Just back from Solapur...
Overheard this cell-phone conversation, as the young fellow talked first to his mom, and then his girl friend, even as one of his chums sat opposite... the guys were sitting across in the AC three tier.
The first thing the two guys commented on, as soon as they boarded the train Hindi-movie style while it was leaving the platform, all out of breath, is 'Arre, yahan recharge point nahi hai '. (Me - oldgen - I was thrilled enough to see clean purdahs and sheets, in our esteemed Rlys, now-making-a-profit ka AC dibbas)
Laloo, Laloo, suno toh sahi... While one of them swore he had seen it on a recent trip in another train, the other was a tad skeptical about it. Meanwhile, the skeptic received a call - ring-tone the default Nokia one - from his mom. Conversation in monosyllables, though mom, like all moms, seemed to have lots to say.
Apart from the 'Hmmmms....', 'Ji....s', 'Haan, Ma....'s', he got agitated at one point when his mom must have asked him - well, we can all guess what she asked him ... 'Ma, woh shahar ke ek kone mein rehta hai, aur mein doosre kone mein, kaise mil sakta hoon'?... and then, his phone got cut off...
Commiserated other friend , 'In today's time and age, this cutting off of signal is criminal.'
Nokia ringtone happens again almost immediately, though young man is sitting back not trying ...
'Nahi, Ma, yahan coverage nahi hai... YAHAN SIGNAL NAHI HAI...'
(listens) 'Main pahunchkar baat karta hoon... BAAT karta hoon.... nahi, Ma- TUMSE baat karunga...'
Had just about finished this conversation, when a piercing & loud police whistle went off with car-horns blaring, in the quiet of the train-night.
That - we all soon figured - was his ring-tone for girl-friend's call coming in...
'..Yeah, my phone was busy... was on an official call.... Sorry, i can't hear - there's poor signal.... No, no, SERIOUSLY, please believe me, coverage nahi hai... sach...
Arre bhai....
'Bhai' is just a figure of speech, yaar, hey-hey'....
Phone cuts off again...
Says sympathetic friend from the other side : 'In one or two years, we'll not be able to give the poor signal reason to anyone you know, what will we do...' (I made note and added to young gen's list of future problems in life in India)
Our friend (the one with the mom and the gf) is frantically trying to dial through - and getting jammed...
Piercing police constable whistle happens.... Train chugs along. All of us junta stoically do our own thing...He puts on the phone, not to his ear - first, to his mouth.
'Hello... Hello.... Mike... Testing... Testing....'.....
'Just checking.... Yeah.... OK, I am joking now....'
'Yeah, hey-hey - me too....'
'Warning you OK? The signal's not good, I am warning you, OK? Don't tell me later I didn't....'
So what do we call this aaj kal wale conversation and dialogues - is it two way/ three way / no way??? All that was spoken of, was the absence of a signal! While there was one voice I heard all through, funnily enough I never heard him - it was three other voices that were really speaking, speaking. Besides, if we remove 'signal' talk/ the cut calls, will service-providers start earning a lot less??
Mikhail Bakhtin, that great Russian thinker must be jumping up and down in his grave in delight... Back in the 40s, and later in the 60s and 70s, he had postulated the 'polyphonic' concept... the human capacity for simultaneous multiple voices; what he said was part of a 'dailogic imagination'... and his thoughts emerged out of his dislike for any structural codes of language.
Wouldn't he just adore this new fragmentedly together world we live in!!!
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
And which lens do YOU wear?
Nominated, by UN, I am told, as best poem, 2006 - :
When I born, I black
When I grow up, I black
When I go in Sun, I black
When I scared, I black
When I sick, I black
And when I die, I still black
And you white fellow
When you born, you pink
When you grow up, you white
When you go in sun, you red
When you cold, you blue
When you scared, you yellow
When you sick, you green
And when you die, you gray
And you calling me colored??
When I born, I black
When I grow up, I black
When I go in Sun, I black
When I scared, I black
When I sick, I black
And when I die, I still black
And you white fellow
When you born, you pink
When you grow up, you white
When you go in sun, you red
When you cold, you blue
When you scared, you yellow
When you sick, you green
And when you die, you gray
And you calling me colored??
Saturday, February 16, 2008
The New Seed-Keepers
A few days ago, this film The Seed-Keepers totally blew me away, and that I've already blogged about. A valiant group of Dalit women in Andhra, keeping an age-old custom of a diversity of seeds alive from year to year, so that the nextgen - both of the seeds variety as well as children of these families, blossom and prosper.
