention that the 400% claimed increase in the number of publications was largely a consequence of giving huge payments to professors for publishing in international journals, irrespective of actual substance and quality. Not surprisingly these cash-per-paper injections had the effect of producing a plagiarism pandemic, one that is still out of control. In a country where academic ethics are poor and about a third of all students cheat in examinations, penalties for plagiarism by teachers and researchers are virtually
non-existent.
Citing Thomson Scientific, the authors claim a large rise in the "relative impact" in some disciplines, based upon citation levels of papers published between 2003 and 2007. But did the authors try to eliminate self-citations (a deliberate ploy) from this count? If they had - as I did using an available option in the Thomson Scientific package - they might actually have found the opposite result."
""Pakistan's Reform Experiment" (Nature, V461, page 38, 3 September 2009) gives the impression of providing a factual balance sheet of Pakistan's higher education under General Pervez Musharraf's former government. Unfortunately, several critical omissions indicate a partisan bias.
Mention of the billions wasted on mindless prestige mega-projects is noticeably absent. Example: nine new universities were hastily conceived and partially constructed, but abandoned and finally scrapped after it became obvious that it was impossible to provide them with the most crucial ingredient - trained faculty. Similarly, fantastically expensive scientific equipment, imported with funds from the Higher Education Commission, remain hopelessly under-utilized many years later. They litter the country's length and breadth. For instance, my university has been
forced to house a "souped-up" Van de Graaf accelerator facility, purchased in 2005 with HEC funds. A research purpose is still being sought in 2009.
The authors conveniently choose not to mention that the 400% claimed increase in the number of publications was largely a consequence of giving huge payments to professors for publishing in international journals, irrespective of actual substance and quality. Not surprisingly these cash-per-paper injections had the effect of producing a plagiarism pandemic, one that is still out of control. In a country where academic ethics are poor and about a third of all students cheat in examinations, penalties for plagiarism by teachers and researchers are virtually
non-existent.
Citing Thomson Scientific, the authors claim a large rise in the "relative impact" in some disciplines, based upon citation levels of papers published between 2003 and 2007. But did the authors try to eliminate self-citations (a deliberate ploy) from this count? If they had - as I did using an available option in the Thomson Scientific package - they might actually have found the opposite result."
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Two tributes to YSR
The more complementary part from YSR: Searching For History's Verdict By K.V. Baparao
"His political success as a grassroots Congress leader is especially remarkable, given the AP tradition of senior Congress leaders who, almost without exception, made an infantile subservience to the High Command their sole qualification for high office; if they failed to obtain the Chief Minister's post, these leaders would seek to make the state ungovernable by anyone else, by engineering riots or perhaps a violent agitation. There was always a premise that the Congress High Command did not look kindly upon strong state leaders who were competent and popular in their own right, but will placate those who throw violent tantrums.
Given this climate, for YSR to have succeeded in balancing his personal power in the state with what is from all accounts an excellent relationship with the High Command, while taking his rivals along, speaks of a high degree of political astuteness and skill.
He also deserves special appreciation for taking steps to improve public access to health care, including emergency services. The ubiquitous presence of ambulances, and the increased use of modern hospitals and clinics by the poor, speaks of an interest in improving health matters on the part of the late Chief Minister who started out as a doctor. Because this has historically not been a widely-shared interest among the numerous doctor-politicians and doctor-businesspersons who populate the upper echelons of the state, YSR's death gives rise to concerns as to whether these nascent services are doomed to stagnate and perish from entropy, or whether they will grow into a serious policy of delivering measurable and accountable health services to all."
From Remembering YSR by Pushpa Iyengar:
"Stories were legion about him......And what a paradox it was that a man known as a “permanent dissident” had brought the Congress together after many years of bitter infighting."
I gather from some friends in Hyderabad that his principal secretary K Subramanyam who also died in the crash was an outstanding IAS officer. Apparently he came from very poor background and some local christians saw that he was bright and helped with his education. He married a christian lady and left two children behind. The son suffers from autism and the daughter is considered very bright.
P.S. See also Kuffir's post r.i.p. victims of hyderabad riots, december 1990. and the comments.
Some say that property rights have taken a tumble. Land and site occupation with the help of mobile goondas seemsto have increased.
"His political success as a grassroots Congress leader is especially remarkable, given the AP tradition of senior Congress leaders who, almost without exception, made an infantile subservience to the High Command their sole qualification for high office; if they failed to obtain the Chief Minister's post, these leaders would seek to make the state ungovernable by anyone else, by engineering riots or perhaps a violent agitation. There was always a premise that the Congress High Command did not look kindly upon strong state leaders who were competent and popular in their own right, but will placate those who throw violent tantrums.
Given this climate, for YSR to have succeeded in balancing his personal power in the state with what is from all accounts an excellent relationship with the High Command, while taking his rivals along, speaks of a high degree of political astuteness and skill.
He also deserves special appreciation for taking steps to improve public access to health care, including emergency services. The ubiquitous presence of ambulances, and the increased use of modern hospitals and clinics by the poor, speaks of an interest in improving health matters on the part of the late Chief Minister who started out as a doctor. Because this has historically not been a widely-shared interest among the numerous doctor-politicians and doctor-businesspersons who populate the upper echelons of the state, YSR's death gives rise to concerns as to whether these nascent services are doomed to stagnate and perish from entropy, or whether they will grow into a serious policy of delivering measurable and accountable health services to all."
From Remembering YSR by Pushpa Iyengar:
"Stories were legion about him......And what a paradox it was that a man known as a “permanent dissident” had brought the Congress together after many years of bitter infighting."
I gather from some friends in Hyderabad that his principal secretary K Subramanyam who also died in the crash was an outstanding IAS officer. Apparently he came from very poor background and some local christians saw that he was bright and helped with his education. He married a christian lady and left two children behind. The son suffers from autism and the daughter is considered very bright.
P.S. See also Kuffir's post r.i.p. victims of hyderabad riots, december 1990. and the comments.
Some say that property rights have taken a tumble. Land and site occupation with the help of mobile goondas seemsto have increased.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Do teachers discriminate?
From Do teachers discriminate against minorities in India? (ungated version of the original paper here):
"Teachers discriminated against minority students in the grading of exams, but the results were modest. It is important to note that our study only facilitates reflection on one element of discrimination within the classroom. Other, more blatant types of discrimination may exist in the classroom as well. If we hope that education can help “level the playing field,” further work needs to be done to understand how to improve the treatment of minority students in the classroom."
P.S. Related post by Anoop Kumar Pandit Ramchandra Guha and the post of Mysore University Vice-Chancellor -II (via Blogbharti)
"Teachers discriminated against minority students in the grading of exams, but the results were modest. It is important to note that our study only facilitates reflection on one element of discrimination within the classroom. Other, more blatant types of discrimination may exist in the classroom as well. If we hope that education can help “level the playing field,” further work needs to be done to understand how to improve the treatment of minority students in the classroom."
P.S. Related post by Anoop Kumar Pandit Ramchandra Guha and the post of Mysore University Vice-Chancellor -II (via Blogbharti)
It is 'arrant nonsense'
says William Safire in Arrant Nonsense:
"If you Google errant, you get nearly three million citations, their sense "roving, straying, sometimes from high standards"; arrant gets only one-tenth as many. But if you enter the phrase "arrant nonsense," you get 35,000 to a mere 772 for "errant nonsense." People know the word with the a means "utter, thoroughgoing, complete," usually carrying the connotation of disapproval. Arrant, the former variant, is now out on its own, its meaning independent of the wandering errant. Let the dictionaries catch up with the living language."
