by Emmanuel Todd seems to be an interesting but erratic book with some valid points. Here are some reviews both favourable and critical:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/023113102X/104-8715834-2637564?v=glance&n=283155
http://www.buzzflash.com/hartmann/05/04/har05004.html
http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2006/01/when_jonah_met.php
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091205H.shtml
http://www.europeanaffairs.org/archive/2004_winter/2004_winter_109.php4
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1143265,00.html
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/185/1/34/
http://dominionpaper.ca/features/2003/07/26/the_concei.html
http://www.countercurrents.org/us-senn080803.htm
Todd seems to be one of the several people who currently see the beginning of the demise of the American empire ( he is also among several who predicted the collapse of the soviet union). As far as I can see, Todd is not anti-American and actually sees several years of American hegemony from the 50’s as beneficial to the world. According to him, the problems are over consumption and dependence on oil, shift from production to financial services, growing trade deficits. Though there were intentions during Carter’s time to lessen oil dependence, the Russian march to Afghanistan again brought USA to the mode of controlling oil supplies. The increase in military spending, imports etc saw the deficit increasing. Todd thinks that the option of militarism (instead of the harder option of less dependence on oil, increase in production rather than over reliance on services) is just a soft option which appealed to some of the conservatives after the collapse of USSR. The result is an empire which cannot afford democracy everywhere since it cannot otherwise maintain its current consumption levels.
There are some studies http://www.slate.com/id/2141595/?nav=fo ( which has a link to a paper by Harvard economists Hausman-Sturzenegger) which argue that the deficit is not really deficit since US is still making money overall. From 23/01/06 report in the Economist:
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5408129
“Thanks to its chronic trade deficits, it stood $2.5 trillion in the red at the end of 2004. And yet it still somehow manages to earn more on its foreign assets than it pays out to service its much bigger stock of debts: $36.2 billion more in 2004.Most economists conclude that America earns a higher return on its overseas assets (eg, EuroDisney) than foreigners earn on investments in America (eg, Rockefeller Centre). They don their anoraks, immerse themselves in the data and try to work out why this might be so. Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger turn the question on its head. It is not the $36.2 billion of income that is the mystery, they say. The anomaly lies in the $2.5 trillion of debt. If America is still coming out ahead of foreigners, then, contrary to popular belief, it must still be a net creditor. America must have more foreign wealth than we can see.The two authors have borrowed a name for this invisible wealth: dark matter. In theoretical physics, dark matter is the stuff in the universe that we can identify only by its gravitational pull. For the Harvard economists, dark matter is foreign wealth, the existence of which we can infer from the income it provides.How much of it is out there? You can calculate a price for an asset from the earnings it provides. Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger elect to value America's net foreign assets at 20 times their annual earnings, which corresponds to a 5% rate of return. Valued at this ratio, America's national "portfolio" of foreign assets and liabilities is really worth $724 billion, not minus $2.5 trillion. What is more, if its foreign assets are as stable as the authors say, it follows that "the country has not been running a deficit."Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger were the first to name dark matter, but not the first to discover it. In his book, "The United States as a Debtor Nation", published last year, William Cline, of the Institute for International Economics, performed the same calculation, backing out the value of America's net foreign assets from the income they generate. (Instead of calling it dark matter, Mr Cline, evidently not a born marketing man, called it "capitalised net capital income".)Mr Cline agrees with the dark materialists when they say there is "something misleading about calling a country that makes money on its financial position the world's largest debtor". But sadly he does not think Americans can stop worrying. After making $36.2 billion in 2004, America made just $4 billion on its net foreign assets in the first three quarters of 2005. If it continues on its present trajectory, it will shell out about $190 billion in 2010, Mr Cline calculates. Using Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger's methodology, America's net foreign assets would then amount to minus $3.8 trillion. A dark matter indeed.Ptaking on PtolemyApart from its name, the dark matter thesis appeals because of its simplicity. Philip Lane, of Trinity College, Dublin, thinks it too simple. It matters, he says, what a nation's foreign wealth is composed of. Foreigners hold a lot of American debt (bonds and bank loans), whereas America holds a lot of foreign equity, especially foreign direct investment (FDI). This has two implications. First, what America pays to foreign creditors depends a lot on interest rates, which have been unusually low in recent years. Second, the value of America's assets depends on the risks they carry. Yet Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger apply the same valuation ratio indiscriminately to bonds, equities, trade credits and bank loans on both sides of the balance sheet.That said, there remains a big gap in reported profitability between American FDI and FDI in America that risk alone cannot explain. Perhaps taxes can. To dodge the revenuemen, a multinational company might report artificially high profits in a low-tax jurisdiction abroad. This tax arbitrage, Mr Lane points out, can shift money from one line of the current account to another. But it does not change the size of the deficit one jot.To Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger, mainstream attempts to explain away dark matter look a bit desperate. Fond of their cosmological analogies, they liken them to the labours of medieval astronomers, trying to fit anomalous movements of the planets into their Ptolemaic model of the universe.But the authors' thesis raises anomalies of its own. By their own account, dark matter should be stable. It stems from abiding features of the American economy, such as managerial know-how, a prized but uncounted commodity that Americans export to their subsidiaries abroad. But as Ed McKelvey, of Goldman Sachs, points out, America's exports of dark matter seem to jump up and down wildly from year to year: $351 billion in 2004, $1.2 trillion in 2003, just $172 billion in 2002. Dark matter seems to fluctuate at frequencies that are not structural, nor even cyclical. Perhaps they are best described as epicyclical. “
So, in spite of some creative accounting, there is still a problem. Probably, many of the ideas touted by Todd will be disputed just like the above, but there seem to some interesting insights in the book.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Monday, May 15, 2006
Remembering Ben Franklin
In these days blogs and websites where everyone seems to be letting himself go, I keep remembering BenjaminFranklin’s words at the Constitutional Convention onSeptember 17, 1787 at the age of 81:“ … for having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought were right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own judgement, and to pay more respect to the judgement ofothers. Most men indeed as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth,and that wherever others differ from them it is so fare rror….”
He goes on to say:“… I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general government necessary for us, there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and I believe further that this is likely to be well administered for several years, and can only end in despotism as other forms before it,when people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”
I wonder whether some form continuous revolution building social capital through citizen forums is the only hope.