On Sunday, the IITB e-cell organized an e-summit on entrepreneurship, where the Venture Capital muscle was out on display. To facilitate and 'incubate' the next-gen of the top end of young entrepreneurs. Names such as Canaan, Sherpalo, Helion, Seedfund, GlobalLogic, DFJ and many more. With India the flavor of the season, the hardened Silicon Valley 'seed-keepers' were here in full strength. I attended all day, and have come away with thoda sa queasy, thoda sa theek-thaak feelings. We students of IITB did not have to pay a penny ultimately, though the initial 'you can attend' mail told us IITians had to cough up teen sau rupaiya for lunch. Wow, was there a big outside contingent willing to pay much more, to attend the proceedings of the day. Yet, the thing is, I just did not feel completely gung-ho, in spite of the amount of money that sponsors had been willing to throw at this event (free lunch got added later, comprende?) , the media presence - that all went to indicate the general hope in the air of prosperity and riches.
And that precisely is what I am feeling odd about. No one says VCs are expected to be philanthropists. Sure, they are here to make money. But why did I get a feeling that reminded me of vultures swooping in for the kill? Talking of payback in 4 to 6 years, seed capital of 2 to 5 crores, IT this and IT that. Bade bade baatein. Oonche oonche nazar.
One fellow in one of the multiple sessions, from the audience, clad in a kurta, asked a pertinent question - in Hindi... Why is it that VCs do not 'micro-finance' entrepreneurship. Pay out Rs. 5 lakhs, 10 lakhs to hundreds of people - as versus seeking to pay out in crores to a few dozen. Why not a more 'social entrepreneur' role... I am not sure he got any clear answer.
And of the 'speakers' / 'mentors' / 'panel discussion members', the less said the better. The hype overshadowed the content. A great idea the e-summit, that got jacked by some strange folks who participated as speakers. But first, the good bit : Among the guys who were phenomenal, in their scope of thinking, were Ashish Gupta, of Junglee fame, and said to be one of the original 'seeders' of Google, and Sharad Sharma of Yahoo. Their two-man session sparkled, wit, gyan, food for thought all compounded wonderfully. A total pleasure and joy to behold. Total paisa-vasool. Ultimately, to all potential entrepreneurs, this is what one aims to be - that 'all-is-well' with the world, that bone-deep confidence.
In other sessions was Manik Arora, full of polite postures up on the stage, and while on camera to the media, and otoh, totally unwilling to give the time of day to genuine questions when I overheard him being asked outside - with a brusque "I don't have the time". In other words, if you are not a potential entrepreneur who I can make money out of, bugger off and do not disturb me. (And come to think of it, does doing a top-level job in an entrepreneurship company make one an entrepreneur?? Aka Manik-man as well as some others... Hitesh Oberoi who came in from Naukri for example (I thought that was Sanjeev Bhikchandani's baby??) ) Vivek Bhargava, another chap, so called entrepreneur made an ass of himself up on stage by using 'real' parenthood as versus adopted parenthood as a metaphor, that he was actually clueless about. Perhaps he should be reading today's newspaper item about this child who is hearing handicapped and has found a loving home with this couple in Bhopal.
Sab baccha party entrepreneurs, green behind the ears (behind the years?) - as we would say. This brings upfront the inherent contradiction... Ajit Balakrishnan of rediff (in the first panel discussion of the day) felt there was a need for many more mentors of the 45 to 60 year age-band variety. Kahan hai, bhai??
Rajendra Mishra arrived - if his name did not mean much, his intro in the booklet said 'Serial Entrepreneur' . If that still did not mean anything, his face (rather than his name) said 'RK Mishra' - Ah!
He was, justifiably, on a euphoric high, enjoying his 15 minutes of fame. This then is the guy who had just won the Lead India the previous evening, and was splattered across the front page of one - merely one (not others, of course!) daily. In today's world, 'news' is not common news - it is branded news - the papers decide who will be on their personal front pages.
Anyway, what he did - and good for him! - was that he generally threw a necessary spanner in the works - by demolishing the entire line-up of 'stars on display' at the summit as an unnecessary 'dotcom' e-venture.
Why is it, he asked, that all the speakers here are from software? If that is what IIT is about, you should just halt all other departments and only keep Computer Science. And where is the 'giving back to society' within all these talk of crores and billions?
