Hindi film songs of yesteryears

Browsing about the period from thirties to fifties of Hindi film songs, there are six posts in Upperstall about the evolution during this period part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 and one of the crucial figures seems to be Ghulam Haider . I could not appreciate the songs of some of the famous ones like Noor Jehan (perhaps too local and I am not much in to ghazals) and some of the excerpts seem to clarify my likings for me. Excerpts about Lata "She was even rejected by producer S Mukherji who vetoed music director Ghulam Haider from using her for his film Shaheed (1948) saying her voice was too thin and squeaky! Haider warned Mukherji that this girl would one day overtake Noor Jehan and helped her breakthrough withthe song Mera Dil Toda from Majboor (1948)......... Such was Lata Mangeshkar's impact that within a year she had changed the face of the playback singer as her highly trained high-pitched singing rendered the nasal, basy voices of the day totally obsolete. At least music directors had found the voice that could stretch their creative experiments to the fullest. The only two singers to survive the Lata onslaught were Geeta Roy and to a certain extent Shamshad Begum as Lata went on to conquer all and sundry with her magical voice!" That was from the last article in the series. I am more partial to Geeta's songs. From the second, "1941 saw the release of a film, Pancholi Pictures Khazanchi, which was to change the face of Hindi Film Music. By then Music Directors of the 1930s, who had embellished films with their exquisite compositions set in classical ragas, were beginning to sound commonplace. Khazanchi's refreshingly free wheeling music by Ghulam Haider not only took the audiences by storm but also made other music directors sit up and take notice. Khazanchi, combining popular ragas with the rich verve and rhythm of Punjabi folk music, ensured that the Indian film song would never be the same again. Saawan ke Nazaare with the hero and heroine and their groups on cycles was a trendsetter song not only for its liveliness but also for introducing the big bang meeting of the boy and girl as they bang into each other's cycles! Gradually Hindi Film Music also began drawing from other States of India - from Uttar Pradesh, Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh. Music forms like the Purabi or Pahadi also proved to be extremely popular." From the above article on Ghulam Haider "Just like the USA, where all diverse nationalities get into the grand melting pot and become Americans, Bombay creates a unique amalgam of film and music makers that make it Bollywood. If Ghulam Haider gave a new style to Bombay, he in turn gained a lot from the grand melting pot experience of the city. As music director S. Mohinder puts it, “Every music director hailing from any part of India and arriving in Bombay, gains immensely from the music directors representing other cultures and participates in the creation of a new amalgam called the composite music of India”. Ghulam Haider’s style also underwent a see change, it happened especially after most of the members of his orchestra went back to Lahore after an explosion in Bombay."

Two songs of Shamshad Begum

which I came across in the last week, the first via 'Dances on the Footpath'. It is dance song from the Hindi film Himmat, 1941 sung by Shamshad Begum. The song without the dance http://www.shamshadbegum.com/songs/90-inhin-logon-ne-le-leena-himmat-1941
There is also a nice video but it not clear to me whether it is from the same film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0QpprJJ1Ig
Almost the same song but with different singers and dancers from a later film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDwvnOkDqSg&feature=related
This seems to be one of the first Hindi film songs by Shamshad Begum
http://cineplot.com/music/shamshad-begums-song-list-1941-1945/
one of the stars in the film is Ragini, whose original name was Shamshad Begum. I do not know whether the dance was picurized with her. A brief biography of Ragini
http://www.upperstall.com/people/ragini
The second song is via Rajraj of the Hub forum and by Amirbai Karnataki
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgHmIinN-e0
Apparently it was dropped from the film Naghma in favour of Shamshad Begum's version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpc6ZsiUYx8&feature=related
I like both but like Amirbai's version a bit more

Peak child level

http://www.gapminder.org/videos/religions-and-babies/
via Duncan Green at http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/

Recent progress in 3-manifolds

A survey article on the recent progress in 3-manifolds http://arxiv.org/pdf/1205.0202v1.pdf Many of the problems that we only dreamed about seem to have been solved by a bunch of relatively young mathematicians. I can only hope to get an idea of the achievement and do not expect to understand many of the proofs.

Two articles on Robert Spitzer

Robert Spitzer recently in the news for withdrawing his interpretation if a gay study is also the main person behind the controversial DSM-3 which has 'checklists' of symptoms for various mental diorders; the later DSMs are considered footnotes to DSM-3. A new one sccheduled for next year also controversial. According to the above article "Robert Spitzer’s achievement represents a Nobel-worthy leap forward in the history of psychiatry, but his DSM-III was only meant to be a first installment to a work-in-progress, not frozen in time as psychiatry’s diagnostic Bible. Its present incarnation as the DSM-IV-TR of 2000 is essentially the same old 1980 book in a new cover. There are many dangers to this. One of them is that the universal success of the DSM has entrenched its original errors. What may have started out in 1980 as a descriptive trial balloon by 1984 was unaccountably accepted as scientific fact, which by 1990 was regarded as wisdom of the ages. Now, in 2011 (and right up past 2030, no doubt), thanks to all the stake-holders invested in the status quo - insurance companies and so on - undoing these mistakes borders on the impossible. Indeed, the DSM-5, due out in 2013, guarantees psychiatry will be stuck in 1980 Groundhog Day forever - or until a new discipline renders it obsolete. But a pharmaceutical company with billions riding on a new antidepressant does not suddenly want to find out that depression no longer means what it used to mean, even if the term is no longer relevant to what we experience and how a new generation of clinicians may practice." This is also the view here which quotes from DSM-3 and worries about its use in litigations “The purpose of the DSM-III-R is to provide clear descriptions of diagnostic categories in order to enable clinicians and investigators to diagnose, communicate about, study, and treat the various mental disorders. It is to be understood that inclusion here, for clinical and research purposes, of a diagnostic category such as Pathological Gambling or Pedophilia does not imply that the conditions meets legal or other non-medical criteria for what constitutes mental disease, mental disorder, or mental disability. The clinical and scientific considerations involved in categorization of these conditions as mental disorders may not be wholly relevant to legal judgments, for example, that take into account such issues as individual responsibility, disability determination, and competency.”

Edward Luce meets some military strategists in USA

Their vision as reported here: "It would not be easy. It may not even be possible, they conceded. But it should be the priority. “The number one threat facing America is its rising debt burden,” said the briefing officer. “Our number one goal should be to restore American prosperity.” Intrigued by the boldness of their vision, I was unprepared for what followed. The briefer said they had all agreed on the need to shrink the Pentagon budget by at least a fifth, partly by closing overseas bases, partly by reducing the number of those in uniform by 100,000, but also by cutting the number of “battle groups” – aircraft carriers – below its current level of 11. Most of the savings would be spent on civilian priorities such as infrastructure, education and foreign aid. None of this would be possible were the US at war, or even under threat of war, they said. It could be pulled off only if the country were, in effect, to cede – or “share” – its domination over large parts of the world. “We would need to persuade our friends on the Republican side that America has to share power if we want to free up resources to invest at home,” the briefer said. “We tried really hard to come up with alternatives. But we couldn’t find a better way to do this.”" Edwar Luce who wrote an excellent book about India has now written about USA “Time to Start Thinking: America and the Spectre of Decline” and the book is reviewd here and here. Interviews with Edward Luce at PBS and Foreign Policy.

