Bill Moyers interviews Andrew Bacevich

Bacevich: The Limits of Power (from 'The Big pictue')'. Flavour of the opinions (with which I am much in agreement) from this one quote:
"BILL MOYERS: Here is one of those neon sentences. Quote, "The pursuit of freedom, as defined in an age of consumerism, has induced a condition of dependence on imported goods, on imported oil, and on credit. The chief desire of the American people," you write, "is that nothing should disrupt their access to these goods, that oil, and that credit. The chief aim of the U.S. government is to satisfy that desire, which it does in part of through the distribution of largesse here at home, and in part through the pursuit of imperial ambitions abroad." In other words, you're saying that our foreign policy is the result of a dependence on consumer goods and credit."
There are several articles by Andrew Bacevich in Tomdispatch

Robert Feinman explains the financial crisis

The Crisis Explained - Really:
"Analogies are never perfect, but here's one using horse racing. Don't expect a perfect correspondence to the banking situation, but I think it is close enough for government work.
Joe goes to the track and bets $2 on a horse.

Two guys standing nearby get into a discussion and Fred says to Sam, "I'll bet you $5 that Joe wins his bet."
Next to them are Bill and Bob. Bill says: "I'll bet you $10 that Fred welshes on his bet if he loses."

Next to them is Sally. Sally says: "For $3 I'll guarantee to Bill that if Bob fails to pay off, I'll make good on the bet."

Sally then goes to Mary and borrows the $7 needed in case she has to ever pay off and promises to pay back $8. She doesn't expect to every have to pay since she believes Bob will always make good. So she expects to net $2 no matter what happens to Joe.

A quick calculation indicates that there is now 2+5+10+3+7 = $27 riding on the outcome of the horse race.

Question how much has been "invested" in the horse race?

Answer:

$50,000 by the owner of the horse who is expecting to recoup his investment from the winnings of the horse and other future deals. Everyone else is gambling, not investing.

The issue with the home market is that the only "investor" was the person who bought the home. All those engaged in the meaningless derivatives spun off from this are gambling. You can see how quickly the face value of all these side bets can exceed the underlying investment. Who is holding these side bets - not the homeowner? It is the people at the failing investment banks, hedge funds and similar enterprises. Notice that the bailout is being directed at them not the homeowners.

The real world is, of course, even more complicated. Over the last 30 years people have been allowed to place bets on everything starting with the value of stock averages. They might as well bet on the temperature in Newark at 8:00 AM.

So when you hear everybody saying this is a crisis caused by the housing collapse, be skeptical. We are in the midst of a classic pyramid or Ponzi scheme and there is no way out except for people to lose a lot of money. All that is different this time is that it is the taxpayers who are being asked for the cash."

And Dean Baker on the bailout Why Bail? The Banks Have a Gun Pointed at Their Head and Are Threatening to Pull the Trigger:
"In other words, the worst case scenario is that we have an extremely scary day in which the markets freeze for a few hours. Then the Fed steps in and takes over the major banks. The system of payments continues to operate exactly as before, but the bank executives are out of their jobs and the bank shareholders have likely lost most of their money. In other words, the banks have a gun pointed to their heads and are threatening to pull the trigger unless we hand them $700 billion."

What do I know? We paid off the house mortgage and in about ten years, the price went up five times. People around said that I was wasting my resource; I should borrow money on the house and invest. They also said if I do not have at least fifty thousand dollars an year, retirement will be hard. I did not invest since I did not want to get in to some thing which I did not understand and I am getting much less than fifty thousand a year but it seems more than enough to survive comfortably and even send some money for charities. Now the retirement funds are hit and I will probably get less. May be I will grow more vegetables, keep plenty of cash and provisions to ride out a few months of crisis.