The link from a comment in the very interesting post The Nature of Modern Finance:
"Is modern finance more like electricity or junk food? This is, of course, the big question of the day.
.........
Given what we’ve seen over the past 12 months, which way should we lean: towards believing in the positive power of finance, until the opposite is proven; or towards being skeptical of finance in its modern form, until we see evidence that this actually makes sense?
Surely out skepticism should extend to financial innovation. Show me the evidence that this kind of innovation really adds value, socially speaking – rather than providing a very modern way to extract amazing “rents”."
The comment which drew the response is from "Old Lady in Red":
"To summarize the common understanding of the principle, “Of several acceptable explanations for a phenomenon, the explanation containing just the facts will do.”
What is happening today in finance is errant nonsense, fantastical craziness, bizarre lunacy and, fifty years from now, we will not be able to fathom how we could have been so stupid for so long."
"If you Google errant, you get nearly three million citations, their sense "roving, straying, sometimes from high standards"; arrant gets only one-tenth as many. But if you enter the phrase "arrant nonsense," you get 35,000 to a mere 772 for "errant nonsense." People know the word with the a means "utter, thoroughgoing, complete," usually carrying the connotation of disapproval. Arrant, the former variant, is now out on its own, its meaning independent of the wandering errant. Let the dictionaries catch up with the living language."
The link from a comment in the very interesting post The Nature of Modern Finance:
"Is modern finance more like electricity or junk food? This is, of course, the big question of the day.
.........
Given what we’ve seen over the past 12 months, which way should we lean: towards believing in the positive power of finance, until the opposite is proven; or towards being skeptical of finance in its modern form, until we see evidence that this actually makes sense?
Surely out skepticism should extend to financial innovation. Show me the evidence that this kind of innovation really adds value, socially speaking – rather than providing a very modern way to extract amazing “rents”."
The comment which drew the response is from "Old Lady in Red":
"To summarize the common understanding of the principle, “Of several acceptable explanations for a phenomenon, the explanation containing just the facts will do.”
What is happening today in finance is errant nonsense, fantastical craziness, bizarre lunacy and, fifty years from now, we will not be able to fathom how we could have been so stupid for so long."
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Crowd behaviour in emergencies
From Emergencies inspire crowd cooperation, not panic (via Mind Hacks http://www.mindhacks.com/):
"Crowd plus emergency equals mass panic, or so urban myths and Hollywood films would have us believe. The reality, recognised by social psychology for some time, is that people in crowds often behave in remarkably cooperative and selfless ways. A new study by John Drury and colleagues suggests that this kind of collaborative behaviour emerges when people in a crowd acquire a shared identity. And contrary to the "mass panic" perspective, an emergency can be the very catalyst that brings people together."
There are links to John Drury's papers as well as a recent book "A PARADISE BUILT IN HELL:The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster" by Rebecca Solnit reviewd here: The Better Angels of Our Nature. Excerpt from the review:
"Her accounts of these five events are so stirring that her book is worth reading for its storytelling alone.
But what makes it even more fascinating is Solnit's demonstration that disasters give rise to small, temporary utopias in which the best of human nature emerges and a remarkable spirit of generosity and cooperation takes over. "Disaster," she writes, "along with moments of social upheaval, is when the shackles of conventional belief and role fall away and the possibilities open up." People suffering unimaginable misfortune often revert not to savagery but to an almost beatific selflessness, comforting themselves in extremis by aiding others. Solnit cites many examples of those who remember a disaster as, paradoxically, one of the great moments of their lives. The reaction is similar to that of some who recall the Great Depression as a time of spiritual and social richness."
"Crowd plus emergency equals mass panic, or so urban myths and Hollywood films would have us believe. The reality, recognised by social psychology for some time, is that people in crowds often behave in remarkably cooperative and selfless ways. A new study by John Drury and colleagues suggests that this kind of collaborative behaviour emerges when people in a crowd acquire a shared identity. And contrary to the "mass panic" perspective, an emergency can be the very catalyst that brings people together."
There are links to John Drury's papers as well as a recent book "A PARADISE BUILT IN HELL:The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster" by Rebecca Solnit reviewd here: The Better Angels of Our Nature. Excerpt from the review:
"Her accounts of these five events are so stirring that her book is worth reading for its storytelling alone.
But what makes it even more fascinating is Solnit's demonstration that disasters give rise to small, temporary utopias in which the best of human nature emerges and a remarkable spirit of generosity and cooperation takes over. "Disaster," she writes, "along with moments of social upheaval, is when the shackles of conventional belief and role fall away and the possibilities open up." People suffering unimaginable misfortune often revert not to savagery but to an almost beatific selflessness, comforting themselves in extremis by aiding others. Solnit cites many examples of those who remember a disaster as, paradoxically, one of the great moments of their lives. The reaction is similar to that of some who recall the Great Depression as a time of spiritual and social richness."
Friday, August 28, 2009
Ted Kennedy Tributes
An American Greek by Bernard-Henri Levy (via Amitava Kumar)
From Silliman's Blog (via a comment from Accidental Blogger)
"In my job at the Committee for Prisoner Humanity & Justice, I managed to arrange an out-of-state parole plan for Lovedahl through the Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco, but I still had to persuade the North Carolina political establishment, and especially that pol, that putting Lovedahl on the streets 2,500 miles from home wasn’t going to come back to haunt him. There was only one person I knew who might be able to accomplish this, so I called Ted Kennedy’s office in Massachusetts. Without even once asking “What’s in it for me?” Kennedy made the call, and Lovedahl got his parole. That might have been the end of the story but Lovedahl broke parole – after 20 years in prison, he found Delancey Street’s restrictions hard to take – & headed to Nevada, where he was arrested as a parole violator. An extradition hearing was held, but it was easy for the Wabash County public defender to show that Lovedahl should never have been convicted in the first place. Free so long as he remained in Nevada, Lovedahl stayed there the rest of his life.
I’ve always wondered just how many times over 46 years in the U.S. Senate Kennedy made those kinds of phone calls. He was not only the one senator in 1973 who might have made that gesture, he was also the only one who could have gotten that result. I fear that the same may have been true as recently as last week."
The many sides of Ted Kennedy (from Salon.com):
" Newt Gingrich, Congressman and Speaker of the House (1995-1999). "Clever tactician"
Every conservative should take a lesson from the liberals in the uses of deliberate, sustained, permanent offense. Ever since they became a majority in 1930, the liberals have learned to keep taking as much as they can get in the way of legislation every day. A model for this is Ted Kennedy. Truth to tell, I have grown to respect the way he handles the process. You may not like him or his politics, but it is hard not to take your hat off to the steady, tough-minded, straightforward way he pushes for what he wants. As soon as we Republicans became the majority in the Senate, Kennedy realized he needed allies on the Republican side and began reaching out to them. He never quits looking for new opportunities to expand the government, and he is remarkably skilled at getting Republicans to sign on to bills with him. We on our side are as yet not nearly as tenacious, as firm, as clear about our ends, nor as clever in our tactics as the good senator; and any would-be conservative legislative leader could learn a lot about permanently being on offense by studying his ability to get hit, attacked, dismissed, and smilingly keep moving forward. (Washington, D.C., early 1990s)"
From Silliman's Blog (via a comment from Accidental Blogger)
"In my job at the Committee for Prisoner Humanity & Justice, I managed to arrange an out-of-state parole plan for Lovedahl through the Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco, but I still had to persuade the North Carolina political establishment, and especially that pol, that putting Lovedahl on the streets 2,500 miles from home wasn’t going to come back to haunt him. There was only one person I knew who might be able to accomplish this, so I called Ted Kennedy’s office in Massachusetts. Without even once asking “What’s in it for me?” Kennedy made the call, and Lovedahl got his parole. That might have been the end of the story but Lovedahl broke parole – after 20 years in prison, he found Delancey Street’s restrictions hard to take – & headed to Nevada, where he was arrested as a parole violator. An extradition hearing was held, but it was easy for the Wabash County public defender to show that Lovedahl should never have been convicted in the first place. Free so long as he remained in Nevada, Lovedahl stayed there the rest of his life.
