rum2ruminate

Coronavirus almost saves lives until migrants spoil the show for the government

2020-03-31T00:45:00.000-05:00

16 Indian citizens die every hour on Indian roads that translates to 192 lives lost every day.  Due to Coronavirus, more lives have been saved (1600 approx) from avoiding accidents on roads. The irony is lost in this situation, as the lockdown will lead to more lives lost from forced migration and displacements of 120 million migrant workers.

Coronavirus death count stands at 32... No easy answers!

The resourceful article on decision making required in laboratory projects

2018-01-02T16:54:00.000-06:00

https://www.bdcnetwork.com/lab-future-smaller-flexible-tech-enabled-business-focused

Business

2011-09-10T04:16:00.001-05:00

http://www.accommodationtimes.com/legal/society/user-of-residential-premises-for-professional-purposes/

My Comments as published by Outlook India over the years

2011-07-31T04:20:00.001-05:00

Nov 30, 2009

All That Old Hat
Who was it that labelled Ray’s work as “exporting poverty”? The Indian worthies never understood Ray’s films, they were never even sent for the Oscars.
Somshankar Bose, Madison, US

Jun 07, 2010

Al Qaeda As Proteus
Hats off to Outlook for writing this piece. It is quite natural for Islam to be fragmented in its practice, interpretation and signifiers in India as it is anywhere else in the world. It is pure bigotry for some Indians to attack Indian Islam and Muslims in India on the basis of terror conflicts. Obviously, they have still to understand what the
Indian constitution is about and what Indian secularism is about.

Somshankar Bose, Madison, US

Aug 01, 2011

Syco-Phantoms
Amazing, the line of Gandhi sycophants never ceases and never ceases to amaze me (The Gov’t Is Combatose, Jul 18). It does tell of how Delhi is so similar to Washington, with clouds of whispers of power being wrested, bought, begged and reported, in this case among a circle of few. The only difference is Delhi still heads a billion dreams and hopes.

Somshankar Bose, Madison, US

Aug 08, 2011

The Events Column?

Every project in Mumbai is built on bribes and slush money. Every system, from the bmc to the mca to even the Mumbai police entrance exams, is rigged. With so much muck to be cleaned up, how can you expect terrorists to be caught? Get real, Mumbaikars.

S. Bose, Madison, US

Aug 08, 2011

Speed Breakers
What
a cock-and-bull story (Built For Speed...Them?, Jul 25). Neither Mumbai nor India have proper traffic rules and don’t enforce licensing regulations—a clear indication is the utter disregard Indian drivers have for the right of way of emergency vehicles.

S. Bose, Madison, US

Architectural Practice in India

2011-07-29T02:40:00.001-05:00

Communication is everything in architecture...and here are some striking examples on communication...

Clarity
Organizational chart of an architectural firm in India..hope you are not confused now....

Mumbai is a city straight out of a Philip K Dick novel

2011-07-23T08:20:00.001-05:00

Mumbai is, among other things, a Philip K Dick megalopolis. It’s been exactly six months since I moved here, and in those six months you wonder about what kind of a city it is; only wondering because you get the feeling that even after six years or six decades there are people who still don’t get it. What is undeniable is that multiple realities exist in the same city-space and that it will take some doing to even scratch the surface of some of those realities (thank God for journalists). Wednesday night’s bombings ripped open a connection between those multiple realities. The blasts were scary, and depressing. And then came the post-blasts noise. You have to wonder if the people making this noise ‘get’ Mumbai; and so Philip K Dick pops into mind.

PKD was a prolific writer of books dealing with parallel universes, alternate histories, and intrusive governments. Many readers might be more familiar with the films made from his stories: recently The Adjustment Bureau, and famously Blade Runner. (Of course the movies are cleaned up, glamorous and less intense versions of his writing.) The stories are set in a future that’s just-around-the-corner; the cities are sprawling, dense, gray and labyrinthine; the characters are hard-working, sometimes zonked out, sometimes neurotic; and the government is simultaneously too distant (poor garbage collection and mail delivery) and too close (big-brother-type surveillance). They could easily be set in Mumbai.

After the blasts there was the usual moaning about our policing and the usual sniping at the state home minister. Frankly, I don’t see what people expect. This city is on the brink of complete anarchy. The chaos looks barely manageable; as if the city’s policemen are standing in a line, forming a human cordon holding back disorder, with the madness pushing against the human chain and ballooning out momentarily from time to time. No wonder the city has an underworld; in a perverted way it probably contributes to managing the disorder (though for a pound of flesh). The political class looks like it long gave up, deciding to profit as much as it can from the confusion. That the police reacted as fast as it did to the blasts, amidst this chaos, is actually commendable.

There might be an argument for blaming the political class in Delhi. Our home minster, P Chidambaram, a Harvard MBA and a practitioner of the law, could have put his high-IQ to solving some of the systemic problems in India’s law-and-order management (you certainly can’t expect that the venal state politicians are up to this). But the fellow seems too impressed by his ministry’s bureaucrats, pig-headed in the way that only a Delhi babu can be; he’s too impressed by their damned power-point presentations; and he’s too impressed by himself and has thus decided to devote his energies not towards solving problems but towards plotting against that other dude in North Block, Pranab Mukherjee.

But then I wonder what Chidambaram could possibly do: in the PKD short story “Minority Report” (which ends more grimly than the Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise film), even the ability to predict crimes in the future does not stop crimes from being committed. Even clairvoyance can’t stop terrorism, and Chidambaram isn’t even able to properly equip or train special anti-terrorist squads.

So there’s hardly any point in ranting against government.
Then there’s the spirit of Mumbai. It was manifest in people offering refuge or rides to those stranded in town in the wake of the blasts. But it was also manifest in the agents who fleeced the kin of the dead, or the good Samaritans who went through victims’ pockets at Zaveri Bazar hoping to hit a jackpot. Perhaps Mumbaikars are just individuals who are propelled forward with our lives because time does not move backward; that in Mumbai, wanting one’s space and minding one’s business defines the actual spirit of Mumbai. There are folks who prefer the bubble of online relationships to the web of neighbourhood ties, and it is no big secret that the lack of strong local communities guarantees anonymity to the terrorist. The spirit of Mumbai is more one of narcissism than anything else (exhibit A: Mukesh Ambani’s $100 million phallic symbol).

To return to Mumbai as a PKD megalopolis: the safest prediction about this city in the years to come is that it will grow, and grow, and grow. It already resembles the futuristic Los Angeles in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. I’ll bet that blasts and such will be a regular occurrence in Mumbai that we will begin to take in our stride (if we haven’t already) in the way people take heinous crimes like serial killing and gang-rape in their stride. People will go on with their lives, and some of them will applaud it as the resilience of Mumbai. Philip K Dick, however, would see in it something far darker and dystopian.

Aditya Sinha | Sunday, July 17, 2011
The writer is the Editor-in-Chief, DNA, based in Mumbai

Quotes of the week

2011-06-17T03:55:00.001-05:00

Quotes of the week...