TRNN update on UNCTAD

The Struggle Over UNCTAD (and Why It Matters) ( via Naked Capitalism which seems to be one of the few main stream blogs featured in Economist's View which carries news of UNCTAD): "Some people see the Doha conference, therefore, as a draw. Others, because of the disproportionate power that the north has over the south, see this as a victory of the south, because it preserved the mandate of UNCTAD and it is allowing it now for the next five years or so to continue researching the question of finance, questions of economic development, as far as, you know, it being people-centered and not finance-centered. So because the mandate of the UNCTAD was not touched, there are people who say this is a major victory for the south,..........................There were two other points that were very important......One part of UNCTAD, you know, the division headed by Flassbeck, for instance, was producing reports critical of the way in which finance in particular had come to dominate social life. Another part was a pledge to helping investment capital enter the global south. And so there is—there was an imbalance at Doha, as there has been within UNCTAD for a long period. And this question has also been raised—you know, what is this double-headed nature of UNCTAD? And the third thing, very important thing, a preview of the rest of the summer's debates between north and south, this third thing was around the so-called new trade narrative.....we need to understand the new trade narrative as part of this supply chain, that every country in the world is linked into the supply chain; there is no real contradiction between north and south; there are no antagonisms in the world anymore; everybody just needs to find their place. In a way, this is the 21st century version of David Ricardo's comparative advantage theory.....But at the Doha meeting, the South African trade minister, Rob Davies, very strongly contested the story, and he said that, look, what you are trying to say is precisely why UNCTAD was created in the first place, because the first secretary-general of UNCTAD, Raúl Prebisch, critiqued this Ricardo kind of theory." Vijay Prashad goes on to explain the 'global supply chain': " I'll put it in the worst way. Malaysia will find the rubber. Singapore will produce certain kinds of technical equipment. This will be put together in Shenzhen in China. But the entire idea is created in the United States, and because of international property laws, the United States will protect its ability to make money off work done by people outside the United States. This is bad for U.S. workers, because it means there is no need to create jobs in America, and it's appalling for people in Malaysia and people in Shenzhen, because they make a very tiny part of the profit in the sale of whatever they're making. The bulk of that profit is going to be made by the so-called intellectual property holder, which is likely to be a major transnational corporation based in the north, and then it's going to be shared out to people who are lawyers, bankers, etc., whose job is to protect the copyright and to preserve the wealth accrued by this transnational firm. So if we get down to it, what Rob Davies said is this is a kind of new colonialism. It's not what we want." Vijay Prashad also thinks that China, Russia, India, Brazil oppsed the developed states not because of their opposition to neo-liberal economics but"....the section of this particular so-called new trade narrative that they are most upset by is something they've been upset by for 20-plus years, and that is the question of intellectual property rights. You know, if you look at the pyramid of profit, you know, it's actually a reverse pyramid of profit. If you look at it like that, you see that the country where the firms control intellectual property are able to make the most out of the global supply chain. You know, they are able to—because of so-called value added, they are able to make the most out of the sale of commodities. It's not the person who makes the Nike shoe in Indonesia that makes the money for Indonesia; it is still Nike in the United States who is reaping the—taking in the profits for Nike shoes, even though Nike doesn't actually make any shoes. You know, Nike is a design and brand firm. They don't actually manufacture shoes. But the design and brand section of the supply chain is where the real profits lie. So countries like Brazil, India, China, these countries are fighting to bring their own brands to market, to bring their own designs to market, and they are being held back by a global or international intellectual property regime that prevents many of them from pushing their brands forward. I mean, one of the real tricks in the 1980s that they are most upset by was the shift in intellectual property from where you copyright not the process by which you get to, say, a sneaker but the actual sneaker itself. That means that you cannot figure out a novel—your own way of making the same product, your own way of making, say, a drug that, you know, is antiretroviral. You can't do that, because now what is copyrighted isn't any longer the process but the product itself. And that is something that is holding back countries like China, India, Brazil. They are frustrated and angry about this one aspect of the global supply chain narrative."

A handbook on corruption

which a Hindu review says is an Antidote to World Bank prescription is currently available online here.

Neurosceptic on labels

From Shyness By Any Other Name : "People think of "social anxiety disorder" as more serious than "social phobia" - even when they refer to exactly the same thing. Laura C . Bruce et al did a telephone survey of 806 residents of New York State. They gave people a brief description of someone who's uncomfortable in social situations and often avoids them. The question was: should they seek mental health treatment for this problem? When the symptoms were labelled as "social anxiety disorder", 83% of people recommended treatment. But when the same description was deemed "social phobia", it dropped to 75%, a statistically significant difference. OK, that's only an 8% gap. It's a small effect, but then the terminological difference was a small one. "Anxiety disorder" vs "Phobia" is about a subtle a distinction as I can think of actually. Imagine if one of the options had been a label that didn't imply anything pathological - "social anxiety" or "shyness". That would probably have had a much bigger impact." Neurosceptic goes on to discuss the terminological chsnges planned for DSM-5

Minai identifies Malavika from 'Ananda Bhairavi'

I have been learning about Indian films , dances and songs from the posts of Minai like Malavika's Dances and the film Ananda Bhairavi (1983, Telugu/Kannada) and Richard's Sai-Subbulaxmi. After an erudite discussion and links to several nice dances in Ananda Bhairavi, Minai wondered about the identity and background of Malavika who did some wonderful Kuhipudi dances in he film. I took interest since Kuchipudi is close to my father's village and I am familiar with the place where the film was made. We wondered why she sort of vanished from the scene after a stellar performance. It turned out that Malavika is a kathak dancer Malavika Sarkar from the Lucknow Gharana who specially trained in Kuchipudi dances for the film after the director Jandhyala saw a TV performance by her. Minai compltes the identification in her latest post Visual Proof of Malavika Sarkar - Kathak Dancerand Ananda Bhairavi Star! . It is wonderful to read Minai's carefully researched posts and links to wonderful dances which make some of the classical dances palatable to even somebody like me who was turned off early by much of the gymnastics in those dances.

"I'll manage it somehow"

Happy Mother's Day! From a Time magazine review of 'Boot Polish', now behind a paywall, quoted here "From her scrawny, seven-year-old frame, Actress Naaz somehow sums up the whole history of her sex, chattering happily as she works with her brother, huddling against him for warmth, patting his arm in a crisis and reassuring him, "I'll manage it somehow." " P.S. Sad to see that Baby Naaz had a terrible mother http://memsaabstory.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/from-the-archives-animals-and-children/#comments Her profile at Cineplot http://cineplot.com/naaz-baby-profile/

Two on armpits

From Our case against Manto By Mohammed Hanif "While describing Saughandi in your notorious short story Hatak you tell us: Her armpit looked as if a piece of plucked chicken skin had been placed there. Did it occur to you that you might be spoiling your reader’s dinner?" (There is also a nice article Ayesha Jalal on Manto http://herald.dawn.com/2012/05/10/he-wrote-what-he-saw-and-took-no-sides.html). From"The 'Cent per Cent' Gandhian" in Raga'n Josh: Richard Attenborough after being subjected to a dinner of 'bisibeleholianna' by Mohan Rao of the Publication Division of the Govt. of India "I will survive, but how do you chaps manage to eat this stuff? To me it tastes like stewed armpits!"

Arundhati Roy on Capitalism

Much of what Arundhati Roy says in Capitalism: A Ghost Story seems right to me, one instance is the recent efforts to curtail the mandate of UNCTAD Why would policymakers want to gag a past master of economic prophecy?. But it is not clear to me whether it forms a coherant narrative or gives hints of plans for action. Perhaps one hint is in her comment "But which of us sinners was going to cast the first stone? Not me, who lives off royalties from corporate publishing houses." It seems to me most of us are involved in making a living and try to ensure some security for our families and have to do with the existing conditions and opportunities. A recent report of Gabriel Parma's work by Duncan Green ‘It’s the share of the rich, stupid’: brilliant inequality stats + politics from Gabriel Palma reports "‘There are two opposite forces at work. One is ‘centrifugal’, and leads to an increased diversity in the shares appropriated by the top 10 and bottom 40 per cent. The other is ‘centripetal’, and leads to a growing uniformity in the income-share appropriated by deciles 5 to 9. Therefore, half of the world’s population (the middle and upper-middle classes) have acquired strong ‘property rights’ over half of their respective national incomes; the other half, however, is increasingly up for grabs between the very rich and the poor.........‘In Latin America the middle classes seek to defend their share of income with different forms of alliances with the élite (some more successfully than others). This is different to India, for example, where the administrative classes defend their position mostly via alliances with the poor (which gives them the political power to mediate in the different conflicts between the capitalist élite and the state)’. Vintage stuff." In other words, all of us outside the top ten and bottom 40 perecent are in some ways involved in maintaining the status quo.But this does not explain why many in the middle classes often both husband and wife (possibly except government employees)are working harder and longer than before or that change is not possible. It seems that with globalization and debt of poor countries, many are caught in a circle from which it is difficult to escape. Perhaps, cancellation of odious debts and considering alternaives like Is this the UN’s most powerful critique to date of finance-driven globalization? may be a start.