I’ve always wondered just how many times over 46 years in the U.S. Senate Kennedy made those kinds of phone calls. He was not only the one senator in 1973 who might have made that gesture, he was also the only one who could have gotten that result. I fear that the same may have been true as recently as last week."
The many sides of Ted Kennedy (from Salon.com):
" Newt Gingrich, Congressman and Speaker of the House (1995-1999). "Clever tactician"
Every conservative should take a lesson from the liberals in the uses of deliberate, sustained, permanent offense. Ever since they became a majority in 1930, the liberals have learned to keep taking as much as they can get in the way of legislation every day. A model for this is Ted Kennedy. Truth to tell, I have grown to respect the way he handles the process. You may not like him or his politics, but it is hard not to take your hat off to the steady, tough-minded, straightforward way he pushes for what he wants. As soon as we Republicans became the majority in the Senate, Kennedy realized he needed allies on the Republican side and began reaching out to them. He never quits looking for new opportunities to expand the government, and he is remarkably skilled at getting Republicans to sign on to bills with him. We on our side are as yet not nearly as tenacious, as firm, as clear about our ends, nor as clever in our tactics as the good senator; and any would-be conservative legislative leader could learn a lot about permanently being on offense by studying his ability to get hit, attacked, dismissed, and smilingly keep moving forward. (Washington, D.C., early 1990s)"
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Winter gardening
in Melbourne has not been easy with cold and rain. Silverbeet grew like a weed and provided much food for us and our friends. Chillies survided and kept yielding until now but there may be a gap of couple of months before we have garden chillies again. Coriander and lettuce did OK, particularly in pots, possibly because the potting mix was freah. Spinach and capsicum did not do too well. May be they will do better in spring. It is time to finish weeding, pruning, mulching and start on the main vegetables for summer.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Links, August 25
Amazonian Fashion and a Lack of Financial Services (via Chris Blattman)
Expanding microenterprise credit access: Using Randomized Supply Decisions to Estimate the Impacts in Manila (via 3quarksdaily which also has links to an interview with the author Dean Karlan)
Revolutionary Minds (via Rajib)
Do Teachers Need Education Degrees?
Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom. More links in Nanopolitan
Qalandar is pleased that somebody is talking of land reforms: Will it take a war to focus on Swat’s problems?
Expanding microenterprise credit access: Using Randomized Supply Decisions to Estimate the Impacts in Manila (via 3quarksdaily which also has links to an interview with the author Dean Karlan)
Revolutionary Minds (via Rajib)
Do Teachers Need Education Degrees?
Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom. More links in Nanopolitan
Qalandar is pleased that somebody is talking of land reforms: Will it take a war to focus on Swat’s problems?
Monday, August 24, 2009
Two posts in Indian films
'kanTi chooputO champEsta by Kuffir to lots of links to his and others' earlier articles. Excerpt:
"the faction genre isn't actually unique to the erroneously classified telugu cinema- the line i quoted was from the remake of an original tamil movie (one of those movies which glorify the lives of rural gounder-thevar-naicker-etc tyrants). telugu cinema is essentially the handiwork of kammas, reddies and brahmins with significant contributions from rajus, kapus (some sub-castes) and velamas. mostly brahminized intermediate castes. all of them together make up not more than 20% of the state's population. what we call telugu cinema is a product of their kanTichoopu, or vision or nazariya. and there's definitely nothing pan-telugu about it. i've talked about whose nazariya is reflected in hindi cinema in this post- who speaks through so-called tamil, bengali, malayalam etc cinema?"
and Utpal Dutt on theatre and film by Chandrahas Chowdary. Excerpt:
"“I believe any discussion on films in semi-colonial or newly independent countries must start from the illiteracy, poverty and cultural starvation of the masses,” wrote the great stalwart of Indian theatre and film Utpal Dutt in an essay in 1979. “It seems blasphemous to engage in comfortable talk about the aesthetics of cinema in a country where the majority starves.” What can we say about this clearly Marxist aesthetic? Is it true? Was it more relevant thirty years ago than it is now? Shouldn’t art be seen as a site, a force, independent of social and economic realities? Are artworks themselves a product of class and power interests, or can they be seen as something more ambiguous and capacious, combating propaganda as often as complicit with it?"
Possibly related: this comment by an anon. in IIT faculty go to war :
"...what IITians are asking not exactly “more”, but what they actually deserve. Obviously they compare the salaries with that of salaries from where they came and joined in IITs ( premier institutes of abroad, industries )."
"the faction genre isn't actually unique to the erroneously classified telugu cinema- the line i quoted was from the remake of an original tamil movie (one of those movies which glorify the lives of rural gounder-thevar-naicker-etc tyrants). telugu cinema is essentially the handiwork of kammas, reddies and brahmins with significant contributions from rajus, kapus (some sub-castes) and velamas. mostly brahminized intermediate castes. all of them together make up not more than 20% of the state's population. what we call telugu cinema is a product of their kanTichoopu, or vision or nazariya. and there's definitely nothing pan-telugu about it. i've talked about whose nazariya is reflected in hindi cinema in this post- who speaks through so-called tamil, bengali, malayalam etc cinema?"
and Utpal Dutt on theatre and film by Chandrahas Chowdary. Excerpt:
"“I believe any discussion on films in semi-colonial or newly independent countries must start from the illiteracy, poverty and cultural starvation of the masses,” wrote the great stalwart of Indian theatre and film Utpal Dutt in an essay in 1979. “It seems blasphemous to engage in comfortable talk about the aesthetics of cinema in a country where the majority starves.” What can we say about this clearly Marxist aesthetic? Is it true? Was it more relevant thirty years ago than it is now? Shouldn’t art be seen as a site, a force, independent of social and economic realities? Are artworks themselves a product of class and power interests, or can they be seen as something more ambiguous and capacious, combating propaganda as often as complicit with it?"
Possibly related: this comment by an anon. in IIT faculty go to war :
"...what IITians are asking not exactly “more”, but what they actually deserve. Obviously they compare the salaries with that of salaries from where they came and joined in IITs ( premier institutes of abroad, industries )."
Saturday, August 22, 2009
National innovations?
After seeing this link in Nanopolitan Pluck an innovation, I looked up Honybee network since this seemed to be the type of problem they would be interested in. From this post of about an year ago India’s National Innovation Foundation and Honeybee Network By rahulbrown, they seem to be hamstrung. Anil Gupta says in the comments:
"much of your criticism is valid and i can only say that if the issue was only dissemination, then you have done a good job of it. But then visit NIF and find out the stress under which a small team works days and night with highly limited resources,m static for last eight years( though in the same period, the number has swelled to more than hundred thousand practices, ideas, traditional knowledge practices, and of course innovations from over 545 districts ). May be you can be a valuable part of the solution rather than just finding out why much could not be done.
If you read Honey Bee newsletter, you will find in the last several issues in which we have published similar innovations which are found in China, Africa, and India.