Home minister Chidambaram said, "I don't think anywhere in the world, fasting is the way to draft a bill." ..........Rebuke by a citizen Pankay from Mumbai-"Mr.Chidambaram there was a time when British government also thought that fasting is not the way to change governments. Beware of that. Gandhi must be crying in heaven"
Home-minister Chidambaram said, "I don't think anywhere in the world, fasting is the way to draft a bill." The British were magnanimous and did not stoop down to the level of PC to comment on fasting.
The government is not going to get diverted by abuses and slander," HRD minister Sibal . It look like Mr Sibal reads my blog ...:-)

Fight Corruption - Need., Effects, Greed-Why, What, How.

2011-06-17T03:50:00.001-05:00

Need
"I'm a traditional Congress loyalist but if Congress tables a Lokpal bill that leaves the PM out of its ambit, I'll never vote for Congress again!"-Rajat from Delhi.

"If anna hazare if an unelected tyrant, prey tell, when did manmohan singh fight an election and win on his own merits... he had to be forcefully included through some electoral jugglery"

"It is very surprising that the party that prides itself on being the inheritors of Mahatma Gandhi's political legacy now finds fault in the path of democratic protest shown by the Mahatma. What is the problem in telecasting video recording of Lokpal panel proceedings? By his statement that it will then become a circus, does the minister believe that just because parliamentary proceedings are broadcast live, it makes MPs animals in a circus." -Prashant Bhushan Lokpal Member.

Effects

J Dey's murder this week is not the first among journos in Mumbai. In 1993 a journalist was gunned down around Ruia college/5 gardens... This murder is closely linked to land developed around Crawford market and owner's expose in Mid-day. Property prices in Mumbai, which at places are the most expensive in the world and a non-transparent system leads to an insane amount of money is paid as bribe to run these development deals and a CBI probe is almost essential for the truth...SPEAK OUT!

Mumbai tense following journalist's murder

Excerpts from the reading of "The Transformations of Delhi" -A conversation on Delhi’s rise and fall and rise

2011-06-09T06:12:00.001-05:00

To mark the anniversary of Delhi’s 100^th year as India’s capital, a few distinguished Dilliwallas sat down in Jan 1st 2011 for a wide-ranging discussion about the twists and turns of the city’s long history and I have brought some interesting excerpts for my interest.

After the events of 1857, and the subsequent devastation of the city, what led the British to move the capital here 50 years later?

William Dalrymple:There’s two answers for that. One is a straightforward British political calculation, because the Bengalis are causing a lot of trouble for the Brits. The centre of political terrorism is Calcutta; you get people putting bombs in the Writers’ Building, and you don’t have that in Delhi. Particularly after the reign of Lord Curzon [from 1899 to 1905], the Bengalis are seen by the British to be troublemakers, political activists, too-clever-by-half babus, and Calcutta itself also becomes unmanageably large and chaotic as an urban space.

Farooqui: And they are helped by the fact that all the Delhi
elites of 1857, the few that survived, are very much collaborating
with the British regime. They are all teaching their
people to be loyal to the British, trying to get into modern
education and reform their community, so to say. It’s a kind
of a reward for their loyalty as well. Delhi, the capital, is
the reward for the loyalty of Muslims who were supporting
the regime.

Delhi had served as a capital for hundreds of years;
Muslims were attached to the city of Delhi; and the
Bengalis were creating a big ruckus. The British are threatened
by the Bengalis—these Indians with English educations,
politically active, quoting Mill and Montesquieu
at them.

So was the development of Delhi driven by the fact that
the government was here? Can we see it as a city like
Washington—which was created from scratch to be the
seat of government?
Dalrymple:
... We have a friend,
a woman from Bombay, who came here in 1989, and she
thought Delhi was out and out boorish, provincial, uncivilised,
full of rude Punjabis... This was a woman who had
grown up in sophisticated Bombay, and she regarded Delhi
as if she had come to Heart of Darkness—as if she had been
sent off to the Third World, as she saw it.
...

Farooqui:
....This is a city where there is now that kind of wealth. And
here, you have these overnight billionaires, people who
have become rich because of a land contract, or some scam,
or some government fixing. In Bombay, that wealth would
have likely come from a certain profession, from a trade
that your family has done for generations. In Delhi, the
two great engines of wealth creation are land and government
fixing. Even if you’re a police inspector, there’s a lot of
money to be made. That’s the difference between the kind
of wealth we see in Delhi and the wealth we see in other cities.
Remember that Delhi, also, is not the highest taxpaying
city in the country—that is still Bombay—so there is wealth
here that is not being taxed, what they used to call ‘black
money.’ Delhi is the heart of black money in India.

So is power the defining element in Delhi today?

Farooqui: Yes, there has always been that kind of power,
but it takes a different form today. In the past, one drew
power from status, from lineage and from education. That
kind of power is no longer unique in Delhi today—going to
St Stephen’s College does not have the same cachet that it
did 20 years ago. But hierarchy still matters a lot more visibly
in Delhi today than in other places—in Bombay, you
could be riding a bus next to a guy who’s a millionaire, but
he doesn’t have to show it. In Delhi it is very important to
show it off.

Delhi became the capital of British India in 1911, but it had previously served that role for a succession of dynasties. Has the city always depended, throughout its history, on the patronage of a government or a ruler, whether the Mughals, the British, or the Indian Republic?

William Dalrymple:
...But in the end Timur does take the city, around 1400, and it is burnt to the ground and contracts again: all of the craftsmen from Delhi are taken off to Samarkand over the Hindu Kush—the ‘tears of the Hindu,’ so named at that time...
.....It becomes a very prosperous city under the British, with the Mughal court as its centre. But then it’s completely destroyed after 1857, and remains a provincial city until 1911. Each of these times it grows and contracts, grows and contracts. No other city I know of, in fact, has this kind of succession of deaths and revivals....

(find the link here for the entire article)
The Transformations of Delhi

A great read on Mumbai cabbies!

2011-06-09T05:16:00.001-05:00

I am sure you all have experienced this...but a great read on Mumbai cabbies on CNN go. I think we all knew it but the flair of writing the experience nails it for a good read.
Mumbai cabby survival guide

I have restarted with a Bang!

2011-06-05T13:57:00.001-05:00

I have restarted blogging due to the sheer variety of events that surround me. Last year in September, I returned from 10 years of living abroad and I am still trying to re-adjust to my Indian life. We are a chaotic culture and we make all kinds of excuses to legitimize it. My mom blames IPL for her inability to take her medicines on time, my colony security guard blames the kids for the dents on my car, my dad blames lack of food source in the refrigerator to consuming copious amounts of sugar for a diabetic person and finally I have started blaming the weather, corruption and the lack of traffic rules for waking up late and going to bed late. We , Indians, thrive on this culture of excuses and I love it. This is what makes us one of the slowest moving culture in all fields of modern living in the 21st century. Yes, you will wrong me with articles about Indians scaling the heights of computer geekness, mathematical brilliance and path-breaking "Jugaad" business models but "hello!", that is a drop in the ocean in a community of a billion and one third population of homo sapiens.
The sheer variety of events that surround me ranges from the the mundane like tales about a neighborhood cat terrorizing us by ransacking our garbage and my neighbors month long interior remodeling using an ear deafening diamond grinder for all day for the entire working week to polish their new floors or my near death or dismemberment by a two-wheeler in Hyderabad and finally the most amazing experience of having seen the street celebration of India's World Cup win in Cricket after 28 years. I have missed out some interesting incidents like a missed out episode of "snapped" from NBC, of an employee and junior team member yelling at the top of his lungs as an end result to a design discussion. It did not help matters as he looked more like a butcher's masseur than a designer who sells design or lifestyle ideas.
Having got over such incidents and issues, politics continues to amuse me even after 10 years of living abroad. The everday TV is such a sheer theatre of politics that all television soaps, Bin Laden killings and Royal wedding take a backstage to Indian politics.
Let me start with where we are and how we got here from last September, a time that defines my most current political memory and re-education. Th ruling party has been hit by scams ones after the other. The CWG scam, the 2G scams and the Adarsh housing scams are finally in the news everyday. Notice my lack of sensation in stating them, because I was always aware of the fact that our nation runs on scams. All projects, tenders, qualifications, selections are based on connections, contacts, bribes, kickbacks and various methods where merit is not the first word nor the last word. The CWG scam is an exponential manifestation of a rigged railway contract to lay a culvert for a passing train or a rigged road contract to finish a sidewalk in a neighborhood. The 2G telecom scam is larger manifestation of a rigged tender order for buses by the BEST undertaking for thekinglong buses that break down everyday on the Mumbai roads after running 16 kms of their route. The Adarsh scam is the mother of all scams that happen everyday that award buidling permit to developers, builders who bribe their way to get there books through for housing and development projects whose polices are deliberately kept ambiguous.

