India Uncut

Anna University's dress code for students bans T-shirts and jeans. But an engineering college at Thorapakkam near Chennai `improved' upon it and, on Wednesday, pulled up a first-year student for donning a dark-coloured shirt.

Avinash Nahar of MNM Jain Engineering College, who wore a red shirt and black trousers to college, was "detained" for questioning by five faculty members and the Principal.

[...]

The college authorities said it was the third time Avinash was "caught breaking the code," which says boys should wear only light-coloured shirts and dark trousers, must shave and keep their hair short.

Two female gorillas have been photographed using sticks as tools to get through swampy areas, the first time the apes have been seen doing so in the wild, researchers reported on Thursday.

"This is a truly astounding discovery," said Thomas Breuer of the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who led the study.

The HIV virus that causes AIDS, the fatal disease of the immune system, is becoming less aggressive, researchers have said in a landmark new study, amid surging speculation about the implications for the global fight against a pandemic that has killed an estimated 30 million people worldwide.

[...]

In layman's terms, explained Keith Alcorn, Senior Editor of National AIDS Manual, the UK's best scientific reference on HIV, that means "the virus is weakening and may be in 50 or a 100 years, it will adapt to living with its human host but cause less disease".

After depriving bar girls of their livelihood, the government has taken its moral policing to the international level. The ministry of overseas Indian affairs has called for an urgent inquiry into the exodus of bar girls to the Gulf, to ‘protect the country’s image’.

I am on my way to office, I want to work today, I don’t think you have any right to stop those willing to work on a strike day.

The day before hurricane Rita hit Texas, last Friday, I saw on TV something that disturbed me. It was not the usual scene of crashing waves and hardy reporters being blown sideways by wind gusts. It was a fat Texas guy swimming in the waves off Galveston. He'd apparently decided the high surf was a good thing to jump into, so he went for a prehurricane swim. Two cops saw him, waded into the surf and arrested him. When I saw it the guy was standing there in orange trunks being astonished as the cops put handcuffs on him and hauled him away.

I thought: Oh no, this is isn't good. This is authority, not responsibility. [Emphasis in the original.]

[T]his [moral policing] has been the norm in the state for the last two decades or so. And that has been mainly because of the Dravidian parties that have ridden rough shod over every institution in the state.

The Dravidians parties of all the hues (DMK, AIADMK, MDMK) have always used cunning demagoguery and have used words like 'Tamil culture' and 'Tamil pride' to garner votes. While [the] Shiv Sena has rightly been criticised for practising such rabid parochialism elsewhere, these parties have just got away with murder for the simple reason both the Congress and the BJP have found them useful at the Centre (all these TN parties have been part of the coalition governments of all hues at the Centre).

Now PMK, another local party that is part of the Union government, has also joined this brigade. This is proving to be the most illiberal of all.

[...]

My personal grouse is against the media. While it assails Shiv Sena's [behaviour] at every turn, it doesn't use the same vehemence when it comes to DMK, PMK and the like. We all get to know when the vandals of SS strike. But the PMK has been going blackening boards with English words. Does anybody know these things outside Tamil Nadu? Does anybody really bother to ask how these Tamil parties have managed to find themselves in whichever dispensation is at the Centre?

One who is jaundiced sees everything yellow.

Too often a false contrast is made between the impersonal marketplace and the compassionate policies of various government programs. But both systems face the same scarcity of resources and both systems make choices within the contraints of that scarcity. The difference is that one system involves each individual making choices for himself or herself, while the other system involves a smaller number of people making choices for millions of others.

In the Melbourne Test of 1907-08, the English last wicket pair of Sydney Barnes and Arthur Fielder needed to get 39 runs,while the Aussies, of course, needed one wicket. Most tailenders would have tried to hit the runs off and probably got out. After a mid-pitch conference, these two decided to 'get singles'. They held their nerves and inched to a one-wicket win, batting through an excruciating hour.

Although less spectacular, slow and steady methods can be even more effective than big hitting. Investors need to remember this at a moment when the Sensex is gaining more than 500 points a week and then losing 260-odd points in a single session.

Here’s some perspective. The market lost about 4% last week -- that’s a tiny correction compared with that in March-April 2005, when the market dropped over 13%. But a huge single-session drop makes much more of a psychological impact just as a sixer is more memorable than six consecutive singles in an innings.

We have grown used to the Two-India imagery being presented, traditionally, in rich vs. poor, city vs. village, capitalist class vs. working class and India vs. Bharat terms. In my view, the real contrast, and the only one that is useful in any transformative agenda, is between the new problem-solving India versus the old India groaning under problems due to vested interests of various stripes.