I do not know about the right or wrong management at nif, but it is open management and colleagues are welcome to critique it, contribute to improve it ( every criticism helps in improving it) and take it forward.
there is no other public institution which has scaled up the knowledge about creativity and innovation in the country with budget going down in real terms in the last eight years.
we are always looking for mavericks who believe in making thsi ocuntry more creative, comassionate and collaborative, may be you will also collaborate
all the best and keep critiquing because that indeed helps"
P.S. See also Invent a coconut-picking machine and scoop a million rupees according to which "In Thailand and Malaysia, pigtailed macaques, a type of monkey, are trained to gather the fruit. In parts of India, hydraulic platforms are used to lift harvesters.
However, Mr Balakrishnan said that previous experiments in Kerala — from the planting of dwarf varieties to the provision of long sticks to farmers to prod nuts from trees — had proven unsatisfactory. “We are looking for a device that will help people to pluck the nuts without having to climb; ideally, one that will allow even women and the elderly to harvest the nuts from the ground,” he said.
The competition opens officially at the end of September and will run for six months. If a workable solution is found, the Kerala state government will help the inventor to set up a factory to supply the winning device to the international coconut industry."
Tender coconuts are exported from Thailand to Australia and are sold for 2-3 Aus. dollars. I understand that coconuts in Queensland are not harvested and go waste.
"much of your criticism is valid and i can only say that if the issue was only dissemination, then you have done a good job of it. But then visit NIF and find out the stress under which a small team works days and night with highly limited resources,m static for last eight years( though in the same period, the number has swelled to more than hundred thousand practices, ideas, traditional knowledge practices, and of course innovations from over 545 districts ). May be you can be a valuable part of the solution rather than just finding out why much could not be done.
If you read Honey Bee newsletter, you will find in the last several issues in which we have published similar innovations which are found in China, Africa, and India.
I do not know about the right or wrong management at nif, but it is open management and colleagues are welcome to critique it, contribute to improve it ( every criticism helps in improving it) and take it forward.
there is no other public institution which has scaled up the knowledge about creativity and innovation in the country with budget going down in real terms in the last eight years.
we are always looking for mavericks who believe in making thsi ocuntry more creative, comassionate and collaborative, may be you will also collaborate
all the best and keep critiquing because that indeed helps"
P.S. See also Invent a coconut-picking machine and scoop a million rupees according to which "In Thailand and Malaysia, pigtailed macaques, a type of monkey, are trained to gather the fruit. In parts of India, hydraulic platforms are used to lift harvesters.
However, Mr Balakrishnan said that previous experiments in Kerala — from the planting of dwarf varieties to the provision of long sticks to farmers to prod nuts from trees — had proven unsatisfactory. “We are looking for a device that will help people to pluck the nuts without having to climb; ideally, one that will allow even women and the elderly to harvest the nuts from the ground,” he said.
The competition opens officially at the end of September and will run for six months. If a workable solution is found, the Kerala state government will help the inventor to set up a factory to supply the winning device to the international coconut industry."
Tender coconuts are exported from Thailand to Australia and are sold for 2-3 Aus. dollars. I understand that coconuts in Queensland are not harvested and go waste.
William Calley says 'sorry'
according to BBC News Vietnam massacre soldier 'sorry' . The story of one who curtailed the massacre Hugh Thompson, Jr.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Micro loan defaults
Indian Development Blog discusses a recent WSJ article A Global Surge in Tiny Loans Spurs Credit Bubble in a Slum in Micro Credit Bubble? :
"Although it can be argued that the WSJ piece is not very well-researched and has instances of generalization and poor attribution, it is interesting to see that MFIs choose to underplay the mass-default that has occurred in Karnataka and dismiss the possibility that it could be partly due to faulty operational models."
I have been involved in one small project for a couple of years and so far there are no defaults. We work through a local pastor who knows the people, their needs and capabilities and has some standing in the community. Because, there are no defaults, the interest rate is low and sometimes used to finance other loans. Now it has reached two other places, in one of them through a local union. Such models may work on a small scale.
"Although it can be argued that the WSJ piece is not very well-researched and has instances of generalization and poor attribution, it is interesting to see that MFIs choose to underplay the mass-default that has occurred in Karnataka and dismiss the possibility that it could be partly due to faulty operational models."
I have been involved in one small project for a couple of years and so far there are no defaults. We work through a local pastor who knows the people, their needs and capabilities and has some standing in the community. Because, there are no defaults, the interest rate is low and sometimes used to finance other loans. Now it has reached two other places, in one of them through a local union. Such models may work on a small scale.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
More Telugu dictionaries
The following పత్రికా పదకోశం is currently available online.
A few years ago, while trying to find some dictionaries for technical terms in Telugu, I came across the name of Digavalli Venkata Siva Rao, through his grandson of the same name. Today I saw mention of his two books in the following openlibrary article:
Digavalli Venkata Siva Rao
Quote from the article:
"Another well recognized work of Siva rao was his book “Vyvahara kosamu” (1933) and his “ Sastra paribhasha”(1934). This is English-Telugu Dictionary of Scientific and Technical terms. Both these books were approved by Text Book Committee. This was a pioneering attempt to find suitable Telugu terms for technical and scientific words. There was no work of its kind before this book. Several Universities including Madras and Andhra approved its use for Telugu translations of technical and scientific literature. Several appreciations were received from many well known personalities including Vepa Rameswam and several others like Vembu Iyer[sessions judge] and the Hindu paper. Long before Glossary work was started by Andhra Govt, Siva rao did this ground breaking work. Above two books were combined and reprinted by J.Jetley of Asian Educational Services, New Delhi in
1991. "
The flavour of the dictionary can be seen at google books English-Telugu Dictionary Technical and Scientific
P.S. See also
gwynn
brown
Adhunika Vyavahara Kosam
శ్రీ శోధన
See also discussions at telugupadam
A few years ago, while trying to find some dictionaries for technical terms in Telugu, I came across the name of Digavalli Venkata Siva Rao, through his grandson of the same name. Today I saw mention of his two books in the following openlibrary article:
Digavalli Venkata Siva Rao
Quote from the article:
"Another well recognized work of Siva rao was his book “Vyvahara kosamu” (1933) and his “ Sastra paribhasha”(1934). This is English-Telugu Dictionary of Scientific and Technical terms. Both these books were approved by Text Book Committee. This was a pioneering attempt to find suitable Telugu terms for technical and scientific words. There was no work of its kind before this book. Several Universities including Madras and Andhra approved its use for Telugu translations of technical and scientific literature. Several appreciations were received from many well known personalities including Vepa Rameswam and several others like Vembu Iyer[sessions judge] and the Hindu paper. Long before Glossary work was started by Andhra Govt, Siva rao did this ground breaking work. Above two books were combined and reprinted by J.Jetley of Asian Educational Services, New Delhi in
1991. "
The flavour of the dictionary can be seen at google books English-Telugu Dictionary Technical and Scientific
P.S. See also
gwynn
brown
Adhunika Vyavahara Kosam
శ్రీ శోధన
See also discussions at telugupadam
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Chandra Latha's blog
I just noticed that the well-known writer చంద్ర లత (Chandra Latha)has started blogging: మడత పేజీ
P.S. A recent post has the video of a speechడా. విజయ్ గుప్తా గారి మాట of Modadugu Vijay Gupta, the recipient of the World Food Prize in 2005. Dr. Gupta is from Bapatla. Mathematicians Komaravolu Chandrasekharan and Madhav Nori come from the same place.
