India speaks

Farakka Water Flow

2009-04-23T07:15:00.002+05:30

Bengali Blogs

2008-03-20T04:17:00.002+05:30

Of late I have started writing more in Bengali and here is a list of my Bengali Blogs :

1. Sachalayatan : This is my main blog site.
2. This is the secondary one in wordpress, here I keep backups.
3. This is for publication in mukto-mona, a secular humanist site.
4. Last but not the least, my favourite somewhere blog.

Please come and read those pages as well.

The News in China

2007-08-17T15:14:00.000+05:30

Today I was watching a Chinese news channel broadcasting news in English. It’s like news broadcast by Doordarshan 20 years ago. There are no specialists present in the studio to discuss things. There is on boring woman taking pain of going through the entire news. There are no graphs, no analysis, nothing. The Chinese news is also similar to this one only. The media in China are at least 20 years behind of Indian counterpart. Everywhere in the news, the signature of socialism is bright and visible.

Let’s dig deep into the news contents. It was showing the Chinese premiere visiting Afghan and Iranian counterpart to talk to them. The reader summarized their comments without any analysis. Next, the domestic issues were presented. The price of pork (main source of meat in China) has been gone down this week by 1.2%. However, the other meats (Chicken and Lamb) have jumped once again. At the end of the scoop, she reminds us that price of pork has been doubled this year due to the shortage of sources. It’s really pathetic. I think if the price of Chicken doubles in any state of India within a year then that could be a good enough cause to vote that particular govt. out of the power. Poor Chinese people seem to forget protests and they have to live in a harsh capitalist society. It seems even USA is less capitalist than ‘Communist’ China.

Next the news about pollution came on screen. China is banning half of the cars from the roads of big cities to reduce the pollution. This is a reaction to the reports that most of Chinese cities are over-polluted. The reader added that the aim is to offer the Olympian guests a better China. The way to achieve half-ban is very simple – ban odd numbered cars on a day and the even ones on the next (between 8am to 8pm possibly). So, if you are a patient and need to use the car, I don’t know what you’d do. Should you wait for a day? Or take permission from some authority to drive (nothing similar was mentioned though)? Only China knows.

The trade news consists of the statements made in a single press conference. Some minister had warned a few countries not to carry out anti-dumping investigations on various Chinese products. He threatened them that China will deal the issue through WTO, in case any negative steps are taken. It seems like single news but the news composer has managed to disintegrate the news into two parts – one against some ‘friendlier’ nations (like Russia and Mongolia) using friendlier tones and the other against some rich competitor nations (like US and Canada) using harsh words. The selection of words was really praiseworthy, who says Chinese are weak in English?

Only in a few lines the reader completed the ‘irritating’ issue of China blocking the entry of Taiwan in the UN. China does not recognize it as a sovereign state, since it considers Taiwan a part of China (no reference to people of Taiwan at all, it seems that Taiwan is a barren no-man’s-land). So, that’s what Taiwan is.

The last one was on Chinese children in a ‘summer camp’ organized by the Govt. (once again!!!). The children are taught some self-dependency and creativity. They do learn organizing rooms, washing own clothes and dishes. And the afternoon is open for all to play. That’s the nicest piece of news I watched. The focus on quality of children is something totally missing in Indian Govt activities. I can China in multiple ways, but the foresight to create ‘quality’ children is really nice and should be replicated in India as well.

Einstein on Religion and Science

2007-08-01T08:48:00.000+05:30

Any Scientific minded person who considers himself as a religious or an atheist, should read thses wonderful articles of Albert Einstein. These are, in a sense, an eye-opener to me, that how beautifully one could express how religion and science can be reconciled. There are four master-pieces, all of them are worth reading at a stretch. I know there will be many religious people claiming that Einstein was a ‘deeply religious’, but what I found here, that he defined the religion in totally a different way to build himself as ‘deeply religious’. Let’s go through a few excellent quotes.

On how the religion has come :

“With primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious notions - fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death. Since at this stage of existence understanding of causal connections is usually poorly developed, the human mind creates illusory beings more or less analogous to itself on whose wills and actions these fearful happenings depend. Thus one tries to secure the favor of these beings by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices which, according to the tradition handed down from generation to generation … This, though not created, is in an important degree stabilized by the formation of a special priestly caste which sets itself up as a mediator between the people and the beings they fear …”

Problems in the above definition of religion and his own view :

“Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. … I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. … The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this. “

On morality :

“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.”

In praise of religion (article 1 and 2):

“The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. If one were to take that goal out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind.”

Defining a religious person and religion (Article 3) :

“a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to which he clings because of their superpersonalvalue. … Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts.”

In support of Science :

“For example, a conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against the doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs.”

This is exactly where he sounds like an absolute Atheist :

“Nobody, certainly, will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help, and guidance; also, by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea in itself, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history. That is, if this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him? … The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God. “

How religions with ‘personal God’ will play around Science :

“To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. “

A request to religious leaders to modify their approach to religion :

“In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests.”

Again restricting religion in the domain of idealism and attitude :

“As regards religion, on the other hand, one is generally agreed that it deals with goals and evaluations and, in general, with the emotional foundation of human thinking and acting, as far as these are not predetermined by the inalterable hereditary disposition of the human species. Religion is concerned with man’s attitude toward nature at large, with the establishing of ideals for the individual and communal life, and with mutual human relationship.”

On in-community brotherly love :

“For while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. “

Overall, I feel the articles are really great. The gist is - Science and Religion are friends is they stay in their own ground. Science should not try to guide what is worthy and what is worthless, what we should do and what we should not. At the same time, Religion should not try to describe how the nature works, neither should it insist anything to be ‘created’ by God as a person. He condemned the idea of ‘religion of fear’, that is, the idea to tell people to be good only because some Omnipotent God will punish them otherwise after death. Overall, these come under one of the best read articles of my life time - they sound very strong.

Links once more.

Around Shanghai

2007-07-29T21:38:00.000+05:30

After long dilemma, I walked out of my home in this weekend at last. I went to see the real and fake marketplaces of Shanghai, as well as the riverside.

I started from my closest Xujiahui metro station. The station has a couple of lines passing through it – line 1 and line 4. My destination was the station named ‘Shanghai Science and Technology Museum’. In the platform, there was a set of ticket counters along with automated ticket vending machines. As a newcomer, I did not risk the vending machines, rather went to the counter and bought the tickets. Then passed through the check-in gate (similar to Kolkata Metro), and took the stairs to reach the platform. The platform looks similar to any of the Kolkata Metro platform except one piece of add-on. There is a single platform shared between up and down lines – and each end of the platform is covered by glass frames. The glass-frames also have doors placed in between. When a train stops, each of its doors stops at one of the doors of the frame, then both opens up simultaneously. The reason is crystal clear: there is no scope for anybody to jump in the line, either accidentally or to commit suicide.

There were five stoppages between Xujiahui and People’s square – the place where I had to switch to line 2. It took around five minutes a station. In People’s square, however, the add-on was missing. I felt probably safety is beaten by the cost – what is affordable for a posh station like Xujiahui, is not affordable for another station. However, I went up and then walked about half a kilometer through an underground tunnel, to reach the line 2 station. The directions are in English and Chinese, so there is no trouble if you follow them. But, please don’t at least expect anybody to speak English. The line 2 actually goes under the river to reach my destination, although there is no unique experience for that as the underground tunnel is as dark as it is in any other places. Ultimately, after five more stations, I reached the destination.

The metro is really crowded, even in the weekend. I can easily project the situation in a weekday – office time. It would be no better than a Kolkata Metro experience. The frequency of trains is high – a train in a couple of minutes. Even in the weekend, all seats are occupied in every train, although standing is comfortable. And there is crowd in the platform, at the escalator, inside the tunnel or at the shops. I heard that China is the most populated country in the world. I saw it today.
Most of the ‘Shanghai hawker’s market’ is underground, attached to these metro stations. The beggars and footpath-sleepers also find comfortable home out in the stairs of the Metro. There are escalators, but they are only to go up. To go down, you have to take stairs. Shanghai streets are almost free of beggars, may be because the authorities are too strict about them. The authority keeps the city ‘look clean’ but the real beggars come out of their den at night. I could see a glimpse of them underground. The pattern of the beggars is same as that in India – ranging from a blind playing a flute to a mother carrying a child. However, it seemed to me, they are a little bit better dressed than their counterparts in Kolkata.

Leaving aside the crowd and beggars, when I reached the station and came up to the open air, I was really charmed. The grand building of ‘Shanghai Science and Technology Museum’ is in front of me. It requires a little knowledge to estimate that it’s been a grand product of a huge investment (later I came to know that the amount is 1.78 billion yuan, i.e. 9 billion Rs) to promote science among the children. Although I am a little bit skeptic of how this kind of museum can promote scientific mind, I have no option but to respect the efforts made. After taking a few photographs, I walked into the market. I had already read about it in a site that asked foreigners to start bargaining at one-fifth of the quoted price. I did it and bought a kimono type dress along with a cotton shirt with Chinese handicraft. The cost was 80 and 100 yuan respectively. I did everything perfectly, from starting with one-fifth to sticking to it and act as I am not that interested in the object. Yet, at the end the owner was happy to sell it, and I was a little bit irritated as it seems I got ‘cheated’. However, the consolation is clear to me - how shamelessly can you bargain? Blaming my ‘shame’ to put lowest digits to bargain with, I started for Nanjing Road, again via Metro.

The interesting thing that I saw in that small market was a shop named ‘Gulistan’. As per the hoardings, it serves Turkish and Uighur foods, but they are no different from Indian kebabs. It is a gift of Chinese western part that is closer to central Asia and India.

The Nanjing Road is the shopping capital of Shanghai. It is said that an investment of $2 billion is being added to this road by 2010. It is not a traditional road as it was a few decades ago. Now it’s a pedestrian road, paved with tiles, with high-rises on both sides. I started walking towards the bund (river) and the old Shanghai came close to me. There are old style buildings, with arch shaped cantilevers, and red colored building supported by additional steel structures outside. The ground floors of these buildings are full of shops, mostly selling clothes, jackets and chop-sticks. It is absolutely a cousin of Kolkata Esplanade area, only missing a couple of cinema halls. The old narrow roads, the market beside, the traffic jams and red buildings, all point to a colonial cousin of Kolkata been nurtured by the British half a century ago.

I took a ride to the sightseeing spot of the bund (river). It was an underground journey, crossing the river in a small single compartment closed trolley. I bought the ticket at 45 yuan and ultimately it was useless. I thought I would see a bit under the river, but it was just another blind tunnel. On the other side, the arrangement for watching the river was fully perfect, with lash green lawns and pavements beside the river. The tallest building of Shanghai is also located nearby, although it’s difficult to recognize it as a ‘building’ at all. It looks more of a tower, with a couple of spherical balls attached to its belly. Later I discovered that those balls are basically restaurants with 360 degree view of the city. I am already planning to visit the place once more and obviously to visit the restaurant in the evening.

The river was another cousin of the Ganges, although less wide. However, the skyline is full of skyscrapers. After spending half an hour beside the muddy river water, I started back.

At the time of return, the Nanjing road looked closer to the fifth avenue in NY than Esplanade of Kolkata. The gorgeous lighting and the innumerable shopping malls does not only show the advances China has made in last couple of decades, but also signifies how we have lost our ways in a harsh, capitalist world. The Nanjing Road Metro station is full of beggars, yet nobody dares to come up and create inconvenience to the rich pedestrians, who are busy in window shopping. Is it a good move for the Government to deny them a few bucks more? Or is it good to keep them away underground? I know, it takes a full-length debate to come to conclusion. However, leave apart morality, that’s how China is going ahead.

Phantoms in the Brain

2007-07-07T01:35:00.000+05:30

"Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is." - Bhagavad Gita.

Have you ever heard of Bill Marshal, an ex-Air Force Pilot, who met a stroke and lost some of his brain functionality? Since then, his capability of dealing with numbers was lost. He could explain you the fighter planes and share his experience of flying with them. But once you ask him about what is the value of one hundred minus three, he fails to answer. Not only that he can’t deal with numbers at all.

Did you hear the story of Mirabelle Kumar, a cheerful young lady, who was born without her hands? But she used to feel the existence of her hands from her childhood. Philip Martinez, who lost his arm in a motorcycle accident in San-Diego freeway, feels pain in his non-existing elbow and fingers.

One might not even heard of Diane Fletcher, a lady who survived an accident from carbon-monoxide fumes, could not recognize or count any object - largest letters on an eye-chart or number of fingers shown. Literally, she was a blind - would have failed all standard tests of blindness. But, she could pick up things or walk or even place a letter in the letter box with dexterity - without any help or even without touching the slit of the letter box.

A more interesting case was that of Ingrid, a Swiss woman, who suffered a brain damage to lose the visibility of continuity of motion. She could perfectly read books or cook in the kitchen but if she looked at a person running, she could only have seen a succession of static snapshots of the continuous motion.

The history of James Thurber sounds more common to us. He lost one of his eyes at the age of six, and later lost the vision of the other eye in a gradual process. At the time he became blind, he claimed that he could see a fantastic world full of surrealistic images. He could see bridges rise lazily into air, like balloons. He used his 'vision' creatively and drew a lot of whimsical cartoons and pictures, those became very popular.

There is a story of one-hand clapping also. Mrs. Dodds, who was paralyzed on her left side of the body after a stroke, knew that it was working very well. When she was asked to clap, she just made clapping movement with her right hand and was confident of her action.

Last, but not the least, the amazing story of Arthur, the son of a diplomat from Venezuela, who met a near-fatal accident and went to coma. Once he's back from coma, he could recall all the past and seemed to be normal with respect to outward appearances. But he had one credible delusion about his parents - that they were imposters, posing as his parents - and nothing could convince him. He even recognized the facial similarity with his 'actual' parents, but never agreed that they are his parents - even he conjured up some imaginary reasons as justification as why would they pose as his parent.

All these and much more are the topics of the book I am going through - Phantoms in the Brain by V. S. Ramachandran, an eminent neuroscientist. He explains all these cases in depth without using much of jargons in Neuroscience. He starts with an assumption of our brain as a set of black boxes and then gradually goes onto describe each one's functionality and how they interact with each other and the limbs. More importantly, other than the above mentioned and many more case studies, he devises a few simple experiments those let us understand his point of view properly. In one of his later chapters, he explains the relationship between our brain and the image of God from the angle of Neuroscience as well as Evolutionary Psychology. In his concluding chapter, he deals with the apparent philosophical question - what is a self and what is consciousness - and how these are closely linked with our brain.

The book I would recommend for the readers who like to explore new fields and want to know about a vaguely understood area of science - neuroscience. As a deeply scientific-minded reader, I enjoyed the book from beginning to the end. It gives me the feel that how correct Newton was when he said :"I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

Blogs on Scientific Philosophy

2007-07-06T23:12:00.000+05:30

A few interesting posts I have come across over wordpress thanks to wordpress tag surfer. The first one discusses how the knowledge was developed in ancient civilizations and wherefrom it started to go dark. The blogger discussed about early socirty, mythology-religion development, trade and economy and also how the religion evolved. He did not forget to mention a few wise men of ancient greece (his writing is Europe oriented).

The next one tries to explain the relationship between stress and development. The blogger diagramatically described how the fear is related to stress-development gap. And he also examplified in support of his hypotheses, with modern day issues and reactions.

The last one talks about the critical thinking - to explain how we accumulate knowledge. I have pointed out the similarity of his writing with Dawkins' letter that I have already discussed and translated too.

Happy blogging, keep it up.

Pollution in Shanghai

2007-07-05T15:50:00.000+05:30

It's evening time in Shanghai. The sky is cloudy and the air is misty. The environment is so hazy that I can't see a high-rise a kilometer away. A few days back, I've reported that a heavy downpour has made the air hazy. I think that's not only the downpour - it's pollution too. The particle density in Shanghai is so high that the fog seems to be automatic in the dusk. To me, China developed too fast to ignore the environmental aspects.

The links are the updates on the
1. BBC
2. The International Herald Tribune.

Can Smokers be Wiped out by Natural Selection?

2007-07-05T12:12:00.000+05:30

One interesting thought!! Can Natural Selection wipe out the smokers from the Earth after years of evolution? The study results point to a similar direction.

First of all, the smoking habit has to be a genetic characteristic (inherited property in other words) to be qualified to take part in evolution. Scientists, in fact, claim to have discovered the gene linked to smoking habit. The study by Dr Hidetoshi Nakamura of Keio University in Japan looked at a particular gene known to have an effect on how people process nicotine. In the human body, nicotine is mainly metabolized by the gene CYP2A6.If people are not very good at processing nicotine, then they are less likely to be interested in smoking and less likely to continue if they do start. In another study by Dr Robert Walton, of Oxford's clinical pharmacology department, variations of a gene known as the dopamine D2 receptor gene, or DRD2, reveals whether individuals are genetically programmed to be addicted to nicotine. One in three people is born with the gene.