Most of these corruption-breeding vested interests reside in our governments and political parties. Exceptions apart, they are neither able, nor even are they trying, to enthuse the people and tap their limitless energy in problem-solving. Which is why, from businessmen to school establishments to charitable organisations, just about everybody who is driven by the zeal to aim higher feels that they would do better — and India would do better — if governments and political parties stopped being a part of the problem and started being a part of the solution.

Heart: All you kids, wish me, today is World Heart Day.
Kidney: We wish you would shut up, heart. Heart Day, Heart Day, Heart Day. Big deal. You're a loser.
Heart: Hey, give me respect dude, or I'll stop pumping blood to you.
Kidney: Well, then I'll stop doing what I do and you'll stop pumping at all.
[Unmentionable male organ]: Did anyone mention pumping?
Right Leg: Sit down, will ya, [unmentionable male organ]?
Left Leg: When are they going to have a World Left Leg Day?
Appendix: Nobody loves me. Bye.
Liver: Gosh, all of you think the world of yourselves, don't you?
Brain: No. [Pause.] I do.

The drama in the stock market has highlighted how India is still an immature market economy. It is the job of the stock market to fluctuate, to move in response to expectations. But in the media and in official circles in India, this induces disproportionate hysteria.

To become a mature market economy, the government has to stop trying to manage prices. When prices fall, as they did on 17 May 2004, we do not need the government to "prop up the market" or to look for manipulators. And when prices rise, we do not need a coordinated assault on the market. The government must respect the process of speculative price discovery, and accept the valuations that come out of it.

It used to happen that after I killed, the soul of the man I kill will come and sit on my chest. But then a Muslim gangster taught me to sleep in a fetal position with my back to the door, so the soul doesn’t have access to my chest so I can sleep peacefully.

If Bollywood doesn’t work out, I will go to the United States to study. If I can’t do that I will work as a waitress there. My only wish was to have all the things I was deprived of as a child. Soft toys. A Barbie doll. I have that now. I can move on.

It was a hot catch. A teenaged girl fighting on the frontline of the Naxalite campaign. But soon, police found the tribal girl couldn’t talk. So what did they do? Well, a constable raped her and then the police left her in a Nari Niketan and forgot all about her. That was 13 years ago.

This week, Madhya Pradesh police finally admitted they were wrong about the dumb girl who’s called Pappe by other Niketan inmates. So finally she’s free.

For an organisation that claims to be committed to nation-building and has many admirable qualities (never mind the attempts by the communists and other Hindu-baiters to demonise it), the RSS has scarcely introspected publicly on why its influence in India’s political, intellectual and public life remains so limited — and rapidly shrinking. The RSS may or may not do such soul-searching. But if the BJP too shuns soul-searching, if it doesn’t pay heed to the hometruths spoken by [LK] Advani, its own space and influence in Indian politics will definitely shrink. If it does, the present crisis could mark a new beginning for the BJP and for non-Congress politics in India.

I think of cynicism as the view that the average quality of human beings and the world is a lot lower than it could and ought to be. Professors should be passionate about answering the Big Questions of their fields, but most of them are boring careerists. Movies and tv ought to be creative and thoughtful, but most of it is derivative claptrap. And so on.

So how can I think this and remain an optimist? Because optimism, as I practice it anyway, is an attitude and a strategy, not a description of the world. As an optimist, I try not to dwell on boring careerists and derivative claptrap. Instead, I seek out the exceptions to the rule and appreciate what I find. Just because the average is low doesn't mean that you can't personally consume high quality. And even when the quality I consume is far from ideal, I try to mentally change the subject to another dimension where I have blessings to count. [Emphasis in the original.]

A secondary school is to allow pupils to swear at teachers - as long as they don't do so more than five times in a lesson. A running tally of how many times the f-word has been used will be kept on the board. If a class goes over the limit, they will be 'spoken' to at the end of the lesson.

[E]conomic growth, and our ambitions for the eradication of poverty, depend upon the energy and drive of business and commerce. In fact, I cannot envision an effective development strategy that is absent of -- or uninformed by -- the private sector. Yet when we examine where development has succeeded, in every case business has been the engine of development.

Because business kick-starts a virtuous economic cycle, new enterprises are formed, new jobs are created, new skills are gained, and incomes begin to rise. Soon, growth and productivity follow, spurring more innovation and efficiency, and bringing the products and services that people want and need. In parallel, people gain opportunity, empowerment and dignity.

There’s an animus against the semicolon because it adds nuance. It makes the reader think that the relationship between two independent clauses is more complex.

What we call Islam is a mirror in which we see ourselves. Tell me your Islam and I will tell you who you are.

Wealthy Americans are paying more than £3,000 to go on controversial package tours to India that mix shopping and sightseeing with handing out food and medicines to the poor.

The tours, organised by Alexander Souri, who has worked on special effects for Hollywood films, take groups of up to 15 people on horseback through the western desert state of Rajasthan, stopping off at villages along the way.