P.S. A recent post has the video of a speechడా. విజయ్ గుప్తా గారి మాట of Modadugu Vijay Gupta, the recipient of the World Food Prize in 2005. Dr. Gupta is from Bapatla. Mathematicians Komaravolu Chandrasekharan and Madhav Nori come from the same place.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Nice article on Annanamayya and Prajanatyamandali
జానపదం ఎవరిసొమ్ము? in Andhra Jyoti, vividha section.
Links, 18th August
Anil Gupta in http://www.scidev.net/en/opinions/the-forgotten-farm-labourer.html :
"The concept of 'farmers first', which promotes farmer-led agricultural innovation, has been discussed for at least twenty years. But the idea of 'farm labourers first' is yet to emerge as a priority for any political party or scientific community. When political debates do feature farm labourers, they usually stress the right to manual work, rather than the need for better technologies or knowledge.
Agricultural and other rural labourers oftenhave more technical information about local resources and variations in their use than the farmers themselves because they often work on several farms. Yet they seldom have access to technological advances or research findings, and have few opportunities to capitalise on their knowledge.
New tools for farm labourers are extremely rare. In many parts of the world there have been no advances in the design of sickles in the past thirty years, for example. Even where new technologies doexist, they are rarely made widely available to farm labourers.
Communication is key
Even so, changing the way existing institutional technologies are used can both add value to labourers' knowledge and make them more productive.
In some cases, this simply involves improving occupational safety by communicating risk and providing safety norms. For example, despite the known environmental and health effects of agrochemicals, including pesticides, there are hardly any billboards in India showing how to use these chemicals safely. Only a fraction of one per cent of labourers in the country use safety gear when applying pesticides.
Similarly, millions of women working in paddy fields could avoid the widespread fungal infections caused by keeping their feet in water all day by simply applying castor oil or fungicidal creams — if only they knew about or had access to them. No Indian labourers under any employment program are given preventive information or materials — not even a bar of soap, even though 60 per cent of diseases are waterborne. Yet making herbal soap from non-edible tree oil seeds could generate considerable employment."
What about latrine cleaners?
From"Annoying Habits of College Professors" (circa 1935 to 1937)The timeless pet peeves of American university students:
"In many respects, teaching is a peculiar problem for university professors. Most professors active in research didn’t train to be teachers, but rather they got to the lecture stand by way of their accomplishments in the quiet eden of the laboratory. Because of this, there’s almost a paradoxical selection bias for introverted people as professors. It might sound good in principle, but when you first find yourself caught in those caffeine-fueled headlights of two hundred pairs of bleary freshman eyes at nine in the morning-- eyes which are expecting to see a performance as entertaining as it is enlightening -- this tends to be the perfect climate for annoying behaviors to “present” in an otherwise shy personality. Of course, some professors are perfectly oblivious and their annoyingness isn’t exactly climate-sensitive; some get even worse. But most learn as they go and the nervous tics eventually subside. "
I am not sure whether the problems subside. There is the additional problem . Many seem to have the attitude "I have a Ph.D. I know what I am doing" (so did some bloggers with Ph.D's in economics) even when teaching outside their areas of specialization and pushing for their own areas in the curriculam. making the syallabi lopsided and some of it irrelevant. I think that some compulory training in teaching is called for.
"The concept of 'farmers first', which promotes farmer-led agricultural innovation, has been discussed for at least twenty years. But the idea of 'farm labourers first' is yet to emerge as a priority for any political party or scientific community. When political debates do feature farm labourers, they usually stress the right to manual work, rather than the need for better technologies or knowledge.
Agricultural and other rural labourers oftenhave more technical information about local resources and variations in their use than the farmers themselves because they often work on several farms. Yet they seldom have access to technological advances or research findings, and have few opportunities to capitalise on their knowledge.
New tools for farm labourers are extremely rare. In many parts of the world there have been no advances in the design of sickles in the past thirty years, for example. Even where new technologies doexist, they are rarely made widely available to farm labourers.
Communication is key
Even so, changing the way existing institutional technologies are used can both add value to labourers' knowledge and make them more productive.
In some cases, this simply involves improving occupational safety by communicating risk and providing safety norms. For example, despite the known environmental and health effects of agrochemicals, including pesticides, there are hardly any billboards in India showing how to use these chemicals safely. Only a fraction of one per cent of labourers in the country use safety gear when applying pesticides.
Similarly, millions of women working in paddy fields could avoid the widespread fungal infections caused by keeping their feet in water all day by simply applying castor oil or fungicidal creams — if only they knew about or had access to them. No Indian labourers under any employment program are given preventive information or materials — not even a bar of soap, even though 60 per cent of diseases are waterborne. Yet making herbal soap from non-edible tree oil seeds could generate considerable employment."
What about latrine cleaners?
From"Annoying Habits of College Professors" (circa 1935 to 1937)The timeless pet peeves of American university students:
"In many respects, teaching is a peculiar problem for university professors. Most professors active in research didn’t train to be teachers, but rather they got to the lecture stand by way of their accomplishments in the quiet eden of the laboratory. Because of this, there’s almost a paradoxical selection bias for introverted people as professors. It might sound good in principle, but when you first find yourself caught in those caffeine-fueled headlights of two hundred pairs of bleary freshman eyes at nine in the morning-- eyes which are expecting to see a performance as entertaining as it is enlightening -- this tends to be the perfect climate for annoying behaviors to “present” in an otherwise shy personality. Of course, some professors are perfectly oblivious and their annoyingness isn’t exactly climate-sensitive; some get even worse. But most learn as they go and the nervous tics eventually subside. "
I am not sure whether the problems subside. There is the additional problem . Many seem to have the attitude "I have a Ph.D. I know what I am doing" (so did some bloggers with Ph.D's in economics) even when teaching outside their areas of specialization and pushing for their own areas in the curriculam. making the syallabi lopsided and some of it irrelevant. I think that some compulory training in teaching is called for.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Rational Fortune Telling?
Earlier Julie Rehmeyer has written about the work of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita:Mathematical Fortune-Telling :
"The New York University political science professor has developed a computerized game theory model that predicts the future of many business and political negotiations and also figures out ways to influence the outcome. Two independent evaluations, one by academics and one by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, have both shown that about 90 percent of his predictions have been accurate. Most recently, he has used his mathematical tools to offer approaches for handling the growing nuclear crisis with Iran." (mentioned in this blog :Synthesizing the wisdom of experts). Recently, there is a more detailed article in The New York Times:
Can Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb? (via 3quarksdaily). Some of it is a bit scary:
"For Bueno de Mesquita, the first prominent use of the model came in 1979, when the State Department was canvassing academics with expertise on India, including Bueno de Mesquita, to see how some parliamentary maneuverings would unfold. Bueno de Mesquita decided to use his first version of the software (which was, as he puts it, “barely working”) and his own knowledge of India to determine the power players and each of their numbers. Then the university’s mainframe computer worked on the data all night.
In the morning, Bueno de Mesquita said, he was astonished: the predicted victor was a seemingly minor figure, someone discounted by the experts. Bueno de Mesquita shared their opinion, he told me, but he accepted the computer’s verdict anyway. “So I called the person back at the State Department, and told him what I had concluded,” Bueno de Mesquita went on. “And there was a long, quiet period and some laughing. He said: ‘How did you arrive at that? Nobody’s saying that.’ So I told him I had a little computer model. He just guffawed. He said, ‘I wouldn’t repeat that if I were you.’ ”
Three months later, according to Bueno de Mesquita, his prediction turned out to be right....