Some good news from Australia-Paid Maternity Leave

PM's maternity leave pledge:
"PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has signalled his support for a national parental leave scheme, after a report recommended that taxpayers fund 18 weeks' leave for working mothers and two weeks for fathers at an annual cost of $450 million.
....
"We are still some ways off resolving the financial policy detail, but what I am saying to you loud and clear today is that this Australian Government believes the time has come to bite the bullet on this and we intend to do so," Mr Rudd said.
.....
The recommendations will now go to public consultation. A final report is due next year. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has already indicated that businesses would not accept them."

Some overviews of the financial crisis

Both from Project Syndicate. Robert Skidelsky in http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/skidelsky9:
"Cycles of economic fashion are as old as business cycles, and are usually caused by deep business disturbances. “Liberal” cycles are followed by “conservative” cycles, which give way to new “liberal” cycles, and so on.
.....
At issue here is the oldest unresolved dilemma in economics: are market economies “naturally” stable or do they need to be stabilized by policy? Keynes emphasized the flimsiness of the expectations on which economic activity in decentralized markets is based. The future is inherently uncertain, and therefore investor psychology is fickle.
.........
Liberal cycles, the historian Arthur Schlesinger thought, succumb to the corruption of power, conservative cycles to the corruption of money. Both have their characteristic benefits and costs.

But if we look at the historical record, the liberal regime of the 1950’s and 1960’s was more successful than the conservative regime that followed. Outside China and India, whose economic potential was unleashed by market economics, economic growth was faster and much more stable in the Keynesian golden age than in the age of Friedman; its fruits were more equitably distributed; social cohesion and moral habits better maintained. These are serious benefits to weigh against some business sluggishness."

Harold James in The Geopolitical Consequences of the Financial Crisis:
"First, private sector solutions have been tried but have failed in a breathtakingly short space of time......The second question is what kind of government can do the job? Not just any government will do. Mid-sized European governments can possibly rescue mid-sized European institutions, but in the case of really major financial conglomerates at the heart of the world’s financial system, there are probably only two governments that have the fire power: the US and China.
....
China is the America of this century. The initial stages of the credit crunch in 2007 were managed so apparently painlessly because sovereign wealth funds from the Middle East, but above all from China, were willing to step in and recapitalize the debt of American and European institutions. The pivotal moment in today’s events came when the Chinese SWF China Investment Co. was unwilling to go further in its exploration of buying Lehman Brothers. CIC’s turning back will be held up in the future as a moment when history could have turned in a different direction." The thesis seems to be that the Great Depression could have been avoided if America stepped in to rescue Europe and now China should step in to save USA and the globalized world economy.
Brad Setser too has been discussing the role of China in the crisis, for example,here:
"China — by far the largest official holder of Agency bonds — also seems to have expressed its concerns directly to the Treasury. Harden and Cha of the Washington Post report that Chinese officials told the US to do “whatever is necessary to protect their investments.”"

Interesting Telugu blogs-1

At one time, I felt that there should be at least that much development in regional languages to communicate everyday matters that we come across in newspapers. But being away from A.P. for 40-50 years, I did not really have the know-how or vacabularly to write in Telugu. I found one dictionary by Baudaraju Radhakrishna written for journalists which I thought would be useful to overseas Telugus. I have been trying to make it available on the internet and it may be available in a few months. Meanwhile, there has been an explosion of Telugu blogs and many of them are writing in Telugu on matters that I thought would be difficult to write. I think that these blogs will help communicating in Telugu on many matters at least up to a certain level of difficulty. I have been visiting Telugu blogs off and on and will slowly point out blogs which I think are communicating relatively difficult(for me) and useful topics in Telugu. Here is one కలగూరగంప . I particularly enjoyed the posts in తొంగి చూసే చరిత్ర series. The blog has a useful list of Telugu equivalents of many English words. The author has several blogs and I vaguely remember than in one of them, he expresses strong beliefs. So, agnostics like may have to be careful.

Review of a Soros book

and an overview of the current financial crisis He Foresaw the End of an Era by John Cassidy in The New York Review of Books. An earlier overview from Harvard Magazine:Debtor Nation, The rising risks of the American Dream, on a borrowed dime
.