Odious Debt

Some of the stigma attached to debt seems to loose some sting with The Concept of Odious Debt: "Odious debt is an established legal principle. Legally, debt is to be considered odious if the government used the money for personal purposes or to oppress the people. Moreover, in cases where borrowed money was used in ways contrary to the people’s interest, with the knowledge of the creditors, the creditors may be said to have committed a hostile act against the people. Creditors cannot legitimately expect repayment of such debts. The United States set the first precedent of odious debt when it seized control of Cuba from Spain. Spain insisted that Cuba repay the loans made to them by Spain. The U.S. repudiated (refused to pay) that debt, arguing that the debt was imposed on Cuba by force of arms and served Spain’s interest rather than Cuba’s, and that the debt therefore ought not be repaid. This precedent was upheld by international law in Great Britain v. Costa Rica (1923) when money was put to use for illegitimate purposes with full knowledge of the lending institution; the resulting debt was annulled." It was formalized later(1927) by Alexander Nahum Sack and there is a widely quoted 2002 IMF paper by Michael Kremer and Seema Jayachandran in which they argue: "... if there were an institution that assessed, and announced, whether regimes were odious, this could create a new equilibrium (that is, market outcome) in which countries' reputations would not be hurt by refusal to repay illegitimate debts, just as individuals' credit ratings are not hurt by refusal to pay debts that others fraudulently incur in their name." In 2007, there were two papers commissioned by the Narvey Government UNCTAD and World Bank publish long-awaited papers on odious debt. As far as I can see, UNCTAD has some forums advising about handling debt and Jubilee Debt Campaign has been active in efforts to Cancelling Poor Countries' Debts: An Interview with Nick Dearden ( See also Review: Africa’s Odious Debt – How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled A Continent.) Now that not-so-far countries are also suffering from odious debt Greece's Odious Debt, By Jason Manolopoulos , perhaps some of the principles advocated by Kremer, Jayachandran and others will be adopted.

Discussion of "Never Mind Europe, Worry About India"

in Economist's View. Paine's comment "india has the great disadvantage of too many world class anglo american school economists"

Blows to the head may unleash latent talent

Discussion Researcher profiles man’s savant syndrome on ABC’s ‘Nightline’ of Jason Padgett's fine art. Berit Brogaard discusses the case further in A Case of Acquired Savant Syndrome and Synesthesia Following a Brutal Assault. There are hints that most people may have unexpressed talents possibly suppressed by more dominant parts of the brain. It seems that in these discussions, mathematics is thought of either as number skills or as visual imagination or sometimes facility with formulae and/or computations. As mathematics is practiced today, these form some of the skills which some mathematicians have but not always. You often hear mathemticians saying that "it is too algebraic for me" or "it is too geomeric for me" or "I hate computations". It seems to me that analytical skills and a temperament for free flights of imagination without being restricted by too much reality is common to many mathematicians rather than any particular skill. Usually many have preference for geometry or algbra or analysis or abstract thought or a combination of these and sometimes even a dislike for some of these aspects. In any case even if there is some resemblance to mathematical pictures, Jason Padgett's work seems to be like print art to me and his comments quoted in this redditt discussion do not make much sense to me. But the ictures in Jason Padgett's fine art are very nice.

P.A. Periya Nayaki Concert from Sabapathy, 1941

I do not know Tamil but P.A. Periya Nayaki's short Concert from 1941 seemed interesting to me.

‘100 Years of Indian Cinema’ in Delhi

says atul's bollywood song a day- with full lyrics. The announcement comes with 'Hauley hauley hawaayen doley' sung by Geeta Roy/Dutt

Leela Naidu about the poverty concerns of some

While reading about Balraj Sahni, I came across the "How is your dear wife?" story with Leela Naidu. She seemed an interesting person and I started looking for articles about her and came across something that I have been wondering about myself. From The Many Lives of Leela Naidu: "I must say I admire the way Arundhati has turned her status as celebrity author into a catalyst for the causes she cares about, but there was very little of the caring Ms Roy on the set of Electric Moon." Leela proceeds to describe in detail the utter mismanagement of the schedule, concluding with, "And so when I watch her pleading for the disenfranchised and the marginalised, I think back to the ruthless Ms Roy on that sun-drenched plateau in Madhya Pradesh and I wonder whether it is easier for us to sympathise with anonymous masses than with the actual people we are confronted with in real life? The poor are an abstraction for whom we can all feel an ambiguous benevolence… Perhaps I am misjudging all of them but I often feel that a production house can be judged by the way it treats those who have no voice: the extras, the dancers and the animals." She desrved a better end than this. .

Two recent science controversies

Ashutosh Jogalekar in The anatomy of peer review: Why airing dirty laundry in public is important (via Abi): "Perhaps the greatest message that the public can take home from such incidents is that even great scientists can make mistakes and remain great scientists, and that science continues to progress in one way or another. No matter how bad this kind of stuff sounds, it's actually business as usual for the scientific process, and there's nothing wrong with it."

Fascinating autobiography of Balraj Sahni

here via http://roughinhere.wordpress.com/. See also his 1972 convocation address at JNU. He is very frank about his shortcomings, compromises and seems to be asking Indian to think; he indicates that during the later part of his lihe he was too busy with films and did not have really time to cotinue with his earlier programs. There are many references to communism and Marx and at one stage, he says "In effect, Marxism is 1 philosophy which can analyse every aspect of worldly life from the scientific point of view." (I do not know what 1 signifies here). I heard about this 'scientific' bit before but always got stuck in my attempts to understand Marxism. I am either stuck at the 'thesis, antithesis' stage or find concets changing meaning as one proceeds. Everytime, I have to google and try to find what Marxism is. There seem to lots of insights as explained in this article by Peter Boyle,but sometimes it seems like a theory of every thing. More often, it seems to me to be a model which can explain some situations, for example some of the current struggles in Latin America, but generally there seems to attempts by some to explain everything in terms of some Marxism.

Reports on UNCTAD XIII

From Victory at UNCTAD XIII by Deborah James:

"The final Declaration provides support -- approved by the developing and developed countries alike -- for a strong mandate for UNCTAD's vital work on financial and related crises. Amazingly, this was the most contentious aspect of the text. Developed countries originally even opposed the inclusion of language recognizing the existence of the global financial and economic crisis. A red line for the U.S. was on language mandating UNCTAD to work on the "root causes" of the crisis -- probably because the implied culpability, since the U.S. was the epicenter of the financial crisis of 2008-2009.
The key contested paragraph calls for UNCTAD to "continue, as a contribution to the work of the UN, research and analysis on the prospects of, and impact on, developing countries in matters of trade and development, in light of the global economic and financial crisis." While this mandate could have been broader, negotiators in the G77 group of over 100 developing countries -- together with civil society support -- were able to push back and wouldn't back down.
Why would such seeming innocuous language be so controversial? This is because UNCTAD has been the source of some of the most accurate and comprehensive analyses of the causes and impacts of the global financial crisis and recession. And it has been proposing solutions that are anathema to those who wish to maintain "business as usual" in global economic and finance policies the aftermath of the crisis."