Soon Bueno de Mesquita and Organski (who died in 1998) acquired clients ranging from Arthur Andersen to Union Carbide, which tapped them for advice on placating the Indian government after the Bhopal chemical spill. Today Bueno de Mesquita’s firm essentially consists of himself and Harry Roundell, a former banker at J. P. Morgan who met Bueno de Mesquita when Roundell hired him in 1995 to help the bank figure out how to push for new, favorable regulations in the U.S. They charge $50,000 and up to do a prediction and offer negotiating tips, and they take on 18 to 20 of these assignments a year. Beyond saying it was “a reasonable amount of money,” Bueno de Mesquita would not describe his income from the company."
However, there are doubts about his predictions:
"Stephen Walt, a Harvard professor of international affairs, says that Bueno de Mesquita’s nonprediction work — like his theory of the “political survival” of heads of state — make him a “respected scholar, deservedly so.” It’s the predictions that Walt doesn’t trust, because Bueno de Mesquita does not publish the actual computer code of his model. (Bueno de Mesquita cannot do so because his former firm owns the actual code, but he counters that he has outlined the math behind his model in enough academic papers and books for anyone to replicate something close to his work.) While Bueno de Mesquita has published many predictions in academic journals, the vast majority of his forecasts have been done in secret for corporate or government clients, where no independent academics can verify them. “We have no idea if he’s right 9 times out of 10, or 9 times out of a hundred, or 9 times out of a thousand,” Walt says. Walt also isn’t impressed by Stanley Feder’s C.I.A. study showing Bueno de Mesquita’s 90 percent hit rate. “It’s one midlevel C.I.A. bureaucrat saying, ‘This was a useful tool,’ ” Walt says. “It’s not like he’s got Brent Scowcroft saying, ‘Back in the Bush administration, we didn’t make a decision without consulting Bueno de Mesquita.’ ” Other academics point out that rational-actor theory has come under increasing criticism in recent years, as more evidence accumulates that people make many decisions irrationally."
"The New York University political science professor has developed a computerized game theory model that predicts the future of many business and political negotiations and also figures out ways to influence the outcome. Two independent evaluations, one by academics and one by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, have both shown that about 90 percent of his predictions have been accurate. Most recently, he has used his mathematical tools to offer approaches for handling the growing nuclear crisis with Iran." (mentioned in this blog :Synthesizing the wisdom of experts). Recently, there is a more detailed article in The New York Times:
Can Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb? (via 3quarksdaily). Some of it is a bit scary:
"For Bueno de Mesquita, the first prominent use of the model came in 1979, when the State Department was canvassing academics with expertise on India, including Bueno de Mesquita, to see how some parliamentary maneuverings would unfold. Bueno de Mesquita decided to use his first version of the software (which was, as he puts it, “barely working”) and his own knowledge of India to determine the power players and each of their numbers. Then the university’s mainframe computer worked on the data all night.
In the morning, Bueno de Mesquita said, he was astonished: the predicted victor was a seemingly minor figure, someone discounted by the experts. Bueno de Mesquita shared their opinion, he told me, but he accepted the computer’s verdict anyway. “So I called the person back at the State Department, and told him what I had concluded,” Bueno de Mesquita went on. “And there was a long, quiet period and some laughing. He said: ‘How did you arrive at that? Nobody’s saying that.’ So I told him I had a little computer model. He just guffawed. He said, ‘I wouldn’t repeat that if I were you.’ ”
Three months later, according to Bueno de Mesquita, his prediction turned out to be right....
Soon Bueno de Mesquita and Organski (who died in 1998) acquired clients ranging from Arthur Andersen to Union Carbide, which tapped them for advice on placating the Indian government after the Bhopal chemical spill. Today Bueno de Mesquita’s firm essentially consists of himself and Harry Roundell, a former banker at J. P. Morgan who met Bueno de Mesquita when Roundell hired him in 1995 to help the bank figure out how to push for new, favorable regulations in the U.S. They charge $50,000 and up to do a prediction and offer negotiating tips, and they take on 18 to 20 of these assignments a year. Beyond saying it was “a reasonable amount of money,” Bueno de Mesquita would not describe his income from the company."
However, there are doubts about his predictions:
"Stephen Walt, a Harvard professor of international affairs, says that Bueno de Mesquita’s nonprediction work — like his theory of the “political survival” of heads of state — make him a “respected scholar, deservedly so.” It’s the predictions that Walt doesn’t trust, because Bueno de Mesquita does not publish the actual computer code of his model. (Bueno de Mesquita cannot do so because his former firm owns the actual code, but he counters that he has outlined the math behind his model in enough academic papers and books for anyone to replicate something close to his work.) While Bueno de Mesquita has published many predictions in academic journals, the vast majority of his forecasts have been done in secret for corporate or government clients, where no independent academics can verify them. “We have no idea if he’s right 9 times out of 10, or 9 times out of a hundred, or 9 times out of a thousand,” Walt says. Walt also isn’t impressed by Stanley Feder’s C.I.A. study showing Bueno de Mesquita’s 90 percent hit rate. “It’s one midlevel C.I.A. bureaucrat saying, ‘This was a useful tool,’ ” Walt says. “It’s not like he’s got Brent Scowcroft saying, ‘Back in the Bush administration, we didn’t make a decision without consulting Bueno de Mesquita.’ ” Other academics point out that rational-actor theory has come under increasing criticism in recent years, as more evidence accumulates that people make many decisions irrationally."
Saturday, August 15, 2009
NEFA in the news again
On Indian Independence Day, this news from The Age: Tensions mount on Chinese-Indian border:
"Feathers were ruffled in Delhi last weekend when Google satellite maps showed the names of several towns in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in Mandarin and not English or Hindi, making it appear as if the region was part of China.
Hackles were also raised two months ago when Beijing objected to a $US60 million Asian Development Bank loan to India for a project in the territory which China claims.
The disputed border follows the ''McMahon Line'' drawn up in 1914 when the British ruled India. Beijing does not recognise this demarcation and claims a large portion of territory on the Indian side, including the town of Tawang, the birthplace of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
In June, the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh, J. J. Singh, said up to 30,000 new troops would be deployed in the region. Also in June, a state-run newspaper in China accused India of ''unwise military moves'' along the border. The article said India's response was ''dangerous if it is based on a false anticipation that China will cave in''.
Professor Chellaney says the tensions are ominous. ''Any doubts that the Indian foreign policy establishment might have had about the threat posed by China have evaporated in recent months, that's for sure,'' he says."
This 1984 report by a US navy commander The China-India Border War gives the background and suggests that at one stage Chinese were agreeable to a settlement on the eastern front.
"Feathers were ruffled in Delhi last weekend when Google satellite maps showed the names of several towns in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in Mandarin and not English or Hindi, making it appear as if the region was part of China.
Hackles were also raised two months ago when Beijing objected to a $US60 million Asian Development Bank loan to India for a project in the territory which China claims.
The disputed border follows the ''McMahon Line'' drawn up in 1914 when the British ruled India. Beijing does not recognise this demarcation and claims a large portion of territory on the Indian side, including the town of Tawang, the birthplace of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
In June, the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh, J. J. Singh, said up to 30,000 new troops would be deployed in the region. Also in June, a state-run newspaper in China accused India of ''unwise military moves'' along the border. The article said India's response was ''dangerous if it is based on a false anticipation that China will cave in''.
Professor Chellaney says the tensions are ominous. ''Any doubts that the Indian foreign policy establishment might have had about the threat posed by China have evaporated in recent months, that's for sure,'' he says."