Now let's see how the smoking habit can make us disadvantageous to reproduce. British researchers published a study claiming that a life of cigarette smoking will be, on average, 10 years shorter than a life without it. They also claimed that consistent cigarette smoking doubles mortality rates in both middle age and old age. More interestingly, Men who smoke cigarettes may experience a significant decline in their capacity to father a child, a research by a reproductive medicine specialist from the University at Buffalo indicates. Like other cells in the body, human sperm carry a receptor for nicotine, which means they recognize and respond to nicotine. The results could mean that heavy smoking overloads the nicotine receptor in human sperm and in the testes, leading to a decline in fertilizing potential. Not only that, the same study claims, smoking men also should be aware that smoking can damage their sperm DNA, passing on faulty DNA to their baby.

To sum up, smokers are likely to have less life-span with less probability to father (or mother) a child. If we bring together all theree studies, the platform for differential reproduction rate to wipe out a genetic variety seems to be in effect. Isn't those enough to stop spreading the genes for smoking? To answer in brief : No, as memes are there to manipulate.

This is where importance of memes comes to picture. Let's take an example of Indian women. They generally don't smoke because in Indian societies, smoking by women is almost prohibited. So, they carry the 'smoking gene' to pass it to the next generation as successfully as other women would have done. The smoking gene doesn't stop spreading because of the meme present in Indian societies to prevent women from smoking. The strong Indian social structure defies the Natural Selection on smokers. In a nature versus nurture debate, in this case, nurture seems to have won - and the habit of smoking will last longer in protective societies. To wipe the habit out, we require the introduction of a new stronger meme to stop smoking itself. The meme is: "Smoking is injurious to health" - and we need a strong awareness campaign.

Reference : Meme and it's activities (my old post)

Darwin, DNA, Evolution, Meme, Genetics, Science

To Change the Species - Just Change the Genome!!

2007-07-04T17:39:00.000+05:30

The news appeared in most of the leading newspapers that scientists have successfully transplanted the entire genome of one species of bacteria to another. This is carried out by the institute lead by J. Craig Ventor, a prominent participant in the human genome sequencing.

The researchers worked with Mycoplasma mycoides (a microbe that infects goats) because it has one of the smallest genetic blueprints of any known self-replicating organism and lacks cell walls, making it easier to insert new DNA. They isolated its entire genetic code - one chromosome that forms a circle-stripping it of all its proteins, and then added genes to make a host organism blue (to make it easy to pick out in a Petri dish) as well as resistant to the antibiotic tetracycline. The scientists added close relative Mycoplasma capricolum (another goat pathogen) to a solution containing M. mycoides' genetic material and gently mixed it for a minute. After three hours of incubation, the resulting microbes were exposed to the antibiotic tetracycline.

The Evolution and Natural Selection are played once more in the labs as the variants having favorable mutations (artificially imposed) survived and the rest perished. After three days, large colonies of blue, antibiotic-resistant microbes had formed. Roughly one in 150,000 of the M. capricolum microbes had absorbed the new DNA and transferred it to daughter cells. The daughter cells displayed no trace of their original DNA while taking on the entire form and function of the original bacterium.

The ultimate goal is to make cells that might take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and produce methane, used as a feedstock for other fuels. Such an achievement might reduce dependency on fossil fuels and strike a blow at global warming.

Scientists remain unable to create synthetic life in the lab. "If we're trying to understand the origins of life and cellular life, it would be ideal to have all the chemical components in a soup to spontaneously go together and form a cell", Venter says, "We're a long way from that."

References :
1. Sciam
2. NYT

DNA, Evolution, Genetics, Origin of Life, Science

My Third Article on Mukto-Mona

2007-07-04T10:21:00.000+05:30

My third bengali article also got published at Mukto-Mona yesterday. The topic was the Dawkins' letter to his daughter, that I have discussed previously. There are a few good Bengali Articles present in the same site. I would recommend one to read Avijit Roy's "Amader Kajer Swikriti" (Recognition of our work), that covers a brief history of atheism along with a history of struggles those Mukto-mona had gone through. The context of the article is the receipt of Jahanara Imam Memorial award, that is given for encouraging free thinking in society.

Coming back to the article, I tried to change the context of the letter so that it becomes acceptable to the public in general, especially to the people of South Asia. I have mentioned the examples (castes and dogmas) to suit South Asian readers.

My next assignment is foing to be a translation of one of my all time favourites - The God Delusion. The first chapter of the same book has already been translated and kept in the mukto-mona site. I am trusted with the translation of at least one chapter from the same. I am planning to take the same route - replace the original examples with the South Asian ones. Given that a Bengali reader is going to be most probably from this region, it's my responsibility to make the translation smooth to him. An overdose of references to the Catholic Church and their activities might not get a warm welcome from people here.

Once I am done, I will definitely come up with the same in my blog.

An Indian Restaurant in Shanghai

2007-06-30T21:55:00.000+05:30

Today I visited the Indian Kitchen, an Indian Restaurant in Shanghai. To get the road direction, I called them up and some Chinese girls greeted me. As expected, the conversation with them was futile; they called up an Indian to carry on. Getting the tone of an Indian in a foreign land is like a song of a bird in the morning. I wished to carry on the conversation a little more, but it was a short-lived one. I got the road-map.

In the evening, I started for Indian Kitchen. Before that, I took the address from the internet and a Chinese transcript of the same from a colleague. The Chinese transcript proved to be the key to reach the restaurant. I could dare to ask the road direction (at least a few silent gestures and hand-directions) from the pedestrians. Contrary to the culture in India, whomever I asked was at least able to approximately tell us where the location is, despite the fact that it is not a famous place to visit. In India, most of the people on the roads of a busy city do not know about the surroundings at all. Soon, I entered he small roads from the broader ones. Astonishingly, even those smaller roads are equipped with pedestrian signals and cemented pavements. And the roadside were full of small restaurants, small shops and massage centers. The houses in the backyard are mostly like Indian houses (resembles saltlake in Kolkata or Jubilee Hills area in Hyderabad). Each one is an entity separated by tall wall surrounding it. The flat culture is thriving in Shanghai with skyscrapers all around yet these small houses do exists. They at least have a free sight of the sky and a few more trees than the flat-dwellers.

The entry to the restaurant was decorated in an Indian style, with garlands and portraits of Hindu gods. I entered and felt the deviation from my expectation at the first sight. The first and the most striking difference was the scarcity of Indians inside. Most of the customers, as well as the waiters were Chinese. However, after a close look, I saw that the kitchen cooks were all Indians – south Indians in particular. The Indian boy, with whom I talked to, met us with a smile. He’s Ambrose from Tamilnadu. I saw that he was communicating with other Chinese waiters at ease – of course in Chinese. Soon, I became familiar with another Indian boy. They came to Shanghai three years back, and can speak in Chinese. I did not ask him more questions, although I think I should have.

Although the waiters are mostly Chinese and as usual are very poor to communicate in English, they were dressed up in traditional Indian dresses. Men were dressed up in golden color Kurta-Sherwani and women in pink Salwar-Kameez, with golden color embroidery on it. The interior is decorated with Tanpuras and Tablas, to conjure up an Indian image. One can match the experience with a Chinese coming to India and having food at a so-called Chinese restaurant. The men and women are dressed up in Chinese traditional dresses and the people who come to eat are all Indians.

There were Chinese couples coming to experience Indian food for the first time. The waiter (Indian one), was explaining Indian course sequence to him – kebabs first, biriyani-curry next and gulab-jamun at the end. To simplify the choices, they have what we call an Indian aggregate meal that we call a thali in India, consisting of one item each from the all three sections. Besides, there were Indian versions of the Chinese foods as well. The couple ordered one such thali. Soon, the kebabs reached them and they were really happy with the food. We had a normal dinner with a lamb kebab and a curry-bread combination. The cost was 130 Rmb, with 6 Rmb tips. In Shanghai standard, I cannot call it costly.

Yesterday, while searching in the net, I found many Indian restaurants around. I was a little bit skeptic of how really an Indian restaurant is defined, since I know that Indians are not present in high numbers here. The entire concept of Indian restaurant abroad, serving NRIs a home-like food, has been trashed in Shanghai. There are Indian restaurants serving the local population, with the customized menus those suit the locals.

Tomorrow, I am planning to visit a nearby Uighur restaurant named Shanghai Xinjiang Fengwei Fandian. The Uighur-community is from the western-most province of China, named Xinjiang. They are mostly Muslims and have a strong cultural tie with Central Asia. After all, China is a big country. If Tibet is the link between India and China, then Xinjiang can be termed as the link between China and the Central-Asia, up to the Middle-East. Same can be said for the food as well. The special item they produce is the juicy lamb-roast (kao quanyang), costs around 40 Rmb. The item is so popular, that it is advised to call them up before to confirm the availability. The other speciality is a square-shaped noodle, named miantiao. The Uighur cuisine includes laohu cai (salads with cucumbers, onions and tomato slices), da pan-ji (chicken with spices) and Xinjiang-pijiu (Xinjiang black beer).The restaurant also has a dance program starting from 7:30 in the evening and I have no idea how it will be. Chinese culture may not be as diverse as the Indian one, but there is no reason to think that it is a monolithic one.

From the above description we can easily identify the similarity between Uighur cuisine and the typical Indian Mughlai cuisine. After all, the Indian culture is an ecosystem of several cultures. And that helps us survive more smoothly inside a different culture with higher adaptability.

India, China, Shanghai, Travel

More of Shanghai

2007-06-29T15:43:00.001+05:30

Of late I’ve been writing on several positive notes on shanghai. One turn-off I have in the streets at Shanghai is the presence of smokers. People do smoke everywhere and there are I am yet to see any no-smoking zone. In India, things did improve a lot in last few years. Especially in Kolkata, it improved a lot (given the Bengali passion for intellectual cigarettes). Like Western countries, women do smoke at a high rate, so do the street-vendors. The worst is that they throw cigarette-butts everywhere. The city is kept clean by sweepers, who really work well to collect so huge garbage.

By the way, I think I have talked about a football ground near to my apartment. It also has a synthetic track around it. Now the shocker is – it’s nothing but a high school!! I sometimes forget that I am living in a country that’s ranked second in the Olympics medals tally. Compare that to the situation in India. I can remember, before 1987 SAAF Games, West Bengal State Government literally ran out of money to build synthetic track at Salt Lake Stadium. And, these people have synthetic running tracks in their schools. It’s no surprise that they are the second and we are fighting to avoid the bottom.

Beggars are not that frequent visitors as they would have been in any Indian cities. The beggars here are more civilized also. Inside McDonalds I met a similar person. He had a poster kind of thing, written in clear bold English, that he’s deaf and dumb and should be helped. While coming back home, I encounter a person who collects begging money in his hat. One good thing about the beggars is that they are all old. In India, even I could have seen young men and women, who could have added value in Indian economy, begging at the streets. I hope that those sections will soon be removed from India also. And that would be an important step towards development.

Today is the birthday of Tanya Chen, the girl who sits beside me. They arranged a small cake (delicious!!) to celebrate. The cake is cut but there were no candles. Let me add an interesting spice to this trivial update. Steven (close colleague) told that in China, gifting clocks is culturally prohibited. The reason is somewhat amazing – the sentence “I gift you a clock” is similar sounding to another sentence “I wish your death”. So, it’s considered ‘ominous’. One can note the similarity with Indian culture at this point. Had the sentences been similar sounding in any of the Indian languages, it would have been probably considered a bad practice to gift a clock in India also. Both India and China, the old civilizations of the world, are yet to get rid of what we call social superstition or the society in general.

India, China, Shanghai, Travel

Around the Shanghai Marketplace

2007-06-28T14:09:00.000+05:30

Ultimately I’m back to blogging. I’ve just finished my first assignment. It’s raining outside. And I can’t just describe how heavy that downpour is. It’s completely dark outside, cars running with headlights on. From the 9th Floor, at 3:00PM, I can’t see the roads clearly. The Shanghai skyline has also been blurred completely.

I did my lunch with KFC burger once more. I’m now doing it for a couple of days, after the initial adventure with pure Chinese foods. I am yet to launch cooking operation at the apartment. This weekend I am planning to visit a few ‘Indian’ places nearby. We’ve got a restaurant at our target list – named Tandoor. Also, I’ve seen a restaurant named Salaam nearby, maybe I’ll also visit it. However, if the prices are exorbitant, I’ll refrain myself from having food at those. It’s foolish to run behind Indian foods where I have so many things to explore with such a little time in hand.

Yesterday, I went to a retail food store (similar to a Food Bazaar) and thought of buying some vegetables to cook. But, the prices prevented me to really buy anything. After taking the trolley, the first thing I was looking for was the chicken. I saw a semi-prepared chicken body (similar to Arambagh’s chicken), priced almost at 4 Rmb/100gm. I calculated it to be 220Rs and the idea of buying chicken was dropped instantly. Then I moved to other markets – to compare prices of beef and pork. But, they were no better. However, all these foods are a kind of ‘packet-preserved’ food; the prices for these kinds of foods are higher in India also. I thought that I should buy meat from a street-vendor, might I get a better deal from him. There were many different fish items kept at a place – all freeze. The point of surprise was the egg-section. There were so many kinds of eggs present there – off different sizes and colors. I am so habituated with seeing white eggs of a particular size (poultry and on a few lucky occasions – duck), I took time to adjust to the situation. Most of the eggs were dark yellow and faded red. Some of them were even ash-colored. Sizes range from 2 times a poultry egg to a normal egg-size. However, the biggest surprise was the absence of simple white eggs – can you believe it? I guess they are not at all popular in China. If you have so many options in eggs – do you think poultry-chicken industry can survive in China?

Next I moved to an electronics section of another retail shop. Looking at a tiny iron, I asked the price. It was marked in clear English – 218rmb. I was really stunned; I didn’t expect prices would be so high in Shanghai when we all know that it’s a low-cost country. I searched on the internet to get a view of the Chinese pricing structure. Actually the price is higher because of taxes. In India, prices are same at villages and cities. But the cities have the infrastructure. So, people flood into the cities. Here, in China, to prevent flooding of people from countryside, they have imposed high taxes on each item in cities. Of course they efficiently control the flow of goods. People, who live in cities, pay more tax to get better infrastructure, that’s why cities are cleaner and less-congested than Indian counterparts.

After the dinner (again with same burger), I went out to buy a headphone. It was an irritating absence since I was not been able to listen to the songs (Chinese songs yet to be explored and added to my favourites) and was not able to chat online. I started at around 8:30 PM and soon I discovered that a lot of stores are already closed. I crossed the busy crossing and entered a less posh area, to get a view of how Chinese items are priced at ‘real’ market – where from the local people buy things. Unfortunately, after walking for a kilometer, I could see only restaurants beside me!! There are so many restaurants in that area – from a small one to a big, decorated one, there were just too many variations. On the footpath, under a tree, a person was shouting with some black packets kept in front of him. It took a while to understand that he’s trying to sell those – and some people are coming to buy those. Do you know what they were? Octopus!! The buyers were probably the local restaurant owners. Indeed octopus and squid is popular food item in Shanghai.

After a crossing, I saw the market pattern got changed – now there are a variety of stores. The dominant one among them was the real estate. The prices were displayed outside and people go inside to see the model and the sample interiors. I saw prices generally ranging from 8000 Rmb to 15000 Rmb (per sq meter) for different places. A shop also had a map of Shanghai with different pins pointing at their different real estate locations. I heard that real estate price are not that high in Shanghai as in Indian cities, but I think it’s not the case. I have to ask a few people to get it confirmed.

There were a few cloth-shops as well. I entered one and quickly realized that it’s better to come with a Chinese colleague to help me. The shop was run by an old woman, who probably had no idea of English. When I was looking for the price tag, she took her calculator and typed in 1078 to let me know the price. She was intelligent enough to understand that I did not like the price (why should I? It comes to 5500Rs!!), hence she quickly multiplied the figure with 70 and divided by 10 (took 70%) and reduced the price to catch an attention. Yet, it didn’t come under my budget. So I left for the next shop. The next shop surprised me – it was written in clear English on top of shop-entrance that “Nicco(shop name) provides excellent post-sell services. Please don’t ask for abnormal discounts to bargain with our staff.” I understood their pain – the prices are indeed exorbitant. May be, they want to prevent entry of the poor by the message – who come inside and bargain.

I went into a darker ally beside the road, to see how the shops look like at that place. Most of them were wine-shops, selling beers and other drinks. One was a tailor-shop. And there were a few barbers’ shop as well. To the contrary of Indian experience, only the tailor-shop was run by a man – others were all women.

After another crossing, I decided to come back. So far I didn’t see any electronics shop – may be after a few crossings they are present in a series. I had no time to blindly look for those. Next I stumbled upon a small shop. It has everything – from pillows to knifes, from nail-cutters to nice pots and wooden racks. Nobody is inside; people are going in, picking up things and paying a woman while coming out. The woman is having a series of notes in between her fingers – in a fashion similar to bus conductors in Kolkata. I also gestured her whether she keeps headphones as well – the answer was negative.