Perhaps Mr. Ramadorai, the TCS head had the last word in his first words (he was the keynote speaker) - India had 13 million retail outlets. That tells you about the power of entrepreneurship in this country. The entrepreneurial spirit rather than the making-big-money factor.
Which is a theme, I think, that the e-cell organizers, need to do next year. Invite some grass-roots folks - banie ke dukan wale hi sahi; vegetable vendor hi sahi. In fact, we sorely need a reality check of a session that can no way be conducted in English. Yet of the success stories that keep this country rooted. And there are the top-end folks such as Dangayach of Sintex; that guy who's in the new rupee billionaire list - what's his name, from IIMA, who makes those sugar factories in Belgaum and so many more... Narendra Murkumbi, I think...Connected to the land, not flying up there folks. Most real (and really big) entrepreneurs always display a certain amazing quality - of not working for the money, and yet the money comes rolling in. These guys then channelize most of the funds in very interesting social ways. ... These are those who have understood the Swami Vivekananda diktat of 'Those alone live, who live for others' even as we take our country forward. It is time to move away from making the Ambani brothers our icons - who we only hear of, in terms of rocks worn around their necks or Gulf-Jets given as birthday gifts... More stories of folks like Dangayach who keeps insisting he is not a entrepreneur (if he is not, God knows who is!), the Subhiksha guy, our IIT's Dunu Roy, Shailesh Gandhi....
And of course, we would all gain by watching 'The Seed-Keepers' - the real seed-keepers that is! To begin with, those who missed the film , might as well read a bit about it.
Last word: I thought, paediatricians use 'incubators' only if a child is born premature? :-) :-)
On Sunday, the IITB e-cell organized an e-summit on entrepreneurship, where the Venture Capital muscle was out on display. To facilitate and 'incubate' the next-gen of the top end of young entrepreneurs. Names such as Canaan, Sherpalo, Helion, Seedfund, GlobalLogic, DFJ and many more. With India the flavor of the season, the hardened Silicon Valley 'seed-keepers' were here in full strength. I attended all day, and have come away with thoda sa queasy, thoda sa theek-thaak feelings. We students of IITB did not have to pay a penny ultimately, though the initial 'you can attend' mail told us IITians had to cough up teen sau rupaiya for lunch. Wow, was there a big outside contingent willing to pay much more, to attend the proceedings of the day. Yet, the thing is, I just did not feel completely gung-ho, in spite of the amount of money that sponsors had been willing to throw at this event (free lunch got added later, comprende?) , the media presence - that all went to indicate the general hope in the air of prosperity and riches.
And that precisely is what I am feeling odd about. No one says VCs are expected to be philanthropists. Sure, they are here to make money. But why did I get a feeling that reminded me of vultures swooping in for the kill? Talking of payback in 4 to 6 years, seed capital of 2 to 5 crores, IT this and IT that. Bade bade baatein. Oonche oonche nazar.
One fellow in one of the multiple sessions, from the audience, clad in a kurta, asked a pertinent question - in Hindi... Why is it that VCs do not 'micro-finance' entrepreneurship. Pay out Rs. 5 lakhs, 10 lakhs to hundreds of people - as versus seeking to pay out in crores to a few dozen. Why not a more 'social entrepreneur' role... I am not sure he got any clear answer.
And of the 'speakers' / 'mentors' / 'panel discussion members', the less said the better. The hype overshadowed the content. A great idea the e-summit, that got jacked by some strange folks who participated as speakers. But first, the good bit : Among the guys who were phenomenal, in their scope of thinking, were Ashish Gupta, of Junglee fame, and said to be one of the original 'seeders' of Google, and Sharad Sharma of Yahoo. Their two-man session sparkled, wit, gyan, food for thought all compounded wonderfully. A total pleasure and joy to behold. Total paisa-vasool. Ultimately, to all potential entrepreneurs, this is what one aims to be - that 'all-is-well' with the world, that bone-deep confidence.
In other sessions was Manik Arora, full of polite postures up on the stage, and while on camera to the media, and otoh, totally unwilling to give the time of day to genuine questions when I overheard him being asked outside - with a brusque "I don't have the time". In other words, if you are not a potential entrepreneur who I can make money out of, bugger off and do not disturb me. (And come to think of it, does doing a top-level job in an entrepreneurship company make one an entrepreneur?? Aka Manik-man as well as some others... Hitesh Oberoi who came in from Naukri for example (I thought that was Sanjeev Bhikchandani's baby??) ) Vivek Bhargava, another chap, so called entrepreneur made an ass of himself up on stage by using 'real' parenthood as versus adopted parenthood as a metaphor, that he was actually clueless about. Perhaps he should be reading today's newspaper item about this child who is hearing handicapped and has found a loving home with this couple in Bhopal.