To hold a sick child in your arms, give her the medicine she needs and then ride into the desert on a beautiful horse under a starry sky to have a fabulous dinner in a fairytale fort is an extraordinary experience.

As well as keeping her under continuous surveillance, the Second Chief Directorate also surrounded her with handsome, attentive male admirers.

In 1972, the KGB claimed to have planted over 3,500 articles in Indian newspapers.

I don’t believe in showing steamy scenes to sensationalize a film. Even if I use a kissing scene I’ll not do it conventionally, because my sensibilities are different. There’s a scene in the film where Sushma Reddy is adjusting her breasts to accentuate her cleavage before entering a party. Then there’s a scene where she takes off her shirt in front of Anil Kapoor. That to me is more sensational than showing a lip-to-lip kiss on-screen.

My wife and I are in Malaysia now on a short term assignment for our company, and every time we step out of our house in Penang, we feel the amazing effects of a liberal economic policy. This small, densely populated island off the coast of Malaysia (Penang) is a big electronics manufacturing base (thanks to a Free Trade Zone, and a port that was formerly duty free) and it is easy to see what this has done to the local economy.

There is a booming free-spending middle class, and almost no poverty. Everyone who wants to work seems to be able to find a job, and they are doing well enough to import labor from Indonesia for low-paying jobs. There are signs of development everywhere - new roads, new bridges, new high-rises. And from what I've heard, Penang reflects what is going on around the rest of the country.

Not to say Malaysia doesn't have its problems, but economically, they seem to have found the secret to growth. We see all this, and naturally, the next thing we think is, "When will this happen to India?"

We are doing it backwards, it seems - Malaysia had manufacturing move over here first, and that brought in a support engineering force which slowly grew into a full fledged "high-tech economy." We got some "low-tech" engineering activities first, and are hoping for the trickle down from this to help our economy in other areas.

I know the Government's hands are tied by the Left when it comes to big initiatives on liberalization, but I wish the FM would do some under-the-radar type things that would make doing business in India easy. Privatizing a PSU may not be easy (given the political circumstances) but maybe it would be more effective to say, eliminate the need for a couple of licenses or provide a few tax incentives. Everyone seems so focused on doing b-i-g, visible things - but frequently it is the little details that matter more.

This seems to be a clear case of misunderstanding. Mr Gandhi thought he was having a casual chat whereas our reporter took it to be a proper interview.

"Minaret" attends carefully to the dwindle and ebb of religion in a secularized world, one that treats religion like a lifestyle choice when -- we are invited to consider -- it may be more like a necessity.

Too many people in our cricket protect their turf and give away the larger piece of land. The big picture to them is uncomfortable, the narrow constituency is the more critical.

A dance programme, which turned out to be virtually a cabaret, was held in the capital's high security Tihar central jail for Rashtriya Janata Dal's controversial MP, Pappu Yadav, who is in the prison on charges of murder.

Violating jail rules and flouting Supreme Court orders, Yadav is in fact enjoying a luxurious stay in Tihar central jail, with the active connivance of jail staff. [...] This was not the first instance, nor the only "comfort" Yadav enjoys in prison. He is also reported to have a cooler fitted in the room, a TV, a mobile phone, enjoys food of his choice, and is allowed to meet guests regularly in the superintendent's office.

You can travel right across these two states but you won’t find a trace of governance here. There is no functioning government in UP and Bihar; and so there is no governance. There is a total collapse of the administrative system… Nothing happens here.

[G]uaranteeing the survival and revival of species isn't just a matter of ecological guilt-alleviation, or even of economic opportunity-seizing. The ultimate issue is the survival of everything that inhabits this pale blue dot of a planet. The same scientists who say that an asteroid killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago now say that there have been dozens of big hits over the eons -- that asteroid strikes put the "punk'd" in punctuated equilibrium. And one of these days, a Really Big Rock will come along and end everything. Or, alternatively, maybe we'll be fried by the sun -- assuming that we don't get fried by each other first. [Links in the original.]

[A]s we look at the pace of change, we tend to take change that has already happened for granted. But any of these stories would have been science-fictional not long ago. And they're still a big deal now, they're just a big deal that people often miss. Much as we get "velocitized" in a speeding car, so we've become accustomed to a rapid pace of technological change. Except that this change isn't just fast, but continually accelerating.

Pinky’s life and death epitomises the tragic irony of the bargirl’s life. While the girls’ beauty, song and dance is what brings in the patrons, the girls remain mere pawns, manipulated and disrespected by the bar owner, physically and emotionally abused by husbands or lovers. Since the ban, two factors reinforce the vulnerability of these impoverished women whose glitzy surroundings belie their bleak lives. They will go to the highest bidder, because money must be made. And they will stand by whoever represents their needs, however little their own say may be.

New Delhi's government has a rat catching department that hasn't caught a single rodent in more than a decade, a newspaper reported Monday.