Just after getting out of the shop, I had a head-on collision with a Chinese boy. In India, I could have avoided a similar one, but in China I couldn’t. I noticed him (and vice-versa) before the critical time one should take to avoid a collision. But, as a natural step, I took my left. Unfortunately, he took his right and we collided. I understand the difference of right-hand and left-hand driving system has lot more to do than we think of. May be is the crowd less disciplined streets of USA one cannot feel it, but I bet, in Shanghai, one will. When our natural step would follow the left side of the footpath or to avoid close collision, the other party will move right. It’s not really my fault, but it is called diversity.

Once more, I have managed to write up a lot on my experiences, hopefully people will enjoy these episode also. Of course, I’ll keep everyone updated on my China visit. The rain has stopped, I need to go now. Bye, see you!!

India, China, Shanghai, Travel

Over to Shanghai

2007-06-26T07:38:00.000+05:30

I boarded in the Flight to Singapore on Friday night, at NSCB Airport, Kolkata. Most of the flight members were Indians and the queue to check in the Singapore Airlines Flight was longer than any Air Deccan Flight. I was really surprised to find so many Indians traveling overseas, may be sue to my lack of knowledge of Indians in Singapore.

My next surprise came with Singapore Changi Airport. My father landed there in 1989 and told me beforehand that it’s going to be an experience. The airport proved him right. You never have to walk to reach the appropriate parking bay; the floor walks (something similar to escalator) itself. The size of the airport is huge – it takes at least 15 minutes for the flight to reach the terminal after landing, that too without any disruption. There are lanes for flights to reach the terminal. There are total 68 parking bays as per wiki. The other interesting aspects of the business-oriented country are the shopping malls inside the airport. Although I did not buy anything, I saw almost everything’s available there.

The next flight took off in the morning and I was quick to notice the change in demography. Almost all the passengers are Mongolians now; we are a tiny Indian minority out there. There are announcements and displays in Chinese, those I don’t understand at all. Also, a major shift in male-female ratio of the passengers – something that I hope to discuss about in details – is in favor of women.

The next major surprise was the city of Shanghai. I was expecting a city of High-rises with a brand-new airport and a broad highway. It is more than those. The high-rises are taller, the highways are cleaner and broader and the airport is bigger than that I expected. It may not be as hi-tech as Singapore, but certainly out of comparison with any Indian counterparts. In fact I am really proud of that India is indeed compared with China, and it is estimated that India will reach the current Chinese state within next 10-12 years. The striking thing at the first glance is that people are disciplined a lot – may be because they are citizens of a metro city.

I was lodged in a Service apartment – near a posh area in Shanghai. It’s not bad, but not at all well-furnished. We need more utensils to cook (may be the Chinese don’t). Otherwise, there are ACs, TVs (all Chinese channels), five-star like bathrooms and first-class furniture. I tried to browse the TV channels and interestingly found Indian serials been telecast. Soon, I discovered that they are dubbed in Chinese and the particular channel is dedicated to Indian Soap serials only. I am still looking for information on how popular these channels are. The channel has a green maple leaf as an icon. The serial I watched was “Koshish”. The owner of the apartment is a company named Orient Manhattan Ltd, who owns a lot of similar apartments in around the area. The COO, Susan, greeted us. She can really talk in English but often takes time to figure out the correct word to express. She has a small office at a nearby place where from I was able to make my first call back to India. I also came to know that in the same compound, there are more Indians, mostly from Infosys and ABN-Amro. She bought a couple of calling cards for us, which we actually got on the next day. ISD calls are cheap in China and possibly come with lower quality than that in India. The China Telecom calling cards cost 30RMB for 100mins (1 RMB = 5.5Rs roughly).

I was out for a walk in the evening around posh Hongqiao Road area. I was a little bit helpless without Chinese money; they call it Yuan, officially named as Renminbi. I walked around to find the huge twin-towers, where the Microsoft office is located. The area around is full of malls and wide roads. Most of the buildings are 15-20 floored, with a few classic exceptions. There’s a football ground nearby, alongside a few small shops also. The security guards are similar to Indian ones, except a small difference. I wanted to confirm whether the Microsoft office is actually located in that building, they did not understand at all. When they called their officer in charge, a suited person came up. He also did not recognize Microsoft, even after I showed back of my T-shirt - “Microsoft” written in English. He tried to pattern-match it with some of the existing sign-book entries, but unfortunately, none of the MS-employees visited the office on that Sunday. So, his efforts were all in vain. He said “sorry” (how did he know that!!) and I understood the situation. None knows English – not even the minimum to carry an informal conversation – except a few privileged ones.

The next morning we were straight to the office. Fortunately, due to the previous experience, the office security persons did recognize IDC entrants and there were no problems to follow. The office was another Microsoft office, with an exceptional view of Shanghai skyline.
The lunch was supposed to be the next interesting topic. There was a restaurant in the same Plaza. I went there, along with my Chinese colleagues. They were delighted to know that I was non-vegetarian and can have beef as well. Though they didn’t order beef, may be some secret instructions or experiences before, I was prepared to have beef. The ordered items were fish and pork. The pork items were really delicious and I want to have them more while in China. The fish were sea-fish mainly and nobody knew which fish it was!! All the preparations were in fact marinated and boiled. The gravy was delicious; some of them were in fact soup-like. The favorite one was the kebab like pork-pieces colored like beets. It was simply superb!!
Yesterday I went to a KFC and found out that HSBC credit-cards were not accepted there. Today, I saw my colleagues are paying by some special cards, meant to pay restaurant bills only. Some of the restaurants accept these cards and one need to ask the acceptability before they enter a restaurant. The system is still mostly cash-based with a few sporadic efforts of cashless transactions. In India, most of the class one restaurants do accept credit cards and also the overall banking is mostly cashless. In the evening, I had some food where we used the Chinese currency – 754 for $100. I went to McDonalds and the serviceman was clever enough to help me with pictured menu-card. I had a McChicken combo at 18.5Yuan. Similar food would cost around 150Rs in India – Rs50 more. In general, food costs more in Shanghai than in any Indian cities.

While coming back, I used a Metro Railway station to cross a road. Although there are flyovers, they are less in number and pedestrians do depend on Zebras to cross the dangerous roads. The Metro Railway appears to be similar one like one in Kolkata. It’s not as clean as one would have expected it to be. The station I visited was Xujiahui (District - Xuhui, famous for the Cathedral), clearly written in English at the entry. Later from the Wikipedia I came to know that the station could be the best landmark for our place. Also, the Shanghai Metro, is much bigger railways service than single-route Kolkata Metro. Shanghai has five key metro routes compared to just one each in Kolkata and Delhi.

The similarity with India was also visible in the attitude of the people. The bus drivers are shouting at the passengers at the stops, although the buses are better ones. The hawkers and roadside beggars are present at footpath, although they are better dressed up. Streets are full of people, although they look different from Indians. They are Chinese, out to add themselves in the world order. The weather was similar to that of Kolkata - hot and humid outside, cloudy sky with occassional drizzles.

The topic I wanted to really talk about was the women in China. They are dressed scantily in Indian definition of dressing, yet they are comfortable with that. It created an impression that dressing should be different for different ethnicity – because the shape and the structure of the body are different. Mini-est skirts and string-tops do fit them. The variety of skirts and tops are really Moreover, women do heavily participate in jobs, both in formal and informal sectors. The ratio should be much higher than India. One step towards joining the big-league of nations is to employ more and more women to increase the work-force and to build a society based on equality. The employment of women in all sectors is a must. In China, there are women bus-conductors, restaurant-“boy”s, salesgirls, bank-officials and hawkers – a majority of them. Emancipation and empowerment of women should be the next Indian goal – if India at all wants to become a China in future.

As I explore more and more of China, I will keep everybody updated. It’s only tiny part of Shanghai I have travelled across; let me wait for getting a chance to draw a better picture soon.

India, China, Shanghai, Travel

Pushing the Limits of Speciesism

2007-06-18T14:19:00.000+05:30

I heard about a lot of hybrids, but never of one involving humans, except in fiction stories. Now, those stories are becoming truth, may be sooner than I expected. Britain has dismissed the plan to outlaw an effort to create a human-animal embryo. Under the new guidelines, Scientists are allowed to create three different kinds of embryos. The Gurdian notes :

"The first kind of hybrid allowed under the bill, known as a chimeric embryo, is made by injecting cells from an animal into a human embryo. The second, known as a human transgenic embryo, involves injecting animal DNA into a human embryo. The third, known as a cytoplasmic hybrid, is created by transferring the nuclei of human cells, such as skin cells, into animal eggs from which almost all the genetic material has been removed."

The scientists will be allowed to grow such an embryo for only two weeks - to develop new treatments for incurable diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. It also restricts the creation of "true hybrid" embryos, which would involve fertilizing a human egg with animal sperm or vice versa. It would also be illegal to put them inside human womb (don't know about the animal one). This kind of embryos would be the major source in the stem cell research.

The moral brigade is already started shouting against it. I got a few letters on the internet those describe it as 'Frankenstein science'. However, they might not know that Chinese have already created such an embryo for a similar purpose. Other experiments are proceeding quietly in research facilities around the world. At the Mayo Clinic, scientists created pigs with human blood. Stanford University in California is considering attempting to create mice with 'human' brains.

The new regulations came as a U turn over Britain's last decision to outlaw it. Many scientists like Dawkins put huge efforts behind it - to set morality free from religion. Dawkins said once that a human embryo is 'biologically nothing different from an Amoeba', yet we shout against its use in stem cell research as it is 'would-be-human'.

However these researches will definitely push to revisit our ancient way to describe a 'human-centric' morality. As Darwinian Evolution said and Genetics later verified, we are very closely related cousins. These experiments are taking that view a bit further. A rat with a human brain might possibly be able to suffer similar emotional pain to that of a human being. So, a 'human-centric' morality can be called an example of 'speciesism'. In this video, Dawkins talks in favor of animal rights and against speciesism.

"Today we live in a specisist world. We are automatically, without thinking, without question assume that there's one law for Homo sapiens and one law for the rest of the animal kingdom. That is speciesism. Now of course, if you object the speciesism, you are in a sense letting yourself wide open to reductio ad absurdum when people will ask - where will you stop? Should you care for cabbages because there is an evolutionary continuum between us and cabbages if you go sufficiently back? You'd be starved to death, if you are that insistent upon rejecting specisism. My answer to that is that we should not be any kind of '-ist' of that kind. We have rather a continuum as a sliding scale from Gorillas and Chimpanzees being very close to us and cabbages being very long way away. And there is no way why we should erect a wall at any particular fence. There are some animals who suffer, can think, can reason, can suffer emotions which deserve and must have a greater moral consideration from us than other animal."

He continued to make a case for other animals to be treated with minimal morality or to stretch the morality of our perception:

"What I am saying is that it's a matter of a merest accident that the intermediates happened to be extinct. That's the only thing that enables us to erect this great fence around Homo sapiens to say that there are humans in one side and the whole of the rest of the animal kingdom on the other side. It's very hard to make a purely scientific case for conserving any particular species. ... The only case I can make is the emotional case, and what's wrong with that? We are emotional beings. I feel emotional about it. I want to save gorillas, to save rhinos; I want to save these magnificent creatures which are built up over millions of years of evolution before they go forever. It's an irrevocable thing and that is an emotional argument."

I wonder what position the religious people would take on this since it cannot be called a 'human'. Will it have a soul? I'm pretty sure that liberalist and extremist religious people will fight once more. Let's wait and find out what their stance would be.

Reference : Dawkins write up on Speciesism. The list of books on speciesism at Amazon.

A Letter to a Daughter

2007-06-18T01:23:00.000+05:30

In his interview, Dawkins said about child-indoctrination and why he considers it as a child-abuse. He also mentioned that a true education of children should include teaching of all kinds of religion, including atheism. Also, they should be encouraged to have a critical view on religion, if they wish to. However, he did not actually mention how that kind of education will look like. In his letter to his 10 year old daughter Juliet, I can see a glimpse of that scientific education.

Dawkins classified belief into 'good' and 'bad' categories. He tries to answer the critical question on why anybody should 'believe' in science. He explains what is evidence and how carefully science gather it. He then cited three other popular reasons for belief - "tradition," "authority," and "revelation." He presented examples for all these and explained how they might drift one away from truth. He didn't only talk about religion, but also about language and other traditions. In the end he separates out the knowledge of "revelation", "tradition" and "authority" from the knowledge out of evidences and guided her to choose knowledge-resources carefully.

I cannot but quote a few lines from his letter. A wonderful similarity between detectives and the scientists are the way the find out evidences. Dawkins says :

"Often, evidence isn't just an observation on its own, but observation always lies at the back of it. If there's been a murder, often nobody (except the murderer and the victim!) actually observed it. But detectives can gather together lots or other observations which may all point toward a particular suspect. If a person's fingerprints match those found on a dagger, this is evidence that he touched it. It doesn't prove that he did the murder, but it can help when it's joined up with lots of other evidence. Sometimes a detective can think about a whole lot of observations and suddenly realise that they fall into place and make sense if so-and-so did the murder."

He even classified 'love' based on evidence and without evidence. He said :

"There are people with a strong inside feeling that a famous film star loves them, when really the film star hasn't even met them. People like that are ill in their minds. Inside feelings must be backed up by evidence, otherwise you just can't trust them."

And of course on child-indoctrination :

"It's a pity, but it can't help being the case, that because children have to be suckers for traditional information, they are likely to believe anything the grown-ups tell them, whether true or false, right or wrong. ... Millions of other people believe quite different things, because they were told different things when they were children. Muslim children are told different things from Christian children, and both grow up utterly convinced that they are right and the others are wrong."

Of course his most valuable guidance to her daughter comes with :

"And, next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: "What kind of evidence is there for that?" And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say."

I am trying to translate it in Bengali. In case I am done, I will update this blog to have that link too. Till then read the finest English letter from Richard Dawkins - the smartest intellectual.

Genetics to Biotechnology

2007-06-18T01:20:00.000+05:30

It was always a challenging task for human beings to produce the ‘human-hormones’ outside a human body. The reward was well known. A disease caused by the lack of this particular hormone can be cured easily by injecting that artificially produced hormone.

Let’s take the case of Insulin. A patient of Diabetes requires regular injection of Insulin since their body fails to produce it naturally. Until 70’s, the major source of Insulin was domestic mammals like cow and pig. Due to close evolutionary relationship with human beings, this Insulin was almost similar to human insulin in structure. Hence, these sources used to work for most of the cases. However, there were side effects of this method – like skin rashes.

The advent of a couple of technological breakthrough changed the entire scenario. First, the DNA was discovered. Then it was established that the amino acid sequence in DNA strands are actually replicated in ribosome to produce different proteins. In other words, the DNA code on the chromosome works as a template to the protein produced in the cell. The other milestone was the discovery of Recombinant DNA – a form of DNA that is achieved by combination, insertion and deletion of more than one DNA strands.

Bacteria have a second set of DNA molecules other than those in their Chromosome. This is called a plasmid. The successful strategy by a company named Genentech to produce Insulin uses these plasmids efficiently. Genentech researchers produced artificial genes for each of the two protein chains that comprise the insulin molecule. The plasmid is then inserted into the bacteria named E. Coli. The bacteria multiply and at the same time produced either of the two protein-chains, in presence of lactose. At the end, the bacteria are killed and the Insulin chains are separated. The protein-chains are then merged to produce Insulin.

The fact is that the person who discovered Recombinant DNA – Herbert Boyer, started Genentech. He was funded by a venture capitalist, Bob Swanson. They formed the World’s first Biotechnology firm, with a capital of close to $1000. However, when they were ready to launch their product, Eli Lilly was the market leader in Insulin business with 85% market share. Genentech avoided the collision and signed contract with Lilly to market their product. In September 1980, Genentech went public. The share price shoot up from $35 to $89 within hours of trading and both of them became instant millionaires.

The same concept of Recombinant DNA is used even today in Biotechnology, to produce artificial proteins, and getting used in every sphere of Life. A chapter of the book DNA : The Secret of Life by James Watson, is dedicated to various biotechnological efforts. The most interesting one is described like this :

So-called dragline silk, which forms the radiating spokes of a spider web, is an extraordinarily tough fiber. By weight, it is five times as strong as steel. … the silk-protein producing genes have been isolated and can be inserted into other organisms, which can thus serve as spider-silk factories. This very line of research is funded by Pentagon … soldiers may one day be clad in protective suits of spider-silk body armor.

Something that started with innovations ended up making money once more. With the advent of Biotechnology, the prime focus of research in Genetics took a new turn to include commerce in the agenda. For human society, the research that started with Watson-Crick Double Helix model slowly begins to produce fruits in direct application.