Interesting discussion at Space_Bar

I have been trying to follow, not very successfully, this discussion The Spaniard In The Works: Husain's Response. It is about the current US financial crisis in which a number of very erudite Indians are taking part. The post is by Mir Ali Husain, a professor of Business and a lyricist. Many of the commentators seem to be in various professions with some knowledge of finance and some of them seem to have even worked in related professions. Quite a few seem to be interested in poetry. A dominant (I have problems with writing English and one of the commentators ridiculed the knowledge of those who misspell)commentator in the discussion is Falstaff who blogs at
http://2x3x7.blogspot.com/
He seems to be against singling out Wall Street for moral outrage and thinks that without social change, it is difficult to find solutions. This seems right but at the moment Wall Street has the ability to make big mistakes and these affect people all around the world. The amounts invoved seem to be arrived faily casually. See
Bad News For The Bailout which says:
"In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number.""

Coming back to the discussion in Space_Bar's blog, I quote below from one comment of Falstaff which seems reasonable to me:
"I don't believe we can keep these kind of crises from recurring without fundamentally changing the social ethos, and I'm not sure how we do that - beyond working through non-profits to instill greater financial prudence and having a larger conversation about what we value as a society. I know that isn't terribly compelling as a solution, but I think accepting that there is no easy solution is better than randomly assigning blame for it to the first available scapegoat. I'm not saying I know the answers (at this point I don't think anyone does), I'm saying that giving Wall Street a bad name and hanging it is not the answer and to the extent that kind of villain-making derails the real conversations we should be having we need to get past it. I'm perfectly willing to admit that I don't know how to solve the problem, I'm not willing to let overwrought emotional statements that do nothing to bring us closer to the solution go unchallenged."
Falstaff later explains the possible problems with too much outrage:
"Though I'm not sure that misdirecting the blame and creating the illusion that it all happened because Bankers are Sith Lords is likely to lead to any useful solutions either. What it is likely to do is allow the McCain-Palins of the world to advance their anti-elitist agenda. "Look at all these fat cat bankers who screwed you over. You don't want people they went to college with making national policy, do you? No, what you need is to put a maverick in power - people who are outside the system, who are mavericks, who are pure of heart; people who will make decisions based not on the voice of reason but the voice of God." If there's one thing the GOP is good at, it's channeling outrage. And if there's one thing the Bush years should have taught us, it's that outrage is not a useful input into national policy."
In his own blog Falstaff explains the sort of situations where one can express outrage :Ap-Palin-g . I think that Falstaff makes some very good points. Possibly 'moral outrage' is too stong a word. But it seems natural to use strong words for problems which affect a large number of people. Perhaps less shrill discussions?
P.S. There are more comments and a follow up post by Husain.

Another good speech

and shorter from Rep. Marcy Kaptur

Bush gives a good speech

I was not planning to read it but read it following Felix Salmon's recommendation Didn't Panic:
"Whoever wrote this speech deserves some kind of medal. It explained complex matters clearly, without oversimplifying, and without talking down. You want the history of the credit crisis in 355 words? I don't think you could do much better than this....
Of course, one can quibble."
Here is the transcript of the speech President Bush’s Speech to the Nation on the Economic Crisis .

P.S. Already, the link to Felix Salmon's post does not seem to work. Here is the bit from Bush's speech that Felisx Salmon quoted:
"For more than a decade, a massive amount of money flowed into the United States from investors abroad, because our country is an attractive and secure place to do business. This large influx of money to U.S. banks and financial institutions -- along with low interest rates -- made it easier for Americans to get credit. These developments allowed more families to borrow money for cars and homes and college tuition -- some for the first time. They allowed more entrepreneurs to get loans to start new businesses and create jobs.
Unfortunately, there were also some serious negative consequences, particularly in the housing market. Easy credit -- combined with the faulty assumption that home values would continue to rise -- led to excesses and bad decisions. Many mortgage lenders approved loans for borrowers without carefully examining their ability to pay. Many borrowers took out loans larger than they could afford, assuming that they could sell or refinance their homes at a higher price later on.
Optimism about housing values also led to a boom in home construction. Eventually the number of new houses exceeded the number of people willing to buy them. And with supply exceeding demand, housing prices fell. And this created a problem: Borrowers with adjustable rate mortgages who had been planning to sell or refinance their homes at a higher price were stuck with homes worth less than expected -- along with mortgage payments they could not afford. As a result, many mortgage holders began to default.
These widespread defaults had effects far beyond the housing market. See, in today's mortgage industry, home loans are often packaged together, and converted into financial products called "mortgage-backed securities." These securities were sold to investors around the world. Many investors assumed these securities were trustworthy, and asked few questions about their actual value. Two of the leading purchasers of mortgage-backed securities were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."