In all this who loses out and on what? We , the people lose out on a way of life that is built around merit for us to get the best of what we deserve and can afford. For most of us, we do not really understand what is democracy. It is not belittle everyone, but it is a fact that most of us do not understand what is democracy.
Have we forgotten that each one of us have the right to question our government? Unlike, the board of a private company, we all are paying taxes and thereby funding the salaries, benefits and perks of all government officials. As a taxpayer, we all have the right to question, seek transparency and demand accountability of the public servants who are elected and appointed that form our government administration. Why do we not continue to question our polity for them to give us definite clear answer on what they provide us everyday. Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare is just a drop in the ocean of dissent that is needed to wash the Indian polity of the ineptitude, disaffection, corruption and brazen power misuse.

Our Prime Minister, who needs a vocal chord cos his voice is so slow and low that only he can hear himself, looks like a person whose spinal cord may be broken, almost clueless, listless and plain boring for most of his public speeches and images. We need someone who has a spring in his step when he leads our country who puts adults to sleep during his monotone sermons on national security.
We need our elections soon and we need to have this government out of power soon , if we wish to continue a path that can be termed as improvement. For that to happen, we need the Gandhi bosom buddies including the like of Kapil Sibal, Jairam Ramesh, Renuka Chaudhary, Sonia/Rahul and all the Gandhis to be dethorned from their assumed legitimized power positions.

Why we are still slaves...

2010-10-25T10:44:00.001-05:00

I am a Libran.I was born in October and an astrological sign of a balance became the compass of my chromosome. I had to be fair and balanced whether these notions ever existed together or separately in the world or not. In viewing the Indian political context, I am struck at our inability to make the government of India and its state government to deliver what they were responsible to deliver. Roads are a sham, projects are delayed, environment is degrading in every direction and despite this complete shrinking of our quality of life, we have been refusing to come together to hold the government responsible for all the wrongs.
To be fair, we have tried like other countries but our core laws that hold government liable for negligence are weak. Laws that make government responsible for their minimum duty are called "Tort Laws". They were framed by the British and adopted by the then Nehruvian government that were enslaven in their minds by rule of our Imperial masters. Some Indians still continue to gloat and sing praises of the British government and its efficiency in dealing with "Indians". It is true by the time of our independence most of today's Indian penal code laws were framed to avoid any liability on our rulers from their responsibility and the structure of those laws is making citizenry till today pay a terrible price in their inability to hold our polity responsible for their shortcomings and mistakes.

How the shit got into your food.

2010-10-25T05:53:00.001-05:00

In India the number of cases of gastro-intestinal problems, infectious diseases,water-borne and air borne diseases is a huge problem. The level of cleanliness in sanitary practices is appalling and the pressures on the ability to achieve sanitary levels for safe living is constant and always mounting. It is a virtual war between achieving an acceptable sanitary level and the pressures that creates the opposite....to be continued.

15th August-64th indian Independence Day, the country named after Indus River, Pakistan-India for the unitiated.