Sab baccha party entrepreneurs, green behind the ears (behind the years?) - as we would say. This brings upfront the inherent contradiction... Ajit Balakrishnan of rediff (in the first panel discussion of the day) felt there was a need for many more mentors of the 45 to 60 year age-band variety. Kahan hai, bhai??
Rajendra Mishra arrived - if his name did not mean much, his intro in the booklet said 'Serial Entrepreneur' . If that still did not mean anything, his face (rather than his name) said 'RK Mishra' - Ah!
He was, justifiably, on a euphoric high, enjoying his 15 minutes of fame. This then is the guy who had just won the Lead India the previous evening, and was splattered across the front page of one - merely one (not others, of course!) daily. In today's world, 'news' is not common news - it is branded news - the papers decide who will be on their personal front pages.
Anyway, what he did - and good for him! - was that he generally threw a necessary spanner in the works - by demolishing the entire line-up of 'stars on display' at the summit as an unnecessary 'dotcom' e-venture.
Why is it, he asked, that all the speakers here are from software? If that is what IIT is about, you should just halt all other departments and only keep Computer Science. And where is the 'giving back to society' within all these talk of crores and billions?
Perhaps Mr. Ramadorai, the TCS head had the last word in his first words (he was the keynote speaker) - India had 13 million retail outlets. That tells you about the power of entrepreneurship in this country. The entrepreneurial spirit rather than the making-big-money factor.
Which is a theme, I think, that the e-cell organizers, need to do next year. Invite some grass-roots folks - banie ke dukan wale hi sahi; vegetable vendor hi sahi. In fact, we sorely need a reality check of a session that can no way be conducted in English. Yet of the success stories that keep this country rooted. And there are the top-end folks such as Dangayach of Sintex; that guy who's in the new rupee billionaire list - what's his name, from IIMA, who makes those sugar factories in Belgaum and so many more... Narendra Murkumbi, I think...Connected to the land, not flying up there folks. Most real (and really big) entrepreneurs always display a certain amazing quality - of not working for the money, and yet the money comes rolling in. These guys then channelize most of the funds in very interesting social ways. ... These are those who have understood the Swami Vivekananda diktat of 'Those alone live, who live for others' even as we take our country forward. It is time to move away from making the Ambani brothers our icons - who we only hear of, in terms of rocks worn around their necks or Gulf-Jets given as birthday gifts... More stories of folks like Dangayach who keeps insisting he is not a entrepreneur (if he is not, God knows who is!), the Subhiksha guy, our IIT's Dunu Roy, Shailesh Gandhi....
And of course, we would all gain by watching 'The Seed-Keepers' - the real seed-keepers that is! To begin with, those who missed the film , might as well read a bit about it.
Last word: I thought, paediatricians use 'incubators' only if a child is born premature? :-) :-)
Monday, February 11, 2008
These Times in Hindustan...
Our monthly paper bill is Rs. 273/- . For TOI (that includes the Mumbai Mirror tabloid), Hindustan Times, Indian Express and The Economic Times... in short, with the thickness of pages nowadays, a significant amount of newsprint to be able to sell to the raddi-wala.
The thing is : this entire thappi of papers, I find, I can skim through in five minutes. Seriously.
Ind. Exp. we keep because I used to quite like the editorials. Now I increasingly find this is so with HT instead. Today's 'paper actually had a lot of food for thought. On various angles, and not just some 'issue of the day' like the kidney racket or something... Many are mediated - in other words, representing another (not the writer's) point of view, but made the richer, for drawing us - the reader -'s attention to it...
The Faithscape page held me... as Renuka Narayan replicates a poem written by Lance Naik Sukhwinder Singh, the first liver recipient of AORTA. To quote her: Here's how the young soldier thinks of the dead lady whose liver now keeps him alive and fit. Calling his poem Jigar Ki Dhadkan
Khushkismat hoon main ki mamta ke aanchal mein jee raha hoon,
Tootne lage the jo sapne dil ke, un sapnon ko phir se see raha hoon,
Ek maa hai jisne janam diya aur laad pyaar se paala hai,
Ek maa hai jisne jeevan diya aur girte hue samhala hai,
Apna jigar ki dhadkan dekar so gayi sitaaron mein
Bhool na paoon kabhi main unko chamak rahi jo taaron mein
Aasmaan ke taraf dekh ke ghoont sabr ka peeta hoon,
khushkismat hoon main ki.....