He goes on to say:“… I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general government necessary for us, there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and I believe further that this is likely to be well administered for several years, and can only end in despotism as other forms before it,when people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”
I wonder whether some form continuous revolution building social capital through citizen forums is the only hope.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Tunnel vision
In a wonderful essay “Who is in charge?” (the first chapter of Paul Seabright’s “The Company of strangers: a natural history of economic life”) Seabright defines ‘tunnel vision’ as the capacity to play one’s part in the great complex enterprise of creating prosperity of a modern society without knowing or necessarily caring very much about the overall outcome. He gives the delightful example of how the economy works when one buys a shirt; essentially nobody is in charge. This seems to be a fact of modern life, we get some training with the view of making a living and somehow do not have to worry about all the factors of modern economic life. Often, it is difficult to know all the changing factors of supply, demand politics of various nation states. If we are reasonably successful, we may even develop an arrogance of the right way to do things. However, when your kith and kin start committing suicides because farming is failing in some places despite the great developments in technology, or when there are wars or when you are in a decision making position you start wondering and feel inadequate. This sort of ignorance and tunnel vision seems to be a common phenomenon partly because we lack good all round education and the new developments are, even those which can affect our daily lives are not quickly assimilated. The ignorance of many developments in science seems widespread. Even among university professors, you see many who do not know the difference between bacteria and virus, or DNA and RNA or the suitable age for language learning or the problems of pregnancy for mother and child, just to name a few. We generally have vague ideas about communism and democracy but not much more. We often talk about culture but it just seems to mean a few traditions and rituals. Here is a passage from Edge http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/selfish06/selfish06_index.html:
“In the twentieth century, a period of great scientific advancement, instead of having science and technology at the center of the intellectual world — of having a unity in which scholarship included science and technology along with literature and art — the official culture kicked them out. Traditional humanities scholars looked at science and technology as some sort of technical special product. Elite universities nudged science out of the liberal arts undergraduate curriculum — and out of the minds of many young people, who, as the new academic establishment, so marginalized themselves that they are no longer within shouting distance of the action.
Yet it's the products of this educational system that go straight from their desks at university literary magazines to their offices in the heart of the cultural establishment at our leading newspapers, magazines, and publishers. It's a problem that's systemic and not individual. Unless one is pursuing a career path in science, it is extremely difficult for a non-science major at a top research university to graduate with anything approaching what can be considered an education in science. I recently talked with a noted Italian intellectual, who is as familiar with string theory and as he is with Dante, and writes about both in his philosophical novels. In appraising this situation, he argued for restraint and compassion. "They just don't know," he sighed, "they just don't know." He might well have added, they don't even know that they don't know.
Somebody needs to tell them. Otherwise, we wind up with the center of culture based on a closed system, a process of text in/text out, and no empirical contact with the real world. One can only marvel at, for example, art critics who know nothing about visual perception; "social constructionist" literary critics uninterested in the human universals documented by anthropologists; opponents of genetically modified foods, additives, and pesticide residues who are ignorant of genetics and evolutionary biology.”
In a recent artcle in The Guardian, Ian McEwan says:
“I say all this somewhat dutifully, because there actually is a special pleasure to be shared, when a scientist or science writer leads us towards the light of a powerful idea which in turn opens avenues of exploration and discovery leading far into the future, binding many different phenomena in many different fields of study. Some might call this truth. It has an aesthetic value that is not to be found in Galen's confident and muddled assertions about the nature of disease. For example, there is something of the luminous quality of great literature when the 29-year-old Charles Darwin, just two years back from his Beagle voyage and 21 years before he will publish The Origin of Species, confides to a pocket note-book the first hints of a simple, beautiful idea: "Origin of man now proved ... He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke””.
This brings me to ruminate about the role of ‘elite’ in a society
and the uses of literature and writing in general; whether it can bring social change etc etc. I am not very literary; I just remember a few lines here and there both in Telugu and English. They come unannounced giving a brief moment of pleasure or pain or wonder and then go away for a while. From what little I know, literature, if at all was used at least until the 20th century, to preserve the hegemony of the privileged classes and thus preventing social change rather than encouraging social change for the betterment of all. If one wants to know the power of the medium, one has only to look at the polls in various countries about the WMDs in Iraq; still 85 percent of the American soldiers in Iraq believe that Saddam Hussain had WMDs. Some say that if one reads various Telugu classics, one can find about the life of people in those times or history as people lived; may be not in terms of dates etc. but their aspirations. Some of the books I read did not give me much more than glimpses in to court life and sringaram. The book “Castes of mind” by Nicholas Dirks gave a bit more. Widows in the Nayaka period could remarry in temples and when the management of temples passed to different groups during the British period and women were barred from entering the same temples. Things seemed better in Tamilnadu for Khushboo’s ancestors some centuries ago. Coming back to sringaram, nuanced lines like ‘gopee peena payaodhara mardita chanchala karayugasalee’ gives me the image of an aged debaucher in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease. Whereas lines like “Akasamuna harivillu viriste adi makenani anandinche papallara, puvullara’ brings me the scene of happy and innocent children; a scene that I feel should be preserved.( But the very next day I hear reports of Iraqi children playing among war debris and depleted uranium.) Even meaningless lines “Go and catch a falling star” or “Find which wind serves to advance an honest mind” bring moments of happiness. Or a line like “No man is an island” brings visions of an eternal truth which is confirmed more and more by science. For a Telangana farmer ‘it may be a line like “Bamdenuka bamdi katti..” and for a village woman it may be a dampudu pata or tummeda pata. For educated people, it may be a line of Srisri “Kharidu gatte sharabu ledoyi’ which brings a temporary empathy for a factory worker. It seems difficult to calculate these ephemeral feelings over populations and see whether they have brought or likely to bring any social change. What all I can say from my experience is that they sustain me like they sustained many poor and rich people from time immemorial. To ask for their use seems to be like asking whether the time we spend with family and friends has any use.