2010-08-16T09:22:00.000-05:00

15th August is a day of a cesarean section of the world's oldest civilization. Its a day of joy and extreme pain in the subcontinent . India gained its independence on 15th August 1947 and Pakistan on 14th August 1947 and on the same day people from two states of India- Punjab and Bengal were divided leading to the world biggest mass-movement of people and an accompanying genocide of unfathomable proportions.Punjab and Bengal , today parts of these two states are Pakistan and Bangladesh respectively, , were the most affluent, powerfully violent under the British rule. Bengal and Punjab were leading a violent resistance in India against the Britain with a strong intellectual backing by the elites in the states. Most of the world only know of Gandhi's non-violent struggle but unlike the popular imagination of the western world, some Indians were willing to show the other door to its European oppressors.The midwife of this cesarean section was an immoral monarchy based in a tiny Island described by an adjective and having some really wet and horrible weather, distasteful food of boiled animal body-parts..named Great Britain, which now channels its high morality in the hall of nations with virtues like " justice"," democracy " and "rule of law".The day is also the beginning of a tale of two nations separated at birth almost 60 years ago. The two nations were from the same parenthood, entwined in family relationships whose roots went back centuries. There was bonds of blood that was built over 9000 years of recorded and proved history. There have been bonds of culture, food and language, music, shared heroes etc.They were like brothers in a Bollywood tragedy who were separated at birth and subsequent accidental misfortunes . The only difference is unlike in the movies, the brothers have kept pulling themselves further apart from each other. When these brothers went to far away lands, people mistook one for the another. They looked so much alike that when bad events happened on the eleventh day of September, the brothers were suspected with equal measure , without discrimination and with equal disdain. Pakistanis and Indians are now inextricably linked in a world of fear and suspicion.Pakistan for the uninitiated means "land of the pure" and India was named after the river " Indus" , which flows most of its course in Pakistan bringing water and resources to the "Sapta Sindhu" delta of Pakistan. This delta is the breadbasket of Pakistan , a food giver to its people. While Pakistan's food source is nurtured by a river that named its arch enemy, Indian civilization has its most prehistoric evidence of its culture at the Mohenjo Daro, Harappa in today's Pakistan.In this piece, I would like to focus first on the concept of purity that has historically driven peoples to commit the most gruesome acts of cruelty and genocide. This drive for purity of genes, purity of breed and the search of an unpolluted pedigree has been the nature of man to distinguish one from the other. Although, this serves a purpose of elimination of prospective partners and mates in the animal kingdom, its extension in the human world , as vehicle to distinguish, historically has led to bloodshed or pure genocide. Hitler used it to devastating effect in the search for purity of the Aryan race and the mass murder of Jews. In a similar way in this context Pakistan was born with an idea of a "land of the pure "..i.e purity of its thought, its blood, its pedigree of purity and its existence. In this path it has systematically, official estimates do not exist, eliminated its Hindu, Sindhi and Christian minority. Pakistan did not stop at that but the interpretation of purity was extended beyond the difference of religions to differences among a single religious group, Sunni and Shias in Pakistan's case , that led to killings between these sects as well as the kafirs or deserters-basically Muslim immigrants from India and finally the Bengali Muslims in the early 70 s that eventually led to the separation of Pakistan. Here one should note that Bangladesh , the new nation, is an Islamic state but for Pakistans' puritans it was not Islamic enough.The reality of modern world is such that this very concept of purity is flawed. Peoples, countries, religion places do not remain pure forever. Human beings are the most successful species on this planet because of the concept of adulteration and impurity. Even genetic scientists have scientifically proven that consecutive generation of inbreeding in communities as an effort to maintain purity leads to birth defects and weaker genes. This is the essential difference that has kept the two brothers at birth from reconciling again with each other. If Pakistan can be called the "land of the pure", India essentially is the land of the impure. An impurity that arises from the sheer diversity of its peoples, thoughts, ideas, culture , food and places. This impurity is what has made India a realistic concept than Pakistan,whose core foundation is on a belief that is against human behavior in the modern world. The concept of identity is also inextricably linked to this idea of purity and when people exist in a multitude of identities then the concept of a pure state or land is impractical.I would not doubt that the people who founded Pakistan were not aware of this but politics is not effective in being a assimilator of people with different identities. Politics and Politicians thrive in a paradigm that promotes division and dissimilation in human societies. It is easier to canonize people against one another by highlighting their differences, and making one a target for the misfortune of the other.So, while Indians are being killed, shot and executed by Australians youth for their joblessness, politicians including the one in the United States continue to target an immigrant group, Indians in this case, to channel the problems of unemployment and job loss. It is an easier route for politics than embark on a difficult task of creating jobs.
Indians should not feel highfalutin about this incidental concept of Pakistan because despite pedigree of good thoughts that India was blessed at its birth , its democracy has been marred with deceitful manipulation of its masses by its elite politicians. I suspect Raj Thackeraj without having any meaningful understanding of philosophy exploited these divisions in his favor by instigating the unemployed youth of Maharashtra in a fight against the migrants. The irony is that the Thackeray themselves are migrants from the state of MP and proves his debate over outsiders meaningless.When Narendra Modi, VHP and the BJP called Gujaratis to embark on the path to annihilate the "Muslims" by leaving the path of "Gandhigiri" as he spoke at a rally in Gujarat "We will shown them what happens when we leave Gandhigiri", he is asking them to abandon the impure existence and purify the state of its Muslims. Almost always and every time politics and politicians are completely responsible to stoke the anger and create divisions by using the impurities that come from our diversity.George Bush famously called all non-believers and non- aligned nations as "those who are against us" and the other or believers "those with us". So, while the republican pogrom is on to cleanse the federal of United States of "the outsider" immigrants and achieve the puritanism that has always existed, note the hint of irony, in its existence since Biblical times.The Congress government,Nehru-Gandhi Dynasty put this concept to good use in their more than 30 years of rule including the Sikh riots of 84 in Delhi (following the assassination of Indira Gandhi-Rajiv Gandhi famously said " When a big tree falls the earth shakes" in a response to the government pogram of genocide unleashed with help of Youth Congress leaders in Delhi.), the inaction during the demolition of Babri Masjib in Ayodhya, the numerous religious and caste riots in Bihar and finally the mother of all...the partition of the Indian subcontinent.Despite these above events and the history tainted in blood and brutality , India and Indians continue to support and nurture the concept of impurity. This impurity is why India exists in all its splendor and it is why many human histories from around the globe has existed in its people and continue today and well into the future. On this momentous occasion of the day of the 64th anniversary of our Independence, I urge my fellow citizens that they strive to understand this impurity , to not divide ourselves but to enjoy its beauty, its rewards and comprehend India's beauty in its splendid impurity.

4th of July reflections

2010-07-02T00:09:00.000-05:00

reprinted from a 2006
This 4th of July America will celebrate its 132nd Independence Day. I have seen exactly 6 such events since I came to America in 2001. After spending seven years in America, I have begun on reflecting on my experience of America and it raises many thoughts about my path in the future of my American experience. As an Indian national who arrived in the twilight of 9/11, my initiation to America was very different than I had expected. I haven't seen the Clinton years and I hear it was different, which I would never know because as we know today, since 9/11 the world has changed and is defined in terms of pre- 9/11 or post- 9/11. I might add here that in reality the world really changed long before 9/11 at different times for different people of the world, now connected in an global economy. It is simply that the upper or privileged half or less than a quarter of the world got an opportunity to give a label to an event on 9/11, via its instruments of mass media. So, now we have a post and pre 9/11 world of another layer of identities, axis of evils, radical Islamists, terrorists and aliens. The other half which never gets an opportunity to label anything , still lives in squalor and disenfranchised economical microcosms and for them the world had changed years before and it still changes while they are never a part of it. In this changed world, America looks very different like a suspicious boyfriend, who suspects every neighbor as immoral and unworthy. It was never than America ever cared about its neighbors, but now it cared more about neighbors who did not care about America. So, Venezuela,Columbia , Bolivia,Cuba, Chile are all somehow part of the axis that were evil or were evil at a certain point in American history. Is it a coincidence that the world's largest economy is surrounded by poor, undeveloped Latin countries who have been struggling with democracy in the last five decades. America's list of hated despots are the rulers of fragile economies viz...Casto, Che, Chavez..etc

I grew up around every outlet of information and media announcing the American supremacy in the world of innovation, technology and free market success. The story was that America was the place where people could achieve anything with determination and hard work. It was the only place in Indian folklore that resembled ancient Indian emperor Vikramaditya's court, that provided justice and fairness to all. But somewhere as the events unfolded since I landed that sunny afternoon in Chicago, my pride in my assumptions about America lay shattered to smithereens and my understanding ruined. I left India on the day of India's 52nd anniversary of independence. My journey of self-discovery and self determination outside the shadow of my parents influence was to head to the new world. The best path forward for most kids of my generation was an American education and an outside world "foreign" experience. Going to America was never a question for me or my family like my mother jostled for attention among her women friends in Mumbai who all had at least one son or a daughter in America.

Barely a month after I arrived, 9/11 happened and everything changed. America was rightfully not only hurt but very angry. Public opinion for a revenge was unquestionable. Barely before every human loss was accounted for in the rubble, America launched a war on Afghanistan. The world too wept with America by sending love notes and offering refueling points for jets to bomb Afghanistan. For the first time, America announced it will put an end to all forms of terrorism. India rejoiced hoping that Pakistan's covert war using terrorists as Mujahadeen's would finally be put to an end. The Taliban fell in no time and Afghanistan was bombed back to 10 century, not that it wasn't already there, thanks to the long waged battle between the Northern Alliance funded by erstwhile Soviet Union and the Taliban funded by American CIA.
Even as the war was not over, a new war was announced on Iraq. The patience for scrutiny of evidence had run out as blood gushed to the brains of the annoyed and angered panel of presenters at the UN Security Council. No evidence was enough to potray the anger of America but was enough to potray the evidence. UN weapons inspectors were replaced with random disdain if arguments arose about the authenticity of evidence presented.To quote Indira Gandhi ironically to this argument considering she was India's only real tyrannical leader elected through democratic process said "You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist".America was not in the mood to make friends. France, with its contribution of potato fries and sparkling wine, found itself on the wrong side of the equation. Their Fries were renamed and rechristened to Freedom Fries. Ironically, the statue of Liberty , the Symbol of American Liberty was gifted by none other than the French. In the twilight of the looming war, as the war countdown was begining to run out in 2003, I was finishing my thesis at UWM. My thesis mates, comprising largely of students from the Wisconsin, except few international students like us, met to discuss the arrangements for the thesis day.I found it nonplussing that very few of my thesis mates gave a rats ass about the looming war. Architecture schools in India teach a lot about history and humantities and we learnt that Iraq was a place of reverence for its architecture and culture. A war in Iraq would mean a splurging of all the world treasures of human history that Iraq holds. I learnt only later that architecture schools in America had very little mandatory history courses on architecture outside of Europe.Could I blame the nonchalance of my friends to the education of history in America? Well, America in general was very non-chalant about the impending war and its consequences. My school invited a speaker , Keller Easterling , a Phd professor from Yale who studded her lecture with hateful references against the protesters of America's war against Iraq. Could it be that Americans generally give very little value to historical or cultural assets? Could it be that the world's youngest country has very little regard to anything historical?