RN also writes an aside on Uddhav (eeks - not the Shiv Sena variety - the original one) as he brings a message from Krishna to Radha, in her other article on the same page. Uddhav feels awkward at having no real message to deliver, and fakes one up.
And then there is Khushwant Singh. Again, what spellbinds my attention is his quote - of Kuldip Salil's translation of Ghalib...
Dair nahin, harum nahin, dar nahin, aastaan nahin,
Baithey Hue raah-guzar pe hum, koi hamein uthaye kyon.
(No home, no hearth for us, no temple, no mosque,
Why should anyone remove us from one thoroughfare, can we ask)
And ultimately, there is Barkha Dutt with her article 'Disadvantage Sania'. Lucidly put and clearly point-put-forth, it is a joy to read. It highlights our peculiar Indian love-hate relationships, that swing between adulation and annoyance. Her analysis of what exactly makes people so uncomfortable. She highlights how the visible women in sports hold up a mirror to both our prejudices as well as our changing attitudes. She calls it a mixture of 'breathless awe' and 'bewildered fright'. How we would rather do with the sentimental do-goods of fiction than the messy reality of fact. The article - I think I said this already, but what the heck, let me just say it again - is simply brilliant.
Must say, sometimes when I watch 'We, The People' am filled with misgivings at the thought of the way the media - including Barkha - perpetrates the sensational stuff of the moment. Once I had the (mis)fortune of being sent as an 'expert' to the show by one of my corporate clients to defend their position on a certain brand. It was quite an intriguing experience seeing the episode from the inside out. I recall being totally taken aback and alarmed at the deference with which I was ushered in the NDTV offices at New Delhi into a 'special room' - as one of the key 'experts' of the day along with stalwarts such as Dipankar Gupta, Balki etc. where each of us virajmaaned with our own individual halos of importance (separate from 'we, the people' the hoi polloi that we were kept away from, till we reached the actual 'set').
And the main HT editorial today, highlights the plight of Indians who get hospitalized. Apparently, a quarter of all those hospitalized every year, slip below the poverty line for medical expenses for which they are not insured. Falling ill means entering into an unending debt trap.
In the past two years, while I have pursued my 'course-work' in sociology leading up to the actual PhD fieldwork, have often added to my growing list of topics I could have covered (but ultimately have not) for my dissertation. One has been the whole 'moneylender' thing in India... how come so many of the unscrupulous ones survive and thrive, and where the bloody hell is the 'State' in all these dealings, and why does it prefer to look away...
Vibhu (Mittal) and we have been having this conversation recently ... He is on a sabbatical right now from Google, and while he is busy being (what he calls) Mr. Mom ! , while wife Sujata helps run the company HP in Palo Alto where they reside, we are having this sporadic chat regarding publications - how they are disappearing from the West, and simply snowballing in India. Earlier I had sent in this essay by Ruchir Goswami, a classmate in the 'Culture & Media' sessions, who has done a halt-in-the-tracks analysis of the diversity of publications that come out in IITB versus those in Harvard, as written by students... At Harvard, students have carte blanche, while in IITB, any masala has to be whetted by the DOSA - Dean of Students Affairs...
Since we are talking media out here, let me speak of an Urdu sammelan recently, and cut-paste from my chat mail here:
...I was attending a talk as part of an Urdu Sammelan (lest you wonder where all i go - this was at Solapur, and of interest to me as part of the changing 'Public Culture' space being created in liberalized small town India)... and the speaker - an erudite and extremely articulate editor from Hyderabad was rueing the fact that readership in Urdu is completely dying off - and the culprit is not just the content, it is also the style - they cannot afford to print in color, nor can they bring out the latest in fashion in print : 'glazed paper'.... A huge part of the 45,000 figure you mention (Vibhu had said : On a larger level, that figure is inverted: theUS has 1500 newspapers versus 45,000 for India
... Actually, IITians just adore and devour all that is published locally. The point Ruchir is making is that the authorities refuse to recognize this is important, and one has to scrounge out time to do these 'extra curricular activities' in the literal sense of the word. In that sense, the campus is as much a reflection of the larger Indian demographic... in the sense of working within impossible constraints, and still bringing out the papers against all odds..