Vijay Prashad says in Draw at Doha:
"Raja Khalidi, a senior economist at UNCTAD, concurred. UNCTAD XIII "noted the global economic realities and UNCTAD's role in providing critical analysis of their implications." The Swiss Ambassador had a more measured response, telling Bloomberg that the agreement "gives more precision" to UNCTAD's mandate so they "can't just do anything".
But thus far UNCTAD has not been able to "just do anything". Despite its many achievements, sections of UNCTAD have been smitten with elements of neo-liberal policy, such as carbon trading as a response to climate change. The carbon-trading model avoids the core problem, namely the North's energy waste and the South's lack of seriousness about alternative energy. There has been little concern for how the UN's Clean Development Mechanism is destroying forests and livelihoods.
There is also little evaluation of the mandate of UNCTAD's Center for Transnational Corporations, whose original mandate - to monitor corporations and create a Code of Conduct for them - had been transformed to reflect "the changing times and become more focused on the positive, rather than the negative, effects of Foreign Direct Investment and Transnational Corporations".
These elements of UNCTAD require some more self-scrutiny. The fierce opposition to UNCTAD from the North makes any serious self-criticism far harder to tackle.
Bankers need not worry yet. UNCTAD's reports do not threaten them. They do, however, irritate their counterparts at the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD. Challenges to their empirical claims and their theoretical blindness shall continue to fly out of the UNCTAD offices."
According to Jayati Ghosh
Unctad is astute and progressive – so why don't developed countries like it?:
"Some explanations for the apparently surprising attitude of developed countries can be found from the informal statements made by certain negotiators. One such representative of an important developed country told his counterpart from a major emerging market economy that they "did not want Unctad to engage in intellectual competition with the IMF"!
Intriguing, isn't it? Such people are usually all for competition in everything (certainly in labour markets) – except, apparently, ideas. Even more surprising is that the IMF and the World Bank, with their massive resources and humongous research departments, are still scared of a rather small organisation with only a handful of people producing their flagship reports.
The perception of "northern" interests also plays a role. For example, in Doha the big fights about what would go into the final text concerned issues like whether Unctad can work on global financial issues (the US opposed this) or on technology transfer, or even on the protection of traditional knowledge.
In fact, this is not about north versus south, even though it may have seemed like that in Doha. As it happens, the content and results of the research produced by Unctad are very much in the interests not just of developing countries per se, but of ordinary citizens all over the world, the 99% of popular imagination. The rearguard action fought by some negotiators to control and limit Unctad's work was more about trying to create a single homogenous approach to economic analysis and policy to be accepted globally, even if that approach is increasingly being exposed as misleading and downright wrong.
The governments of the United States and other developed countries are keen to export what they see as democracy to different parts of the world, and to point out (with respect to countries that try to control information and freedom of speech) that it is impossible to control the spread of ideas. Clearly, they need to learn the same messages themselves, especially with respect to ideas and economic analysis.
Fortunately, the active engagement of some of the Brics and other emerging nations proved to be critical in shifting the balance and preserving the basic role of Unctad in the conference. But the messy negotiations showed that taking the progressive agenda forward is going to be constantly challenged even as it becomes ever more relevant and necessary."
Some more reactions
Unctad gets fresh mandate by Martin Khor
UNCTAD XIII: Not much to cheer about from Bangla Desh Financial Express.
and here
My impression is that though the final mandate seems to be a success considering the determined opposition of some of the developed countries, as Nicaragua constitutional fights show, declaration is not enough. Moreover some elements of developing countries are believers of neo-liberalism and some are keen to exploit the least developed countries as grabs of land and mineral resources by some of the developing countries line China and India show. Nevertheless, It seems to be some progress.

Interview with Jampala Chowdary

http://www.navyaweekly.com/2012/apr/25/page18.asp
Jampala Chowdary,one of the stalwarts in Telugu Internet world interview in Andhra Jyothi. Jampala has also contributed much to social work and welfare through TANA, from educational scholarships, health clinics, to encouragement of folk dances. These are not mentioned in the interview which is more about his background and contributions to organizational work about Telugu literature. Known to be a good organizer, established psychiatrist and teacher and much admired for his contributions to Telugu world. He has also contributed to social work in USA through many organizations. In fact a global citizen.
P.S. An earlier interview with Jampala Chowdary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNy40wr0YYw&feature=player_embedded

UNCTAD

After seeing reports like this: In praise of … Unctad and In Defence of UNCTAD it is good to see UNCTAD Meeting Overcomes Serious Disagreements apparently with some support from the Brics: Five BRICS chalenge the Neoliberal North. The Doha Mandate and other related documents here and press releases here P.S. There seems to be some prevailing paradigms and alternative views such as those expressed by UNCTAD do not seem to get mention in many of the main stream blogs or news channels. So far, I have noticed mentions of UNCTAD mainly in The Guardian, Financial Times, http://www.voxeu.org/ and http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/.

How Usha Kiron fell in love with her husband after marriage

From Usha Kiron-Memories (http://cineplot.com/usha-kiron-memories/)
"My husband is a man with no complexes whatsoever. When I was expecting my first child, Amiya Chakraborty died. That was the only time I ever brought up the subject with my husband after we were married. I asked his permission to go to Amiya’s funeral. My husband was most understanding and insisted that I do the same. That is the only time I ever stepped into Amiya’s house, after I had promised his wife about not meeting him."
It also has the story  of  interaction with Uday Shankar and also her daughter's impressions.
Another excerpt:
"Once in Madras however, catastrophe took place. I was thrown out of the film and sent packing back to Bombay. It was just a misunderstanding, coupled with Udayji’s mercurial temperament and my militant naivette. For a dance sequence, I had to wear a transparent Manipuri costume. Since I was conscious of it, I wore a white slip underneath. Mrs. Uday Shankar asked me to remove it for the shot, since it would have looked very awkward. I didn’t pay heed to it. So later, Udayji noticed it and bellowed at his wife for not taking care of the costumes. She in turn screamed at me. After that incident, I used to hang around the set with a permanent sulky expression. This used to get on Udayji’s nerves and one day he bellowed once again. ‘Don’t you know how to smile?’ I in turn, replied hotly, ‘No! You teach me how to smile! ‘ And that was the end. In retrospect, I would still credit him with shaping my inherent talent, more than any one else. He is an education in acting and dancing for any actress."
Minai has good news about Yday Shankar's Kalpana http://cinemanrityagharana.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/kalpana-1948-to-be-screened-at-2012.html?showComment=1335584557125

Here is a video song from Patita

Neo-liberalism to neo-extractivism

Dani Rodrik in Ideas over Interests:

"The most widely held theory of politics is also the simplest: the powerful get what they want. Financial regulation is driven by the interests of banks, health policy by the interests of insurance companies, and tax policy by the interests of the rich. Those who can influence government the most – through their control of resources, information, access, or sheer threat of violence – eventually get their way.

It’s the same globally. Foreign policy is determined, it is said, first and foremost by national interests – not affinities with other nations or concern for the global community. International agreements are impossible unless they are aligned with the interests of the United States and, increasingly, other rising major powers. In authoritarian regimes, policies are the direct expression of the interests of the ruler and his cronies.

It is a compelling narrative, one with which we can readily explain how politics so often generates perverse outcomes. Whether in democracies, dictatorships, or in the international arena, those outcomes reflect the ability of narrow, special interests to achieve results that harm the majority."

Dani Rodrik finds this in complete and misleading and suggests that
"It was economists and their ideas that made it respectable for policymakers and regulators to believe that what is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street.
Economists love theories that place organized special interests at the root of all political evil. In the real world, they cannot wriggle so easily out of responsibility for the bad ideas that they have so often spawned. With influence must come accountability."

Tyler Cowen asks for references on education in developing countries

Tyler Cowen's post
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/04/development-economics-education-bleg.html
There are lot of links in the comments. My two cents. I wonder whether education in developing countries can be disassociated with education in America and Americal influence particularly through foundations. There is an old book of Edward Breman which discusses this; relavent parts from the book here:

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/oss/ideologyofphilanthropy.htm
There is a more recent paper by Jayant Krishnan which discusses the American influence on Indian legal education:
http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1347&context=facpub
There is also an article by David Warsh on the influence of foundations in American business education
http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/2011.12.18/1321.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EconomicPrincipals+%28Economic+Principals%29

Similar songs, different singers

Two Songs - Jayasimha (1955) (Telugu) - Jai Singh (1959) (Hindi) from YouTube

(trying the new format)

Mamta cartoons

http://keralacartoonacademy.com/ has an exhibition of Mamta cartoons
http://cartoonexhibition.blogspot.in/2012/04/cartoons-mamta-banerjee.html

Saadat Hasan Manto is the gold standard of South Asian fiction

according to Daisy Rockwell in an article about another writer. Tributes by Tariq Ali: Remembering Saadat Hasan Manto and write up with links to some of his writings
Remembering Saadat Hasan Manto
Here are translations of some of his writings
TOBA TEK SINGH
Khol Do
Thanda Gosht
The Dog of Tetwal
The assignment
Mera Sahib
Ten Rupees and Mozelle
From this artcle by Manto about Ismat Chughtai, it seems that Manto was not a diplomatic person. He writes to his wife:
"I met Ismat. You will be surprised to know that as a woman she is exactly like you. I am bitterly disappointed."
An artcle about his alcoholism,
An article about his characterization of an Anglo-Indian woman.
A traveller meets two taxi drivers who knew TOBA TEK SINGH in New York city .
His one time teacher Faiz Ahmed Faiz thought "Manto was not a great artist but he was honest, talented and straightforward.”. For me the gold standard of south Asian fiction is still Sarat Chandra Chatterjee's "Mahesh". P.S. More articles at Viewpoint http://www.viewpointonline.net/manto-in-india.html http://www.viewpointonline.net/manto-in-usa.html http://www.viewpointonline.net/manto-is-universal.html http://www.viewpointonline.net/manto-in-oslo.html From the first I learn that there is a lane in Delhi named after Manto.