Digby explains the US financial crisis

Influential blogger Digby in an interview with Glen Greenwald:
" This is a trap that they are - look, this happens all the time. There is a historical pattern that we can turn to, which is that Republicans make a habit of looting the treasury - this isn't the first time it's happened. During the vanted Reagan years, we had the S&L crisis which up 'till this point was the largest since the great depression, which was also a Republican crisis. And the problem is that they fetishize this idea of deregulation, they create shadow banking systems, which is essentially what the S&L scandal was, and again, here we have another shadow banking system, that they created with no regulations, and with this huge amount of exposure and risk, to the economy as a whole. They make a lot of money over a period of time; I mean tremendous amounts of money. Over the last few years, when people look at the wreckage of this particular scandal, they're going to find that people on Wall St. were swallowing a fire hose of money, for years now. We've been talking a lot about the new gilded age - this is what we're talking about. And so, they have this pattern of deregulating and creating these opportunities for themselves to take these huge risks knowing that the government is going to essentially be the bailout of last resort if it doesn't work.

This is the biggest moral hazard in world history, to allow this to happen. And we are having, we wind up again with the gun to our heads, going, well, okay, either fix it, or we're going to take everybody down with them."
Moreover, according to James Grant, there is the problem of 'deficits without tears':
"The dollar emerged at the center of the monetary system that took its name from the 1944 convention in Bretton Woods, N.H. The American currency alone was made exchangeable into gold. The other currencies, when they got their peacetime legs back under them, were made exchangeable into the dollar.
.....and the Nixon administration, on Aug. 15, 1971, decreed that the dollar would henceforth be convertible into nothing except small change. The age of the pure paper dollar was fairly launched.

In the absence of a golden anchor, the United States produced as many dollars as the world cared to absorb. And the world’s appetite was prodigious. “Balance of payments” crises were now, for this country, things of the past. “Liquidity,” that bubbly speculative elixir, gurgled from the founts of the world’s central banks.

It was the very lack of gold-standard inhibition that permitted the buildup of titanic dollar balances overseas. At the end of 2007, no less than $9.4 trillion in dollar-denominated securities were sitting in the vaults of foreign investors. Not a few of these trillions were the property of Asian central banks. So, although the United States has run heavy and persistent current account deficits — $6.7 trillion in total since 1982 — they have been “deficits without tears,” to quote the French economist Jacques Rueff. The dollars American debtors sent abroad America’s creditors sent right back in the shape of investments in American stocks, bonds and factories.

Under the Bretton Woods system, worried foreign creditors would long ago have cleaned out Fort Knox. But, conveniently, the dollar is uncollateralized and unconvertible. America’s overseas creditors hold it for many reasons. Some — notably Asian central banks — acquire dollars simply to help make their exports grow. But even the governments that scoop up dollars for no better reason than to manipulate their own currency’s value presumably put some store in the integrity of American finance.

As never before, that trust is being put to the test. In the best of times, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve pretended as if the dollar were America’s currency alone. Now, in some of the worst of times, Washington is treating its vital overseas dollar constituency as if it weren’t even there."