About seven years have passed since the war was announced and Osama Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind is still a fugitive. Somewhere in these 7 years a country named Iraq was caught in this vortex of purging terror. Iraq or Babylon , the cradle of civilization, somehow found its foot at the wrong place and the wrong time. Its brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein, became the most hated man in North America. After his death, the graphic video of Saddam being hung unceremoniously became a form of entertainment to American teens seeking adult or mature fun. Saddam , for all his brutality was a very secular dictator. He promoted education for women and worked to bring the minorirties of Iraq together. Saddam made frequent references to the Abbasid period, when Baghdad was the political, cultural, and economic capital of the Arab world. He also promoted Iraq's pre-Islamic role as Mesopotamia, the ancient cradle of civilization, alluding to such historical figures as Nebuchadrezzar II and Hammurabi. He devoted resources to archaeological explorations. In effect, Saddam sought to combine pan-Arabism and Iraqi nationalism, by promoting the vision of an Arab world united and led by Iraq.(source wiki). Did he deserve the inconsequential death as he did? Maybe he did, but who makes that choice, America or hundreds of Kurds who died at his hands. For the world his trial leading to his death , regardless of how America would like to tell the story, would seem staged and doctored to American needs. But the most shocking irony of the story is that Saddam Hussein was a leader who came to power with the help of America and the person at the center of this event was someone none other than Mr Donald Rumsfield, the Secretary of Defense during Iraq War of 2003.

For that matter, most Americans have been pretty ignorant and ill informed about recent political history or geography. As an Indian living in India, we knew that Saddam Hussein was a past American ally after the fall of the democratic government in Iraq. We also knew that Osama Bin Laden and the Afghan Taliban were an American funded covert CIA operation to keep communism out of Afghanistan. So, its surprising that most Americans were even unaware of these linkages even as a conspiracy theory. I get asked quite often at bars and drinking establishment "Why does the world hate America?"..Most tell me, that I wanna live in peace. They often tell " They hate our freedoms and success". I ask my reader , Do they truly believe that people around the world hate America because it has more freedom than the rest of the world? Can more freedom be defined in a nation that prosecutes and incarcerates foreign prisoners with no legal representations in a jail camp built on occupied land?. Can America with the world's second largest number of crimes, almost 4 times that of Germany be considered a free society. India with 1.13 billion people in differing social and economic demographics had about 1/20th number of crimes as America.

I presumed the fact that every major media outlet in the world had some American connection meant that Americans knew everything. I used to love watching the NGC TV series and was always at awe about this American enterprise discovering the world for us. I was sure people living around the source of such a wonderful institution would know everything. Well!! I was very wrong, as I discovered later that most Americans don't watch NGC.
America, Iraq War, Bin Laden, Donald Rumsfield, Saddam Hussein, Freedom Fries, Indira Gandhi

Bahadur Shah's last poem in exile in Rangoon..extract from "The Last Mughal"

2010-05-10T22:56:00.001-05:00

The poem written by the last Mughal ruler Bahadur Shah Zafar ..translated by Ahmed Ali...of Delhi as he was imprisoned by the British ...an extract from William Darymple's "The Last Mughal"

'When in silks you came and dazzled
Me with the beauty of your spring,
You brought a flower to bloom
Love within my being.
You lived with me, breath of my breath,
Being in my being, nor left my side;
But now the wheel of time has turned
And you are gone - no joys abide.
You pressed your lips upon my lips,
Your heart upon my beating heart,
And I have no wish to fall in love again,
For they who sold love's remedy
Have shut shop, and I seek in vain.
My life now gives no ray of light,
I bring no solace to heart or eye;
Out of dust to dust again,
Of no use to anyone am I.

Delhi was once a paradise,
Where love held sway and reigned;
But its charms lie ravished now
And only ruins remain.
No tears were shed when shroudless they
Were laid in common grave;
No prayers were read for the noble dead,
Unmarked remain their graves.
The heart distressed, the wounded flesh,
The mind ablaze, the rising sigh;
The drop of blood, the broken heart,
Tears on the lashes of the eye.
But things cannot remain, O Zafar,
Thus for who can tell?
Through God's great mercy and the Prophet
All may yet be well.

Heard the most heart rending narration of Delhi's secret and beautiful history by William Darymple...the narration in 7 parts of his book "The Last Mughal"....A lot of history is still to be retold and accepted...after the incalculable damage of British distortion of Indian history...a must see for all Indians...how unified Indians were until 1857.

The Last Mughal - William Dalrymple Part 1

A critical analyis of the working of IGBC and and relevance of LEED India standards

2010-03-10T14:48:00.001-06:00

Looking for publisher for this article.
Here is link to the edited version.
LEED India