Reference:

DNA The Secret of Life by James Watson : Chapter Five titled as – DNA, Dollars and Drugs: Biotechnology
Biotechnology describes the Insulin production process.
Wikipedia
Protein Synthesis described.
History of Insulin.

Writing in Bengali

2007-06-18T01:18:00.000+05:30

For the first time I am writing in Bengali on the topics I cover in my blog. It's a great experience to write in mother tongue. The article, already published in the mukto-mona site, is again on the interview of Richard Dawkins. I was always skeptic about my Bengali writing skill, but ultimately somehow managed to produce something. One of the questions was eventually dropped from the translation since I was unable to get a fitting Bengali translation for 'compartmentalize'. I am really thankful to my wife for helping me out in crtical translations - she again proved that Bangladeshi Bengalis have superior control over Bengali. Thanks to Avijit Roy of Mukto-Mona for publishing my article. And of course thanks a lot to the Bengali word processing software, Bornosoft. It's really interesting to know that this excellent word editor (download the free version) has been developed by someone who is a doctor by profession!!

Coming back to my writing, I am planning to write up an article on Daniel Dennett's view of Atheism. Also, I am eager to write about DNA stuff I am reading from the books of James Watson. I would also write on brain and consciousness inspired by a book from V. S. Ramachandran. This time, I have to write in Bengali too. May be it will add a few extra hours of work in my weekend, but the pleasure I derive from the writing is priceless.

For next couple of months, I am going to stay at Shanghai, China. During the visit, I am planning to concentrate on China specific topics, especially on Chinese culture. I am already a little bit worried about the Chinese food and work-culture. Yet, nothing is wrong if I hope for the best !!

Bornosoft, Bengali software, Bengali editor.

The Bengali Resources at Mukto-Mona

2007-06-12T09:55:00.000+05:30

While I write on Richard Dawkins and Evolution in my blog, a group named mukto-mona have taken up their pens to write up in Bengali. It's great to see people scribing for Atheism and Dawkins in Bengali. Let me refer you all to some of the best resources available in Bengali.

1) The first chapter of The God Delusion.
2) A book on Evolution by Bonnya Ahmed - continued for multiple chapters. It is also available as a book at Bangladesh Ekushe Boimela.
3) A Richard Dawkins article on Religion and Evolution.
4) The Journey of Science to find Life - An excellent write up on modern science (especially focussing on the roots of Universe and what is Life) starting from Big Bang to Extraterrestrial life, divided into multiple parts.

The life of Charles Darwin is described in Bengali.

And of course, anybody want to publish their views in Bengali, can send it to them or join a yahoo group called mukto-mona. There are numerous good articles both in English and Bengali published at the site. I bet that anybody will enjoy most of them. To a Bengali living in West Bengal, I would recommend these article since they should know how close they are to someone living accross the border - in Bangladesh.

Atheism, Bangladesh, Bengali, Darwin, Dawkins, Evolution

The Evolution FAQ

2007-06-08T20:56:00.000+05:30

I was planning to write about Evolution FAQ for long. It's boring to fight against all apostates of Evolution visiting their own blogs. Rather, if I can prepare a platform at my own blog to fight those, I get a better opportunity pounce on them. By the way, let me first acknowledge that this particular piece is going to be mostly be compiled from various sources in Internet.

The evolution is best described as :
1. is a fact,
2. is also a number of theories,
3. is Science,
4. is also scientific,
5. is naturalistic and purely mechanistic,
6. is falsifiable,
7. is testable,
8. is predictive,
9. has been observed;
9a. in the field
9b. in the laboratory,
10. has occurred in the past,
11. is still occurring,
12. will continue to occur in the future.

Further, we can also note that evolution:

13. is not atheistic (nor Communistic, Marxist, Leninist, Stalinist, etc.),
14. is not evil,
15. is not mandated by law to be taught in US public schools,
16. is not a cosmological theory (i.e., "it don't do origins"),
17. is not a religion nor Religion,
18. is not determined by popular opinion (as can be said of any science),
19. is not a socio-political program or paradigm,
20. is not dependent on the supernatural,
21. does not claim that "Man came from apes",
22. is not progress,
23. has not, will not and cannot be proven (as can be said of any science),
24. Is not random nor relies on 'blind chance',
25. does not violate the second law of thermodynamics,
26. Does not deny (a) God(s), and finally,
27. Falsifying evolution does not prove Creation.

Sounds interesting? Continue reading ... By the way, my pick of the quote would be :

The honest scientist, like the philosopher, will tell you that nothing whatever can be or has been proved with fully 100% certainty, not even that you or I exist, nor anyone except himself, since he might be dreaming the whole thing. Th us there is no sharp line between speculation, hypothesis, theory, principle, and fact, but only a difference along a sliding scale, in the degree of probability of the idea. When we say a thing is a fact, then, we only mean that its probability is an extremely high one: so high that we are not bothered by doubt about it and are ready to act accordingly. The probability that evolution is the correct explanation of life as we know it may approach 99.9999...9% but it will never be 100%.

However I would like to pick up a few more so called technical questions to answer. The pick of the questions are :
1) What is the application of Evolution, or, in other words, can evolution predict anything?

A very good application can be the creation of hybrid species. These species are been created matching the environment they are going to live, so that they can maximize production. This is derived from the fact that nature does select. If everything were created, we would not be able to create new species.
Many predictions made by theory of evolution are proven true. Darwin predicted the existence of 'unit of heredity' that was proved to be gene. And, the genetic similarities the species share among them, are the living evidences of evolution. More recently, the same theory explains the existence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, who've mutated to resist antibiotic (e.g. penicilin), and 'selected' to become the majority and can resume attacks.

2) If humans are from monkeys then how does monkeys still exist?

Human beings did not evolved from monkeys. They share a common ancestor with monkeys. And a new species generally comes out of the other only if they are geographically isolated. So one can safely assume, that there were at least two groups of apes/hominoids, one evolved to become humans, the other became monkeys.

3) Even if we accept natural selection, what's the proof that it leads to speciation?

I should refer to the speciation events observed in the past in front of modern human eyes.

That's it from my side. I know I could have written a lot more than this, but somehow, I'm satisfied with this. If anybody else suggests me about any common misconception, I am ready to clarify him.
Further reference :
1) FAQ 1 A good technical one.
2) FAQ 2 brief but to the point.

Videos on Evolution

2007-06-06T12:19:00.000+05:30

The Discovery channel on Evolution of life on Earth is amazing and entertaining. Here's the list of of the links -
part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12. The program is named as "Walking With Monsters". In fact the entire set uploaded by TruthTheory should be watched.

An knowledgable description of the process is found in Dawkins' video -
The evolution of the eye. The full video is available in part 1 and part 2, titled The Blind watchmaker. Another video, comparatively less attractive, was the Nice guys finish first.

The wonderful story of Human evolution is at 5 parts -
part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5. The series is named as "Human Life - Evolution To Self-Evolution". It also lists the proofs gathered with respect to human evolution.

Evolution, Science, Dawkins, Darwin.

Towards a science-aware society

2007-06-03T10:33:00.000+05:30

Of late I have been writing on the ill-effect of religion to resist the science and the scientific study of nature. After writing on the Memetics of the religions, I decided to look further deep to understand why exactly science is obstructed – is the religion the root cause or human nature itself blocks the development. I discovered that the intuitiveness, a virtue of a human being, is considered to be the worst enemy of science education. In other words, human beings are programmed to oppose science instinctively. The best explanation comes in favor of it by analyzing the natural learning process of a human being.

Prior to exposure to organized study of science, children use their intuition to judge and gather knowledge about the world they see – both physical and social knowledge. The examples social knowledge can include the identification of parents and close relatives. The physical domain experiences include the observational fact that objects fall in the ground or it hurts more if dropped from higher places.

The problem with teaching children the science is not what student is lacks, but what the student has already assumed to be the truth as per physical domain experience. As an example, once a child ‘knows’ that objects fall, it’s difficult to convince him that the Earth is spherical in shape, because they perceive that people should ‘fall’ out of the bottom half of the sphere. Also, a flat world fits their observation that they can see, sometimes, in a dilemma, they pick up a false idea of a flat livable flat place on top of a spherical Earth.

Michael McCloskey, a professor of Cognitive Science in John Hopkins University, conducted a survey among adult American students to find out how scientific they are. He took the domain of objects in motion, something that people both read theories and observe a lot of times in their day to day life. He presented diagrams to depict a physical condition and asked the students how the motion of the object would be in those conditions. He asked how a ball should continue after coming out of curved tube, what trajectory a ball should fall when dropped from a moving aero plane or from the roof and many more of these. The result was strikingly different from what was expected, people went by ‘common perception’ or what we see in life. Most of them told that the ball from the aero plane will fall straight, or come out of a curved tube in a curved motion. Interestingly, when asked about the motion of water out of a curved hose-pipe, they mentioned it to be straight, since it comes into their direct space of observation.

McCloskey concluded that everyone (children or adults) builds a naïve theory in their brain out of the observations they make. These theories are often wrong and also carry casual explanations along with them. These naive theories are dominant in ancient scripts and continue to be the base of pseudo-science. A sustainable knowledge of science needs to overcome these barriers of naïve theories within a human being.

To overcome this resistance, the establishment of trustworthy source is necessary. Children, when unable to verify most of the claims, try to verify the sources of the claim. To a child, parents and the closer relatives are the most trustworthy source. So, in case science teacher in school teaches them about evolution and parents back home opposes that, then, they are bound to take the parents’ one. Not only that, they grow idea about books and newspaper those are trustworthy. They tend to believe ideas from an adult who is confident and who can map their theories to real life. Most notable point here is the trustworthiness they gather, carries to their adulthood. And it holds true for religious, political and moral beliefs also. The idea to overcome science resistance is to inject science at every level of information source, so that people understand them as trustworthy, even if it conflicts the naïve theories in mind.

In India, the presence of naïve theories in the form of superstitions is very potent. One example I can pick up, is related to “Snakes eating milk and banana”. These theories are present from religious background and get verified by the children from their trustworthy adults. I used to believe that snakes really eat them as society elders talked about them. I came to the correct knowledge only after a science campaign run on television. The naïve theories (example: firm land should be kept idle for a certain period of time to retain land-fertility) present among farmers are also the result of their intuitions, and campaigners find them difficult to replace with modern science (following crop-rotation).

The discussion above points out that we need more prominent scientists to come up at the stage, at public debates or at television programs to articulate and defend science as a unique process of acquiring knowledge. The society today, if it is superstitious and religious like that of India, is a result of egoistic apathy of the scientists, who ignore their social responsibility to convey their message to common people. More research and more innovations might bring more money to them, but ultimately, in a democracy, people rules. So, a social awareness of the science is the only way people can become scientific, or at least can consider science as a trustworthy source of information.

Science, Cognitive Science, Atheism, Evolution, Society, India

Memetics and Cultural Evolution: The Roots of the Religion

2007-05-29T01:42:00.000+05:30

What is Memetics?
The term "meme" coined and popularized by the biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene, refers to a "unit of cultural information" (cognitive or behavioral pattern) which can propagate from one mind to another in a manner analogous to genes (i.e., the units of genetic information). Some contemporary examples of meme can be popular proverbs (“Hard work pays”), gossips, health consciousness (“wash hands before eating”), nursery rhymes (even epics and religious books), conspiracy theories, terms and phrases (“Whassup”) and a lot more.

Memeplexe or Meme-complex is a group of Memes; those are interdependent and survive as a ‘colony’ of memes – such as religion, culture or political doctrines.

Memetics, coined as a similar sounding word of Genetics, is an approach to evolutionary models of information transfer based on the concept of the meme. The popular Memetics hypotheses that memes do not replicate only, but refined, recombined or modified in new memes.

Propagation of Memes
The better a meme can be copied; more it will become common part of the culture. This depends on copying fidelity (accuracy of copy), fecundity (rate of copying) and longevity of the meme. The successful propagation of memes depends on various things – experience of the individual, speculation of the individual, social censorship, distinction of source of the meme. Two communities, those who mix rarely, can be thought of as memetically isolated communities, e.g. Americans and Arabs.

Children as the media of meme propagation
As per behavioral evolution, children who are more obedient to their parents get natural selective advantage over others. This unique nature of children enables human civilization to build upon past experiences. Children, who accept the words of adults as rule of thumb, as “Don’t go to cliff of the roof”, “Don’t swim into the deep water” or “Don’t go to the forest alone”, are more likely to survive and reproduce later. When grown up, they propagate their memes, accumulated in the childhood to the next generation, and may be in a modified format. The memes that are more appealing tends to propagate more accurately than the others.

Religion as a Memeplex
Religion and the existence of God as a set of memes have got the unique appeal to human civilization. It provides plausible answers to deep and troubling questions of the nature, suggests the ‘injustice’ will be rectified in the next and one will be placed in relatively good or bad places after death depending on the performance in this life. Dawkins, in his book The God Delusion (pg 199) has provided a list of religious memes those had high survival values in human civilization.

The reasons for the high survival of religious memes include social experience, speculations and distinct source. The religious people always express their experience as positive to add the survival value to the meme, e.g. faith is a virtue and prayer is the way to seek help from God. People speculate about mysteries of nature, miracles, life and death that ensure high survival for the religious explanations. Last but not the least, the revered and distinct source (religious leader/book) adds additional survival value to it. Presence of ‘exclusivist’ memes in the organized religion is striking. For example, punishment or ostracism for heretics, apostates and blasphemers are such ‘exclusivist’ memes. These memes protects the memeplex to get infected from 'outsider memes'. One of the distinct features of Indian culture is the lack of 'exclusivist' meme, that enables India to be built on top of a unique plural society.

A reflection on the above theories can provide you clues why religious sects exist. Sects came into being due to different variation of ‘interpretation’, resulted out of different memetic evolutionary path followed by different sects. Same way, the recombination of different memes resulted in same religion to be performed in different ways in different regions.

The Roots of Religion
As we know how religion and the features propagate, we can proceed how it came into being initially. The best explanation, although controversial, I have got is from Daniel Dennett, in his book The Intentional Stance. He classified the stance of human beings with respect to an object in three ways – physical stance, design stance and intentional stance. In a Physical stance, man tries to explain the object and its’ behavior in terms of natural laws. The second one is design stance, to predict the behavior of the object as it is designed to perform that, e.g., the bird flies by flapping the wings or an alarm clock is designed to ring at a particular time. This is in effect a shortcut over the earlier one and provides advantages if established upon experience. The last one is the intentional stance, that enables personification of the object and predict the behavior as per the intention of the object. The intentional stance, very frequently gave humans advantage over other animals e.g., to identify predators (like Tiger) and cattle (Dogs). The noticable point is that the abstraction of objects is increasing in each stance. The human civilization is basically a race from the third one to the first - initially they had to take the more abstract ones due to lack of knowledge to go to physical stance. Dennett argues that it is best to understand human beliefs and desires at the level of the intentional stance, without making any specific commitments to any deeper reality to the artifacts of each and every folk psychology. The gods and the God, along with the Angels and Daemons are nothing but these personifications of these objects - survived in human societies as memes.

The Future
The clash of reason and religion is basically the clash of memes. The memes of reason are supported by evidences, those a human being can directly experience. The memes of religion are appealing and has high propagation value. The battle is likely to continue in future.

Conclusion
A memetic view of religion is undoubtedly better than any view proposed by the popular religions as the ‘first cause’ or the beginning of themselves. The explanation gives us idea on how the simple ‘personification’ of unknown objects turned into what we see as organized religion, by means of propagation of memes. The hypothesis, may have a lot of technical drawbacks, but overall is very effective in this case.

References
A bibiliography on meme.
The multi-dimensional evolution.
Susan Blackmore and her "The Meme Machine".
The Selfish Meme - a concept.
Intentional Stance made easy.

Atheism, Evolution, Meme, Dawkins, Religion.

The Richard Dawkins FAQ

2007-05-25T10:25:00.000+05:30

Richard Dawkins, the author of NY Times bestseller The God Delusion, has been interviewed many a times recently. The questions asked were mainly related to his book, the views on atheism, morality and present world. He answered all the question in a flawless and confident way. Each and every answer of him speaks about his passion and eagerness to explain his stance on every point. It's an amazing experience to watch him speak. I have tried to pick up a few commonly asked questions and his answers on different topics.

Why are you against faith?

Because, I am a kind of person who cares about the Truth. The religion and any sort of dogma are the biggest obstacle against the Truth. Not only that, I am worried about the position religion enjoys in our society. You can attack other's political view, criticise a football coach but cannot attack one's religious faith. It's a kind of immunity from criticism that religion enjoys, despite being proven to be mostly illogical.

There are billions of people across the world following their faiths and living their life. How do you describe them?

Of course, there are billions of people living their religious life and most of them are harmless people. But, they are carrying a virus of faith with them, that they transmit from generations to another, and could create a 'epidemic' of faith any time. As I said, I am a kind of person who cares about the truth and also want to see people following the truth. The truth is not a revelation, but truth that has been established though evidences and repeated experiments.