This 1984 report by a US navy commander The China-India Border War gives the background and suggests that at one stage Chinese were agreeable to a settlement on the eastern front.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
New direction for treating schizophrenia
From Traffic jam in brain causes schizophrenia symptoms:
"Schizophrenia waits silently until a seemingly normal child becomes a teenager or young adult. Then it swoops down and derails a young life.
Scientists have not understood what causes the severe mental disorder, which affects up to 1 percent of the population and results in hallucinations, memory loss and social withdrawal.
But new research from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine has revealed how schizophrenia works in the brain and provided a fresh opportunity for treatment. In a new, genetically engineered mouse model, scientists have discovered the disease symptoms are triggered by a low level of a brain protein necessary for neurons to talk to one another.
A Traffic Jam in Brain
In human and mouse brains, kalirin is the brain protein needed to build the dense network of highways, called dendritic spines, which allow information to flow from one neuron to another. Northwestern scientists have found that without adequate kalirin, the frontal cortex of the brain of a person with schizophrenia only has a few narrow roads. The information from neurons gets jammed up like rush hour traffic on an interstate highway squeezed to a single lane.
"Without enough pathways, the information takes much longer to travel between neurons and much of it will never arrive," said Peter Penzes, assistant professor of physiology at the Feinberg School. .....
This discovery opens a new direction for treating the devastating cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia," Penzes said. "There is currently no treatment for that. It suggests that if you can stimulate and amplify the activity of the protein kalirin that remains in the brain, perhaps we can help the symptoms." "
"Schizophrenia waits silently until a seemingly normal child becomes a teenager or young adult. Then it swoops down and derails a young life.
Scientists have not understood what causes the severe mental disorder, which affects up to 1 percent of the population and results in hallucinations, memory loss and social withdrawal.
But new research from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine has revealed how schizophrenia works in the brain and provided a fresh opportunity for treatment. In a new, genetically engineered mouse model, scientists have discovered the disease symptoms are triggered by a low level of a brain protein necessary for neurons to talk to one another.
A Traffic Jam in Brain
In human and mouse brains, kalirin is the brain protein needed to build the dense network of highways, called dendritic spines, which allow information to flow from one neuron to another. Northwestern scientists have found that without adequate kalirin, the frontal cortex of the brain of a person with schizophrenia only has a few narrow roads. The information from neurons gets jammed up like rush hour traffic on an interstate highway squeezed to a single lane.
"Without enough pathways, the information takes much longer to travel between neurons and much of it will never arrive," said Peter Penzes, assistant professor of physiology at the Feinberg School. .....
This discovery opens a new direction for treating the devastating cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia," Penzes said. "There is currently no treatment for that. It suggests that if you can stimulate and amplify the activity of the protein kalirin that remains in the brain, perhaps we can help the symptoms." "
Views of Ann Dunham Soetoro
From Dreams From His Mother :
"Based on these observations, Dr. Soetoro concluded that underdevelopment in these communities resulted from a scarcity of capital, the allocation of which was a matter of politics, not culture. Antipoverty programs that ignored this reality had the potential, perversely, of exacerbating inequality because they would only reinforce the power of elites. As she wrote in her dissertation, “many government programs inadvertently foster stratification by channeling resources through village officials,” who then used the money to further strengthen their own status.
These same observations also led her to start working with institutions like the Ford Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development to devise alternate pathways for reaching and working with the poor. She helped to pioneer microcredit programs that made small amounts of capital available to weavers, blacksmiths and other low-income groups — people who would otherwise have had no access to credit."
(via Kalyan Mukherjea)
"Based on these observations, Dr. Soetoro concluded that underdevelopment in these communities resulted from a scarcity of capital, the allocation of which was a matter of politics, not culture. Antipoverty programs that ignored this reality had the potential, perversely, of exacerbating inequality because they would only reinforce the power of elites. As she wrote in her dissertation, “many government programs inadvertently foster stratification by channeling resources through village officials,” who then used the money to further strengthen their own status.
These same observations also led her to start working with institutions like the Ford Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development to devise alternate pathways for reaching and working with the poor. She helped to pioneer microcredit programs that made small amounts of capital available to weavers, blacksmiths and other low-income groups — people who would otherwise have had no access to credit."
(via Kalyan Mukherjea)
Three-in-one oven
From SciDev.net Researchers trial 'three-in-one' oven:
"A new 'three-in-one' stove that provides electricity as well as acting as a cooker and refrigerator is undergoing field trials in Nepal and the United Kingdom.
Developed by scientists at the UK-based University of Nottingham, the stove harnesses 'thermoacoustic' energy.
A fire at one end of a gas-filled pipe creates a temperature gradient, which triggers sound waves as gas moves from hot to cold regions, similar to a 'singing' kettle. The mechanical energy of the sound waves is then converted into electrical energy.
A separate thermoacoustic engine works in reverse to generate a cooling effect for the refrigerator, and food can be cooked on the heat from the fire. All three processes can occur simultaneously.
The oven is more efficient than similar devices and can be built using local materials, as recent tests in Nepal using propane as the energy source showed.
The team are hoping to develop a generator that runs on biomass — wood or dung for example — and weighs between ten and 20 kilograms, at a cost of no more than £20 (US$33). They believe that communities in the Indian subcontinent, Sub-Saharan Africa and South America could benefit from the stove.
The project, known as SCORE (Stove for Cooking, Refrigeration and Electricity Supply) was launched two years ago."
P.S. Some similar earlier posts: Ravi Kuchimanchi , Gadgets for the poor ,'Glacier man' Chewang Norphel brings water to Ladakh,
Sugata Mitra.
Malapati Raja Sekhar has similar posts in Rural Development of India .
"A new 'three-in-one' stove that provides electricity as well as acting as a cooker and refrigerator is undergoing field trials in Nepal and the United Kingdom.
Developed by scientists at the UK-based University of Nottingham, the stove harnesses 'thermoacoustic' energy.
A fire at one end of a gas-filled pipe creates a temperature gradient, which triggers sound waves as gas moves from hot to cold regions, similar to a 'singing' kettle. The mechanical energy of the sound waves is then converted into electrical energy.
A separate thermoacoustic engine works in reverse to generate a cooling effect for the refrigerator, and food can be cooked on the heat from the fire. All three processes can occur simultaneously.
The oven is more efficient than similar devices and can be built using local materials, as recent tests in Nepal using propane as the energy source showed.
The team are hoping to develop a generator that runs on biomass — wood or dung for example — and weighs between ten and 20 kilograms, at a cost of no more than £20 (US$33). They believe that communities in the Indian subcontinent, Sub-Saharan Africa and South America could benefit from the stove.
The project, known as SCORE (Stove for Cooking, Refrigeration and Electricity Supply) was launched two years ago."
P.S. Some similar earlier posts: Ravi Kuchimanchi , Gadgets for the poor ,'Glacier man' Chewang Norphel brings water to Ladakh,
Sugata Mitra.
Malapati Raja Sekhar has similar posts in Rural Development of India .