Like all staid media articles, let me also end on a good note (why can't we end with anger????) - Of eleven month old baby Kyson Stowell (Fate names us well!) surviving a twisted tornado and its debris.
And this faith - that the nextgen deserves the best - will keep us all going on, in life. Or to go back to the RN article, Radha laughs, for the words when they reach her, read 'Uddhav has not finished his learning yet'. Shocked, he seeks an explanation.... 'I am one with Krishna. I don't need a letter from Him. He himself is my love letter'. It is the realization that Uddhav figures - a village woman has understood the nature of faith better than he had, particularly faith in oneself, that comes from a secure belief in one's soul connection with all Creation!
The thing is : this entire thappi of papers, I find, I can skim through in five minutes. Seriously.
Ind. Exp. we keep because I used to quite like the editorials. Now I increasingly find this is so with HT instead. Today's 'paper actually had a lot of food for thought. On various angles, and not just some 'issue of the day' like the kidney racket or something... Many are mediated - in other words, representing another (not the writer's) point of view, but made the richer, for drawing us - the reader -'s attention to it...
The Faithscape page held me... as Renuka Narayan replicates a poem written by Lance Naik Sukhwinder Singh, the first liver recipient of AORTA. To quote her: Here's how the young soldier thinks of the dead lady whose liver now keeps him alive and fit. Calling his poem Jigar Ki Dhadkan
Khushkismat hoon main ki mamta ke aanchal mein jee raha hoon,
Tootne lage the jo sapne dil ke, un sapnon ko phir se see raha hoon,
Ek maa hai jisne janam diya aur laad pyaar se paala hai,
Ek maa hai jisne jeevan diya aur girte hue samhala hai,
Apna jigar ki dhadkan dekar so gayi sitaaron mein
Bhool na paoon kabhi main unko chamak rahi jo taaron mein
Aasmaan ke taraf dekh ke ghoont sabr ka peeta hoon,
khushkismat hoon main ki.....
RN also writes an aside on Uddhav (eeks - not the Shiv Sena variety - the original one) as he brings a message from Krishna to Radha, in her other article on the same page. Uddhav feels awkward at having no real message to deliver, and fakes one up.
And then there is Khushwant Singh. Again, what spellbinds my attention is his quote - of Kuldip Salil's translation of Ghalib...
Dair nahin, harum nahin, dar nahin, aastaan nahin,
Baithey Hue raah-guzar pe hum, koi hamein uthaye kyon.
(No home, no hearth for us, no temple, no mosque,
Why should anyone remove us from one thoroughfare, can we ask)
And ultimately, there is Barkha Dutt with her article 'Disadvantage Sania'. Lucidly put and clearly point-put-forth, it is a joy to read. It highlights our peculiar Indian love-hate relationships, that swing between adulation and annoyance. Her analysis of what exactly makes people so uncomfortable. She highlights how the visible women in sports hold up a mirror to both our prejudices as well as our changing attitudes. She calls it a mixture of 'breathless awe' and 'bewildered fright'. How we would rather do with the sentimental do-goods of fiction than the messy reality of fact. The article - I think I said this already, but what the heck, let me just say it again - is simply brilliant.
Must say, sometimes when I watch 'We, The People' am filled with misgivings at the thought of the way the media - including Barkha - perpetrates the sensational stuff of the moment. Once I had the (mis)fortune of being sent as an 'expert' to the show by one of my corporate clients to defend their position on a certain brand. It was quite an intriguing experience seeing the episode from the inside out. I recall being totally taken aback and alarmed at the deference with which I was ushered in the NDTV offices at New Delhi into a 'special room' - as one of the key 'experts' of the day along with stalwarts such as Dipankar Gupta, Balki etc. where each of us virajmaaned with our own individual halos of importance (separate from 'we, the people' the hoi polloi that we were kept away from, till we reached the actual 'set').
And the main HT editorial today, highlights the plight of Indians who get hospitalized. Apparently, a quarter of all those hospitalized every year, slip below the poverty line for medical expenses for which they are not insured. Falling ill means entering into an unending debt trap.
In the past two years, while I have pursued my 'course-work' in sociology leading up to the actual PhD fieldwork, have often added to my growing list of topics I could have covered (but ultimately have not) for my dissertation. One has been the whole 'moneylender' thing in India... how come so many of the unscrupulous ones survive and thrive, and where the bloody hell is the 'State' in all these dealings, and why does it prefer to look away...