Does this all mean that there is no point looking for any changes through literature or writing in general. I am not so sure and I think one should try. After all one of the advantages of sound and word is to convey things which cannot always be conveyed rationally. There are perhaps atavistic memories. Scientists have been able to instil fear of snakes in monkeys raised in zoos but only temporarily the fear of flowers. Some have the gift to find some of these essences and convey them through perhaps an unconscious grasp of word and sound. But there is a lot of change in what has to be conveyed. Though some things seem eternal, science continually comes up with surprising confirmations as well as hints of new revelations. This has been prominent in the recent years through the work of people like Trivers and Hamilton, Boyd and Richerson, Cosimides and Tooby, Richard Putnam, Fehr, Hrdy and others which have brought new insights to cognition, empathy, parochialism, cooperation etc. I do not see how writers go on with primitive notions of Marxism, feminism etc without taking these new studies in to account. I think in these times of too much information, this is the challenge to writers: to assimilate the new discoveries, incorporate them with the earlier insights and present them using the magic of language in a form that common people can understand or at least get a feel to sustain them and to ‘improve’ their lives. I had only glimpses of the work of the above people through the writings Jarred Diamond, Herbert Gintis, Matt Ridley and through google search.
Swarup
“In the twentieth century, a period of great scientific advancement, instead of having science and technology at the center of the intellectual world — of having a unity in which scholarship included science and technology along with literature and art — the official culture kicked them out. Traditional humanities scholars looked at science and technology as some sort of technical special product. Elite universities nudged science out of the liberal arts undergraduate curriculum — and out of the minds of many young people, who, as the new academic establishment, so marginalized themselves that they are no longer within shouting distance of the action.
Yet it's the products of this educational system that go straight from their desks at university literary magazines to their offices in the heart of the cultural establishment at our leading newspapers, magazines, and publishers. It's a problem that's systemic and not individual. Unless one is pursuing a career path in science, it is extremely difficult for a non-science major at a top research university to graduate with anything approaching what can be considered an education in science. I recently talked with a noted Italian intellectual, who is as familiar with string theory and as he is with Dante, and writes about both in his philosophical novels. In appraising this situation, he argued for restraint and compassion. "They just don't know," he sighed, "they just don't know." He might well have added, they don't even know that they don't know.
Somebody needs to tell them. Otherwise, we wind up with the center of culture based on a closed system, a process of text in/text out, and no empirical contact with the real world. One can only marvel at, for example, art critics who know nothing about visual perception; "social constructionist" literary critics uninterested in the human universals documented by anthropologists; opponents of genetically modified foods, additives, and pesticide residues who are ignorant of genetics and evolutionary biology.”
In a recent artcle in The Guardian, Ian McEwan says:
“I say all this somewhat dutifully, because there actually is a special pleasure to be shared, when a scientist or science writer leads us towards the light of a powerful idea which in turn opens avenues of exploration and discovery leading far into the future, binding many different phenomena in many different fields of study. Some might call this truth. It has an aesthetic value that is not to be found in Galen's confident and muddled assertions about the nature of disease. For example, there is something of the luminous quality of great literature when the 29-year-old Charles Darwin, just two years back from his Beagle voyage and 21 years before he will publish The Origin of Species, confides to a pocket note-book the first hints of a simple, beautiful idea: "Origin of man now proved ... He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke””.
This brings me to ruminate about the role of ‘elite’ in a society
and the uses of literature and writing in general; whether it can bring social change etc etc. I am not very literary; I just remember a few lines here and there both in Telugu and English. They come unannounced giving a brief moment of pleasure or pain or wonder and then go away for a while. From what little I know, literature, if at all was used at least until the 20th century, to preserve the hegemony of the privileged classes and thus preventing social change rather than encouraging social change for the betterment of all. If one wants to know the power of the medium, one has only to look at the polls in various countries about the WMDs in Iraq; still 85 percent of the American soldiers in Iraq believe that Saddam Hussain had WMDs. Some say that if one reads various Telugu classics, one can find about the life of people in those times or history as people lived; may be not in terms of dates etc. but their aspirations. Some of the books I read did not give me much more than glimpses in to court life and sringaram. The book “Castes of mind” by Nicholas Dirks gave a bit more. Widows in the Nayaka period could remarry in temples and when the management of temples passed to different groups during the British period and women were barred from entering the same temples. Things seemed better in Tamilnadu for Khushboo’s ancestors some centuries ago. Coming back to sringaram, nuanced lines like ‘gopee peena payaodhara mardita chanchala karayugasalee’ gives me the image of an aged debaucher in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease. Whereas lines like “Akasamuna harivillu viriste adi makenani anandinche papallara, puvullara’ brings me the scene of happy and innocent children; a scene that I feel should be preserved.( But the very next day I hear reports of Iraqi children playing among war debris and depleted uranium.) Even meaningless lines “Go and catch a falling star” or “Find which wind serves to advance an honest mind” bring moments of happiness. Or a line like “No man is an island” brings visions of an eternal truth which is confirmed more and more by science. For a Telangana farmer ‘it may be a line like “Bamdenuka bamdi katti..” and for a village woman it may be a dampudu pata or tummeda pata. For educated people, it may be a line of Srisri “Kharidu gatte sharabu ledoyi’ which brings a temporary empathy for a factory worker. It seems difficult to calculate these ephemeral feelings over populations and see whether they have brought or likely to bring any social change. What all I can say from my experience is that they sustain me like they sustained many poor and rich people from time immemorial. To ask for their use seems to be like asking whether the time we spend with family and friends has any use.
Does this all mean that there is no point looking for any changes through literature or writing in general. I am not so sure and I think one should try. After all one of the advantages of sound and word is to convey things which cannot always be conveyed rationally. There are perhaps atavistic memories. Scientists have been able to instil fear of snakes in monkeys raised in zoos but only temporarily the fear of flowers. Some have the gift to find some of these essences and convey them through perhaps an unconscious grasp of word and sound. But there is a lot of change in what has to be conveyed. Though some things seem eternal, science continually comes up with surprising confirmations as well as hints of new revelations. This has been prominent in the recent years through the work of people like Trivers and Hamilton, Boyd and Richerson, Cosimides and Tooby, Richard Putnam, Fehr, Hrdy and others which have brought new insights to cognition, empathy, parochialism, cooperation etc. I do not see how writers go on with primitive notions of Marxism, feminism etc without taking these new studies in to account. I think in these times of too much information, this is the challenge to writers: to assimilate the new discoveries, incorporate them with the earlier insights and present them using the magic of language in a form that common people can understand or at least get a feel to sustain them and to ‘improve’ their lives. I had only glimpses of the work of the above people through the writings Jarred Diamond, Herbert Gintis, Matt Ridley and through google search.