How the cats revived a glorious past and an insensitive industry

2010-02-23T16:40:00.001-06:00

The winter chill was unbearable to take. I was in Sawai Madhopur, a town of near Ranthambore 200 km away from the historic city of Jaipur, founded by Sawai Jaisinghsinghji. With a rented bicycle and armed with my sketchbook, I was on my way to meet a tiger expert of international repute in this sleepy now decrepit town of Sawai Madhopur. King Madhosinghji established this town when he moved his capital from Jaipur to Ranthambore near Sawai Madhopur. Ranthambore, about 5 km from Sawai Madhopur, was the place of the world famous Project Tiger reserve. Ranthambore and its riches had catapulted Sawai Madhopur on the international tourist itinerary. Every year thousands of foreign and a few Indian tourists throng to this sleepy town enroute to Ranthambore. I wonder how this decrepit town once forgotten after the imperial invasion had grown to become a place teeming of international visitors. I was on my way to meet Mr. Fateh Singh Rathore, the first field director of Ranthambore who was one among the founders of Project Tiger, instrumental in putting Ranthambore among the network of Project Tiger reserves, under Mrs. Indira Gandhi's regime. I had already talked to his wife over the phone, when after a period of brief silence the 'Tiger' as Fatehsinghji is popularly known answered the phone. Without any hesitation he invited me over to his home near the Ranthambore reserve to discuss my Project. We set our appointment for an hour after noon that day. As I rode my bicycle up the only small road-over bridge, I could get a view of the entire city. Its rustic settlements tell a tale of a very busy past, wearing a lazy coat of a city in slumber. It’s most enterprising business of hospitality, with numerous tourist lodges and hotels, had not changed after our economic liberalization, though it seemed to have grown tremendously over the years. Other businesses worked as usual as they must have over the past decades, in which grandsons inherited their ancestral businesses after finishing little education the city was capable to provide. The cold January weather compelled most to wear more than the traditional clothing people wear in Rajasthan throughout the year.
As I now scan the city once again, I notice there were pockets of princely architecture, which may have been the residences of the king's courtiers. The forest office, which looked like a rustic village municipal building, was a space adapted from a ramshackle brick building faced with raw lime plaster and painted in brick red. It could be made out that it has been converted from a residence to its present use. The working ambience of the office projected a casual workaday of transactions between tourists and government employees. As I got nearer to the tourist office at the end of the road-over bridge, I saw the tourist officer in-charge waiting on the road having a chat with some locals. There were not many tourist arrivals today by the morning train from Jaipur. The officer waved at me and I reciprocated the same. With some discomfort he smirked, which reminded me of the deal we made yesterday. He traded Rajasthan Tourism pamphlets on Ranthambore with me for a hundred rupees, which were issued free of cost to the tourists.
Looking ahead, the winding road ahead takes one to Alwar, the place of the only veterinary hospital in the city. I had been to Alwar yesterday to meet the chief veterinarian who also headed the veterinary unit of Project Tiger. The hospital was also built in the local non-descript vernacular style of architecture with a large court and cloistered structure along the periphery. The buildings facing the main road were the consultation rooms with the chief veterinarian's residence sited at the back of the property. The public buildings in Sawai Madhopur were all adapted spaces from existing structures with an absence of a driveway or any setback from the main road.
As I cycled ahead the weather felt better or I may have warmed up with the bicycling on the undulating slopes of the road. Maa Farms was still three kilometers away and I took the left split of the Y-junction for Ranthambore road. Ranthambore, this word runs chills down my spine. My maternal native town was in Alipurduar, a small town about 5 miles from the world renowned Buxa Tiger reserve. Tigers and Tiger stories ran in my family. My grandpa held an international hunting license and had some amazing hunting expeditions under his belt, when it was lawful to do so. The one surviving Tiger Skin is still a precious possession of the Bose-Mitra family. My grandpa used to narrate his hunting stories about staking tigers for a hunt while the Tigers were also stalking him in the forest. Such stories led me to develop a similar picture in my mind like I, the unaware innocent protagonist, am being stalked by this smart stealthy animal sitting high rock above me while I go looking to find it. This would send a cold shiver down my back, now aching due to excessive cycling. At the sides of the road were palatial hotels teeming with tourists sunbathing in the front lawns that overlook the road. They were presenting a thrifty dress code that would be very alien to the local Rajasthani. I conjecture that after this they would have a hot-tap water bath,a fancy the local could ill afford, and a luxury the tourists enjoy at the many star hotels in Ranthambore. Then , the tourists would take the hour long tiger-safaris inside the forest. Tigers are very shy animals and these tours inside the core zone of the forest is an invasion of their privacy while it goes about its daily life. The Indian tourism ministry actively promotes these safaris in the name of wildlife tourism. However, the Indian BOF and exchange rate assures that the have-nots living off welfare in the developed world can easily enjoy these treasures, while it is a luxury to our poor and the middle class, at the expense of the best the developing world can offer.

Tourists often take photos and their flash photography jeopardizes the natural behavioral traits of the tigers. There have been incidences of tigers, who have been so provoked with this intrusion in their habitat, having deliberately attacked livestock and people in the neighboring villages etc. One fine day an ignorant, ruthless villager will shoot the animal for his own survival for food and subsistence and push the tiger further towards extinction.
Do we want this happen to our national animal? Does it justify in jeopardizing the existence of our national animal at the expense of foreign exchange earned through wildlife toursim. India is still a developing country and it call ill afford to create a situation where the little funds that is allocated to such programs as 'Project Tiger' are exacerbated by causes , which are still within our control. The funding models for Tiger reserves have to come from other sources, like controlled entry for wildlife filmmakers, tourists and alike.
Yesterday I had been to the reserve, when I met Bob and Sheryl, a British couple in their mid fifties. After we were finished with introductions and "Spice Girls' , I was introduced to a Danish tourist who had been in Ranthambore for a week now to photograph the tiger. He was out of luck for almost a week and had stopped wasting his energy on the other animals that were being occasionally seen along the tour trails, he kept taking repetitively. The bisons, nilgais, chital deers, crocodiles did not interest him anymore. He was waiting for the mighty Tiger to appear and somehow luck was in my favor. During my tour, the mighty cat was seen at two points in the tour. We spotted three tigers in a group, the erie noise of the forest broken by the deathly silence of their presence. My man under observation, the danish tourist armed with his Canon, finished clicking an entire roll of the charming beast who was drinking water from a stream that flows through his own royal kingdom. The Dutch looked quite content at the end of the tour as he would finally move on to his next tour destination having finally seen the tiger.
One has to really see and do a ROI comparison of the wildlife tourism earning and find if it was justified in letting tourists enter the core area of the forest to see tigers. A disruption in their core habitat is even more dangerous to their survival than a secure prohibited habitat as tigers could be displaced into areas where they come in conflict with humans for space and fodder. The one thing that makes me happy is that tourism has been able to keep Sawai Madhopur economy alive. It is really fascinating to see how these cats had earned a reputation for the city and the jungle to have tourists come all over the world. World bodies like WWF spend millions of rupees on protecting these cats. The loss of this top predator is not only a loss of our national symbol but will be a blow that will cascade down to the entire ecosystem that the tiger represents. It is time to rethink on wildlife tourism policies and tourist trails, zones inside these protected reserves.
By now, I had reached very close to Maa Farms where Fatehsinghji lived in a beautiful farmhouse nestled at the cradle of a mountain covered with Dhok forest. Now as I am nearing Maa farms to meet Fatehsinghji, I break into a smile at my thoughts about the tiger and my research. I am assured if this interview did not turn fruitful, I would still have solid reason to proceed with the mission to design a nerve center for Project Tiger
This article is an edited updated version of a similar article by the author that appeared in the annual NASA (National Association of students of Architecture) Convention Magazine held at Chennai in 1998.

A really old university is taking shape again!

2010-02-18T15:24:00.000-06:00

Recently,I found myself reading through these two excellent article about Nalanda University..the world's first full fledged university found somewhere around 500BC. There two articles give a good idea of what is being planned....excellent effort by Dr Amartya Sen.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="545" caption="Nalanda University"][/caption]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3029197.cms
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/09/opinion/09garten.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

'Under 30 not liberal no heart, Over 30 still liberal, no brain'-I have no brains...