Vibhu (Mittal) and we have been having this conversation recently ... He is on a sabbatical right now from Google, and while he is busy being (what he calls) Mr. Mom ! , while wife Sujata helps run the company HP in Palo Alto where they reside, we are having this sporadic chat regarding publications - how they are disappearing from the West, and simply snowballing in India. Earlier I had sent in this essay by Ruchir Goswami, a classmate in the 'Culture & Media' sessions, who has done a halt-in-the-tracks analysis of the diversity of publications that come out in IITB versus those in Harvard, as written by students... At Harvard, students have carte blanche, while in IITB, any masala has to be whetted by the DOSA - Dean of Students Affairs...
Since we are talking media out here, let me speak of an Urdu sammelan recently, and cut-paste from my chat mail here:
...I was attending a talk as part of an Urdu Sammelan (lest you wonder where all i go - this was at Solapur, and of interest to me as part of the changing 'Public Culture' space being created in liberalized small town India)... and the speaker - an erudite and extremely articulate editor from Hyderabad was rueing the fact that readership in Urdu is completely dying off - and the culprit is not just the content, it is also the style - they cannot afford to print in color, nor can they bring out the latest in fashion in print : 'glazed paper'.... A huge part of the 45,000 figure you mention (Vibhu had said : On a larger level, that figure is inverted: the
... Actually, IITians just adore and devour all that is published locally. The point Ruchir is making is that the authorities refuse to recognize this is important, and one has to scrounge out time to do these 'extra curricular activities' in the literal sense of the word. In that sense, the campus is as much a reflection of the larger Indian demographic... in the sense of working within impossible constraints, and still bringing out the papers against all odds..
Like all staid media articles, let me also end on a good note (why can't we end with anger????) - Of eleven month old baby Kyson Stowell (Fate names us well!) surviving a twisted tornado and its debris.
And this faith - that the nextgen deserves the best - will keep us all going on, in life. Or to go back to the RN article, Radha laughs, for the words when they reach her, read 'Uddhav has not finished his learning yet'. Shocked, he seeks an explanation.... 'I am one with Krishna. I don't need a letter from Him. He himself is my love letter'. It is the realization that Uddhav figures - a village woman has understood the nature of faith better than he had, particularly faith in oneself, that comes from a secure belief in one's soul connection with all Creation!
Friday, February 8, 2008
The Seed-Keepers
Farida Pacha is a sociologist-cum-film-maker. I just saw her award-winning documentary at IIT, and met up with her. A group of rural women somewhere in Andhra, have taken it upon themselves to farm land lying fallow, using a variety of seeds of 'sorghum' - jowar. What I loved about the film was the format Farida uses, of a narrative within a narrative - Farida follows a group of local women who have been handed a large unwieldy movie-camera by an NGO, as they go about capturing what they see as traditional systems, that preserve and maintain a rich variety of sorghum seeds, as versus the government's regimented mono-culture of subsidizing 'one variety'.
The local women have a simply stated logic - if the men could have their way, they would plant the 'single variety' - to be able to sell the surplus for a profit to generate income... that would be mis-utilized anyway - in drink / material goods - whereas currently, the motley farming ensures a far more nutritious mix for their children through the year, rather than a monotonous 'rice' or 'wheat', which was never part of their original diet in any case.
This strikes a chord. I am just back from another trip to Solapur, and the same story is replicated there. Sorghum or Jowar prices have shot up to nearly Rs. 20/- per kg (from Rs. 7/- less than two years ago), and this is bringing about a change in diet.
Even the 'upvaas' or 'fasting' days actually seemed to be a way that the powers that be in ancient times, set a pattern for the consumption of a wider variety of protein - no rice or wheat, but 'Bhaghar', Shengdana or 'Sabudana' to be consumed through the day. Upvaas ensured a healthier diet. With prices going up across board, the poorer members of society take the 'upvaas' literally - to be a day of no food - having 'tea' whenever hungry, instead of the allowed sabudana khichdi, shengdana (peanuts) etc.
As Gordon Hopper has indicated in his fascinating PhD thesis, on Changing Food Consumption and the Quality of Diet in India, in spite of all the Planning Commissions, and so-called Food Corporation godowns that are said to overflow, the fact is that our billion plus population is eating less nutritious food than did their grand-parents across board. More a case of Planning Omission than Commission.