Swarup
Monday, March 27, 2006
Two pop science books
Among the several popular science books that have been coming out during the last few decades, two of the easiest to read are Bill Bryson’s “A short history of everything” and Robin Dunbar’s ‘The human story”. Bryson is a journalist-writer of several popular books who suddenly realized one day that he did not know much about the physical (and biological world) and spent 3-4 years reading and talking to experts and produced a very readable book about earth, cosmos, evolution etc. It is one of those books that cannot be put down and gives a quick view of our world. It has won Aventis prize and is a best seller. Robin Dunbar is a scientist who has written a few popular books and is probably best known for Dunbar number which gives a limit to the number of individuals with whom any person (in a species) can maintain stable relationships. His theory is that this is limited by the mental capacity which in turn measured by the neocortex size. For humans this number (the mean) is supposed to be 150. For a discussion of this number with respect to online communities, see: http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html
Dunbar develops similar ideas about mind, music and culture which are somewhat speculative but insightful. In the early part of the book, there is a quick review of human origins(out of Africa theory) and human aggression. Some of it is hard science from several disciplines and some speculative but overall a very readable book giving glimpses of our origins and instincts and a taste of some of the recent research. Similar ideas backed by more quantitative research seems necessary to understand economic matters described in Paul Seabright’s “The Company of Strangers: a ntural history of economic life”.
Swarup
I will be away on a trip until May 15. I hope to return to these topics when I come back.
Dunbar develops similar ideas about mind, music and culture which are somewhat speculative but insightful. In the early part of the book, there is a quick review of human origins(out of Africa theory) and human aggression. Some of it is hard science from several disciplines and some speculative but overall a very readable book giving glimpses of our origins and instincts and a taste of some of the recent research. Similar ideas backed by more quantitative research seems necessary to understand economic matters described in Paul Seabright’s “The Company of Strangers: a ntural history of economic life”.
Swarup
I will be away on a trip until May 15. I hope to return to these topics when I come back.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Matt Ridley
Jo has been complaining that I have not written anything for a couple of months. I was planning to write a bit more about Heilbronner’s book on capitalism and Jeffrey Sachs’ book on the end of poverty. Slowly itseemed that big solutions like Sachs’ may suffer fromcorruption and bureaucracy and perhaps such solutions are temporary if there are no cultural changes. Thereare such criticisms by Easterley and others:
http://72.14.203.104/search q=cache:0nQnUijF4hEJ:wwwc.house.gov/international_re\lations/109/bat063005.pdf+William+Easterley&hl=en&gl=au&ct=clnk&cd=27&ie=UTF-8
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/03/opinion/03easterly.html?ex=1138856400&en=5630a\1f66d1fb058&ei=5070
http://imaginingaustralia.blogs.com/imagining/2005/07/end_of_poverty.html
Heilbronner’s book might have been topical when it was written but now it is agreed that most of us are living in some kind of capitalist states. Since capitalism is supposed to be driven by greed and status which somehow are magically adjusted by some invisible hand, it seemed a good idea to read a bit about human nature. And I got stuck in sociobiology etc for a while. Then I found Matt Ridley’s book “Nature via nurture” in a sale and this seems to give a start on some of these topics. It is difficult to agree with some of Ridley’s extrapolations and conclusions but there is no doubt that he is a wonderful science writer. There are anumber of facts and discussions in both “Nature via nurture” and “The origins of virtue” which might have made a difference to me if I had known them earlier.Every chapter is thought provoking and can be used for further discussion and study in either a class room or a group. I think that the purpose of this kind of semi-popular books is not always to give definitive answers. If the authors can present interesting topics which people can understand and enjoy and leads to them to think further on those topics, it is worthwhile. I think that Matt Ridley succeeds in this if my example is any guide. There are good critical reviews of both the books of Ridley by H. Allen Orr. Some links are in : http://www.tsujiru.net/?p=209 for reviews of “The origins of virtue”:“The softer side of sociobiology”and the exchange with Herbert Gintis. Allen Orr discusses variants of Prisoner' dilemma in some detail and Herbert Gintis discusses the Public-goods experiments. These go some way in hinting the origins of empathy, reciprocity which are problematic in theories of capitalism and rational choices. A more enthusiastic review of “The origins of virtue” by Solloway is in the New York Review ofBooks. A critical review of “Nature via nurture: byAllen Orr is in the same journal. I am sold on Ridley and will probably read his "Red Queen" and "Genome".
It seems that studyof reciprocity has been a big research topic in the recent years. There are about 200 references to books and papers on related topics in the article “Unifying Behavioral Sciences” by Herbert Gintis ( available athttp://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~gintis/). There is also a discussion in a different context of Public-goods experiments in Chapter 5 of “War and peace and war” by Peter Turchin. With this weak response to Jo, I go back to struggle with the Herbert Glintis ‘ article.
http://72.14.203.104/search q=cache:0nQnUijF4hEJ:wwwc.house.gov/international_re\lations/109/bat063005.pdf+William+Easterley&hl=en&gl=au&ct=clnk&cd=27&ie=UTF-8
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/03/opinion/03easterly.html?ex=1138856400&en=5630a\1f66d1fb058&ei=5070
http://imaginingaustralia.blogs.com/imagining/2005/07/end_of_poverty.html
Heilbronner’s book might have been topical when it was written but now it is agreed that most of us are living in some kind of capitalist states. Since capitalism is supposed to be driven by greed and status which somehow are magically adjusted by some invisible hand, it seemed a good idea to read a bit about human nature. And I got stuck in sociobiology etc for a while. Then I found Matt Ridley’s book “Nature via nurture” in a sale and this seems to give a start on some of these topics. It is difficult to agree with some of Ridley’s extrapolations and conclusions but there is no doubt that he is a wonderful science writer. There are anumber of facts and discussions in both “Nature via nurture” and “The origins of virtue” which might have made a difference to me if I had known them earlier.Every chapter is thought provoking and can be used for further discussion and study in either a class room or a group. I think that the purpose of this kind of semi-popular books is not always to give definitive answers. If the authors can present interesting topics which people can understand and enjoy and leads to them to think further on those topics, it is worthwhile. I think that Matt Ridley succeeds in this if my example is any guide. There are good critical reviews of both the books of Ridley by H. Allen Orr. Some links are in : http://www.tsujiru.net/?p=209 for reviews of “The origins of virtue”:“The softer side of sociobiology”and the exchange with Herbert Gintis. Allen Orr discusses variants of Prisoner' dilemma in some detail and Herbert Gintis discusses the Public-goods experiments. These go some way in hinting the origins of empathy, reciprocity which are problematic in theories of capitalism and rational choices. A more enthusiastic review of “The origins of virtue” by Solloway is in the New York Review ofBooks. A critical review of “Nature via nurture: byAllen Orr is in the same journal. I am sold on Ridley and will probably read his "Red Queen" and "Genome".