2010-02-15T11:09:00.001-06:00

Last night I saw Edukators , a German movie that captures the quagmires of capitalism and market economy. Through the lives of three young Germans, the movie paints a somewhat comical but poignantly true canvas about the entrapment of unfettered capitalism. The narrative connects the victims and the victors of the economic systems through incidents where one is oblivious to the life of the other and inflicts cruelty without understanding its implications. Unfortunately, we all have been in this predicament at a certain time in our lives , just as the capitalist abductee in the movie proclaims 'Under 30 not liberal no heart, Over 30 still liberal, no brain'. It is important to compare the condition in developed Germany and understand how limited are the channels of protest or activism under a purely capitalist society. Fortunately , the human condition generally is programmed to do good things for others, but what is particularly interesting in the narrative is the idea that the goal of an individual married to immediate bonds, engulfed in a pursuit to prove his dominant alpha status to the society, can disregard ideals of compassion and regard for fellow human beings that he once espoused of. This predicament is also exacerbated by the remoteness of our lives from our victims in a system that pulls the havenots apart from the privileged. This is the awful truth that comes out in the movie. I found the narratives on the period of the 60s and the story of the hippie generation a mirror to my own life during my college and University years.

In India , we also had our period of angst but unfortunately it comes and leaves us too early. The aforesaid phrase takes a form of 'Under 20 no girlfriends no passion, above 20 no wife no life'. The pressure of "settling down" or buying into the capitalist system is tremendous among our peers and young generation. I find it fantastic to see how 23-28 year olds are finishing MBA schools and entering careers in the corporate echelons for six figures or at time seven figure salaries. It seems the young and our generation have completely accepted the capitalist model without any critique. The tide of people against this model have grown fewer and weaker by the day, as India changes rapidly from a sleepy socialist society of molly coddling parents to a society of young who are independently living, dreaming and chasing wealth. There is a lot of positive among in the idea of individualism, independence but unfortunately the victim of this socio-economic model is our families. The next time we lecture someone about Indian culture and values, especially from the west, we need to be cognizant of the fact that India now is riding the graph to a Himalayan spike in the number of divorces, parental abandonment, day care centers..surrogate parentage etc.
These are all effects of capitalism and it negates the false pride of our 'cultural quotient" we brag about across the world. Economic systems are as a force on cultural change if not more than political ones and India is about to get a good lesson in the next 20 years. The problem is that while the west had the ability and luxury to react more maturely through its period of cultural revolution of flower-girls and pot smoking generation, India does have any avenues of such a revolution. The only revolution that exists are of the extremes. The Maoist violence is the extreme reaction to disenfranchised polity, unrepresented poor and lack of justice. The model , we imported from the rich west and the development we have accepted as necessary for the path to the first world ,will continue to exacerbate the problem and increase the numbers of have nots. We cannot escape this reality and our youth unfortunately have not been able to think and react critically to this quagmire. Instead , the young have shut their eyes and looked away by accepting this path to development. I am still waiting for our pot smokers, dreamers, artists as Indian elites are saturated with dalal street bankers, business grads. Till then we have said with open arms....
Welcome to capitalist dictatorship!...

Hafeez,design and Mumbai

2010-02-03T14:34:00.001-06:00

font face="arial">Why is Indian design still an imitation of the west? Why is design in India a consequence of theories, ideologies and trends from the west? Having raised that larger question and being an architect, I would limit my opinion to the state of design in the built environment, particularly Mumbai.
After 60 years since the British rule, Bombay is dotted with ugly buildings and an even uglier street-scape. Hafeez is still in business and his buildings look awfully similar, like ugly dildos of concrete. There are several people who will disagree with my view of Hafeez Contractor's architecture. Some of those disagreements are based on a few arguments. I will tackle each argument one at a time
The first argument raised is that "Hafeez delivers what the people want"
-Obviously, People who raise that argument do not understand the processes that make a building. For the uninitiated, those processes involve a builder/promoter to approach the architect (Hafeez in this case) for seeking design options although the promoters often drive the choice of the design. There is absolutely no involvement of the public, be it neighborhood commitees, design boards, public officials etc etc. The design is only reviewed by public officials from a standpoint purely for meeting the building/planning or regulatory boards by the letter of their code. It would not be too much to suppose that many such codes are compromised, deviated and relaxed by approving public officials with money changing hands from the promoters to the measly salaried public officials. This process itself blows the first argument out of water and proves that Hafeez's designs do not come from a consensus of the market.

The second argument raised is that "Design is a matter of taste"
If design is indeed a matter of taste and considering it differs between individuals,then how can all of Hafeez's design look so similar and stylistic. Obviously , the assumption of the matter of "taste" is as subjective as Hafeez 's ethics of practice of architecture.

Having addressed the matter of choice, I would follow up with the argument on design and its influencing factors.

Indians haven't been able to comprehend their background and appreciate their history, culture and tradition. While we may know our history very well, we fail to understand the link of our present age to our past history. India's fascination with the west has not waned despite a renewed growth in the understanding of our recent history. Indian continuity of indigenous ideas, knowledge, learning methods were abruptly disrupted under the British rule. The victor always imposes and influences its subjects
with view that serves their purpose and world view and Britain did not pass this opportunity. British historian James Mill in his "History of India" and&nbsp; Thomas Macaulay later in his Macaulay's minute on Indian education are examples of the British view over its vanquished subjects. Macaulay's professed in his minute on Indian education Indian knowledge, history and the entire civilization was unworthy and went to an extent of saying The entire Hindu history is equal to one book of Shakespeare. The British tactically imposed a British education; with english as the primary langauage and were suceesfull in creating of a new class who are colloquially referred to as the "brownsahibs" . The brownsahibs were a necessity for the British to rule its 200 million Indian citizenry.The narrow British projection of India and its civilization was also necessary to govern its peoples and enable British expats to subjugate their subjects without remorse.

Despite of 70 years since the end of the world biggest imperial power,Great Britain and its world view of India still perpetuates. India and its history is still enslaved to British interpretation. Amartya Sen, Amitav Ghosh and some other Indian authors have done exceptional work . Art,fashion,architecture today still is bound to the confines of western designs and western models of mass production.
to be completed<

Hospital fire in Hyderabad

2010-02-02T17:45:00.001-06:00

Hi Friends,
You must have heard in the news about the incident below. We all understand and recognize that the things mentioned that led to this incident is not rocket science and we recognize that the incident is not a consequence of lack of expertise. The hospital, which should have some of the highest safety standards has been violated. We should all come together on such incidents to resolve to see through one simgle issue. The owner of such a hospital should not go scott-free. Also, if any public officials and architects were involved in this issue should immediately be stripped of their professional licensure and sent to jail. It is imperative that HSW be the most important yardstick for us to pursue our responsibilities in this profession.
I am following this issue and will keep you updated. Please help me to see this issue till the end that is bring all defaulters to jail.
Som

Concept of Purity-India and Pakistan

2010-01-07T17:04:00.001-06:00

This is the tale of two nations separated at birth almost 60 years ago. the two nations were from the same parenthood, entwined in family relationships whose roots went back centuries. There was bond of blood that was built over 3000 years has a recorded and proved history. There have been bonds of culture, food and language, music, shared heroes etc.They were like brothers in a Bollywood tragedy who were separated at birth and subsequent accidental misfortunes . The only difference is unlike in the move the brothers have kept pulling themselves further apart from each other. When these brothers went to far away lands, people mistook one for the another. They looked so much alike that when bad events happened on the eleventh day of September, the brothers were suspected with equal measure , without discrimination and with equal disdain. Pakistanis and Indians are now inextricably linked in a world of fear and suspicion.