Some impressions

Now that I have spent about 40 days in India, and off and on spent some some time with local NGOs, I have been getting requests from friends in USA and elsewhere about my impressions and how to organize some help for the poor in India. Unfortunately I really do not know. I spent most of the time in Andhra with middle class friends, and rest of the time visiting the mathematics department of Vivekananda University, Belur Math. I also spent three days in New Delhi talking to Shekhar Singh about RTI and sustainable development and a day in the Narendrapur branch of RK mission trying to understand their work on rural development.

From what I can see, RK mission work is impressive (I am basically an atheist and my main interest is in the mathematics department of Vivekanda University. The work of RK mission in rural developmement, I came to know only during my stay there three years ago through a visitor). From what I could gather, this work started over sixty years ago when a monk sheltered a few young people during the Bengal famine. In return he asked them to help the neighbouring weaver community and slowly the involvement with neighbours srarted. They moved from North Kolkata to Narendrapur and started working with nearby villages taking advantage of the youth clubs in villages to train villagers in agricultural technology. This slowly led to the development of teaching and research departments and an agricultural centre now supported by the government. There are around thirteen units in the Narendrapur centre from a school for the blind to Ayurvedic and Allopathic treatment centres to gardens of medicinal planta to schools to about four units involved in rural development of over two hundred villages. This is all very impressionistic; some more details can be found at Ramakrishna Mission Ashram, Narendrapur. In any case my impression is that some of the work of the mission started in a similar fashion. Some dedicated monk had a passion to do some sort of work. For example one became a monk after seeing his father beat up his mother and wanted to help women. His efforts resulted in Ramakrishna Mission Shishumangal Pratishthan. It seems to start with a combination of a nucleus of need, a dedicated monk with a passion for that work, and also the support of the mission and the community. I found that when I was walking with monks there seemed natural respect and admiration for the people who have given up normal pleasures of life to serve others and even shopkeepers were selling things cheaper to me. It is clear that RK mission is doing great work but it is not clear how it can be reproduced. Unfortunately, the the number of monks seems to stay around 1200 and they do not open new centres without 3-4 dedicated monks.

Then I also visited a couple of small local organizations in AP who have been doing social work for a few years and to whom I have been trying to organize funds on a small scale off and on. One of them T.Aruna in Ongole, a Kamma lady married to a Brahmin and has been involved in various activities with her husband's support for nearly 25 years. Whereas RK mission scrupulously keeps away from politics, Aruna first went along with communists and then with Telugudesam of which she may still be a member. My impression is that she helped a lot of poor women to organize self help groups, got land from the government for several poor, and in addition runs two different centre for the old and women in need with overment funding. The funding seems to come late sometimes 2-3 years late and meanwhile she borrows money to run the centres and seems to have lost all her property in the process. We helped to organize operations for two women in the short stay home. With funding from abroad, there is generally insistence on bills, accounts etc and it is not clear how these can be organized well in India. This accounting requirements seem to be an unnecessary distraction and in two cases I saw that volunteers could not cope with it and asked us to take the money back. Perhaps when reliable people are found, accouting requirements can be loosened. In RK mission, I found that sometines retired people help to keep accounts and there is only accountant for the whole Vivekanda University.

Perhaps the highlight of the trip is chating with Shekhar Singh who oozes aptimism and is justifiably proud of what RTI is beginning to do and now with the help of social audit. Rahul Banerjee whose "Recovering the Lost Tongue" ended in a somewhat pessimistic note now says that they won a few cases using RTI and feels more optimistic. Somehow the bureaucrats let RTI slip through, perhaps they did not take the new NAC seriously, and have not been able to dilute it so far. Moreover, like in any other group, there seem to be several well meaning bureaucrats and the challenge seems to be to organize these various cohesive groups which can work at least locally.

Those are my rough and somewhat incoherent impressions.

P.S. Shekhar Singh is a friend since 1977. Aruna is the sister in a law of a friend I knew from 1957. Mahan Mitra/Maharaj of Vivekananda University, Belur Math and I have common research interests; we colloborated in 2009, I know him from his work since 1996 and met me first in 2005.

The Voice

For Telugus of my vintage, perhaps from the coatal districts of Andhra, this is still the voice:
Laila Majnu - Payanamaye priyatama
A unusual dance by Lalita and Padmini from the same film:
Laila Majnu - O Sarasuda

An excellent book about Uday Shankar

After reading posts about Uday Shankar dances like In Search of Uday Shankar’s Kalpana (1948) and A Documentary on Simkie, Uday Shankar's Dance Partner I started browsing through the internet about Uday Shankar and read this excellent book of Mohan Khokar mentioned by Minai (the link contains a list of books about Uday Shankar):
His Dance, His Life: A Portrait of Uday Shankar
It eulogizes Uday Shankar but does not hide his weaknesses. The author seems to have spent a lot of time with Uday Shankar during the last years of Uday Shankar's life and had about ten hours of tape recorded conversations with him. Though Uday Shankar started as a painter, dance seems to be a part of his life since childhood. The first influence was a 'chamar' dancer Mata Din whose movements he began to imitate much to the delight of his mother who had no daughters. " His mother more than anybody else encouraged him as a dancer, though both then knew nothing of what dance was." This was in the village of Nasrathpur before Uday Shankar was fourteen. By 1930, he was quite famous and when he visited Nasrathpur again ".. Shankar went to see Mata Din, whose dancing inspired him in childhood. He fell straight at his feet'. Somehow without much knowledge of classical indian dances but with memories of Indian paintings and sculptures and with his painter's eye he seems to have internalized dancing. According to Beryl de Zoete, who saw him in 1931:
"When Shankar 'took up' dancing he did not appear as an exponent of one of the traditional schools, but as a choreographer, free to choose what elements he needed from either. His knowledge of Indian dancing was at that time very slight, but he had a real gift for composition and capacity for assimilating style which reminds one of Massine. The magnificient dance poses of the Indian sculptures also played a large part in his education. It was Kathakali, the great dance drama of Malabar, which chiefly attracted him, and he was the first to attempt a transcription of some of its extraordinary techniques and make up, for the Europeah stage. More important still, he caught something of its spirit. I had never before moved quite in this way by dancing before. The dancer did not appeal to the audience, seemed indeed to be unconscious of its presence. Yet his face is not inexpressive, on the contrary it seemed much more varied and striking in its means of expression.But the expression corresponded to another state of being, it was directed inwards, not offering itself to the spectator with the desire to please or surprise. The remoteness of the art, commuting with iyself, as it were, was something new and strangely attractive."

This quote is on page 64 of Khokar's book. The last points were made again by Uday Shankar in the lasr interviews described on pages 165-166:
"It was like something possessed me. I forgot myself. I was no more Uday Shankar. And I forgot I was dancing to the public and I had no concern of how the public was taking me. No such thought came to me. I just went through my paces with complete enchantment."
The book is full of reactions and reviews by contemporaries who saw the dances and the author does not impose his views even though he seems more symapathetic to traditional Indian dances. There are stories of the decline and bitterness and indications that 'Kalpana' may be an uneven film. In fact F. Hall says in 'Honoring Uday Shankar' that only a couple of the dances are excellent. The author wrote two more books, one called "Traditions of Indian Dance" where the last chapter on 'The Free Dance' Has some material on Uday Shankar. There is another on folk dances of India which I have not seen yet. Unfortunately all seems out of print. But the author's son seems to be an influential dance critic and I hope that these excellent books will be reprinted though he says (http://www.mid-day.com/specials/2010/jun/270610-ashish-mohan-khokar-dance-historian-indian-male-classical-dancers.htm)
"Today, if you are looking for a book on dance, you are likely to be directed to the gardening or hobbies section. No publisher wants to print a book on dance unless there's a known name involved. And when they do, the books cost a fortune."
P.S. There is very little about Simkie, Uday Shankar's most vibrant partner in the book though her name is mentioned several times. Elsewhere, Ravi Shankar remembers his brother's art most from 1030-38 when Simkie was partnering him. In the video posted by Minai, Amalahankar thinks her dancing was nothing compared to simkie's. Some of the details from the book which have not seen before are:
Jlly 21, 1941: Simkie fell suddenly sick... appendicitis.
September 1, 1941: Simkie was successfully operated upon for appendicitis in King George 5 hospital, Lucknow.
And Weddings
March 15, 1941: Ravi Shankar with Annapurna Devi
March 8, 1942: Uday Shankar with Amala
August 4, 1942: Prabhat Kumar Ganguli with Simkie
and this heartbreaking passage on page 156:
"In a mere five years, beginning in 1942, the parting of ways was complete. Simkie gave up performing altogether and tried for a while to direct dance in Bombay films. This discouraged her further. She then joined the External services of All India Radio. This,too, was not for very long. Finally she left India, demoralized and hurt, never to return to this country. She has since preferred to keep religiously away from anything connected with the Shankar cult."