Gurajada and others

Excepts from Colonial Knowledge and Literary Representations: Construction of Gender Identity in Colonial Andhra by Madan Mohan Rao V:
"In the Telugu writings of the 19th century, we find three recurrent women characters – chaste Hindu wife, bounded widow and the vicious nautch girl. The ‘lot of women’ was, sought to be ‘improved’ through education. They were to be taught child-care, cooking, health care, house keeping, sewing etc[30]. In the literature, marital relationship was glorified, sanctified and it was conveyed in subtle to women to be virtuous, self-denying, sacrificing and serving. Panuganti in an essay titled “Mahapativrata” writes that “the man with brahmaznanamu (knowledge of universal truth) may get moksha (liberation) after fourteen births, but the woman with devotion to her husband and in anticipation of no returns (nishphalapekshamina patibhakti) from her husband could definitely get mukti (attainment) in one birth/life. Further it was stressed that only such a grihini (housewife) was sure of attaining mukti”.[31]
For Kandukuri Viresalingam, the husband was a socially necessary master and without them women had no life. “The husband is to be held as God, since he provides all comforts and caters to the pleasures of the wife; hence she should dedicate herself to his service: if need be, tolerate his anger, abuse and patiently endure even beating and physical violence … the wife should not wear flowers and jewels and should not laugh loudly when the husband is away”. To shape the ‘ideal Hindu patni’ on these lines he started the journal ‘Strihita Bodhini’ and wrote ‘Satyavati Charitramu’, ‘Chandramati Charitramu’, ‘Satya Sanjeevani Patni’ and ‘Hita Suchani’. “At night after entire work was complete, she had to clean up the kitchen, take bath, touch husband’s feet and then mangalsutra and finally to bed” writes Viresalingam. The impact of this idealization was such that a young girl wept after reading ‘Hita Suchani’ for failing in her callings. This took place in 1887 and was narrated by Viresalingam himself in his ‘Sweeya Charitra Sangrahamu’.
..............
But an attempt at altering this discourse can be seen in the writings of Gurajada. Well positioned both in traditional learning and western education, with a vast reading and wide travel, being an active participant in the ongoing spoken language movement, enjoying the liberal patronage of a reformist raja and surrounded by forward looking writer friends and sensible to the contemporary theatre, Gurajada for himself could see the shallowness of the ongoing reform activity and writings. He problematised the whole reformist discourse in –Kanyasulkam- a satirical play. His works are marked with pun, rare sensitivity and deep insights. In a poem a male partner narrates:
“Husband is an old word.

I am your friend,

poor without your love.

But if I have it, I’m

richer than the kings of gods”.
No wonder, his partner was perplexed at this. In essence it’s a double-edged sword. While advocating the relation between partners, it exposes the emptiness of the reformist ideas in practice.
The society in which Gurajada lived could not capture the subtleties of his writings. Moreover his short span of life and meager literary output could not create an influential literary legacy. As a result the subsequent writers could not take this discourse to its logical conclusion. Efforts of Unnava Lakshmi Narayana, Kallakuri Narayana Rao, Jashua and a host of other writers were swamped by the larger discourse that was outlined above. Chalam’s writings created an outburst of violent criticism rather than meaningful debate, which would have set the ball rolling. Writers like Kodavatiganti and Sri Sri who were heavily influenced by the Marxist thought could not address the issue."

Gurajada's meditations on history

I saw this piece in Arudra'a article on Gurajada Apparao in 'Samagra Andhra Sahityam" and also in his article 'sasanaparisodhakulaga Gidugu-Gurajada' in "Marosari Gidugu Ramamurthy". Apparently, it is the notes of his propsed 'Kalinga Desa Charitra". The manuscript seems lost now. At some stage one of his trunks was stolen in Madras station. What remained of his manuscripts were in two trunks and bought by a publishing house which could not edit them due to lack of funds and since the organizerswere underground for a period. The trunks were shifted for a period to Madras(?), since the publishing house owners were afraid that their properties might be burnt. During the off and on efforts to edit, one of the editors took some of the manuscripts home to edit and lost some of them. These are the sort of stories I heard on a trip to A.P. The remaining papers are now microfilmed are in the Govt. Archives in Hyderabad with copies in Tirupati and Visakhapatnam. The manuscript of the "Kalinga desa charitra' seems lost though some keep hoping that it may turn up somewhere. Here are Gurajada's words:

"ప్రాచీన శిధిల భవనాలను, శిల్పాలను, అవశేషాలను చూసినప్పుడు మనం వ్యాకులపడతాము. వ్యాకులముతోపాటు మనకు ఆసక్తి కలుగుతుంది. ఆ వస్తువులచుట్టూ జాలీ, ఆసక్తీ గొలిపే వాతవరణం అలుముకొని ఉంటుంది.
రూపు చెడని కోట కన్నా, రూపు చెడిన కోట, విశేషించి దానికి చరిత్రలో అనుబంధం వున్నప్పుడు, మనకు ఎక్కువ ఆసక్తిని కలిగిస్తుంది. ఊహించుకొందుకు వీలున్నప్పుడు మన ఆసక్తి మరీ ఎక్కువౌతుంది. సహజంగా మనకు కొన్ని ఊహలు పుడతాయి.
కొన్ని వందల సంవత్సరాల క్రితం ఈ కొటలో కొందరు నివసిస్తూవుండేవారు. అనేకుల జీవితాలు వింత వింత అభిరుచులతో, అనుభవాలతో, ఆశలతొ, నిరాశలతో, ఇక్కడ గడిచి పోయాయి. వాళ్ళ కష్టసుఖాలు, సుఖదుఖాలు, ఎటువంటివో. ఇక్కడివాళ్ళు ఒక్కొక్కొప్పుడు అత్యంత ధైర్యోత్సాహాలతొ ఇంకొక్కప్పడు మహాభయాలతో కాలం గడిపి ఉంటారు. జీవితంలో అనేక జయాపజయాలను చవిచూసి ఉంటారు. వీళ్ళ ఆశలతో నిరాశలతో ఆనందంతో విచారంతో ఏ వాతావరణం ఒకప్పుడు నిండివుండేది. ముఖ్యంగా ఇక్కడ నివసించిన చివరితరం మనుషులు ఎక్కువ ఒడిదుడుకులను ఎదుర్కునివుంటారు. అనేక కష్టాలుపడివుంటారు.
ఛారిత్రకంగా వీటి ఉనికి ఏమిటో? "

P.S. I am enclosing the version in English for any advice and corrections.
"praacheena Sidhila bhavanaalanu, Silpaalanu, avaSEshaalanu chuusinappuDu manam vyaakulapaDataamu. vyaakulamutOpaaTu manaku aasakti kalugutundi. aa vastuvulachuTTuu jAlii, aasaktii golipE vaatavaraNam alumukoni unTundi.
ruupu cheDani kOTa kannaa, ruupu cheDina kOTa, viSEshinchi daaniki charitralO anubandham vunnappuDu, manaku ekkuva aasaktini kaligistundi. Uhinchukonduku veelunnappuDu mana aasakti maree ekkuvoutundi. sahajamgaa manaku konni uuhalu puDataayi.
konni vandala samvatsaraala kritam ee koTaloe kondaru nivasistuuvunDeavaaru. aneakula jeevitaalu vimta vimta abhiruculatoe, anubhavaalatoe, aaSalato, niraaaSalatoe, ikkaDa gaDichi pOyAyi. vaaLLa kashTasukhaalu, sukhaduKhaalu, eTuvanTivO. ikkaDivALLu okkokkoppuDu atyanta dhairyOtsAhaalato imkokkappaDu mahaabhayaalaTo kaalam gaDipi unTaaru. jeevitamloe anEka jayaapajayaalanu chavichuusi unTaaru. veeLLa aaSalatoe niraaSalatoe aanandamtoe vichaaramtoe E vaataavaraNam okappuDu nimDivunDEdi. mukhyamgaa ikkaDa nivasimchina chivaritaram manushulu ekkuva oDiduDukulanu edurkunivunTaaru. anEka kashTaalupaDivumTaaru.
Chaaritrakamgaa veeTi uniki EmiToe? "
P.S.2 Archives website:
http://www.apts.gov.in/andhrastatearchives/archives.htm

Temptations of vegetarianism

Chris Blattman: Why, one day, I might become a vegetarian. Maybe. I am almost a vegetarian; I cook meat for the children but eat meat only when there is nothing else in the house to eat.