Even there are scientists who are religious. How do you feel about them?

Yeah, unfortunately there are many good scientists who do this. Although, I do not clearly understand their position in life, it seems to me, either they act like religious people consciously for some other purpose or compartmentalize their views based on the context.

Religious people claim they derive their morality from religion. Where from an atheist derive his morality?

Religious people do not derive their morality from religion. I disagree (with the interviewer) on this point. Almost all of us do agree on moral grounds where religion had no effect. For example we all hate slavery, we want emancipation of women - they are all our moral grounds. These moral grounds started building only a few centuries ago and long after all major religions were established. We derive our morality from the environment we live in, Talk shows, Novels, Newspaper editorials and of course by the guidance of parents. Religion might only have a minor role to play in it. An atheist derives his morality from the same source as a religious people do.

But, all the religious books have given moral guidance to the people, like not killing the neighbors. Why do you think they are still bad?

The religious books do talk about not killing your neighbors, at the same time they talk about not showing skins of women or killing the infidels. The God of the Old Testament, as I described, is not at all a good 'person'. The God is certainly a lot better in New Testament. However, when you pick and choose the good verses out of a religious book, the parameters those you use, does not certainly come from the religion itself. For example, when you say New Testament is better, you are certainly not using Christianity as a judge. The parameters you use, are the effect of the morality that is already with you, assimilated from different sources in your life time.

In your book, you've said that God 'almost certainly' does not exist. Why are you leaving open the possibility?

Any scientific people will leave open that possibility, that they cannot disprove whatever unlikely the event might be. I would be the first person to acccept God once evidence comes in favour of it.

So you accept Science cannot disprove God. What is the problem if people follow religions till God is disproved?

Science cannot disprove God as well as they cannot disprove Apollo or Juju or Thor with his hammer or even a Flying Spaghetti Monster creating the universe. However, we do not believe them as they are unlikely to exist. We do neither believe in fairies of Hans Andersen although we cannot disprove them. To believe in an unlikely event or a deity only because we cannot disprove it, sounds foolish to me.

Why don't you thing that the Universe, huge, complex and mysterious, is not a creation of a Supreme Being, where we see all complex things are in fact created?

First of all if you assume that all complex things are created, then a God, capable of creating such a complex Universe, should also be a complex being and should also has a creator. On the other hand, if you follow the Darwinian Evolution path, you'd see how a complex organism can be built upon relatively simpler beings by the process of Natural Selection. And it is far more logical to believe that we and the Universe in general, started from a simpler start that a complex creator starting it up.

When you stand on the top of a mountain doesn't the vastness of the world strike you? Don't you feel charmed by the beauty of the nature, and the mysterious laws of the vast Universe?

Of course I do. And I have mentioned about it in the first chapter of my book as the spirituality followed by Einstein. He was so charmed about the mysteries of the world and it was such an exciting experience to explore it. It's a kind of spirituality that does not require God, a personal deity to explain the mysteries of Nature. It is quite different from a religion centered around a God who can read mind, keeps track of sins, judges people after death punishes the disbelievers and rules the Universe.

What is your opinion about Stalin and Hitler as Atheists?

I have said in my book that Hitler is not at all atheist, as he was religiously biased against Jewish people. Stalin was following communism dogmatically. I have already said that none of us, in effect derive our morality from religion. Stalin, in fact, used the dogmatic communism as his source of morality - if we call it morality at all. Being atheist does not ask you to become dogmatic or communist, but only ask you not to believe in God. A person working in a Mafia group can also be an atheist although it will be illogical to say that atheism pushed him to the Mafia group. There are other colleagues working with him who are religious.

Why do you link religion with 'Child-abuse'?

I link the marking of children as 'Jewish boy' or 'Muslim child' as a child abuse, since, in childhood they are yet to choose their religious views. Not only that, they are brought up in a way that he gets separated from other religious groups and views so that he follows the religious faith of his parents. Obstructing the view of children clearly comes under child abuse.

Your ambition is that people reading this book should abandon their faith. Isn't that?

There is no harm in aiming high and you can say that is my ambition. But, in practice, we want the people who follow the middle ground, who never have thought deeply on this topic, to think twice and consciously reject God. Also, I can see that in United States 10-15% people are Atheists, larger than any minority religious groups. However, they don't have any political power or a lobby compared to strong Jewish lobby. I want Atheists to come together and establish a God-neutral political view, a view of their own, for a better balanced world.

References

1) Interview with Jeremy Paxman on BBC.
2) Interview on CNN on Darwin Day.
3) TV Ontario interview (part 1, part 2 and part 3).
3) The Hour interview, (part 2).
4) The debate - part 1, part 2 and part 3.
4) RichardDawkins.net for more video/interview resources.

Atheism, Religion, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion.

Atheism in Ancient India

2007-05-19T02:10:00.000+05:30

India is known for tolerance to difference in opinion and thoughts. There were multiple religions spawned off in India due to diversity among Indian people. Although, in modern days, most of the Indians remain religious and do believe in God, traces of Indian history shows the existence of Atheism in ancient Indian societies.

In Ancient Hinduism, there were a couple of schools who used to teach non-existence of God. The first one, Samkhya, used to believe in duality of existing things - as per the book, saamkhya kaarikaa. Prakriti (Nature) and Purusha (Consciousness) were thought to be the basic building blocks of everything. However, the school later incorporated Iswara as a third entity and became theist. The other Atheist school of thought was Mimamsha, which concentrated on Dharma rather than gods.

Other than Hinduism, most philosophies of Jainism and Budhhism denied involvement of God. Both of these religions did not deny the presence of God, but neither did they attribute any power of creation or judgement to God. The future of a living being was thought to be decided by the actions of the being - something that this more materialistic than the thoughts of core Hinduism. It suggests more of a 'way of life' than describing the 'way to satisfy god'. However, later most of the Buddhists started worshipping Buddha as god.

The other interesting school of thought that taught atheism in materialistic sense, was Carvaka (or Charvaka), named after the its founder saint. The key features of the Carvaka philosophy, as described in Sarvadarshansamgraha by Madhavacarya, were purely materialistic and thereby rejecting the afterlife. Interestingly, it points out that soul and intelligence are parts of our body, something that I was trying to argue in a previous writing. It looks at rituals being sources of living and not a way to get to the heaven. It contained the strongest atheistic viewpoint where it refuses to accept any 'creator' for natural things - and argues that any phenomenon can be produced by the inherent nature of things. Here goes a famous verse :

"Fire is hot, water cold,
refreshingly cool is the breeze of morning;
By whom came this variety?
They were born of their own nature."

The Carvaka philosophy was deeply down to earth - close to secular humanism. It questioned the caste system as a process imposed by Brahmins. It is amazing to observe how close they were to the modern view of humanity, when a verse reads :

If our offering sacrifices here gratify beings in heaven,
why not make food offerings down below
to gratify those standing on housetops?
While life remains, let a man live happily,
let him feed on butter though he runs in debt;
When once the body becomes ashes,
how can it ever return again?

Critics of the Carvaka school see this cleaving to only artha and kama, without regard of dharma (and ultimate moksha) as an extreme of self-centred hedonism. One can easily understand why modern day atheists are also classified as hedonists - the similar feelings were present in early India as well.

In medival ages, the presence of Atheism was missing - something that led to a stricter grip of caste-divided Hinduism. The lack of balancing force resulted in dogmatic religious beliefs, superstitions and the society headed towards darkness, till the modern day renaissance, with major influence of Vedanta philosophy.

Atheism, India, Carvaka, Humanism.

Pseudo-Science and the Religion

2007-05-07T11:16:00.000+05:30

The changes in life that Science has brought about are really outstanding. If one considers how a similar human life used to be a century ago and compares it with that of today, one cannot deny the positive role of establishing truth by logical reasoning discarding the faith. At the same time, the rapid advancement of science has left millions with virtually no knowledge in science, where they tend to believe science as 'just another faith' and not based on pure reasoning. Moreover, common men, who even have some knowledge of science, don't always use their scientific acumen to reason everything around them. These gaps in popular understanding of science are hugely manipulated by neo-priests and 'religious' scientists.

The dangerous trend in these section of people spreads like a virus. A learned person, having a degree in science, is powered enough with scientific jargons to provide excuse for what actually is inspired by his faith. The 'excuse' used to 'justify' faith or a superstition, are all categorized as 'pseudo-science'. These 'excuses' spreads among the have-nots of science like virus. One of the classic examples could be what Sujai mentioned in his article on Vaastu. People follow Vaastu purely based on faith, having some excuses derived from scientific ground. And, as virus spreads, Vaastu is also becoming more and more popular.

What inspires pseudo-scientific excuses from the people who know science? It is simple - ego matters - it's another case of self-denial. They want to defend their faith and also their knowledge in science. It's really difficult to pursue a 'pure scientific life' in India, since most of the population is still deeply religious. At the same time, widespread effort of educationists has opened the window of scientific education in India. Hence, a generation is created who are taught science at school and faith at home. Unable to reconcile both, people fall victims to pseudo-science.

Let me take a few more examples. Among Indian Hindus, not having beef is based purely on faith, still pseudo-scientists come up with their version against eating beef - pointing to social value of cow or promoting violence against animals by cow-slaughter as excuses. However, none of them will take beef even in abroad, where cow doesn't have any social value. They'll even refuse if the meat of a cow that's not slaughtered but dead in an accident. Similar arguments are cited by the Vegetarian people as well. Muslims (Jews too), by their faith don't take pork, but often cites excuses that pig carries a lots of worms(tapeworm - Taenia solium). Even though it is scientifically proved that pork boiled above 100C for a minute (which is mostly done in all Indian preparations) is free from worms and parasites, it's hard to find any pseudo-scientist having boiled pork. To frustrate these pseudo-scientists, we can take a look at meat consumption statistics in USA. The major sources of meat are - beef, chicken and pork - confirming that these neither harm your economy, nor your health. Similar pseudo-science exists to defend the specific way of slaughter also.

To conclude, let me reaffirm that the purpose of my article is not to criticize faith, but to criticize the people who can't keep faith and science separate. A country, where 95% people are science-illiterate and superstitious, this practice can spread like virus and replace the original aim of science to educate people based on pure reason and logic. A war against the superstitions should include an agenda to fight against pseudo-science also. A better society is a society free of superstitions, let's uproot them before the grow more.

India Science Religion

The Life outside Earth

2007-04-26T12:27:00.000+05:30

I think that by now everyone has added a new name in the General Knowledge memory - Gliese 581 c. It's not only the name of a newly discovered planet having an environment similar to that of Earth, but also is synonymous to an ongoing threat to remove Humans and their beloved Earth from the center of life-creation.

It was long believed in ancient and medieval ages that the earth and human beings are special creation of God. Galileo and his follower Charles Darwin has broken into that house of faith with a powerful set of observations. While Galileo removed Earth from the center of the Universe, Darwin put humankind back to the nature, just another species evolved in a complex natural process.

Coming back to possibilities of life outside the Earth, one can divide the approach in two different steps. The first would be to search the Earth-like planets, in the 'Habitable zone', the next could be the search for life on the planet. Only when the step one is confirmed, people generally look into the step two.

While the existence of 'intelligent life' in our Solar system is almost (Science really cannot disprove anything) impossible, the search for the preliminary form of life is still on. The best bet on this topic is possibly Europa, the 'moon' of Jupiter. It has a hypothesized ocean beneath its icy surface, which is supposed to contain life. It also has Oxygen in its atmosphere. The same kind of life might be present in Ganymede and Callisto. Jupiter and Saturn could have been a destination of Ammonia based life as hypothesized by Carl Sagan. Besides, NASA reported strong evidence of getting life in Mars.

The extra-solar planets are still open to all kinds of life possibilities. That is why the discovery is such an important milestone in Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. However, these planets are detected via some indirect method, hence the confidence attached to the properties of the planet discovered is considered low.

On 24th this month, Scientists at the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile claimed they had found the first Earth-like planet. The planet orbits within the habitable zone of Gliese 581, a red dwarf star which is a scant 20.5 light years from Earth. If oxygen or methane (tell-tale biological gases) are found in Gliese 581c's atmosphere, this would be good circumstantial evidence for life. Dr Malcolm Fridlund, a European Space Agency scientist, said the discovery of Gliese 581c was "an important step" on the road to finding life. Interestingly, Gliese 581c is so close to the Earth that if its putative inhabitants only had our level of technology, they could - just about - pick up some of our radio signals, such as the most powerful military transmitters.

One could remember the famous Franc Dreck equation to find out how difficult it could be to find an evidence of life on the Earth. It is not only extremely difficult, it costs a lot also. Due to lack of funding, a lot of projects could not take off in recent years. However, the importance of such a project can never be undermined. It would help us to identify how the life grows, or possibly what the life actually is. May be, also to create new form of life.

Astronomy,Science

Remembering 26th March, 1971

2007-03-25T17:05:00.000+05:30

A few days back, when I wrote about plebiscite in Kashmir, I tried to point out the pain of redrawing the border. Ironically, within a few days, I am writing up the next one, exactly on the conditions before redrawing a border. March 26th is known to be the Independence day of Bangladesh. But, the day before marks the beginning of the biggest genocide in post world-war era.

The reason I am writing this article is to educate Indians and Pakistanis about these incidents. I found it to be shocking that most Indians still remember 1971 as the year when India defeated Pakistan in a brisk war. A lot of Pakistanis also think that it was a "fall of Dhaka" due to the betrayal of East Pakistan. While both India and Pakistan continue to protest a few thousand murders in Iraq, they should also look a few years back to see their neighbors and ex-countrymates killed en-masse.

Let's get into the topic now. I can start with the build-up to this incident. After the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan in 1951, political power began to be concentrated in the President of Pakistan, and eventually, the military. The nominal elected chief executive, the Prime Minister, was frequently sacked by the establishment, acting through the President.The military dictatorships of Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan, both West Pakistanis, only heightened feelings of deprivation of East. Finally, when Sheikh Mujib's Awami League won a clear majority in the elections of 1970, the West Pakistan establishment refused to allow Mujib to form a government. The party won 167 of the 169 seats allotted to East Pakistan, and thus a majority of the 300 seats in the National Assembly. On 3rd March 1971, the two leaders (Bhutto was the other) of the two wings along with the President General Yahya Khan met in Dhaka to decide the fate of the country. Talks failed. General Tikka Khan was flown in to Dhaka to become Governor of East Bengal. A unit of East Pakistan Rifles refused to obey commands to fire on Bengali demonstrators, beginning a mutiny of Bengali soldiers.

Then came the March 25th, 1971. The Army started what was named as 'Operation Searchlight'. The commandos easily captured Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at the beginning of the crackdown. Army assaulted the Dhaka University area and killed unarmed students present in the halls, and also some professors, then moved on to attack the Hindu areas and the old town. Captured Bengali soldiers, EPR and Police personnel were executed or improsioned without trial.

In an editorial, The Daily Star, a leading Bangladeshi newspaper, reproduced some accounts of the day. I quote a few incidents of atrocities from the same source :

- "At Jagannath and Iqbal Halls, students were mown down mercilessly. Other students were forced to dig a large grave and once that was done, they too were shot. All the bodies were dumped into the grave, which was then bulldozed by the army."

- "Soldiers burst into the quarters of the philosopher Gobinda Chandra Dev and murdered him. They also killed the mathematics teacher Rafiqul Islam. And they left Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta, a senior teacher in the English Department of Dhaka University, seriously wounded."

- "Outside the campus, the soldiers razed the Kali Mandir, a Hindu temple inside the Race Course compound, to the ground. In similar fashion, they blew up the Central Shaheed Minar before the Dhaka Medical College Hospital. On the streets, common citizens were murdered at random. Rickshaw pullers died even as they slept on their three-wheelers."

- "The military also set fire to the Ittefaq and Sangbad newspapers, leaving those inside dead or wounded."

There are many more accounts of the incidents of 25th March by Journalists. The famous ones were from Simon Dring (British Journo to capture the incidents first) and Arnold Zeitlin (Associated Press). Rediff and Globalwebpost sites also reported the same incidents successfully. Among eyewitness accounts, one from Rafiqul Islam is available in English on the net. A private site has also depicted the dateline of 25th March.

What was the reaction in India? There was not much of reaction among the people of India other than in West Bengal. The political leadership was busy chalking out a strategy for separation of East Pakistan. The common people were hardly aware of what was going on. The aftermath was known to all - India-Pakistan war of 1971 and the Liberation of Bangladesh. The world was also kept in dark. More frustatingly, people who cite examplify genocide with Iraq and Afghanistan, take out pocessions and rallies in soliderity with them, simply forget Bangladesh.

I feel Pakistan did absolutely nothing to accept the war-crimes committed by the Military. The atrocities were established in Hamoodor Rahman Commission report. But, the accused were never prosecuted. The Govt of India released all PoWs, including those accused of genocide. Remembering the incident, I hope that people of Pakistan would soon understand the atrocities committed by their Army and pressurize their govt to issue a former acknowledgement of the war-crimes.