A traditional Telugu song from Malliswari

NomiNomannaLala - Bhanumati & Chorus -Traditional

Right to Informatiom

Governments do not seem to like RTI acts:Blair regrets passing freedom of information law. In today's Age Reform on FOI bogs down :
"FEDERAL freedom of information reforms have stalled, with government spending on high-performance shredding machines easily outstripping funding for public servants to handle requests for information."
Compared to this, from Shekhar Singh's articleThe Genesis and Evolution of the Right to Information Regime in India
"Both studies came to the conclusion that awareness about the RTI Act was still very low, especially among rural populations and among women. Fortunately, surveys done in rural areas as a part of the People’s Assessment estimated that in the first two and a half years of the RTI Act (Oct 2005 to March 2008) there were an estimated two million RTI applications filed across the country, of which an estimated 400,000 RTI applications were filed from the rural areas, belying the impression that only the educated urban people used the RTI Act."
The article of Shekhar Singh is from
TRANSPARENT GOVERNANCE IN SOUTH ASIA published by INDIAN INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION and is available online.
In addition India also has a number of Social Audit activists, apparently in states like Andhra Pradesh to monitor the progress of various government programs partly using RTI.

Ohoho pavurama

Prompted by this post A Girl and Her Bird(s) in 'Dances on the Footpath', I stated listening again to Bhanumati's Ohoho Pavuramaa in Swargaseema. More songs from the film are in Sakhi Yaa post
Swarga Seema 1945 స్వర్గ సీమ.
Much more about Bhanumati is in several posts at Dhool com ippadiyum oru peN - A Hundred Songs of Bhanumathi including the story of her re-entry into films and about this particular song in the post SOTD #807:A Hundred Songs of Bhanumathi- Part I.
Along the way came this early documentary (Marcus Barley connection) CHILDREN OF THE JUNGLE and several other documentaries from the colonial times.

Glenn Davis Stone on BT cotton

I have been following Stone's writings for a few years (links to some of his work here and here. See also http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/01/06/genetically-modified-crops/)but missed the recent posts in his blog due to a trip to India. Here is a recent post:
Bt Cotton, Remarkable Success, and Four Ugly Facts .

He also discusses BT brinjal controversy in the post Decide for Yourself in view of Manmohan Singh's remarks in February “Biotechnology has enormous potential and, in due course of time, we must make use of genetic engineering technologies to increase the productivity of our agriculture. But there are controversies. There are NGOs (non-governmental organizations), often funded from the United States and the Scandinavian countries, which are not fully appreciative of the development challenges that our country faces.”.

Vivekananda University again

For the second time, I spent a month visiting the mathematics department of the Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University,Belur Math. There are branches located at various places including Narendrapur and Coimbatore. Last time was in 2009 and a new building is coming up which should be ready in an year. At the moment, the classes, offices, library, teaching monks of the university, visitors etc are all housed in one building which is quite comfortable. Unlike many other gated communities and institutions that I visited, the number of workers is very small. There are two gardeners who are helped by a monk, three to four cleaners who are well dressed and equipped with masks etc while dusting and cleaning, three to four help with cooking and serving and a couple of drivers. Total numbers are not clear since some of them seem to do multiple duties; one of the drivers helps with serving food to visitors. There is a dining room and common room for snacks and coffee which is shared by monks, teachers, visitors and workers. There are no dhobis visiting the place; one can wash one's clothes or use the washing machine. It is a pleasant change from other places where one sees armies of workers in the morning and sometimes for the rest of the day.
At the moment there are only three teachers in the department headed by Mahan Mitra/Maharaj but faculty from other places like ISI help with the teaching. Mahan won Bhatnagar prize last year and Kingshook Biswas the Young Scientist award and they have already produced a few Ph.D's, latest being Pranab Sardar. Now one of the funding agencies granted ten positions for Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and since Mahan is a monk that should give about six teaching positions to the mathematics dept. There is another windfall; one retired mathematician Lakshmikantam (taught in Hyderabad and later in USA) contributed his life savings of about two crore rupees and the interest on that should give one position each to the two departments in the general area of dynamical systems. The department has also started weekly expository lectures to college students so as to attract more to graduate studies. I mainly focussed on completing a small notes on algebraic topology which should be ready in a few months and which I plan to put in the expositions section of the departmental websisite.

Like last time, my impression is that RK Mission is in to service and not religion. I actually saw a moslem monk and also christian monks in the mission. I took the opportunity to visit Ramakrishna Mission Ashram, Narendrapur,
mainly to get some idea of their rural development activities. More about these later.
P.S. There was one practice that I did not apprecate. All the cows in the University centre of Belur Math are in one shed and are not taken to graze, though there seems to be plenty of land belonging to the mission nearby. But they do play music to the cows.

Minai's posts on T.Balasaraswati

The latest Found: Bala (1976, Satyajit Ray) and an Extant Recordings List
Earlier Rare Video of Devadasis Gauri Ammal and Balasaraswati
See also her post Devadasi-Like Dances in Classic South Indian Films

Links, March 23, 2012

Discussion of "Amartya Sen's Commitments" by Dan Little
Yes, Virginia, Heads of Nonprofits Get Egregious Salaries Too from 'Naked Capitalism'
Pungent melody: the life of Sheila Dhar
Procrastination as a positive productivity strategy by Andrew Gelman
with interesting links in comments like Structured Procrastination (winner of Ig Nobel) and
Benchley Tonight: "How to Get Things Done"

Wonderful book

I came across Raga'n joshin Delhi and read about half of it. I did not finish reading it since I wanted to savor it later on. Lot of the book is available at the above link. From this review :
"In her book “Raga’n Josh – Stories from a Musical Life” (Black Kite, 2005) that combines her two earlier books “Here’s Someone I’d Like You to Meet” and “The Cooking of Music and Other Essays”, she writes about her interactions with bureaucrats and musicians, about her experience listening to some of the great masters of Hindustani Classical music and about her own thoughts on Indian Classical Music and the changes it has gone through during her times."
A write up Pungent melody: the life of Sheila Dhar by RUKAN ADVANI.

RTI and Social Audit

RTI Act 2005 (Blair said that his biggest mistake was the introduction of RTI in Britain)and Social Audit seem to be two of the reasons to feel optimistic about Indian democracy which I find quite vibrant. Both have been provided to me by old friend Shekhar Singh whom I first met in 1977 in Shillong when he was working in the Philosophy Dept. and I in the Mathematics Dept. of North Eastern Hill University.

Social Audit: A People's Manual by Shekhar Singh and Rajakutty online.
The first few pages are also availablehere.

As the booklet says in section 3 "One essential and critical requirement for conducting social audits is the availability of all relevant information and decision making processes that are totally transparent. The beginnings of social auditing owes much to access to information, especially to bills,vouchers and muster rolls related to expenditure by Panchayats and other government institutions. Initially, this information had to be accessed despite stout resistance from the concerned officials, and without legal backing. Initial right to information acts, in some states, though relatively weak and ineffective, provided some legal basis for accessing these documents. Fortunately, a very powerful and comprehensive national act was passed in 2005.The Right to Information (RTI) Act 2005 significantly facilitates the process of conducting social audits. There are many provisions in the RTI act that directly support public scrutiny of schemes and programmes."

See also Right to Information Act: A primer by Suchi Pande and Shekhar Singh which can be ordered online and as the blurb says:
"This small booklet is designed to help general public as well as authorities. Through a question answer format, it introduces the lay reader to the RTI Act and its implementation, its use and function as well as details of how information can be accessed and appeals filed."