Pakistan for the uninitiated means "land of the pure" and India was named after the river " Indus" , which flows most of its course in Pakistan bringing water and resources to the "Sapta Sindhu" delta of Pakistan. This delta is the breadbasket of Pakistan , a food giver to its people. While pakistan's food source is nurtured by a river that named its arch enemy, Indian civilization has its most prehistoric evidence of its culture at the Mohenjo Daro, Harappa in today's Pakistan.

In this piece, I would like to focus first on the concept of purity that has historically driven peoples to commit the most gruesome acts of cruelty and genocide. This drive for purity of genes, purity of breed and the search of an unpolluted pedigree has been the nature of man to distinguish one another. Although, this serves a purpose of elimination of prospective partners and mates in the animal kingdom, its extension in the human world , as vehicle to distinguish, historically has led to bloodshed or pure genocide. Hitler used it to devastating effect in the search for purity of the Aryan race and the mass murder of Jews. In a similar way in this context Pakistan was born with an idea of a "land of the pure "..i.e purity of its thought, its blood, its pedigree of purity and its existence. In this path it has systematically, official estimates do not exist, eliminated its Hindu, Sindhi and Christian minority. Pakistan did not stop at that but the interpretation of purity was extended beyond the difference of religions to differences among a single religious group, that led to killings between Sunnis/Shias,kafirs or deserters-basically Muslim immigrants from India and finally the Bengali Muslims in the early 70 s that eventually led to the separation of Pakistan. Here one should note that Bangladesh , the new nation, is an Islamic state but for Pakistans' puritans it was not Islamic enough.
/>The reality of modern world is such that this very concept of purity is flawed. Peoples, countries, religion places do not remain pure forever. Human beings are the most successful species on this planet because of the concept of adulteration and impurity. Even genetic scientists have scientifically proven that consequetive generation of inbreeding among communities in an effort to maintain purity leads to birth defects and weaker genes. This is the essential difference that has kept the two brothers at birth from reconciling again with each other. If Pakistan can be called the "land of the pure", India essentially is the land of the impure. An impurity that arises from the sheer diversity of its peoples, thoughts, ideas, culture , food and places. This impurity is what has made India a realistic concept than Pakistan,whose core foundation is on a belief that is against human behavior in the modern world. The concept of identity is also inextricably linked to this idea of purity and when people exist in a multitude of identities then the concept of a pure state or land is impratical.I would not doubt that the people who founded Pakistan were not aware of this but politics is not effective in being a assimilator of people with different identities. Politics and Politicians thrive in a paradigm that promotes division and dissimilation in human societies. It is easier to cannonize people at other who are different than them for their misfortunes.

Indians should not feel highfalutin about this incidental concept of Pakistan because despite pedigree of good thoughts that India was blessed at its birth , its democracy has been marred with deceiful manipulation of its masses by its elite politicians. I suspect Raj Thackeraj without having any meaningful understanding of Philosophy exploited this in his favor by dividing the unemployed youth of Maharashtra by aligning them in a fight against the migrants. The irony is that the Thackeray themselves are migrants from the state of MP and proves the debate over outsiders menaningless.
When Narendra Modi VHP and the BJP called Gujaratis to embark on the path to anhilate the "Muslims" by leaving the path of "Gandhigiri" as he spoke at a rally in Gujarat "We will shown them what happens when we leave Gandhigiri", he is asking them to abandon the impure existence and purify the state of its Muslims. Almost always and every time politics and politicans are completely responsible to stoke the anger and create division by using this path of purity. George Bush famously called all non-believers and non- aligned nations as "those who are against us" and the other or believers "those with us".
Congress government, Rajiv Gandhi and the Gandhi Dynasty put this concept to good use in their more than 30 years of rule including the Sikh riots of 84 in Delhi after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi famously said " When a big tree falls the earth shakes" in a response to the government pogram of genocide unleashed with help of Youth Congress leaders in Delhi.

Despite these events , India and Indians continue to support and nuture the concept of impurity. This impurity is why India exists in all its splendor and it is why many human histories from around the globe has existed in its people and continue today and well into the furture. As Indians we should strive to understand this impurity , to not divide ourselves but to enjoy its beauty, its rewards and comprehend India beauty in its impurity.

India: Economic rise and the development story (in progress)

2009-10-07T16:08:00.001-05:00

India is on the path to rapid rise of economic growth and recovery.The global meltdown that affected most of the world did not impact India to so much extent. This has largely been facilitated by India's controlled banking policies and regulated financial market, which came from repeated criticism from the western economies or the G-8. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/20/business/20nocera.html?_r=1
While India is cautiously loosening its control over the banking policies , the western economies are beginning tightening their policies, which eventually will lead to a credit freeze. India has in the last one year brought down inflation , which had rose to very high levels with the growing economy and also brought down lending rates. This is slowly beginning to reap rewards in terms of generating economic activity. There is lot to be written about this slow change but that is not the focus of this article. This articles aims the various other structural changes that needs to be accompanied to facilitate and complement the transformation that is taking place in India.

The obvious challenges that face India's development has been amply enumerated by economists, think-tanks and policy institutes across the world and their finding are not very different. The common challenges listed by them include inclusive growth, infrastructure development , education and poverty alleviation. I will spend some little time to enumerate a little on these few issues.

More than 10 years back in a piece called "Goddess of small things", as a magazine editor for my college magazine, I wrote about Architect, Activist, Booker prize winning author Arundhati Roy. She is a necessary voice to all...including India...Salman Rushdie calls her a necessary polemic to democracy...her latest interview from Al Jazeera English..
She is India's Amy Goodman....!

Riz Khan - Arundhati Roy - 02 Nov 09 - Pt 1
Inclusive growth:
Growth in India has to encompass the masses or else due to sheer size of the people not affected by this growth the policies will always centered the impoverished masses. Such policies may not always favor technology or scientific development.
Infrastructure development:
The need for infrastructure , which at times is not existent in areas of India is essential to growth. The challenge is not only investment and flow of capital to serve this sector but the need to align these efforts with sustainable principles, which would be cost-effective and incur lower environmental costs in the long run. This required an imaginative way to deliver goods and services that provides real value to its customers that may be from across the entire economic spectrum.
Education:
Education is the single most and most important driver of human capital that will be the only asset going forward for India. This asset will not only aid economic development but also enable better governance. Literacy should not be the minimum for this goal to be achieved.
Poverty Alleviation:

A new book on Indian history

2009-09-10T22:12:00.001-05:00

D.N. Jha has written a book titled "Rethinking Hindu Identity" . Although, I have not read it , I read its review here http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?261637
and it seems it had really tried to do what I feel most Indian historians should be trying to write about. Jha as sacked by the BJP when he refused to endorse BJP view of Hindu India.

Some excerpts of the review is below.
"In this magnificent little book, he demolishes the false claims of antiquity made on behalf of an imaginary ‘Hinduism’ said to exist in that period. He argues that the monolithic category ‘Hindu’, as it is often understood today, was a colonial construct further cemented by their allies, the Hindu communalists."

"Jha literally questions the ‘holy cow’ of Hindu communal belief. He argues that the notion of the sacred cow emerged only in the early medieval period. He furnishes ample evidence to show that in the Vedic period cows were routinely slaughtered and eaten; Brahmins would serve cow meat to their guests on special occasions—a fact which was readily accepted even by Swami Vivekananda, though numerous lives have been lost subsequently through hostility with Muslims on this issue."