Bangladesh

The Plebiscite in Kashmir

2007-03-22T19:51:00.001+05:30

Readers can view and comment on my latest updates on Kashmir at my new blog.

The History

UN had once recommended a plebiscite to be held in Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir to solve the dispute of accession. It was in response to the dispute between India and Pakistan over the state. The UN Security Council adopted resolution 47 and still sticks to it. The solution had a few prerequisites and a few methodologies to implement the plebiscite. Pakistan was asked (Refer to 1a) to withdraw the Army and the tribals who entered within the state in course of fighting (Indo-Pak Kashmir war 1947-48). India was asked to establish a Plebiscite commission and conduct the Plebiscite. Neither of the prerequisites did take place, nor the plebiscite. UN still recognises the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir as a disputed area and shows it accordingly in its’ map. Many of the states (including US) has changed their position since then to support 1972 Simla Agreement as a base of dispute resolution in Kashmir.

What is a Plebiscite?

A referendum (plurals: ‘referendums’ or ‘referenda’) or plebiscite (from plebiscita, originally a decree of the Concilium Plebis) is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. In the topic, choice (or preferendum) was given to People residing in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, to join India or Pakistan. There were no option for a free Kashmir in the referendum proposal. An example of plebiscite could be the Quebec referendum in 1980, where the choice was between a free Quebec, against remaining as a state of Canada.

The Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir

The Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir was primarily consituted of five different areas. The areas are - 1) Kashmir Valley, 2) Jammu, 3) Northern Areas, 4) Ladakh and 5) Aksai Chin. Among these, the valley is administered by both India and Pakistan. Jammu and Ladakh are almost entirely administered by India, Northern Areas are administered by Pakistan and the Aksai Chin was administered by Pakistan.

The Diversity

The State of J&K is a diverse geographical region, having people from different ethnicity and religious background. There is a little in similarity between and person living in Northern Area, a Valley resident, a Ladakhi and a resident in Jammu. It might worth noting that the dissatisfaction is mainly centered in Valley, because it is divided between India and Pakistan. Also, the valley dominates over all four regions, because of the higher population it has. The Northern Areas is governed directly by Pakistan yet they don’t have any representation in Pakistani Parliament and understandably they are moving towards freedom struggle. The role of religion in the diversity can not be undermined. The Jammu region is predominantly Hindu and hence they would be happy to get annexed to India as a state. The Ladakh is mainly inhabited by the Buddhists and Shia Muslims (there are some settlers from valley as well) and so far did not wanted freedom from India. Similarly, the people of Northern Areas are mainly Shia and might not be comfortable within Pakistan.

The Solutions to Kashmir Problem

There are many proposals to solve the Kashmir dispute. Some of them contains region give-away, where some other are only some confidence building measures. A very good guide to these possible solutions is presented in this BBC document. It showed that all possible combination of solutions are in fact difficult to achieve and would make grounds for further damage in the region.

Plebiscite as a solution

The traditional proposal of plebiscite raises a lot of questions. The main question would be against linking the fate and aspiration of a Buddhist Ladakhi tied to a Sunni Muslim living in Sialkot. They live complete different lives. Moreover, after 60 years of independence, a lot of Kashmiris, who are legitimate stakeholders of the plebiscite, are living outside the region. A lot of people has also entered these regions (for example - people from Tibet entered Ladakh and people from NWFP entered Northern areas). It is difficult to conduct a plebiscite without bias - whoever conducts it. A role might be played by the vote with force. And at the end, whoever gets defeated, will perceive a loss and threaten to withdraw complaining a foul played by the other party. If, by any chance a lands do change ownership, it might result in a huge list of murdered and displaced people as the victor would in turn engage in routing out the anti-sentiments of the newly gained land.

A Modified Plebiscite

The plebiscite proposal can be modified to be used. The granularity of the decision-making process could be down to district or sub-division level, to minimize the displacements. This would in effect result in a partition of the state among Indian and Pakistani regions. For the continuity purpose, if the minority-pockets are exchanged, minorities could get slaughtered or displaced on either side, something that happened after 1947 Indian partition.

The recent view of India and Pakistan towards Plebiscite

Indians generally refer to Hari Singh treaty of accession and J&K State assembly decision in 1951 to annex the state with India. The claim for plebiscite is mainly raised by Kashmiri (valley) groups and Pakistanis. However, Pakistan is shifting their stance recently. Kofi Annan also said that the plebiscite proposal is irrelevant now. Pakistan President Musharraf even said that they would give up the claim for Kashmir if Indians implement a few peace-proposals.

Conclusions

I would suggest that any further change in boundary should be avoided at any cost. A change in boundary has done a lot of damage in 1947 and in 1971. We should not repeat it. While the advanced countries in Europe are looking ahead to reduce the burden of the boundaries, we should put our best efforts to minimize the impediments of the Indo-Pak boundary, rather than installing a new one.

References :

1) Kashmiris Reject War In Favour Of Democratic Means - A survey by MORI. The five point solution voted for by the people of Indian part of Kashmir are -

* Economic development of the region to provide more job opportunities and reduction of poverty - 93%
* The holding of free and fair elections to elect the people’s representatives - 86%
* Direct consultation between the Indian government and the people of Kashmir - 87%
* An end to militant violence in the region - 86%
* Stopping the infiltration of militants across the Line of Control - 88%

2) Kashmir’s forgotten plebiscite - BBC.

3) Documents related to J&K. It includes Article 370 of Indian Constitution and the speech of Sheikh Abdulla in J&K Assembly in 1951.

4) EU Report on Kashmir.

Kashmir India Terrorism

What is a Soul?

2007-02-28T01:19:00.000+05:30

Soul, as per most of the religions, is an immortal essence of a human. It survives physical death. According to some believes, it goes to Hell or Heaven with some other body. Some others believe, it takes another body to reborn as a human once more.

The essential property of a soul is 'self-awareness'. It means, a soul knows the identity of the human attached to it. So, it is safe to conclude that soul has memory (at least minimal) since it retains knowledge. This 'self-awareness' property is lost in the case of rebirth, with some exceptions. In case of other beliefs, the new body in hell or heaven must retain the identity of the human - otherwise what's the use of punishing or pampering it?

Now coming to the 'minimal memory', what is the exact domain of memory retained by the soul at physical death? If it is only the name and address of the human being, it cannot simply have a 'self-awareness' property. It should retain most of the memory of the human being it has been attached to. In other words, the memory at the time of death is the best candidate to be retained by soul, as logically deduced from beliefs.

Is the memory physical or non-physical? It has to be physical. It resides within human brain. There are brain disorders(Alzheimer's disease) those kill the memory. There are different types of Amnesia resulting out of head injury. This brings us to the paradox - what memory does the soul retain for an Amnesia patient? After all, the soul is non-physical. So, the memory has to be freed from the physical container (brain). The paradox two states that how this detachment takes place?

There are many other candidates as a soul like mind, thought and emotions. But none of them could logically survive without memory, can they? The modern soul theorists claim that soul is supernatural, it 'temporarily' stays inside the brain and then can easily float out of it. Even, that does not answer the paradox one. After all, a huge percentage of human beings suffer from global amnesia before death. Does the soul depart earlier for them? It cannot - according to the beliefs.

And, if I logically conclude that there is no soul then there should not be any hell or heaven as well. Neither should there be an afterlife. So, what are we living for? Is it to get a place in heaven or to merge our soul with the eternal soul? It increasingly seems that we live for ourselves. The life is a single and beautiful expression of a human being - with his body and mind. Live the life first, there might not be an afterlife at all.

References :
1) Religious views on soul.
2) Amnesia

Atheism, Religion, Soul

Remembering 21st February

2007-02-21T14:17:00.000+05:30

21st February is a day to remember for each Bengali. Officially, it's known as International Mother Language Day. But, to a Bengali, it signifies the passion for language, it's a love for literature in mother tongue and a lot more. This is the day when Bengalis shed their bloods for their language.

History
Details history of The Language Movement is available in the Virtual Bangladesh site. I am quoting a few key turning points of the chronicle.

September 15, 1947
Tamuddun Majlis (Cultural Society, an organization by scholars, writers and journalists oriented towards Islamic ideology) in a booklet titled State Language of Pakistan : Bengali or Urdu? demands Bengali as one of the state language of Pakistan.
February 23, 1948
Direndra Nath Dutta, a Bengali opposition member, moves a resolution in the first session of Pakistan's Constituent Assembly for recognizing Bengali as a state language along with Urdu and English.
March 21, 1948
Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan and its first Governor-General, while on a visit to East Bengal, declares in Dhaka University convocation that while the language of the province can be Bengali, the "State language of Pakistan is going to be Urdu and no other language. Any one who tries to mislead you is really an enemy of Pakistan."

January 26, 1952
The Basic Principles Committee of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan announces its recommendation that Urdu should be the only state language.
In a public meting at Paltan Maidan, Dhaka, Prime Minister Nazimuddin declares that Urdu alone will be the state language of Pakistan.
Both the developments spark off the second wave of language agitation in East Bengal.
February 21, 1952
A general strike is observed.
Noon - A meeting is held in the campus of Dhaka University. Students decide to defy the official ban imposed by Nurul Amin's administration and processions are taken out to stage a demonstration in front of the Provincial Assembly. Police starts lobbing tear gas shells to the students. Students retaliate by batting bricks. The ensuing riot spreads to the nearby campuses of the Medical and Engineering colleges.
4 p.m. -The police opens fire in front of the Medical College hostel. Five persons - Mohammad Salauddin, Abdul Jabbar, Abul Barkat, Rafiquddin Ahmed and Abdus Salam - are killed, the first three are students of Dhaka University.
"The news of the killing spread like wildfire throughout the city and people rushed in thousands towards the Medical College premises." (-- Talukder Maniruzzaman)
Inside the assembly, six opposition members press for the adjournment of the House and demand an inquiry into the incidents. But Chief Minister Nurul Amin urges the House to proceed with the planned agenda for the day. At this point all the opposition members of the Assembly walk out in protest.
February 22, 1952
Thousands of men and women throng the university, Medical College and Engineering College areas to offer prayers for the victims of the police firing.
After prayers when they go for a procession, the police opens fire.
The police also fire on angry mob who burned the offices of a pro-government newspaper. Four persons are killed.
February 24, 1952
The government gives full authority to the police and military to bring the situation in Dhaka back to normal within 48 hours.
February 25, 1952
The Dhaka University is closed sine die.
May 7, 1954
The Pakistan government recognizes Bangla as a state language.
Feb 26, 1956
The Constituent Assembly passes the first Constitution of Pakistan recognizing Bangla as a State Language.
March 23, 1956
The first Constitution of Pakistan comes into effect.
March 26, 1971
Bangladesh become an independent nation.

After-effects
Actually, the language movement the distance between Bengalis and West Pakistanis grew and eventually resulted in Bangladesh Liberation War and Freedom of Bangladesh as a nation in 1971. They paid 3 million more lives to gain independence and the absolute freedom of language.

My Analysis

I think the apathy of Pakistani policymakers to East Pakistan was solely responsible to create the whole problem. A country, with more than 50% Bengalis, should have a special recognition of that language. Instead of doing that, a common all language was not a good proposition to impose. India has accepted Hindi as a National language, very slowly. India initially recognized all major state languages as "language of the state". Even then, Indians had shed blood for the sake of their language. So, the declaration of Urdu as a National Language by Pakistan in 1947 planted a Time Bomb in Bangladesh which blasted off in 1971.

A better way to unite the geographically separated West and East Pakistan were to grant language autonomy to either sides.

Reference
Detail discussion at Language Movement page of wikipedia.
Rezwan's post.

Bangladesh, Bengali.

Moving on ...

2007-02-20T11:29:00.000+05:30

I have moved on to wordpress. However, I'd continue this blog also for next few days. But the content of both would be the same. Thanks for all visitors in my wordpress blog.

The Myths Against Atheism

2007-02-19T14:01:00.000+05:30

The 10 top myths against Atheism are :

1) Atheists believe that life is meaningless.
2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.
3) Atheism is dogmatic.
4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.
5) Atheism has no connection to science.
6) Atheists are arrogant.
7) Atheists are closed to spiritual experience.
8) Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding.
9) Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society.
10) Atheism provides no basis for morality.

Sam Harris, the author of "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation", bursts these 10 myths against Atheism. He tried to prove atheists are normal people and only notion they have is to reject anything that is not yet proved. According to his theory, atheism does not mean that one has to grab some other dogma (like Marxism) and behave according to that. Atheism is restricted to rejection of religious dogma. The source of morality for Atheists changes to some modern books, laws and behavioural science rather than ancient holy texts, and by no matter they are immoral.

The most interesting was the myth 9, which says that "Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society." It seems from his writing that Atheists are ready to accept the historical importance of religion but not as a source of morality. He says that if human beings are able to "choose" from good and bad texts of the Holy Books and also provide "better" interpretations for those "bad" texts, then why shouldn't we directly bypass those holy texts and use our own choice.

However, the problem that I often see scientists and historians quoting against Atheism is the lack of alternative guideline. Human beings are still too weak to live without any guideline, specifically laid out to them by some supreme being. Rod Liddle suggests that we should leave God as he is since the drastic absence of God could create instable society since human beings will grab some other dogma. Sam Harris is yet to answer this "Moral Vacuum Dilemma" against Atheism.

Reference :
1) The Trouble with Atheism - part 1. (Youtube video - 24mins)
2) The Trouble with Atheism - part 2. (Youtube video - 25mins)

Atheism, Sam Harris, Myth.

The Epicurus Riddle

2007-02-18T18:34:00.000+05:30

While going through Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion, the argument that struck me a lot was in fact posted long back(Around 300 BC) by a Greek Philosophist, Epicurus. The argument is said to be the first argument for Atheism.

The argument goes like this (Epicurus, as quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief):

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able, and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither willing, nor able? Then why call him God?

Isn't the argument a little bit different from the popular arguments for Atheism?

The other one came from Russell's Teapot argument, which goes like this :

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Bertrand Russell clearly compared God with 'China teapot' that is preached in a way that cannot be disproved. Also, the accusition against the doubter is satirically criticised in his argument.

Is there any good answer to these questions (especially the first one) with anyone? I am yet to take a side.
Epicurus, Atheism

The Origin of Life : RNA Hypothesis

2007-02-18T13:44:00.000+05:30

Of late I have been reading books by great scientists. The best one as I found out, is one from James Watson, named as DNA : The secret of Life. I have gone through first three chapters of the book only. It has given me a lot of knowledge on how the life has been evolved on the earth.

The basic mystery that I had prior to reading the book was on the relation between protein and life. The explanation tha I got is really interesting. It's the DNA that replicates a part of it (transcribes) to messenger RNA. The messenger RNA then comes to Ribosome and gets translated to amino acids with the help of transfer RNAs present there. Amino acids are catalyzed by RNAs to build polypeptide bonds among them to generate Protein. But, DNA, RNA and the Proteins are built on nucleotides.

Here the RNA World hypothesis comes into picture. It's now obvious that RNA has a property to store, transmit and duplicate the genetic information as DNA. It can also produce proteins - the building block of life. According to this hypothesis, RNA was independent initially and later evolved a barrier outside to form later form of life - like bacteria and Amoeba. Carl Zimmer, who's working on this for long, believes that RNA Viruses are the last common ancestors of life. They evolved into DNA based viruses and since then, the superior system of DNA based life exists.

The most interesting part to me was the role of Natural Selection in the process of forming RNAs. Initially nucleotides (purely chemical substance) were free floating. They were often formed bonds to bind together. but certain sequence of bonds had properties to bind and go to more stable state. As each chain grew longer it attracted more matching nucleotides faster. RNA is one of these giant nucleotide chains. In an RNA world, different forms of RNA compete with each other for free nucleotides and are subject to natural selection. The most efficient molecules of RNA, the ones able to efficiently catalyze their own reproduction, survived and evolved, forming modern RNA. The competition grew and resulted in co-operation between separate RNA chains to produce more and more different proteins. DNA came later and so lipids, carbohydrates and other materials since a collaboration of such materials were more 'sustainable' and 'replicable'.

The main problem of this thesis was the instability of RNA while being exposed to UV Rays. Recent experiments also suggest that the original estimates of the size of an RNA molecule capable of self-replication were most probably vast underestimated, the size can be smaller than one have thought of. More-modern forms of the RNA World theory propose that a simpler molecule was capable of self-replication (that other "World" then evolved over time to produce the RNA World). There are many more hypothesis surrounding this RNA and life but the lack of undisturbed sedimentary rock from that early in Earth's history leaves few opportunities to test any of these hypothesis robustly.

The idea of RNA world was first proposed in Carl Woese's The Genetic Code. The term was coined in 1986, by Walter Gilbert.