Links related to "Why Nations Fail"

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson – review by Paul Collier
Is the one percent the same everywhere? by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
The Koch Brothers, The Cato Institute, And Why Nations Fail
by Simon Johnson
FiveBooks Interviews: Daron Acemoglu on Inequality

Some views of Sarat Chandra Chatterjee

It seemed natural to revisit Sarat while in Kolkata. I found this SARATCHANDRA CHATTOPADHYAY by RAMESH CHANDRA MAJUMDARwho seems to a friend of Sarat. Sarat clearly states his mission in a conversation with his friend's wife:
"Didi (Sister) you women have never got your due in society. I am determined to protest against this through my novels as long as I live."
The article also describes the politics of his D.Litt award from Decca University. Sarat's views on Islam do not seem to be so well known. Here are excerpts from a speech by Sarat . It is a surprise that the author of Mahesh , perhaps the best Indian short story that I read, had such opinions.

A strange book

I have read a few articles and interviews of Amartya Sen before but The Argumentative Indian is the first book by him that I started reading. But after reading the first four articles beginning with the one with the same title as the book, I did not have the stomach to read the rest of it and quickly browsed through the rest of it. The article claims that there is a long standing argumentative tradition in India and the evidence is givef from quotations from ancient books, discussions there, budhist councils and so on.I assume that Sen is talking of Indians in general not just some elites or text communities; he does say "We do like to speak". Of course talking, gossip and expressing opinions is not the same as an 'argumentative tradition'. If Sen wants to substantiate the later, he should give some examples as to how ordinary people discussed perhaps looking at books of various periods such as plays where ordinary people were represented or from travelogoues which existed for at least 2000 years/ There is none of that and there are also paeans to people like Aryabhatta. My own suspicion is that the opposite of what Sen says may be true. In fact there was too much respect for elders and what some allegedly great people said, even in science.
From Johannes
Bronkhorst in his artcle "Panini and Euclid: Reflections on Indian Geometry",
Journal of Indian Philosophy, 29,p 43-80, 2001:
"Aryabhatta is wrong where he gives the volume of a pyramid as:
"Half the product of the height and the [surface of the triangular base] is the volume called `pyramid'." The correct volume of a pyramid is a third, not half, of the product here specified. In spite of this, Bhaskara accepts Aryabhatta's rule and carries out some (incorrect) calculations with its help. The same is true of Aryabhatta's incorrect rule for the volume of a sphere.
Aryabhatta's incorrect rules have drawn the attention of scholars, some of whom have tried to interpret the rules differently, so as to obtain a correct result......

And yet it seems obvious that these mistakes do throw light on the intellectual culture of their authors. It seems inevitable to conclude that the theorems propounded by Aryabhatta and Bhaskara were apparently not accompanied by proofs, not even in private, not even outside the realm of the written commentary. They were handed down as received truths, with the result that incorrect theorems were not identified as a matter of routine by any student who checked the proofs. Bhaskara
confirms that he regards the theorems and other information contained in Aryabhatta's work as received truths in his commentary on the first chapter, the Gitikapada."
See also Aravindhan's comments quoted towards the end of the post A.K.Ramanujan's famous essay /
Apart from this attitude of taking for granted statements of 'great' people there seems to be strong currents of seeing even scientific matters through the religious prism. From Christopher Minkowski's artcle The pandit as Public Intellectual , we have
"Aside from Nilakantha the authors of these works were predominently astronomers. Nevertheless they wrote primarily as defenders of Puranic authority and validity. The general approach of the argument is that faced with an apparent contradiction between Siddhanta and Purana, the Purana overrules the Siddhanta in its authority claim."
In a later chapter,on page 173, in the essay "China and India", Sen quotes Alberuni "On the whole, there is very little disputing about theological topics among themselves...On the contray all their fanaticism is directed against those who do not belong to them- against all foreigners. They call them mlecha, i.e. impure, and forbid having any connection with them, be it by intermarriage or any kind of relationaship, or by sitting, eating, and drinking with them,'
Sen quotes Alberuni in the first chapter but does not mention this quote.
It seems to me that the kind of things that Sen says (reading what he wanta to in the past by selective choice of material)without much evidence encourages the unfortunate trend of seeing glory in the past topics and encourages this common tendency among many young people particularly of Hindvatta extraction. I see a comment from one of the bloggers on the blurb "This is how history should be written...". I have read "The Aryans" by Romilla Thapar. There is painstaking reasearch based on several areas from archaeology to linguistics to numismatics to reach tentative conclusions and these conclusions got modified over several years afterwards. I do not think that there is any serious danger of historians taking these particula essays of Sen seriously but non-experts may. I have no expertise in these areas and am quite prepared to be proven wrong and learn more.
Sen seems to come in to his own in some of the later chapters. I liked the one on Tagore and Tagore's view on patriotism. But the later chapters where he clearly has expertise, somehow I started having doubts after the impressions I had from the first chapters. At some stage, I should try to read related material by others to make sure.
P.S. Searching about Sen through Nilanjana Roy's blog Akhand of Swat (the blogger whose comment is one of the comments in the blurb about the book, I find that there has been much discussion about the book including a long and erudite one from Ramachandra Guha in EPW Arguments with Sen

World Press Photo of the Year 2011

here via 3quarksdaily

A book on India's development

The 2006 book "In Spite of the Gods:The Strange Case of Modern India" by Edward Luce is hard edged yet affectionate and optimistic and got favourable reviews in many places;for example here and here.
Lant Pritchett's 2009 review is here and complements the book.
A related article by Lant Pritchett Is India a Flailing State?

Going to India today

Check
http://roughinhere.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/happy-birthday-nimmi/
for some of the first songs I remember and hope to listen again.

Dirac's advice to Nehru in 1955

From page 354 of The Strangest Man:
"A common language, preferably English. Peace with Pakistan. The metric system."

Frank Close interview on the Infinity Puzzle

Can physicists crack the big puzzle?.
Somewhat technical book but still can get the gist of it.
Reviews The Infinity Puzzle by Frank Close in "Uncertain Principles" and The Infinity Puzzle in "Not Even Wrong".

A Guru-Shishya interaction

From Annapurna Devi - Lady Shrouded in mystery:
"Pradeep Kumar, a sarod exponent at the Films Division, and a student of Annapooma Devi relates his experience which throws some more light on her eccentric behaviour, if one may call it that. "ln 1974 I started learning the sarod from her. For five years I tutored under her and she became very fond of me. To such an extent that she even started teaching me Ustad Allaudin Khan's style of playing, the Dhrupad Ang. Around '79 my parents fixed my marriage and at a quiet ceremony I was engaged. I did not tell her this and one day suddenly I told her that my marriage had been fixed. She took it very calmly and told me that it was time I took a break and that she did not feel like teaching me! I was aghast! Why, I asked her. ' It was your duty to tell me about your engagement, wasn t it? A guru is not a simple word, it means more than you imagine it does,' she said sternly. I realised it was entirely my fault.

"After this I kept visiting her, pleading with her all the while to take me back but each time she would tell me that she was not in a mood to teach me, 'dil nahi karta hai' (I don't feel like it). >From '79 to '86, seven, yes, seven yes, I kept visiting her from time to time but to no avail. My parents also came to plead with her a couple of times but she wouldn't yield. She never once said she won't teach me, it was always 'I don't feel like.' Then one day, last year, I went to meet her once again and asked her to teach me. She gave me her usual reply. And that was it! I couldn't take it any more and burst out crying. oh, how I wept! I was sitting in the hall and she was in her room. She came out and scolded me, 'kya aurton ki tarah rote ho. Chooriyan pahen lo (why are you weeping like a woman? Go wear bangles). And then she relented 'I never said I'll never teach you, did l? I just kept postponing it. okay get up now. Come tomorrow with some flowers, garlands and a box of sweets we'll begin again. "That's how she is. The way she is with her disciples she will be the same with her son too, if it comes to that. To me she is the ultimate, a maun saadhika (silent saint). But a very hard taskmaster. In all the five years I was with her I learnt only two ragas, Bhairavi and Yaman. Her favourite phrase is: 'you people want everything in a short time.' "
It seems that Namita Devidayal(the author of The Music Room) had an easier time.
P.S. More about Annapurna Devi in Notes from behind a locked door)