It seems that studyof reciprocity has been a big research topic in the recent years. There are about 200 references to books and papers on related topics in the article “Unifying Behavioral Sciences” by Herbert Gintis ( available athttp://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~gintis/). There is also a discussion in a different context of Public-goods experiments in Chapter 5 of “War and peace and war” by Peter Turchin. With this weak response to Jo, I go back to struggle with the Herbert Glintis ‘ article.
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Another New Year
As new years come and go, I keep remembering a waiter that I met in Hyderabad in 1960. That was my second stint at university, I left home after a fight with my father. I had very little money, and stayed in a hostel which charged thirty rupees a month and gave two bad meals a day. I was young and used to feel very hungry and whenever I had some money, I used to visit a restaurant in Narayanaguda and eat a masaldosa which cost twentyfive paise. Somehow, a waiter discerned my condition and offered that I can charge to his account and pay whenever I had money. I do not remember his name and never saw him after those two years in Hyderabad. Now that my children are earning more money than I did when I retired, spend it on gadgets and world trips and expect expensive bail outs, I keep wondering how I can repay that waiter. Happy new year to all.
Swarup
Sunday, December 25, 2005
A story that I missed
From David Brin's website: http://www.davidbrin.com/
Take this oft-quoted passage from Ron Suskind's N.Y. Times article "Without a Doubt" - interviewing a Bush White House aide:
"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.'"
Take this oft-quoted passage from Ron Suskind's N.Y. Times article "Without a Doubt" - interviewing a Bush White House aide:
"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.'"
My take on religion
From Telugudanam:
I write this with a lot of hesitation since I have been an agnostic most of mylife. I have even forgotten many stories from Hindu mythology. Last year I was reading "Being Indian" by Pavan K.Varma (Viking, 2004) and came across this story ( page 69):" In the holy city of Pushkar, the hereditary priests of the Savitri Devitemplehave gone to court to compel the guardians of the nearby Brahma temple to share the offerings received from devotees. Their argument is that Brahma,the creator of the world, had 'divorced' his wife Savitri because she did not arrive in time to participate in his yagna to create the world. As such- so lawyers were arguing in the local court in the year 2001- the creator should be made to pay alimony to the Goddess!"I always thought that Saraswati was Brahma's wife and remembered the name Savitri in another connection, the story of Sati Savitri. To make sure, I enquired about the story of Sati Savitri in a website and the post was rejected. I googled a bit and started getting various stories about Savitri, Gayatri etc and it got a bit confusing. I stopped since anyway it did not seem to be a matter of life and death. What bothers me more was what I saw in Hyderabada few months earlier. I was staying with some friends in Jubilee Hills and one morning went out around six to get some cigarettes. Most of the shops were not open and on the roadside, I found a lady selling tea and cigarettes. It was drizzling and she covered the stall with a plastic sheet but not herself. I was probably the first customer. When I bought a whole packet of cigarettes not one or two loose cigarettes, she immediately touched her eyes with the money in folded hands. This image still haunts me.
Coming back to Hinduism, I started looking through Pavan Varma's book again using the index. He says on page 96:"Hinduism has no organized church, no one god, no paramount religious text and no single manual of prescribed ritual. The predominant emphasis is on personal salvation, a journey in which the individual is essentially alone with his karma and his god". Again on page 102,"In Islam there is the Friday congressional gathering, and in Christianity th visit to the Church on Sundays. There is no such institutional counterpart in Hinduism, and almost no emphasis on the need for the individual to contribute to his community within the arena of spiritual search and fulfilment.The emphasis on the self as the centrepiece of the spiritual endeavour tendsto stunt the individual's concern for the community. This insensitivity to the external milieu, coterminous often with the most overt preoccupation withspiritual pursuits, has become so much a part of life that is not evennoticeable to the educated Hindu'. Similar thoughts in the context of povertythat dehumanises both those who have it and those who do not have beenexpressed by Claude Levi Strauss in "Tristes Tropiques". I do not know whether these are true or not and some may argue that Hinduism helped people survive such poverty. Note also the recent resurgence in the construction of temples. About religious conversions etc, he discusses on pages 176-178;"Hinduism has always existed in a remarkably self-assured way, largely immune to attack or demise because no one entity- scripture, church or god-limits its diffused omnipresence. For its believers it is more a way of life,notwithout its own certainties and rituals and samskaras, but without the constant need to test loyalties."" On the other hand, other religions have felt the need to resist the creeping encroachment of Hinduism. … Many converts to Christianity still identifythemselves according to the castes…"
These quotes seem to correspond roughly to what I know of Hinduism. Of course my lack of knowledge or interest do not mean much. Perhaps variouscultures like religious, linguistic etc are the ways people of different eras coped with the world. These may provide doors of perception different fromthe currently dominant `objective', `scientific' approach. It would be worthwhile recording this traditional knowledge, studying and `analysing' it. But as I indicated in the beginning, it is the continued poverty and hunger in these days of affluence and technology that bother me. I think awareness (of local, global politics of science and technology) and tolerance and a little charity are necessary to understand and tackle these problems.
