Ten Issues - 9

1- India's Telecom Scam: How Can a Corrupt System Be Cleaned? : The telecom scam that recently forced the resignation of telecom minister A. Raja defrauded the country to the tune of nearly US$40 billion. Since telecom is an industry that links backward and forward to several others, the total economic cost could well be hundreds of billions of dollars. This scandal shows that corruption has deep roots in Indian society, but informed voters and the democratic process can help eradicate it, argues Rajesh Jain, managing director of Mumbai-based Netcore Solutions, in this opinion piece.

2- Audre Lorde’s quote “anger is loaded with information” ; When you are at the wrong end of the unjust societies, many truths that are clear to you come out loaded with information. Read complete 6 page essay on Uses of Anger. Thanks to Anu.

3-The narcissism of the neurotic by P Sainath : The Commonwealth Games were no showcase, but a mirror of India 2010. If they presented anything, it was this — Indian crony, casino capitalism at its most vigorous.

4- This is not a panel discussion : Meet four Adivasi intellectuals whose lives have changed the politics and conversations about indigenous people, says G VISHNU

5-The Burden Of Knowing By Charles Hugh Smith: Knowing what lies ahead is a great emotional burden. The knowledge that the present is unsustainable is, for many of us, a great emotional burden. It troubles our sleep, our minds, and our basic emotional well-being. Knowledge, like memory, cannot be erased at will, and thus it runs in the background of our lives, unseen by others but deeply troubling to the knower.

6- Religious Excuse of barbarity by Johann Hari: If you are engaged in an act of cruelty, there is an easy, effective way to silence your critics and snatch some space to carry on. Tell us all that your religion requires you to do it, and you are "offended" by any critical response. Erect an electric wire fence around your nastiest actions and call it "respect".

7- Microfinance is under attack. Even the normally reticent pink newspapers have now begun to bring out the inherent flaws in the microfinance model.Check some facts here- MFIs: Profiteering from poverty and Five myths about microfinance.

8- When girls fear school by Kalpana Sharma: The reasons for the high drop-out rate of girls are simple: Fear of corporal punishment, sexual abuse and the lack of basic amenities like toilets in schools.

9- Valerie Plame, YES! Wikileaks, NO! : It is the American people who should be outraged that its government has transformed a nation with a reputation for freedom, justice, tolerance and respect for human rights into a backwater that revels in its criminality, cover-ups, injustices and hypocrisies.

So savor the Wikileaks documents while you can, because soon they'll be gone. And for the government criminals of the world, and for those who protect them, it will again be business as usual.

10- Meet Dr. Dani: One of the unsung heroes of our public service institutions : . Yet, there are people such as Dani in many of the small hospitals in the country, whose toils go unheard, and whose stories go unsaid.

Thought of the Day :
Julian Assange writes in his blog: “True belief is when a voice booms ‘the prisoner shall now rise’ and no one else in the room stands”.

Development is Uneven, Get Over It

Adapted from the blog post of William Easterly

This a 20 minute extemporaneous talk at UNICEF headquarters in New York on the topic of “Inclusive Growth”. After the talk, there is a question, comment, and response session with the audience.  The full video is an hour, if you are really a masochist. (Try this link if the video player above doesn’t work.)



To summarize the talk: success is intrinsically uneven, so development and growth is intrinsically uneven, not “inclusive”. (See the earlier post about the fractal stubborness of uneven geographic wealth.) In this talk, I also mention how remarkably uneven success shows up in just about every field of endeavor. One way this shows up is in a “power law”: there is such a strong negative relationship between the frequency of success and the scale of success that we have to use a logarithmic scale (i.e. a scale where every unit increase means multiplying by 10)  for both to be able to fit the extremes onto the graph, like the one below:



There is no evidence that large-scale redistribution programs can succeed without killing off growth, but targeting things like health and education to the poor has worked and could work even more. Lastly, the best thing of all you can do for “inclusive growth” is asserting the individual human rights of all, including women, gays, and religious, racial, and ethnic minorities. For more detail to fill out these ideas, please watch the video.

UPDATE: Answer to how many Beatles  hits out of 188 recorded songs on their 14 albums are hits today: 15. Even the most successful band in rock history could only produce a lasting hit about 8% of the time (please draw your own profound insights into the intrinsic unevenness of success and non-inclusive growth).

Travelouge

In plucking the fruit of memory one runs the risk of spoiling its bloom -Joseph Conard.

A journey back to Nanital has keep me guessing about this quotes. I have grown up in Nanital till the age of five years. There is always a sense of excitement attached to old memories. Especially, of the places where one grows up.

Memories are altered by present day reality and the sweetness is lost. We are grown up on the tales of childhood and in weaving an endearing and engaging past times. There is tale made by elders about ours association with these places. Only fogy scenes appear in the mind about childhood days when even memories were not even saving in the brain. Back then, life was blossoming with the present. Neither care for future and nor drag of yesterday.

When I want to re cherish those moments and reached to the place after twenty years, everything was changed. I was hoping for the time frozen land of my memories welcoming me with a cheer. All the landscape was different than imagined. Strangely, I met the faces who shared their time with me in long back. The passing age had taken place the effect and photographs of the memory were becoming altered with present.

I visited my LKG school back after 22 years. The school has become remain scant of the past. The walls are falling and the church appears as centuries old due to poor maintenance. The whole place appear as an archaeological site but the schooling is still continued. there. New people are there in the school and few classes have been converted to boarding. Memories have fallen into a abyss and given place to the reality.