Wheat production has grown tenfold and rice quadrupled since 1947 - for a population that has grown from 350 million to 1100 million. And coarse grains? These have merely doubled. Pulses - grown just by 75%. Anyone with a modicum of maths can see that there is something curiously and desperately flawed about government intervention that encourages high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice, at the cost of the far more nutritious pulses and coarse grains. Little wonder that prices of these items are shooting through the roof, in a spiraling crisis.
Hopper presents irrefutable data - that i see as spine-chilling, in the light of the usual media-frenzy of a rising India, that the per capita food production - with the actual quantities of nutrients available, from 1937 to 1998 indicate that pre-independence levels were only recovered, as late as 1995. What's more, the indications are that India's diet is going to get more unbalanced, than the other way around. The supply of protein, he shows, is 21 per cent below per capita needs!
So much for rising / arriving / shining India !!
And my salaam to folks like Hopper who came here to do his fieldwork, and Pacha - and the women in distant Andhra with their 'Sanghams' for continuing to do a fab job. India is blessed as long as we will have involved folks like them.
The local women have a simply stated logic - if the men could have their way, they would plant the 'single variety' - to be able to sell the surplus for a profit to generate income... that would be mis-utilized anyway - in drink / material goods - whereas currently, the motley farming ensures a far more nutritious mix for their children through the year, rather than a monotonous 'rice' or 'wheat', which was never part of their original diet in any case.
This strikes a chord. I am just back from another trip to Solapur, and the same story is replicated there. Sorghum or Jowar prices have shot up to nearly Rs. 20/- per kg (from Rs. 7/- less than two years ago), and this is bringing about a change in diet.
Even the 'upvaas' or 'fasting' days actually seemed to be a way that the powers that be in ancient times, set a pattern for the consumption of a wider variety of protein - no rice or wheat, but 'Bhaghar', Shengdana or 'Sabudana' to be consumed through the day. Upvaas ensured a healthier diet. With prices going up across board, the poorer members of society take the 'upvaas' literally - to be a day of no food - having 'tea' whenever hungry, instead of the allowed sabudana khichdi, shengdana (peanuts) etc.
As Gordon Hopper has indicated in his fascinating PhD thesis, on Changing Food Consumption and the Quality of Diet in India, in spite of all the Planning Commissions, and so-called Food Corporation godowns that are said to overflow, the fact is that our billion plus population is eating less nutritious food than did their grand-parents across board. More a case of Planning Omission than Commission.
Wheat production has grown tenfold and rice quadrupled since 1947 - for a population that has grown from 350 million to 1100 million. And coarse grains? These have merely doubled. Pulses - grown just by 75%. Anyone with a modicum of maths can see that there is something curiously and desperately flawed about government intervention that encourages high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice, at the cost of the far more nutritious pulses and coarse grains. Little wonder that prices of these items are shooting through the roof, in a spiraling crisis.
Hopper presents irrefutable data - that i see as spine-chilling, in the light of the usual media-frenzy of a rising India, that the per capita food production - with the actual quantities of nutrients available, from 1937 to 1998 indicate that pre-independence levels were only recovered, as late as 1995. What's more, the indications are that India's diet is going to get more unbalanced, than the other way around. The supply of protein, he shows, is 21 per cent below per capita needs!
So much for rising / arriving / shining India !!
And my salaam to folks like Hopper who came here to do his fieldwork, and Pacha - and the women in distant Andhra with their 'Sanghams' for continuing to do a fab job. India is blessed as long as we will have involved folks like them.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Collateral Casualties...
Was reading a scholarly article, by Zygmunt Bauman in relation to Consumption behavior, and was struck by this paragraph - About the fading of the caring-sharing impulse in life, about turning away instead of facing up to life's challenges:
Rather than intense, sometimes tortuous and painful, but always lengthy and energy-consuming resolutions of mutual apprehensions, this sets in motion a vicious circle: in relationships, one is tempted to avoid confrontations and seek respite or a permanent shelter by turning inwards.
(Unquote)
Apt name for the article - Collateral Casualties (of Consumerism).
Bauman is so right about the way we increasingly 'resolve' our crises in our lives - by escaping, by turning inwards. Whereas, to be able to lead fulfilling lives, is such a wonderful challenge. To go out and face life, face its relationships. Same within the home too.
Our socio gang has just put together a delightful rejoinder to the perception that techies have, about those of us in 'humanities'... all this is part of the IIT Bombay Golden Jubilee year celebrations. Once our charts and comic strip is on display at the campus, shall upload it here also :-)
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)