Kuffir wonders about intercaste marriages

in this post.
In Blogbharti he links to a post by Svairini which may explain some of the mechanisms at work. Here is a long excerpt with apologies to Svairini (I have seen similar things in Coastal Andhra families of other castes, Svairini writes about Iyengars):
"Typical scenario, the family (nuclear also), and its immediate surroundings are seeped in "tradition". Tradition means celebrating every festival with ALL the rituals, no matter how impractical. Every religious occasion - new moon, full moon, crescents in between, month beginning, month end, saturday, tuesday, thursday and all days in between - are observed with appropriate piety. Men and women, supposedly have assigned roles and should stick to them, with..ahem...exceptions.
This is carried to the extreme and results in ridiculous situations! Like the time my aunt me I couldn't join a new job on a pre-set date - it was a Navami (god knows whats wrong with the number 9, other religions praise it!). I had to explain to her that the corporate world works just a tad differently and I better join if I wanted to have a job! Or the fact that my mom insists that dad and I get out of the house first, whenever the family goes out - threes are unlucky, see! I tell my mom she should have planned better - can't estrange herself from my father every 5 minutes to make up!
These things might sound harmless enough, but they are like ivy, creeping up on you slowly, choking the life out of you, slowly...very slowly. There are constant irritants that leave you longing to escape, leave you shaking your head in disbelief. See, its not all backward - thats the most incidious part of the situation. These families educate their women, send them to work even, but still they have to follow TRADITION, no matter how much it harms their lifestyle!
Its not done through coercion, its done through conditioning. For a long time, I beleived that having a period was "unclean"...something to be ashamed of! Biology classes didn't help - this was Madras and no one explained very clearly what was happening. I had to (and still do) sleep separately, on a plank (that has changed now, after some 15 years) with a rexin pillow. I was given water in a separate bottle and had to stick to one chair (only) for 3 days - these things continue even today! I couldn't go into the kitchen (that one I don't do anyways ;-))...I couldn't go near the gods for sure...I couldn't take the food plate from my mom's hands - had to pick it off the floor, no matter I had cramps that left me (and still do) crying out loud! Oh, by the way, I had to bear the pain of those cramps - tablets were considered harmful! Pain that left me confused, bewildered, wondering how my mom couldn't understand my suffering, pain I couldn't share with others - it made me feel guilty."
As they say, read the whole post. Recently, I read a few books mainly by Westerners of different schools on the topic: "Castes of Minds' by Nicholas Dirks, "Colonial Lists" by by Michael Katten. Earlier books (now all in one placs in the Cohn Omnibus" by Bernard Cohn are also very interesting. A book by Richard Eaton "The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760" explains agrarian expansion basis for the spread of religion (Hinduism too spread in this process but much less than Islam at that time, but similar things might have happenned earlier in the spread of Hinduism according to D.D. Kosambi). It is available online from http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
P.S. Apart from the rituals and traditions within castes and subcastes, I think that one should also bear in mind the interaction or lack of it between different castes. I remember such an interaction from around 1950 when caste was indeliably imprinted in my mind. I was 9 or 10 and my father who was a teacher sent me to stay in the house of another teacher in a different village so that I would not waste the vacation. Thet were very nice and friendly and I used to play with his children and sleep in side by side beds. But for the whole time of about two weeks, I could not eat with them. I had eat in the verandah and take the babnana leaf outside in view of several on a public road to throw it in the garbage. Later, when I studied in Madras, one day a classmate came very upset since Gemini Ganeshan married Savithri from a 'lower' caste. One can only imagine the experiences of the untouchables. Have things improved any since then? If my observations from occasional visits to A,P. are any guide, I do not think that there is much improvement.