Swarup
I write this with a lot of hesitation since I have been an agnostic most of mylife. I have even forgotten many stories from Hindu mythology. Last year I was reading "Being Indian" by Pavan K.Varma (Viking, 2004) and came across this story ( page 69):" In the holy city of Pushkar, the hereditary priests of the Savitri Devitemplehave gone to court to compel the guardians of the nearby Brahma temple to share the offerings received from devotees. Their argument is that Brahma,the creator of the world, had 'divorced' his wife Savitri because she did not arrive in time to participate in his yagna to create the world. As such- so lawyers were arguing in the local court in the year 2001- the creator should be made to pay alimony to the Goddess!"I always thought that Saraswati was Brahma's wife and remembered the name Savitri in another connection, the story of Sati Savitri. To make sure, I enquired about the story of Sati Savitri in a website and the post was rejected. I googled a bit and started getting various stories about Savitri, Gayatri etc and it got a bit confusing. I stopped since anyway it did not seem to be a matter of life and death. What bothers me more was what I saw in Hyderabada few months earlier. I was staying with some friends in Jubilee Hills and one morning went out around six to get some cigarettes. Most of the shops were not open and on the roadside, I found a lady selling tea and cigarettes. It was drizzling and she covered the stall with a plastic sheet but not herself. I was probably the first customer. When I bought a whole packet of cigarettes not one or two loose cigarettes, she immediately touched her eyes with the money in folded hands. This image still haunts me.
Coming back to Hinduism, I started looking through Pavan Varma's book again using the index. He says on page 96:"Hinduism has no organized church, no one god, no paramount religious text and no single manual of prescribed ritual. The predominant emphasis is on personal salvation, a journey in which the individual is essentially alone with his karma and his god". Again on page 102,"In Islam there is the Friday congressional gathering, and in Christianity th visit to the Church on Sundays. There is no such institutional counterpart in Hinduism, and almost no emphasis on the need for the individual to contribute to his community within the arena of spiritual search and fulfilment.The emphasis on the self as the centrepiece of the spiritual endeavour tendsto stunt the individual's concern for the community. This insensitivity to the external milieu, coterminous often with the most overt preoccupation withspiritual pursuits, has become so much a part of life that is not evennoticeable to the educated Hindu'. Similar thoughts in the context of povertythat dehumanises both those who have it and those who do not have beenexpressed by Claude Levi Strauss in "Tristes Tropiques". I do not know whether these are true or not and some may argue that Hinduism helped people survive such poverty. Note also the recent resurgence in the construction of temples. About religious conversions etc, he discusses on pages 176-178;"Hinduism has always existed in a remarkably self-assured way, largely immune to attack or demise because no one entity- scripture, church or god-limits its diffused omnipresence. For its believers it is more a way of life,notwithout its own certainties and rituals and samskaras, but without the constant need to test loyalties."" On the other hand, other religions have felt the need to resist the creeping encroachment of Hinduism. … Many converts to Christianity still identifythemselves according to the castes…"
These quotes seem to correspond roughly to what I know of Hinduism. Of course my lack of knowledge or interest do not mean much. Perhaps variouscultures like religious, linguistic etc are the ways people of different eras coped with the world. These may provide doors of perception different fromthe currently dominant `objective', `scientific' approach. It would be worthwhile recording this traditional knowledge, studying and `analysing' it. But as I indicated in the beginning, it is the continued poverty and hunger in these days of affluence and technology that bother me. I think awareness (of local, global politics of science and technology) and tolerance and a little charity are necessary to understand and tackle these problems.
Swarup
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Another Chomsky Interview
Continuation of the "Problems with News": See a recent interview with Chomsky
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=21&ItemID=9380
Some excerpts:
“A huge majority wants Bush to rescind tax cuts forthe rich, people with over $200,000 income and so on.Well how was that reported? Well a friend of mine dida database search and nothing. Zero. Only onenewspaper in the country - some small town newspaperin Iowa.”
“You and everybody else has read Animal Farm, I'msure, but you and everybody else hasn't read theintroduction to Animal Farm. There's a good reason forthat: because it was suppressed. The introduction wasfound 30 years later in Orwell's own published papers.The introduction to Animal Farm says look this book isa satire on a totalitarian state but I'm going to talkabout England, Free England. In Free England it's notthat different. Without state coercion unpopular ideascan be suppressed and are. And then he described how.He didn't go in much details but he said partly it'sbecause the press is owned by wealthy men who haveevery reason not to want certain ideas to beexpressed. But the more important reason, he said, wasbecause of a good education. By the time you've gonethrough, you know, Oxford and Cambridge and here youcould say Harvard and Princeton and so on, and evenless fancy places, you have instilled into you theunderstanding that there are certain things that justwouldn't do to say, and that's what a good deal ofeducation is. So the people who come out of it - andthere are many filters, if people go off and try to betoo critical there are many ways of discouraging themor eliminating them one way or the other. Some getthrough, it's not a uniform story.”
“The more educated you are the more indoctrinated youare. And you believe you are being free and objective,whereas in fact you're just repeating statepropaganda. “
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=21&ItemID=9380
Some excerpts:
“A huge majority wants Bush to rescind tax cuts forthe rich, people with over $200,000 income and so on.Well how was that reported? Well a friend of mine dida database search and nothing. Zero. Only onenewspaper in the country - some small town newspaperin Iowa.”
“You and everybody else has read Animal Farm, I'msure, but you and everybody else hasn't read theintroduction to Animal Farm. There's a good reason forthat: because it was suppressed. The introduction wasfound 30 years later in Orwell's own published papers.The introduction to Animal Farm says look this book isa satire on a totalitarian state but I'm going to talkabout England, Free England. In Free England it's notthat different. Without state coercion unpopular ideascan be suppressed and are. And then he described how.He didn't go in much details but he said partly it'sbecause the press is owned by wealthy men who haveevery reason not to want certain ideas to beexpressed. But the more important reason, he said, wasbecause of a good education. By the time you've gonethrough, you know, Oxford and Cambridge and here youcould say Harvard and Princeton and so on, and evenless fancy places, you have instilled into you theunderstanding that there are certain things that justwouldn't do to say, and that's what a good deal ofeducation is. So the people who come out of it - andthere are many filters, if people go off and try to betoo critical there are many ways of discouraging themor eliminating them one way or the other. Some getthrough, it's not a uniform story.”