Monday, August 10, 2009
Rajesh Kochhar's blog
Vaguely following up a post in a Telugu blog Sainyam. I started wondering about Rigveda
here. Kalyan Mukherjea directed me to the work of an Indian astrophysicist Rajesh Kochhar. His website and blog are here. A chapter of a book by him and Jayant Narliker is posted there as well as a review of his book The Vedic People
here. Kalyan Mukherjea directed me to the work of an Indian astrophysicist Rajesh Kochhar. His website and blog are here. A chapter of a book by him and Jayant Narliker is posted there as well as a review of his book The Vedic People
Perepa P.C. Joshi
People in my age group are falling one by one and it may be time to pay some tribute to my old friend Perepa Joshi, named after Puran Chand Joshi. It was a friendship formed accidentally in Hyderabad. I was rebellious about university courses, was in and out of college, finally decided to complete a degree and landed in Hyderabad with very little money. Joshi's father Perepa Mrityumjayudu was shot dead in 48-49 in Telangana struggle ans some of his colleagues like Pucchalapalli Sundarayya, Chandra Rajeswara Rao who felt grateful that he did not reveal their whereabouts took interest in Joshi's welfare and started helping with his education. We ended up in the same college and rented a triangular room which we shared with a fellow student. We duly completed our degrees and went our separate ways. Once in a while I would try to look him up in Hyderabad. On one such occasion I found that he was already married and living with his children in a small room made under a stair case. Later I heard that he became manager of the Visalandhra Publishing House and visited him a few times in Vijayawada. He always seemed poor (but is reasonably comfortable now), did not have his own house but was always cheerful, talking of books, publishing and editing Gurajada and others. I kept running him in to various places, in Mumbai, Delhi, Chicago and once on a flight to UK. At some stage, he seemed to quit the hurly burly of publishing for others. A contractor friend forced him to buy a small house with deferred payments. Meanwhile children completed their studies. Joshi decided to start his own publishing house and publish old telugu books for which copy rights have expired.
I have not really kept in touch with him in early days. It is a friendship which grew over years. I still do not know what sort of communist denomination he belongs to. But over years, there have been many conversations, particularly about Telugu literaray figures many of whom he knew personally from Visvanatha Satyanarayana, Arudra to Kutumba Rao others. He had some guesses about the change in Visvanatha possibly due to the ill-treatment in in the Christian college he taught and many stories about publishing, how Gurajada's manuscripts were put in two trunks and carted around when communists were umderground for fear that they may be burnt when some houses were set on fire by the police. Recently he had a stroke. I hope that somebody in Hyderabad will find out more about these stories which may be lost.
He is a man with strong beliefs and integrity and who with his wife Lalita( another admirable person who has spent a lot of her life in social work. On the last trip she was telling me of the lot of poor muslims in Hyderabad; how a mother and her daughter had only one proper set of clothes and only one of them could go out at a time)contributed to the welfare of people around them in various places. I hope that he will recover soon and spread his cheerfulness around for a long time.
I have not really kept in touch with him in early days. It is a friendship which grew over years. I still do not know what sort of communist denomination he belongs to. But over years, there have been many conversations, particularly about Telugu literaray figures many of whom he knew personally from Visvanatha Satyanarayana, Arudra to Kutumba Rao others. He had some guesses about the change in Visvanatha possibly due to the ill-treatment in in the Christian college he taught and many stories about publishing, how Gurajada's manuscripts were put in two trunks and carted around when communists were umderground for fear that they may be burnt when some houses were set on fire by the police. Recently he had a stroke. I hope that somebody in Hyderabad will find out more about these stories which may be lost.
He is a man with strong beliefs and integrity and who with his wife Lalita( another admirable person who has spent a lot of her life in social work. On the last trip she was telling me of the lot of poor muslims in Hyderabad; how a mother and her daughter had only one proper set of clothes and only one of them could go out at a time)contributed to the welfare of people around them in various places. I hope that he will recover soon and spread his cheerfulness around for a long time.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Some India-related books
I have often wondered about the fact that many of the areas associated with India and Hinduism are in Pakistan and Afghanistan, for example, Gandhari may be from Peshawar area, Panini from near Swat Valley, originial Kambhoja is in Afghanistan, the Mohenjodaro-Harappa civilization might have stated from Mehrgarh... Alice Albinia started dreaming about Rig Veda in Delhi and her engrossing account "Empires of the Sind" describes her travels along the Sind, then in to Afghanistan, later to Ladakh and Tibet up to the souce of Sind. I read it recently after a Book recommendation from Fatima Bhutto. It is not a coneventional history book but there is lot of history, its influences on the present, conflicts of nations and perils of development. Along the way, there is some day dreaming about where Rig Veda was written which is not too covincing. There is no discussions of the 'fact' that devas and dasa were interchanged for Iranian aryans and Indo Aryans; this later is discussed briefly in John Keay's "India: a History". But Alice Albinia has some additional information about trade between Harappa and Manda in Kashmir. Pankaj Mishra travelled some of the same territory in his "Temptations of the West" and his account will complement Albinia's account of the current conflicts. Another history book that I found interesting is Burton Stein' posthumous book prepared for publication for by Sanjay Subrahmanyam and others.
There are some heavy tomes like "Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia", edited by Sheldon Pollock, and "The Language of the Gods in the World of Men" by Sheldon Pollock which I read after a suggestion from Paruchuri Sreenivas. Somebody recently gave me a copy of "Classical Indian Metaphysics" by Stephen Phillips which looks readable. Indian history seems to be still unfolding and I hope to get some glimpses of it.
There are some heavy tomes like "Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia", edited by Sheldon Pollock, and "The Language of the Gods in the World of Men" by Sheldon Pollock which I read after a suggestion from Paruchuri Sreenivas. Somebody recently gave me a copy of "Classical Indian Metaphysics" by Stephen Phillips which looks readable. Indian history seems to be still unfolding and I hope to get some glimpses of it.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
Information overload
An interesting discussion in 3quarks daily and a comment led to the following
A Conversation on Information: An interview with Umberto Eco, by Patrick Coppock. I resist the temptation to quote from it or paraphrase it.
A Conversation on Information: An interview with Umberto Eco, by Patrick Coppock. I resist the temptation to quote from it or paraphrase it.
Friday, August 07, 2009
Who is Paruchuri Sreenivas?
My response to a query in
a Telugu blog:
Paruchuri Sreenivas is the most knowledgeable person about Indology topics that I know. He has suggested to me and many others articles , books etc and seems to have the knack for finding significant articles. Even scholars like Velcheru Narayana Rao (Krishnadevaraya professor in University of Wisconsin and one of the best writers on Telugu poetry etc. in English)consult him for references.
I never met him personally but heard that his father and my father taught in the same school; but I think that he is much younger than me. He gets a bit impatient with sloppy people like me but is very helpful. By profession, he is a plastics engineer. He is the owner of the group racchabanda, and one of the people responsible for oldtelugusongs, ghantasala.inf. He has not written many articles but has many informative and sometimes encyclopedic posts in various places like racchabanda, oldtelugusongs discussion groups and vatious archives like telusa.
I think that he is a treasure and possibly a good position for him would be some sort of directorship of a Telugu Institute. But he does not have the right 'qualifications'.
a Telugu blog:
Paruchuri Sreenivas is the most knowledgeable person about Indology topics that I know. He has suggested to me and many others articles , books etc and seems to have the knack for finding significant articles. Even scholars like Velcheru Narayana Rao (Krishnadevaraya professor in University of Wisconsin and one of the best writers on Telugu poetry etc. in English)consult him for references.
I never met him personally but heard that his father and my father taught in the same school; but I think that he is much younger than me. He gets a bit impatient with sloppy people like me but is very helpful. By profession, he is a plastics engineer. He is the owner of the group racchabanda, and one of the people responsible for oldtelugusongs, ghantasala.inf. He has not written many articles but has many informative and sometimes encyclopedic posts in various places like racchabanda, oldtelugusongs discussion groups and vatious archives like telusa.
I think that he is a treasure and possibly a good position for him would be some sort of directorship of a Telugu Institute. But he does not have the right 'qualifications'.
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