The origin of life on earth is a mystery that Humankind ought to solve. The proper understanding might give us several advantages over the natural world. We may create our own microbes to fight against the diseases caused by virus and bacteria. We will have much better understanding of each of the building blocks of our own body.

News Reference from BBC :
Creation of Viral life by researchers.

DNA, RNA, Evolution, Origin of Life

Books

2007-02-06T12:44:00.000+05:30

I would recommend a few books I am going through right now. I'll come up with my understandings once I finish them.

Book 1 : DNA : The Secret of Life by James Watson, person who discovered the Double Helix.

Book 2 : The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

Book 3 : The Inflationary Universe by Alan Guth.

All three are very good books if somebody likes the topics. The first one ranges from Eugenics to modern-day DNA fingerprinting and Genetically Modified Crops. It starts with a critical note against Darwinism, but went onto describe how it has overcome the problems and eventually adding value in the human society.

The second one is self-descriptive, Dawkins refuted all the traditional claims for existence of God and called to organize the atheists. He argued how atheists are suffering despite their stance is the most logical one.

The third one starts from Big-Bang theory and it's proofs. It also comes to the flaws in the theory and eventually gets into the new Inflationary Theory on the creation of Universe. He described the evolution of his theory with references to the key incidents in his life in a lucid manner. The ideas are a little bit difficult to digest (especially the negative pressure of vacuum), but a second thought should solve the problems.

I hope I can finish the books very soon and come up with my analysis. I have to go throough half of Book 1 and 2, and a quarter of the last one. Till then, if anyone else can come up with his views, I'd be greatful to him.
Books Atheist

The Business of 'Fake' Encounters

2007-02-05T14:06:00.000+05:30

The news of Fake Encounters really shaked my heart. From today onwards, I won't be at the same mood seeing 'routine' killing of militants in Kashmir. As it was in the case of 'Abu Hafiz', the LeT Commander. Army sources told us that he was killed an 'encounter' with SOG (Special Operations Group) on 8th December. And the person who actually killed him, got an award of 120,000Rs (almost US$ 2700).

Almost after one and half months, another prize was offered by an old man, Ghulam Rasool Padroo at Rambagh Police Station near Srinagar. He offered 20,000 Rs to the ASP to find out his missing son Abdul Rehman Padroo, a father of 5 children, a carpenter in profession. The connection between the mentioned incidents is known to us. A DNA examination will be carried out to confirm the the killing of Abdul in a chilling 'fake encounter'.

The key to this was Constable Farooq Rehman Padroo, a relative of Abdul. Abdul used to work at Rural Development department as a daily wage worker. He paid bribe of Rs. 75,000 to Farooq to ensure a permanent job in that operation. But neither the job was ensured, nor the money came back. 8th December, 2006, he called him to the Police Station. Abdul never returned back. It is alleged that Farooq, with his four associates in the Police Station, killed Abdul and distributed the money among themselves.

Sources : Anandabazar Patrika and Hindustan Times(along with two more cases of Nazir Ahmad Deka and Shoukat Ahmad Khan).

The latest update : The SSP Hansraj Parihar and his deputy Bahadur Ram are been arrested in the connection. The tension continues in Kashmir. TOI reports that even ShivSena is protesting these fake encounters.

How can we survive the corruption by lawkeepers? Or perhaps we can if we have some money to engage a few people, a few renouned lawyers, a few NGOs and media. But, what's really a price of a carperner in a terror-prone Kashmir? What can his family do to save his life? Nothing ... practically.

Energy Updates

2007-01-30T18:29:00.000+05:30

The Indic View wrote about the prospect of Gas Hydrates in India. Methane gas hydrates worldwide have been estimated to hold some 400 million tcf (trillion cubic feet) of gas. Worldwide all known natural gas reserves total some 5000 tcf. That means hydrates hold 80,000 times as much gas as natural gas reserves. In fact, India is estimated to have gas hydrate reserves of around 1,894 trillion cubic metres (67,000 tcf).

In the mean time, Cairns Energy finds more oil in Rajasthan.

The Pakistani newspaper wrote about the importance of IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India) Gas pipeline. It is known that Iran, Pakistan and India have agreed on a formula for setting a rate for Iranian gas, the main point of dispute. India should concentrate on buying more gas from Iran and Turkmenistan. Interestingly, the Kashmir condition did not block the negotiations.

Meanwhile, India is eyeing stakes at Sakhalin-III as a continuation of Sakhalin-I where they already have stakes. A Russian company, Gazprom, has asked India to let them join IPI project as a contractor. Vladimir Putin himself backed India for the deal.

How to Educate Students

2007-01-29T16:15:00.000+05:30

After the allegation of Shankarmurthy against Tipu Sultan as a Kannada-hater, I tried to gather news about the state of Indian textbooks as whole. Also, later I was involved in a brief research on worldwide textbooks and the ways of teaching.

The pathfinder article tries to show how BJP Govt was trying to manipulate the History Textbooks for their political gain. It went onto the extent of denying a genetically and historically accepted fact that Aryans came to India from outside. The Historian Romila Thapar pointed out correctly -

it wants to "project a unified, continuous Indian identity where Aryanism, encapsulated in the culture of the Vedas and the upper castes, is the major cultural expression of India."

For a little humourous touch, this article says that a Rajasthani textbook compares a housewife to a donkey and concludes -

"It has to toil all day and, like her, may even have to give up food and water. In fact, the donkey is a shade better, for while the housewife may sometimes complain and walk off to her parents' home, you'll never catch the donkey being disloyal to his master."

Such is the pathetic bias against women in Indian textbook.

The best of them all was not surprisingly a Gujarat Textbook, promoting Nazis and went onto include one includes a chapter on the "internal achievements of Nazism"!!! It rubbishes the Holocaust and projected Hitler as a true leader!!

As the international case study, the list of biased and hateful text books are almost endless. The Japanese textbooks often present downplayed or vague historical accounts on the parts where Japanese were guilty of mass-murder.

The Saudi textbooks came under scrutiny after most of the 9/11 conspirators were found to be from Saudi. This is a brief account of Saudi textbooks, having bias against non-Muslims and Jews in particular. The claim that the bias is due to Palestein conflict does not garner much support since the textbooks of Palestein does not contain anti-Semitic writings. In his blog, Mezba recounts the way of teaching as he found in Saudi.

Coming closer to home, I had already wrote about Pakistani textbooks. As SDPI wrote, the textbooks were biased on factual inaccuracies, religiousand ethnic prejudices, gender stereotypes, glorification of war and lack of direction towards peace. The most prominent lie was

After 1965 war India conspired with the Hindus of Bengal and succeeded in
spreading hate among the Bengalis about West Pakistan and finally attacked on
East Pakistan in December 71, thus causing the breakup of East and West
Pakistan.

However, the things are changing due to moderate views of President Musharraf (or under US-pressure?) with new textbook policies are brought about.

In Europe, the issue is to forget the World Wars and unite against USA. A new Franco-German joint textbook at least tries to promote European culture and denounces USA. I don't see any reason for denouncing USA to promote their own values. The British-Argentine spat over Falklands continues to the pages of the textbooks as the latter accuses Britain over colonialising the island. An American organization also suggests changes in US-version of History books.

The ethnic spat is well demonstrated in Malaysian textbooks, which is accused of racial bias against Indians and Chinese people living in Malaysia. However, the things are changing in positive direction.

I hope that everyone knows the role of upbringing in today's world. A better upbringing can definitely lead to a better world. To shape the mind of the children, should we use these hate-materials or the books of peace - are to determine the future of the world.

Reference :
1) Return of Rightwing Textbook
2) Thou Shall Cross the Pig

Holy dip in Dirty water

2007-01-28T00:20:00.000+05:30

The Ardh-Kumbh is at last over. Another gathering of people took the holy dip in the dirty Ganges river. A river, if it is really a pious place and is treated as a godess, should be kept clean at least. Or otherwise, the fanatics of religion should understand that a holy dip in a life with whatever belief they had, can actually do more harm than the upgradation of the life. Is it at all possible to have a clearer 'soul' if you pollute your body? I have serious doubts.

Still, the Kumbh draws 50-70mn pilgrims and takes place once in 12 years and indeed is the largest religious gathering on the earth. Sometimes I ask myself, is it really worth having a dip with such a powerful belief? The realities might be stranger than I think.

Read a foreigner describing their experience of Kumbh-mela.

Shia-Sunni Clashes Worldwide and My Views

2007-01-27T23:12:00.000+05:30

I am not very sure that I am a good person to have a write up on this debated topic, still I tried to come up with a non-partial view.

Ever since Saddam Hussain had been hanged, a new secreterian difference has come up in the already-split world. It is the Shia-Sunni split among Muslims. Is it a new split that started with Saddam's hanging or a long stading dispute raised it's head once more? As listed in the wiki, the relation was never a sweet one.

To know about the faiths and key differences, one can look around wiki, and would amaze that the difference is almost zero. The demographic distribution is also continuous, Shia and Sunnis are neighbours.

The outcome of the spat is visible everywhere, may it be a religious summit, a suicide attack or a riot. In Lebanon, where Muslims are half of the population, with slight Shia majority, the actual rift is between Hezbollah and anti-syrian Lebanon Govt. The Lebanon Govt is backed by the Christians and Sunnis alongwith Saudi and USA while the opposition Shias are backed by Iran and Syria. It is actually a 'trial of strength' for the outsider forces. The riots are reported even in USA. In India, the rift of personal laws started earlier, and now

For Iraq, the facts themselves talk about the rift. After Saddam's execution, the reaction in Sunni and Shia faces tells the truth that they had separate interests. The clash of interest resurfaced in repeated suicide bombings in Iraq over last few weeks.

Globally speaking, the neo cold war(verbal war) in the Middle-East is actually between Saudi and Iran, with the former backed by USA. The more unstable the Middle-East, more the threat would be on the oil-price, a concern for India. The cold-war is to attain a politically coveted powerful position in the oil-rich region. Saudi Arabia discovered the biggest oilfields in the world. But 70% of its oil lay in the Shia-majority region on the Gulf shore. This made the Saudi royal family paranoid about the possibility that these Shias, abetted by Iran (and now Iraq), would secede and take the oilfields with them.

Internationally, people are less concerned since it's less likely to affect the countries outside the Middle-East. And of course, there is a punching bag, USA, to blame for the internal rift. The situation is comparable with Indian Partition riots, which is blamed on Britishers but fully executed by the Indian people. It's shameful for the society to indulge in secreterian riots and then blame it on others despite the sects living almost together for hundreds of years.

Strategically, from US and Israel, this rift can become their biggest weapon. As it is very difficult to distinguish a Shia from a Sunni, a group of trained Spies can easily penetrate the opposite sect terror organizations. Major world powers were in search of spies after the 9/11 debacle. And, the rift is a gift of God to them.

Is there an end to this problem? I guess it's not so soon. In deeply religious Middle-East, it can only get more polarized. Would it ever be possible for a Shia in Iraq to accept Saddam as a Martyr? Or otherwise, would it ever be possible for a Sunni to displace Saddam from the position of Hero, who fought against a super-power? I guess it's not. Sometimes it requires a person or country to be more practical and less religious, I feel. The people of Middle-East missed that very point. One example you can find in Turkey, where the Shia-Sunni clash is not present, where people and politics are indeed less religious. Let's see when others can understand and can actually reconcile the two sects.

Updated :
1) A suicide bomb blast in Peshawar killed 15 people. It was meant to target a Muharram pocession although both Shias and Sunnis died at the end. Today another suicide bomber fails to reach the site and killed three in the blast.
2) Cold war in Middle-East.

New US Weapon

2007-01-27T22:58:00.000+05:30

US Military is reported to have developed a new weapon - something that spreds heat-ray. It's named as Silent Gurdian. It's a good ploy and is expected to be used for dispersing huge mobs. Although, it's reported to be non-lethal, it's claimed to be actually less-lethal.

The Undercover Mosque

2007-01-24T18:26:00.000+05:30

Once the video of "Undercover Mosque" has come online, bloggers has started coming up with their views on that. I had a long discussion in a blog. Today, I got the update that MCB and MJAH (Organization that runs Green Lane Mosque) has lashed out against the media for it's bias against Muslims. It was expected but equally unwanted response to the debacle. They said that they were quoted out of context and both side of the view were not aired in a balanced way. But, if one goes through some of the quotes, one can easily decide whether any context can really justify them.

Another person, writing on behalf of UK Islamic mission, claims the greatness of Wahabism(!!) and says that most of UK Muslims practise belong to that sect. He even went onto claim that

"The Saudis did not need to buy British Muslim support. It was worth little and yet had this been possible, considering the trillions they contribute to the British economy, the Saudis were very well placed to buy up the British establishment itself."

I feel the person has a delusion over Saudi money, which is much less in compared to that of UK in all scales - be it defence or science.

I liked the approach that iMuslim took, clarified that the religion does not support the view expressed by the Imams in the video. He also plans to clarify some of the topics.

The required response could have been setting up a panel to investigate inside and then expel those who are already blacklisted in the video. This could have been a minimal face-saving reaction. Or otherwise, they could have made a transparent system of speeches from next time onwards.

Some of them, like Bilal Philips, tried to do a little bit damage control through a video. Even that seems not enough. Lots and lots of bloggers are pouring up their materials in the blog sites. This blogger points out the lack of apologies from the mosque authorities actually proves that they intentionally spread this kind of message. Another blogger sums up as the phobia warnings is the primary objective of C4 investigation.

Some other blogger has importantly pointed out that the section projected here are very small in number and they may not be any real threat to Britain.

For my concern, there was a blink of reference against India - to attack Indian business. May it be peacefully (boycotting) or violently (planting bombs), it's a dangerous ploy for India. The sufferers would be innumerable Indians (both Hindus and Muslims), despite the fact that they contribute very little towards the global sufferings of Muslims (nothing in individual level). I think it's a responsibility for Indians living in UK to lobby in the Govt for a crackdown aginst these hate-preachers.

References
1) The video - Undercover Mosque (48 minutes).
2) The response - Yasir Qadhi's response
3) The response - Abu Usamah
4) The Saudi Archive of Wahabism.

Racism Updated

2007-01-24T11:15:00.000+05:30

In my previous post I wrote about Indian maturity in dealing with racism. It seems the confidence of Indians is really sky-high to tackle these minor issues. The tourism department of India has invited Jade Goody to have a free-stay to know more about India. The effort is laudable as well as shows a way how to deal with racist mind. It has been reported also that Jade Goody is indeed planning to visit India and already visited Indian Highcommission in London in regards to that.

The advertisement, published in The Times and The Gurdian, came up on behalf of Incredible India, the official tourism promoter on behalf of Indian Ministry of Tourism.
The advertisement read:

Being one of the world's oldest civilizations, our land is one where the ancient and the modern co-exist and a multitude of religions live in harmony. We have a modern thriving culture and offer an amazing wealth of sights and sounds, tastes and textures making our country a place like no other. ... As a beauty therapist, you may be especially interested in visiting one of the many spas where you can cleanse your stresses away, enjoy yoga in the land that invented it and experience Ayurvedic healing which promotes positive health and natural beauty.

I feel whoever accuses anybody else to racism, should take a similar effort to make things straight. That's exactly how the next century is going to be shaped !!!!

Racism and UK

2007-01-22T19:15:00.000+05:30

After the incident of racial abuse on Shilpa Shetthy by a British actress on a Reality show 'Big Brother' on Channel Four, there has been a chain reaction of events going on. The reactions, however, pointed out the maturity of Indians and Britishers to retain the pride of the respective countries. The Indian media, although attacked the person seriously, has also shown no bias against the Britishers. They have also covered the anti-racism protests held inside Britain and singled out that it's possibly not the country but the individual responsible for the debacle. The British media also did not try to cover up the concerned actress Jade Goody and accused her of racism. The political leaders, thanks to the democracy in place, condemned the event. The sponsors withdrew their support, may be due to the forsighted problems in entering Indian market. Eventually, the actress apologized.

A BBC coverage on Indian maturity to handle the event.

I would also add to the report about the maturity of British people in this regard. Although, the actress was popular in British entertainment world, they showed no mercy on her. They realized the importance of saving the reputation of their own country and behaved rationally. Rather than blaming media or the channel (which is actually partly responsible), they zoomed into the actual problem, down to the individual level, and made ger apologize. When'll India mature and behave similarly?

To some extent, Indians getting matured. I saw it in the latest Bangalore riots report. Everybody blamed politicians instead the other community for the violence. I have doubts whether Indian politicians are 'matured' enough to apologize.

The Ancestors we had

2007-01-19T11:02:00.000+05:30

Of late, I was reading about different findings and theories around Human Ancestors. I tried to summarize what I found out.

Introduction
Over years human beings believed that human beings are special creation of God and got created at His will. The lack of reasoning and strong believe in divine beings forced human beings to rely on divine theories rather than looking at the nature to find out the laws. Over years, human beings have got rid of those burdens through science and started finding the natural laws. Let us visit where exactly we are in terms of knowledge of Human ancestry.