It seems that Obama is loosing

one way or the other

Some old Telugu movies

are available online from:
http://www.telugutunnel.com/category/movies/old-movies
I watched 'Palletuuru' which I missed those days. The villages in which I grew up did not have cinema halls and we had to walk 2-3 miles to watch relatively old movies. But we heard lot of the film songs. Others I misses and watched recently are 'Pathalabhairavi' and 'Peddamanushulu'. I am still waiting for 'MLA'. I am not very proficient in either Telugu or English, but I grew up in Telugu villages and the medium of instruction was Telugu. So, the memories of villages and Telugu songs are strong and as I grow older many old songs which I have not heard for 30-40 years seem to come back suddenly. I always carried 3-4 books of Gurajada Apparao and Srirangam Srinivasarao because their Telugu is easy to understand. For some reason, I still count in Telugu and some Telugu seems to have remained strongly with me. So, it was enjoyable to watch 'Palletuuru', particularly the village scenes (it was still chedugudu in the film) and the early songs. Some of the songs have shades of Shankar-Jaikishen and I think that 'Shavukaru' with similar village scenes is a better film.

The Swedish banking crisis response

In long post The Swedish banking crisis response - a model for the future? , Ed Harrison wonders why the Swedish plan is not widely discussed. Conclusion:
"This is an immense task that the Swedes took on. Their entire banking system was effectively insolvent. Yet, they were able to fashion a workout scheme that had bi-partisan political support, did not unfairly reward shareholders, dealt with moral hazard, separated regulatory and workout roles so as to reduce conflicts of interest, and that quickly wrote down valuations and liquidated the bad debts as opposed to dragging the process out. The Swedish authorities should be especially commended for dealing with the liquidity and solvency concerns simultaneously, while keeping moral hazard to a minimum.

I thoroughly suggest you read this memo, save it and pass it on to your local elected official. It should be mandatory reading for the BoE, the Fed, the ECB and key government officials in he UK, US, Ireland, and Spain where the magnitude of the housing bubble is largest. See the link below for the full article.

Why this plan has not been more widely discussed remains a mystery."
(via 'Naked Capitalism')

Gurajada's lost papers

In the introduction to "Girls for Sale", a translation of a part of the second edition of "Kanyasulkam' by Gurajada Apparao, Velcheru says that "Apparao's personal diaries, letters, other papers, all of which he wrote in English, have mysteriously disappeared, except for a few at the Andhra Pradesh State archives, Tarnaka, Hyderabad." I just came to know that many more are available from this year in the Archives with copies in Tirupati and Visakhapatnam.

Another Development Blog

Dani Rodrik recommends this development blog. Thereis a recent post What’s Kerala’s Secret?. Abstract:
"What emerges is a picture of an educated population, able to use whatever they can extract from the state to further the welfare of their families. What is lacking is the long term economic capacity to underpin this. In Jeffrey’s words:

‘Democratic politics, involving large sections of a population, can be made to provide services that people need and, consequently, use. Literate, confident women will, as domestic managers, turn such services into better health for men and women alike. Birth rates will fall. What one yearns for is a further stage in which enough wealth is produced – and politics guarantees its fair distribution – to ensure far higher measures of well-being for all.’"

Interesting books

In an effort to understand a bit about India I have been reading some books (somewhat like imagining that one is travelling by reading travel books). Here ia a partial list of books which I found interesting that I have read or have been browsing through recently. Just finished reading Bernard Cohn's "India: The Social Anthropology of a Civilization", "Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge", Partha Chatterjee's "The Politics of the Governed", Gurajada Apparao's "Kanyasulkam" and its translation "Girls for Sale" by Velcheru Narayana Rao. Browsing through Sanjay Subrahmanyam's "Penumbral Visions", Brian Larkin's "Signal and Noise' and K.V. Ramanaraddi's "Mahodayam". From the last, I learnt that the family name Gurajada was originally Gurujada.