“The more educated you are the more indoctrinated youare. And you believe you are being free and objective,whereas in fact you're just repeating statepropaganda. “
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Problems with news
In forum.mayyam.com, in the Miscellaneous Topics, there is a thread called "Picked from the papers today". Usually somebody picks up from the newspapers some item that he or she finds interesting and sometimes there is a discussion or somebody posts another news item. On 20th December, somebody gave several URLs:
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2226/stories/20051230003103300.htm
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20051226&fname=Pakistan+%28F%29&sid=1
http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/dec/16rajeev.htm
http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/dec/15ram.htmBack to top
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/mazdak/mazdak.htm
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/mazdak/20051203.htm
The second article from OUTLOOK ia about a Hindu MP in Pakistan slapping a Muslim MP in the parliment. The last one is about abduction and conversion of some Hindu girls in Pakistan. The two seem present different pictures of Hindus in Pakistan. Similarly some of the other items paint contradictory views on other issues. I think that this juxtaposition of news items is deliberate just to show how we can pick and choose from so much information coming in.
There were a couple of artcles in the New York Review of Books:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18516
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18555
about the difficulties of getting reliable news, more in terms of pressures on journalists, publishers profit concerns and omissions. Blogs do not seem to fare well either. There seem to be nexus between various blogs, radio and TV stations, particularly among the right wing.
So, the question is where is reliable news and how do we find it?
Probably, the two items about Pakistan can be reconciled by saying that anyway the rich and powerful get away with lots of things. How about other tems like terrorism ( there is British documentary saying that initially there was no Al Dueda and it was a myth created by the Americans) or economic matters. Perhaps we have to get numbers from 'reliable' sources and analyze them ober a period. it seems a difficult proposition. Perhaps this is what many political leaders bank on. just keep lying and by the time people have an inkling of what happenned, they are on to the next crisis.
Pl. let me know if you have any ideas about reliable news in these days of large scale disinformation.
Swarup
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2226/stories/20051230003103300.htm
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20051226&fname=Pakistan+%28F%29&sid=1
http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/dec/16rajeev.htm
http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/dec/15ram.htmBack to top
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/mazdak/mazdak.htm
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/mazdak/20051203.htm
The second article from OUTLOOK ia about a Hindu MP in Pakistan slapping a Muslim MP in the parliment. The last one is about abduction and conversion of some Hindu girls in Pakistan. The two seem present different pictures of Hindus in Pakistan. Similarly some of the other items paint contradictory views on other issues. I think that this juxtaposition of news items is deliberate just to show how we can pick and choose from so much information coming in.
There were a couple of artcles in the New York Review of Books:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18516
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18555
about the difficulties of getting reliable news, more in terms of pressures on journalists, publishers profit concerns and omissions. Blogs do not seem to fare well either. There seem to be nexus between various blogs, radio and TV stations, particularly among the right wing.
So, the question is where is reliable news and how do we find it?
Probably, the two items about Pakistan can be reconciled by saying that anyway the rich and powerful get away with lots of things. How about other tems like terrorism ( there is British documentary saying that initially there was no Al Dueda and it was a myth created by the Americans) or economic matters. Perhaps we have to get numbers from 'reliable' sources and analyze them ober a period. it seems a difficult proposition. Perhaps this is what many political leaders bank on. just keep lying and by the time people have an inkling of what happenned, they are on to the next crisis.
Pl. let me know if you have any ideas about reliable news in these days of large scale disinformation.
Swarup
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Why do strikes take place
These are tentative observations that I posted in the thread of the above name in www.andhranews.com :
I write down a few tenatative observations; most of these should be prephrased by 'May be".
I think that strikes and boycotts were vigorous during the independence movement and were considered a legitimate part of the struggle. Independence did not bring an end to the injustices and in fact many who fought for independence themselves became corrupt. A song from 1954 film 'Peddamanushulu' talks of selfish people selling our independence in the market place ( 'Nandamaya gurudu nandamaya'). So strikes continued. Nehru already complained about this indiscipline and thought that even though strikes were legitimate for independence, they were not that suitable for nation building. See, Dipesh Chakraborty's article "In the name of politics": i
http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2005&leaf=07&filename=8908&filetype=html
In any case the main party at that time, the Congress Party, consisted of a people of different ideologies whose common aim was Indian independence and the policies were mainly driven from the top with some socialistic ideals from Nehru but there was no coherent ideology. The standard technique during strikes seem to be try to put them down by force if possible and if things get out of hand then diffuse the crisis by setting up an enquiry commision.
For younger people who are frustrated by the slow progress and looking for quick solutions, the only party which gave a world view and a clear ideology and which worked at the grass roots level was the Communist Party. Moreover during the Telangana struggle of 40's various leaders from all over A.P. sacrifised and worked in Telangana. Even now, though it has split in to several groups, they are probably the only groups who educate people at the local level on politics and ideologies. Even though communism (or striving towards it) has failed in several countries, some parts of the Indian society still seems at the level where marxist ideology seems applicable. Moreover some of the contradictions of capitalism predicted by Marx are visible in some places. For example, his prediction about companies swallowing other companies and getting huge and exploiting workers seem to be still happenning in places like Guragon and with some of the multinationals and drug companies. The companies which got contracts after Iraq war are the same companies which are getting contracts after Katrina, and Bush has suspended laws about minimum wages and equal opportunity. I think that these continuing phenomena make Marx still relevant and appealing.
I myself am inclined more towards Scandinavian type social democracies, though my knowledge of them is very limited. I understand that poverty levels are low, salary disparities are less than other western countries, even prime ministers shop like commoners ( and one was killed coming back from shopping). There is good social security. My economist friend tells me that it may not be perfect but is much better than the system in countries like USA and the kind of scenes that one has seen after Katrina were never seen in the Scandinavian countries. He says that one of the main problems there is boredom. Assuming that it is a good compromise between communism and capitalism, how does one achieve such a system in India? For one thing, India is a much bigger country with diverse groups of diverse economic levels and a different evolution. It has not gone through an industrial revolution. Even now compared to China, industrial sector seems to be going down and service sector going up. Most people are too busy making a living in the given system rather than thinking about ideologies and government. During elections, people vote for who ever bullies them or whoever they think will give some benefit to them and are usually disappointed. Many politicians seem to have criminal cases against them. Moreover, there is a suspicion that some of them are working in league with multinationals other western ( this means mainly US and British and does not mean Scandinavian) interests for their own benefits.
Somehow US always comes in to the picture since it is one of the main advocates of democracy for other countries. Some feel that this is just an evolution in the American type capitalism, using some groups in poor countries to control others ( see, for example Kawaljit Singh's books on globalization). What has this got to do with strikes? Again Gurgaon is an example how this system works.