I didn't visited my UKG school and old house due to this fear of change. A lot have been changed there. UKG school has been converted into hotel. And new constructions and roads have changed the old landscape. This was for the good for the people. I need store of memories to tell stories in the old age. Reality will tamper the timelessness of memories and tales.

May be I am in a making stage of romantic. Preservance slows down the decay yet life always looks full of energy in the past. Only youth and old can bear the risk of being romantic. One full with dreams, enthusiasm and idealism & another with experience and memories. A Realist turns into romantic is a sign of old age. My mind is aging faster than the body !

I am alone and thinking a line of Fyodor Dostoevsky : The characteristics of our romantics are to understand everything, to see everything and to see it often incomparably more clearly than our most realistic minds see it...

Complex System

Ecologist Eric Berlow doesn't feel overwhelmed when faced with complex systems. He knows that more information can lead to a better, simpler solution. Illustrating the tips and tricks for breaking down big issues, he distills an overwhelming infographic on U.S. strategy in Afghanistan to a few elementary points.



I agree with the talk as understanding big terms as 'development' and 'sustainablity' is like dealing with the complex system. I have myself reached this conclusion with the help of fluid dynamics. That might sound like an unconventional explanation for the readers. When you create any index or threshold level, it is like checking turbulence and laminar in the flow of fluid. Turbulence is flow characterized by recirculation, eddies, and apparent randomness. Flow in which turbulence is not exhibited is called laminar. And therefore many conditions should be included before making any empirical formula.

This talk helps in understanding interconnectivity of the subjects and diversity needed in the education. Monitoring, managing, and coordinating the information collection and cataloging of activities of a process result in huge amount of data and interconnected sub - process. The broad spectrum can only be understand in the simpler way by going from basics to complex looking phase and returning with the simpler explanation. Now, the level of dependence of process on various parameters can be well defined and analysed.

This we often do in the Mathematics. From rockets to stock markets, many of humanity's most thrilling creations are powered by math. So why do kids lose interest in it? Conrad Wolfram says the part of math we teach -- calculation by hand -- isn't just tedious, it's mostly irrelevant to real mathematics and the real world. He presents his radical idea: teaching kids math through computer programming.



The fear of people to deal with complexity and maths hinders the establishing process to reach the estimative conclusion. Nature does not work in the mysterious way. The mystery element is little complex yet transparent for observation for everyone. We need for computing and less repetition !

Example: Key observations from the ICKM conference this year (October, 2010 ) by Nimmy,

Quote of the Day: Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein

We, the people

When an individual fights in enabling the voices of the powerless to be heard and exposes the corrupt game behind power corridors, one faces the persecution from the people in power. Julain Assange (wikileaks) commitment to transparency, peace and justice by exposing and holding governments to account for closed room deals, human rights abuses and for fearless challenges to censorship in any form is cheer worthy.

Exclusive: The Wikileaks Manifesto, by Julian Assange.
Interview of Julian Assange ;

I have also written on wikileaks before on my blog. : Why the world needs WikiLeaks !
Read more in detail and well crafted : Wikileaks is Good for You and Me

Personal Stand on Transparency:

Capitalism and Democratic political system may not be an effective model, but it provides relative more space to an individual. Nationalism has always served the regional interest of the elites. Socialism and Islam are forms of political nihilism, and that both contend that the life of the individual has no intrinsic meaning or value outside of their systems. One ascribes meaning to the individual as a unit of society and its servant, and no more than that. The other ascribes meaning to the individual as a debtor to and servant of a supreme being, and no more than that. Still, I prefer liberal-democratic discourse – rather than an ethnic-nationalist one over any system.

Even ISM is always hijacked by group in power to fulfill their own goals. Any political, social or economic institution/system made by human will always be incoherent and suppress the uniqueness and individuality of the participant. Only, an individual with the consciousness can change the world !

I stand for free and universal availability of knowledge in the public sector. The problem lies that we love escapism.We prefer the heavy dose of entertainment rather sharing our resources with the people. I will put ten points (thanks tai) on ours typical attitude toward anything.

1. We don’t push the envelope.
2. We reinforce stereotypes
3. We don’t know the ‘reality’ of the world.
4. We love to be divided and ruled.
5. We love the fact that the ‘system’ will take care of everything for us.
6. We don’t provide alternatives.
7. We dare not try to correct our system lest it open the Pandora’s box.
8. We are happy where we are. We are happy to be ignorant.
9. We love talking about being the victim of larger forces.
10. We are afraid of what our family, society even what the countless person will think and react about our actions.

People love 'entertainment'  and 'gossip' rather embracing the truth. That is one line conclusion of all this shouting. People feel helpless and timid in front of the problems. Hence, they reject mind and simply submit for numbness that gives an easy solution for all problems, EAT, WORK, PRAY and be ENTERTAINED at any cost. So the virtual cocooned world of create a self perpetuating cycle with no breakthrough for a new element. People have good intention but unable to take action due to their resignation of mind. Mainstream don’t think, it just follows like sheep' herd to the authority.

We, the people have just lost anger against unjust practices. We can't fight corruption in big issues and can help to keep it more transparent. This is the first step taken for the justice for everyone.

Meanwhile the optimists are looking for new hope in wikileaks with respect and honour, Indian media is being ashamed by Nira Radia tapes controversy (Thanks POC). This is India;

"There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy." — Joseph Pulitzer