There are 97 rat catchers on the municipal payroll, all working for the Rat Surveillance Department, a decades-old agency that last saw a lot of action back in 1994, when a plague outbreak killed 56 people in areas of northwest India near the capital, The Hindustan Times newspaper reported.

[W]elfare states create dependency, not wealth. They sustain poverty, not eliminate it. In effect, they pay people to remain poor.

[...]

When the Great Society debate was raging in the 60s, Daniel Patrick Moynihan (an early neo-conservative and later Ambassador to India) pointed out the difference between a poverty of means and a poverty of spirit.

People can find themselves in poverty for reasons beyond their control, but as long as their spirit is not broken, they get up each morning and go out there to work harder than they did yesterday. They may be poor, but their poverty is resolvable.

Then, there are people with a poverty of spirit. They are dependent on the state for survival, and when the state fails (as it frequently does), they are left marooned. Such poverty is not resolvable.

The key is to make sure that we don't end up with poverty of the spirit. In India, many millions are poor, but they work just as hard as all of us slightly more privileged. They are heroes who build India's wealth every day with their sweat -- it must be India's objective to resolve their structural poverty.

Instead, what India has been doing since independence, alas, is creating a dependency society -- with poverty of the spirit -- where all manner of reservations and subsidies and artificial jobs guarantees ensure a perpetuation of poverty for many.

Your longing for Bong restaurants also reminded me of an interesting aspect of Kolkata, where I'm officially based. I'm from Orissa with Telugu antecedents, and it puzzled me no end as to why there no restaurants serving Bengali cuisine in Kolkata. Especially conspicuous by absence are places where you can go to for moderately priced lunch, like those in the south, for example - or anywhere else, for that matter. The only ones where you can sit down and have good Bengali food are expensive restaurants like Charnock City or those at the Peerless Inn, Taj Bengal or other luxury hotels. Me and my roommates wondered about this and I asked my Bengali friends about it, and they couldn't really explain it either, but they didn't think it was an issue. So you have what we used to call 'jhups', where you don't exactly have five-star conditions, or you have Charnock City (who do serve excellent food) - nothing in between. In contrast, there are plenty of places serving affordable Chinese or Punjabi.

Any insights into this?

An Intelligent Designer can create policies, programs, and organizations through legislative fiat and top-down administration that operate effectively in a centralized manner. Government agencies and bureaucracies are like highly-tuned cars, needing only good navigators and drivers to race them to their goals.

An Israeli couple who got married in Pushkar on Wednesday and had planned an Indian honeymoon could spend three months in jail instead after falling foul of the priests who conducted their marriage according to Hindu rituals. Their offence: a post-nuptial kiss on the ghats of the Pushkar Lake.

Priests conducting Orprez Allen and Selev Kermit’s marriage blew their fuse when they kissed right in front of them after the ceremony.

“It spoiled the prayers. The wedding became a farce because of this unholy act,” SN Garg, secretary of the Association of Pushkar Pandits, said.

Frankly, Pune's just been exposed as a bit of an upstart, a one-hit wonder whose feted climate has been crippled by the pollution, whose roads have dissolved into gravel at the first downpour and never had any width to begin with to handle the explosion, and whose civic fathers are from one of those mawkish TV serials where all they can do is abandon their responsibilities.

To the dismay of Bollywood starlets and former Miss Indias, one of the most coveted female roles in India has been snapped up by a man. Shah Rukh Khan, one of Bollywood's biggest male leads, is to appear in a role usually seen as the prize for one of India's most beautiful women.

A heartthrob for hundreds of millions of Indian women, Khan, who usually plays more macho roles, is to appear sitting in a bath surrounded by floating rose petals as the new Indian "face" of Lux beauty soap.

The inescapable fact is that even today India accounts for only 2 per cent of the world’s GDP, less than 1 per cent of world trade, less than 1 per cent of global investment flows and an even smaller share of global technology breakthroughs — with 16 per cent of the world’s people.

While it is good to be optimistic and to be conscious about the country’s latent potential, and indeed to capitalise on recent positive trends, it would be dangerous to get into the mindset that says we have already arrived.

The distance to be covered between today’s reality and tomorrow’s potential was emphasised in bold relief this last week, with the release of UNDP’s latest Human Development Report. At a rank of 127, India is still among the laggards. And despite the front-ranking rate of 7 per cent economic growth, we are making precious little progress in education, health care, sanitation and other elements of social infrastructure.

Most other international rankings also show India in a poor light, whether it is the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness report, or Transparency International’s corruption perception index. In none of them do we match Sania Mirza’s global rank of 42, and she to her credit is likely to move up the numbers ladder faster than the country.

Their modus operandi is the same. They always strike early in the morning before day-break. They arrive in a small lorry and are gone with the cover in less than five minutes.