I feel that it is difficult for a few to control other human beings and some how things will evove for the better. How they will evolve I do not know. (My inclination is to work through non profit organizations at the local level). Some strikes which bring political awareness seem to be a part of this evolution.
Swarup
I write down a few tenatative observations; most of these should be prephrased by 'May be".
I think that strikes and boycotts were vigorous during the independence movement and were considered a legitimate part of the struggle. Independence did not bring an end to the injustices and in fact many who fought for independence themselves became corrupt. A song from 1954 film 'Peddamanushulu' talks of selfish people selling our independence in the market place ( 'Nandamaya gurudu nandamaya'). So strikes continued. Nehru already complained about this indiscipline and thought that even though strikes were legitimate for independence, they were not that suitable for nation building. See, Dipesh Chakraborty's article "In the name of politics": i
http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2005&leaf=07&filename=8908&filetype=html
In any case the main party at that time, the Congress Party, consisted of a people of different ideologies whose common aim was Indian independence and the policies were mainly driven from the top with some socialistic ideals from Nehru but there was no coherent ideology. The standard technique during strikes seem to be try to put them down by force if possible and if things get out of hand then diffuse the crisis by setting up an enquiry commision.
For younger people who are frustrated by the slow progress and looking for quick solutions, the only party which gave a world view and a clear ideology and which worked at the grass roots level was the Communist Party. Moreover during the Telangana struggle of 40's various leaders from all over A.P. sacrifised and worked in Telangana. Even now, though it has split in to several groups, they are probably the only groups who educate people at the local level on politics and ideologies. Even though communism (or striving towards it) has failed in several countries, some parts of the Indian society still seems at the level where marxist ideology seems applicable. Moreover some of the contradictions of capitalism predicted by Marx are visible in some places. For example, his prediction about companies swallowing other companies and getting huge and exploiting workers seem to be still happenning in places like Guragon and with some of the multinationals and drug companies. The companies which got contracts after Iraq war are the same companies which are getting contracts after Katrina, and Bush has suspended laws about minimum wages and equal opportunity. I think that these continuing phenomena make Marx still relevant and appealing.
I myself am inclined more towards Scandinavian type social democracies, though my knowledge of them is very limited. I understand that poverty levels are low, salary disparities are less than other western countries, even prime ministers shop like commoners ( and one was killed coming back from shopping). There is good social security. My economist friend tells me that it may not be perfect but is much better than the system in countries like USA and the kind of scenes that one has seen after Katrina were never seen in the Scandinavian countries. He says that one of the main problems there is boredom. Assuming that it is a good compromise between communism and capitalism, how does one achieve such a system in India? For one thing, India is a much bigger country with diverse groups of diverse economic levels and a different evolution. It has not gone through an industrial revolution. Even now compared to China, industrial sector seems to be going down and service sector going up. Most people are too busy making a living in the given system rather than thinking about ideologies and government. During elections, people vote for who ever bullies them or whoever they think will give some benefit to them and are usually disappointed. Many politicians seem to have criminal cases against them. Moreover, there is a suspicion that some of them are working in league with multinationals other western ( this means mainly US and British and does not mean Scandinavian) interests for their own benefits.
Somehow US always comes in to the picture since it is one of the main advocates of democracy for other countries. Some feel that this is just an evolution in the American type capitalism, using some groups in poor countries to control others ( see, for example Kawaljit Singh's books on globalization). What has this got to do with strikes? Again Gurgaon is an example how this system works.
I feel that it is difficult for a few to control other human beings and some how things will evove for the better. How they will evolve I do not know. (My inclination is to work through non profit organizations at the local level). Some strikes which bring political awareness seem to be a part of this evolution.
Swarup
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Rao Balasaraswati Devi
I will start with some of my posts from other sites which I still like and agree with. This an old post from oldtelugu songs titled "The voice that I liked most":
During my Andhra days that essentially ended in1956, the voice that I liked most was that of Rao Balasaraswati Devi. It had the sweetness of a mother's voice, the allure of a lover's voice and the majesty of Samskrit. Then, I left Andhra but kept wondering: Is she still alive? Can she still sing? Is she pretty? What kind of person is she? She has been a mother, a lover and a companion for the rest of my life. After several years, I started enquiring and some news filteredthrough. She is alive and her career essentially ended since her husband discouraged a career in films. Now, my thoughts are different. Why is that such talented women put up with this type of injustice and still sing songs which perpetuate the stereotypes that cause these imjustices? By some accounts, she is an independent person, can still sing, and spoke (last year)freely about the injustices done by some of the icons in Telugu and Hindi film music.
There have been other Andhra influences from those days: Chalam,Srisri, Gopichand and Narla. But music is different. Even now. through wornout 78 RPMs where I cannot even decipher the words, Balasaraswati still touches me. Perhaps by seeing the injustices done to those who touch us, we can develop some empathy for the silent sufferers in this men-oriented world. After exploiting my wife for thirty years, I started cooking for her for the last oneyear. If at some stage, she finds fulfilment elsewhere, I hope that I will happily share my resources with her and wish her all the best.
Swarup
During my Andhra days that essentially ended in1956, the voice that I liked most was that of Rao Balasaraswati Devi. It had the sweetness of a mother's voice, the allure of a lover's voice and the majesty of Samskrit. Then, I left Andhra but kept wondering: Is she still alive? Can she still sing? Is she pretty? What kind of person is she? She has been a mother, a lover and a companion for the rest of my life. After several years, I started enquiring and some news filteredthrough. She is alive and her career essentially ended since her husband discouraged a career in films. Now, my thoughts are different. Why is that such talented women put up with this type of injustice and still sing songs which perpetuate the stereotypes that cause these imjustices? By some accounts, she is an independent person, can still sing, and spoke (last year)freely about the injustices done by some of the icons in Telugu and Hindi film music.
There have been other Andhra influences from those days: Chalam,Srisri, Gopichand and Narla. But music is different. Even now. through wornout 78 RPMs where I cannot even decipher the words, Balasaraswati still touches me. Perhaps by seeing the injustices done to those who touch us, we can develop some empathy for the silent sufferers in this men-oriented world. After exploiting my wife for thirty years, I started cooking for her for the last oneyear. If at some stage, she finds fulfilment elsewhere, I hope that I will happily share my resources with her and wish her all the best.
Swarup
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