Jonah Lehrer on colloborative work

Just one aspect of colloboration from the interesting article Groupthink:
"Jones’s explanation is that scientific advances have led to a situation where all the remaining problems are incredibly hard. Researchers are forced to become increasingly specialized, because there’s only so much information one mind can handle. And they have to collaborate, because the most interesting mysteries lie at the intersections of disciplines. “A hundred years ago, the Wright brothers could build an airplane all by themselves,” Jones says. “Now Boeing needs hundreds of engineers just to design and produce the engines.” The larger lesson is that the increasing complexity of human knowledge, coupled with the escalating difficulty of those remaining questions, means that people must either work together or fail alone. But if brainstorming is useless, the question still remains: What’s the best template for group creativity?"
The artcles different types of colloborative work in different fields from science to art and even measuring the efficieny in some cases. In my own case, out of forty years in resarch, I colloborated mainly during the last years. I found it certainly beneficial both in terms of learning and solving problems that bothered me.
P.S. See the discussion in http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/creative-groups/

A wonderful lecture on music

TEDxMumbai - Dhanashree Pandit-Rai - 04/03/10 via http://roughinhere.wordpress.com/

Some books and articles that I have been reading

mostly picked up through John Harriss papers, trying to understand development in India in rural and urban settings and how caste, class and power work. The articles of Jeffrey Wittsoe mentioned in a previous post give some idea about how things work in rural settings. The papers below by Benjamin, Roy, Harris discuss various aspects of functioning in Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Chennai respectively. It is interesting that some of the topics like caste which are frowned upon in polite company are openly discussed in some of these articles. So far the impression is that apart from power relations however they might have arisen and attempts to preserve or perputate them, the actual working vary greatly from place to place and rural to urban settings and changes over time. All this is preparation for the coming trip to India since usually I do not seem to understand from discussions with Kamma relatives or academic friends.
Power Matters:Essays on Institutions, Politics, and Society in India by John Harriss From the review Politics, power and society :
"There is an increasing tendency today among international organisations, some sections of academics and policy makers to regard politics as dirty, not truly representative, and of course as an inefficient system for delivering development. There is growing emphasis on civil society, social capital, and participation. Against this backdrop, this volume strikes a very different and refreshing note. It is fundamentally a vigorous defence of the issues that are coming to be sidelined by mainstream development literature — politics, power relations, culture, and class analysis. "
Governance, economic settings and poverty in Bangalore By Solomo Benjamin(April 2000)
Representation and Development in Urban Peripheries: Reflections on Governance in Ahmedabad Suburbs by Indrajit Roy (October 2006)
Antinomies of Empowerment:Observations on Civil Society, Politics and Urban Governance in India by John Harriss (June 2007)

The next two are books that came out in 2011 probably based on earlier seminars.
Understanding India's New Political Economy: A Great Transformation? Edited by Sanjay Ruparelia and others, also available in Kidle books.
A Companion to the Anthropology of India edited by Isabelle Clark-Deces , seems available through Wiley online.

Susarla Dakshinamurthy RIP

Tributes from TV-8:
TV9 - Sangeet Samrat Susarla Dakshinamurthy passes away at 90
Tv9- Chit Chat with Swara Brahma Susarla
and also సుస్వరశాల "నర్తనశాల" సృష్టించిన స్వర బ్రహ్మ శ్రీ సుసర్ల ఇక లేరు.
Some of his early songs like Challani Vennelalo can be found in Susarla Dakshinamurthy : Artist and oldtelugusongs site.
A cinemachat write up on the blockbuster Narthanasala contains many dance songs including Raaga Sudhaa Rasa Saaram.
Like Samudrala Sr., Kasinathuni Viswanath and many others Dakshinamurthy was born on the banks of river Krishna in Pedakallepalli. Many others are from Godavari delta. Perhaps the agraharams and temple towns contributed to the preservation of various art forms in Andhra Pradesh. Now they may be shifting to metropolitan areas like Hydrabad as it happened with the shift to Madras in Tamilnadu, but I do not know.

Corruption as power, studies from Bihar by Jeffrey Witsoe

Everyday Corruption and the Political Mediation of the Indian State: An Ethnographic Exploration of Brokers in Bihar (February 2012
An earlier article covering some of the same ground:
Corruption as Power: Caste and the Political Imagination in the Postcolonial State (January 2011)
P.S. Usually, the links seem to disappear after a while and EPW articles are available without subscription only for a few weeks. I will post passages from the two articles ( I think that they are excellent and I will come back to them several times later on) so that it will be easier to find them somewhere. From the first article:
"But what exactly is the role of politics and politicians in the everyday functioning of the Indian state and how does this relate to what is commonly called “corruption”. This article will examine the role of politically-connected brokers in mediating many people’s access to state institutions and in shaping everyday administration– what I term the political mediation of the Indian state. I focus on brokers as a window into political mediation because they are the visible face of this process – it can be much harder, for instance, to see behind-the-scenes control of the local Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA). I argue that taking brokers seriously changes the ways in which we think about the Indian state and reveals some of thecomplex causes of corruption in Indian public life."
From the second (earlier) article:
"The image of a postcolonial state based on the promises of nation building, development, and rule of law but governed through networks of patronage that re-inforced upper-caste dominance (effectively undermining these promises) clashed with a politics of caste empowerment that sought to weaken development and law-and-order-related institutions thought to be controlled by upper castes, replacing them with alternate networks of lower-caste politicians, mafia figures, and an emergent class of political brokers. I argue that these two radically divergent modes of governance reflect very different ways of imagining the postcolonial state, representing alternative forms of political subjectivity."

John Harriss on poverty research

Building on the earlier work of Chambers and Jodha Poverty in India: concepts measurement and reality John Harriss argues in Bringing politics back into poverty analysis: Why understanding social relations matters more for policy on chronic poverty than measurement :
"If only – the implicit reasoning runs – ‘we’ can build a good scientific understanding of poverty, then ‘we’ will be able to solve the problem. But the reality is that poverty knowledge is profoundly political, as the contemporary debates over poverty trends in India in the 1990s so clearly show (Deaton and Kozel 2004). The problem is that even in the most sophisticated poverty measurements, long chains of assumptions are necessarily made so that these are always open to question. And the assumptions specialists most readily accept depend on value judgements. As O’Connor argues, poverty research, dominated in the case of international development by people educated in a small number of mainly American universities, is an exercise in power. This has been recognized in recent years at the centre of poverty knowledge, the World Bank, in its celebrated study, Voices of the Poor. But that study, which argues for a different model of knowledge as the basis for poverty action, has been ignored. Poverty research seems to indicate that the social sciences should not try to emulate the natural sciences (Flyvberg 2001). They are more effective in generating the kind of knowledge that develops from familiarity with practice in particular contexts, helping people to question relationships of knowledge and power, such as those giving rise to poverty, and subsequently to work to produce change. Such a view has quite profound implications for the design of poverty research."

Similar questions have arisen in the micro-finance debates In Which I Am Exposed As a Double Agent

P.S. N.S Jodha's article referred to above has appeared in EPW under the title "Poverty Debate in India A Minority View", vol.23,no. 45, November 1988. There iaalso anther article "Poverty Debate in India" vol.34, no.31. 1999 respondind to comments to a working paper from the Institute of Development Studies.

Ken Grenda's gesture

From Meet Victoria's best boss who gave his staff a $15m bonus :
"A MELBOURNE boss has stunned his staff by giving them a staggering $15 million gift -- the ultimate pay-off for their hard work and loyalty.
Workers at bus company Grenda couldn't believe their good fortune when surprise bonuses averaging $8500 were paid into their accounts - with some staff receiving as much as $30,000.
....
But Mr Grenda, the major shareholder, modestly played down the "best boss" moniker, instead paying tribute to his staff.
"A business is only as good as its people, and our people are fantastic," he said. "This is to recognise that. We have had people here who are second generation, and one fellow in the same job for 52 years.
"We have grown from just four bus routes in Dandenong in 1945 to operating 1300 buses in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. You only get there if you have good people."
The family has been swamped with about 100 emails and countless phone calls of thanks from staff, who will all keep their jobs under the new owners.
Mr Grenda, who was awarded an AM for his services to the bus industry, said the gratitude was humbling."