History of Findings
The first light was thrown on this topic by the famous scientist Charles Darwin. In his book named "Origin of Species", he mentioned how a species can separate it out from other through "Natural Selection" and "Evolution". However, he was not able to explain how the first life on the earth was formed. A contemporary scientist, Gregor Mendel came up with the idea of Hybrids which was later converted to study of Gene and DNA. Although Darwin's findings were widely contested by the Church those days, his theories opened floodgates to a new set of discoveries in the medical science and human genetics.

Darwin's theory - A mere theory?
There are a series of accusitions on the Darwin's theory that it was a mere 'hypothesis' and has proved nothing. Most of the accusitions came out of religionalists, who are threatened as this theory annihilates a long standing interpretation that 'God created the Man'. A lot of scientists even today accuse Darwin's theory to be having 'no evidence'.

However, there are yet to be a proof found that goes against the Darwin's theory. The tools used to evaluate the theory were mostly undiscovered at Darwin's time. More and more the human knowledge is growing, the evidences seem to be piling up in favour of it. For example, the use of RadioCarbon Dating to determine the age, use of Genetics to study inheritence, Comparative Anatomy, Geographical distribution or the Fossil records, all supported evolution. On the other hand, there are no counter-evidences of it are found yet, neither a fossil of a human in Jurassic age nor a specific bacteria which defies the laws of natural selection.

The limitation of the study of evolution is the time it takes to perform an experiment to open eyes. Due to less complexity, the evolution can be observed in the level of microbes and it takes less time. However, in bigger creatures, like a human being, it takes thousands of years to become recognizable to a naked eye.

In short, evolution and creation of species take the same position in the world of science as that of gravity. Gravity can not be proved, it can be observed till date, the same is with Evolution. We are yet to know whether gravitation works on all celestial bodies due to our limited knowledge of the Universe, same with evolution of living beings.

Mitochondrial Eve
Coming back to the human ancestors, the study of ancestors are now powered by Genetics and Molecular Biology. The inductive study on human genetics reveals an important fact. A person directly inherits the mitochondrial DNA directly in his/her maternal line. Male sperm contains only enough mitochondria to power the sperm to the surface of the egg – it does not enter the egg. The egg, however, contains mitochondria that have been passed from mother to daughter for countless generations. The only way for mitochondrial DNA to alter is by natural mutations, which occur very slowly when compared with the almost frantic gene mixing we and our parents take part in. Because the rate of mitochondrial genetic mutation is slow, the mutation difference between the two populations can then be compared, and a 'clock' can be produced, enabling the rate of mutation in mitochondria to be established. The genetic survey that produced the whole Mitochondrial Eve scenario didn't just sample Africans and Europeans – it sampled genes from people all over the planet. When mitochondrial DNA was compared, the survey discovered a startling result. Fundamental similarities in mitochondrial DNA in living humans suggested that we all contain genetic material from a single woman who was living in Africa around 200,000 years ago. The woman is called Mitochondrial Eve.

The confusion
Wilson's naming Mitochondrial Eve after Eve of the Genesis creation story has led to some misunderstandings among the general public. A common misconception is that Mitochondrial Eve was the only living human female of her time — she was not. Mitochondrial Eve is the most recent common matrilineal (female-lineage) ancestor for mtDNA of all humans. She didn't live alone – she would have lived within a community. There is no reason to suppose that she had more than one female child. But there is reason to suppose that whatever female children she had, they contained specific advantages for survival over the rest of the population.

Y-Chromosomal Adam
Similar to women, men inherit their Y-Chromosome directly from their father. In human genetics, Y-chromosomal Adam (Y-mrca) is the patrilineal human most recent common ancestor (mrca) from whom all Y chromosomes in living men are descended. Y-chromosomal Adam probably lived between 60,000 and 90,000 years ago, judging from molecular clock and genetic marker studies. While their descendants certainly became close intimates, Y-chromosomal Adam and mitochondrial Eve are separated by at least 30,000 years, or many hundred generations. Y-chromosomal Adam probably lived 65,000 years ago, and mitochondrial Eve some 150,000 years ago. The people living around the same time as these two individuals would have passed on their genes like Adam and Eve, but their Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA lines would have eventually died out.

Implications
1) It qualifies as an evidence for Single-origin hypothesis. Again, it has nothing to show that human beings started from a single couple, but to show that human beings originated in a single place through mutation.
2) A milestone in the path of Genetic Genealogy.

Future
It opened a door only to the study of Human genetics and evolution. The religionalists are coming up with Intelligent Design theory, which claims to bridge the religion with the Science. It says that the first instance of life was created by God on the earth, after which the evolution took place. It is true that the creation of life itself has been a point of contention as scientists are yet to create a fresh life in the lab. Let us wait till we can see life to be created in front of us and observe all the phase of Human Evolution inside a lab, open in front of our eyes. I will definitely write up on origin of life very soon.

References
1) The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins
2) BBC article.
3) Wikipedia articles.
4) MSNBC Page on Genealogy.
5) A simple version of the story.
6) An excellent documentory on Human evolution in this site.
7) Articles on Mukto-Mona.

Singur and Industrialization of West Bengal

2007-01-12T17:21:00.000+05:30

I came across four excellent editorials from Anandabazar Patrika those talk about industrialization of West Bengal and the clash between the Agriculture and Industry to occupy the land.

The first one points out to the inability of the govt to understand the popular opinion and to walk with people. The second one highlights the need to build popular opinion before actually taking any action. The third one talks about the compensation issue with a historical perspective. The fourth one revisits the eternal war between Agriculture and Industry.

Whatever be the logic, it seems the left govt is likely to go ahead with projects in Nandigram and Singur. That the stance till day.

Democracy Revisted

2007-01-10T16:13:00.000+05:30

After the uninterrupted journey of Indian democracy for almost last 60 years, we can see the fruits of democracy. We have better education, health and overall standard of living for all in this 50 years. But, the negatives are also visible. Let me discuss a few negatives in Indian context produced by democracy as a continuation of Manas' blog.

The first argument against democracy is widely visible - the tyranny of majorities towards minorities. The majority and minority are generally distinguished based on ethnicity, religion or language. But how should we draw the division? What is the line between majority and minority? The boundary based on ethnicity and religion are output of democracy or they were pre-existing? In fact these boundaries are not at all resultant of democracy, rather democracy has asked for opinions to each and every people, not to communities and weighed them according to the share of the population the community had. It is the failure of the people that they drawn boundaries based on their ethnical, religious or linguistic grounds.

The biggest falacy of democracy is the same as the biggest strength of it. The rule of the majority. Hence, if someone is minority, he'll try to get to the end of minority - by any means. The means used are often beyond the interest of the people. Due to the lack of knowledge, people often step into the traps and one trap leads to another. The media emerges as a champion tool on manipulating popular opinion and drawing up invisible lines between once united people. As human inability to verify all facts around him, it is now to see how long the democratic system brings good output to human society.

The Indian case is little bit complicated one. Indians are divided on many different fronts, language, caste, ethnicity and religion. A mixture of all these four parameters could not determine a fixed majority throughout the country. A clear boundary is yet to be drawn. That's the only reason democracy is still floating in India - not due to the greatness of Indian leaders.

Whom should I point out as minority in India? Muslims, Christians and other non-Hindus can claim that they are minorities on religious ground. But, are Hindus a single monolith? All the reservation battle was fought between multiple castes of Hindus. The recent ULFA massacre points to a linguistic division in Asom despite they are all Hindus. It is difficult to see any cultural similarities between a Malayali and a Bengali Muslim. Only Sikhs are a little bit exception on this, as they were rooted only a few regions in India. In India, the minority is non-existent. It is a fact to the grass-roots of India. But, the falacies of democracy has at last catching India on the wrong-foot. Internal and external sources are engaged in draw up invisible majority-minority line. As I said, a clear majority-minority distinction is non-existent in India. Hence, it came up as a linguistic line in Asom and Maharastra; religious line in UP, Gujarat and Kashmir and ethnical line in Manipur and Nagaland.

A recent case of industrialization of West Bengal also should be remembered in this context. The State of West Bengal needs industrialization. So, the popular opinion is in favour of it. Unlike many other states, West Bengal has only 1% of unused land. Hence, it requires agrarian land to be acquired. Whenever a piece of land is declared to be acquired - the opinion splits between the population within and outside the land. The popular opinion says, the inhabitants of that land should amicably shift out of that land, even with a meagre compensation. The population of the land tries to gain as much compensation as possible as their future is insecured. An invisible line is drawn and the rest is visible today.

The last strength in Democracy is that it is opinion based. If people do really understand that the dividing lines are not helping them, they'll revert to the unbiased opinion. In that sense it's self-corrective. The correctiveness of popular opinion entirely depends on literacy and education of people. Only education of people can guide India to achieve the goal. We should remember that democracy is only a process and a process needs proper implementation to ensure output. Education should emphasize on the human-bonding and that should diminish the lines. Let's hope that we implement our system properly and achieve a borderless society.

Reference :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

Jesus in India?

2006-12-25T11:32:00.000+05:30

Of late, I read about a few articles on Jesus in India and also watched a few documentories on that. There are some points of doubts about Jesus - where he spent his early days and also if he was not crucified, where did he spend his last days.

There are a couple of India-based theories that trace back both this periods to India. Both of these theories are well incorporated in this BBC documentory. The first one is from Nicolas Notovich, which tells about Isha (Jesus) in India. The information he gathered are from a Tibetan monestry in Hemis in Ladakh. In his book The Lost Years of Jesus:The Life of Saint Issa, he drew parallel to Issa and Jesus to trace the lost years of Jesus. Notovitch's writings were immediately controversial and after the German orientalist Max Mueller corresponded with the Hemis monastery Notovitch claimed to have visited, and Archibald Douglas visited Hemis Monastery, and both found no evidence that Notovich (much less Jesus) had even been there himself, his claims were widely rejected. The head of the Hemis community signed a document that denounced Notovitch as an outright liar. However, his findings were later supported by Swami Abhedananda, a famous diciple of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, in his Bengali translation of Tibetan Gospels named "Kashmir O Tibbate". An English translation of the Tibetan Gospels are found here. A short and interesting discussion on this topic is found on youtube.

The next one was post-crucification. As presented in the documentory, the Ahmadiyya sect believes that Jesus lived his end days in Kashmir and even he was burried here. The details of the claim was made by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and published as a book also. Holger Kersten wrote a book on "Jesus Lived in India" in 1995 which broadly supported this view.

The other resources :
1) Read the topic in the article by Swami Nirmalananda Giri - "Some Buddhist historical records about JesusSome Buddhist historical records about Jesus".
2) An article : Survival of the Crucifixion: Traditions of Jesus within Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Paganism by James W. DeardorffDecember, 1993; revised March, 1998.
3) Sole support for Christ of the Church in this reserch paper, but it seems to be to biased to project Jesus as we know in Bible, especially too inclined on non-Christian backgrounds of Notovich and Abhedananda.

BBC Videos courtesy youtube :
Part-1, part-2 and part-3 of the documentory is a well-represented and compiled resouce on crucification and what happened next. This will compell you to find the truth and will shake a human being's eternal quest for truth.

16th December remembered !!

2006-12-19T12:33:00.000+05:30

The TIME Report

16th December always has a special meaning to refugee migrants from East Pakistan living in India. The day of victory celebrated all over the India and Bangladesh, on the occasion of great Indian victory over Pakistan in 1971 to give birth to a new Nation, Bangladesh. Though, most of us did not go back to Bangladesh, we felt we are closer to a nation named Bangladesh than the country we left, Pakistan.

Thanks to TIME Magazine, I was able to get hold of a couple of news reports from their archives. The first one describes the build up to the war, including the plights of the refugees and the war ravaged people, the political situation and the condition of the country. The next one gives vivid description of the war and how the new nation was born.

It's a pleasure to read the reports by TIME. Although the magazine was based in USA, the dared to come up with such reports, despite the pro-Pakistan stance of USA. Hats off to TIME.

The significance of the Victory day in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan

How India and Pakistan view Bangladesh and events of 1971, are highlighted in a couple of great editorials in The Daily Star, written by two liberal columnists - Kuldip Nayar and MB Naqvi. The following mukto-mona article also shows that Indian celebration of Victory day does not mention Bangladesh or even the Mukti-bahini. My coverage ends with a link to Rezwan's writing on the same topic.

Updates today

2006-11-07T16:55:00.000+05:30

Bangladesh is not going to join Trans-Asian railways as it was not approved by the ruling govt.
Bangladesh was dropped from the topmost spot of the TI list after five years. India moved 18 places up to catch up China at 70th place. Read the report.
Trains to Srinagar are on their way.
A different perspective of 1857 revolt from a Britisher.
Virtual tour of Dhaka.

An Indian's view of Bangladesh : part 1

2006-11-06T14:08:00.000+05:30

I had a chance to visit Bangladesh in the last month. What I am writing are only my personal views and opinions, not a generic one. I will write up all those in a few parts.

From my childhood I had a wish to see the country where from my father is. Also, I had a lot of questions, especially about the major differences between West Bengal and Bangladesh. I got the chance to fulfill the dream last month. Despite political problems, I had gathered sufficient view about Bangladesh and most of those are positive in my judgment.

The Initial Clearance
The journey started with a few stumbles as Bangladesh Embassy first refused to grant me the Visa till I personally meet them. It was almost impossible for me since I was at Hyderabad and somebody has to get it on behalf of me to save a valuable day. The reason was not clear to me, but after a little persuasion, we got it. Next, the GMG Airlines booked tickets for us without informing us that the flight was going via Chittagong and will take a couple of hours. We discovered it only after looking at the tickets.

The Journey to Dhaka
I, along with my wife chose to fly to Dhaka with a GMG Airlines flight. When our flight left Kolkata airport for Chittagong, I had no idea even how Bangladesh looks like from the flight. The experience with the flight was not that great except the delicious foods. The air-hostess welcomed us with "Salam Alaikum ... Allah-hu-Akbar", something that signified that I am entering a different country. The bird's eye view of the country from 1500m is of a lash green field, disconnected by muddy water rivers. You can see all possible curves of rivers in Bangladesh and all possible shapes of deltas from the sky. The place where Meghna river flows into the Bay of Bengal is so huge that it took around 10 minutes to fly pass that. After the calmest sea shore, a thin beach, and a few poor houses, we landed into Chittagong International Airport. After landing it was tough for me to believe that it is an International Airport. Our small flight of GMG Airlines having 10 passengers was the only one present in the huge area allocated to the airport. A small transit lounge with Bengali speaking guards welcomed us in the airport.

After watching the ICC Champions' Trophy match between England and Australia for about 10 minutes, we moved on to the Dhaka bound flight along with 25 odd passengers. Before landing to Dhaka, I possibly realized the first truth about Bangladesh - it is a Dhaka-centric country. Looking at the skyscrapers and the roads, Dhaka is comparable to any other international city. Dhaka is certainly comparable to, or may be even better than all four metro cities of India in terms of concrete buildings and roads. Dhaka Airport is huge, and is bigger than most (may be all) of the Indian Airports. I wish all major Indian cities will have a better second airport than this - let's hope for the best for Shamsabad(Hyderabad) Airport to come in 2007-08.

The difference between Dhaka and Chittagong is really pathetic, and asked me a question - if such is the difference between the country's first and second major cities - what can be the differences between the rich and the poor and also the urban and the rural people? Isn't a decentralized mechanism should be in place for a country that's trying to eradicate the poverty? Six different divisions with six assemblies and autonomies to the divisions to some extent might have produced less number of skyscrapers in Dhaka, but a few more in other cities. Developing a few more cities parallel to Dhaka should be critical to Bangladesh's people. Let me leave this debate to my Bangladeshi friends and proceed further.

A few days later when my parents along with my sister came to Dhaka, they came via direct flight and hence were overwhelmed by Dhaka. It seemed to me, that a hopping flight via Chittagong gave me better insights of the country and I thanked GMG Airways for that.

First Sight
The Dhaka Airport gave me an impression that it's not at all an alien land. Everything is written in Bengali and everybody is speaking in Bengali - may be in a different dialect - is really nice to watch. The day I reached, was the last Saturday before the Eid, at the time of Iftaar. There were several people having their Namaaz on the floor of the lounge - the only difference visible in an Indian eye. The lounges are big compared to the Indian Airports, where we almost have to jostle our way. The human traffic was also very low compared to Indian ones. The air-traffic in India picked up during last few years thanks to the cheap domestic airlines in India.

On the Roads
Busy roads of Dhaka were very similar to those of Indian cities. The last weekend of Eid had drawn less crowd on the roads. The roads of Dhaka are broad, but fail to take the huge crowd who come from all over Bangladesh. A few days later, during the Eid, the crowds almost vanished. It showed up, unlike Indian cities, Dhaka has much less urban-mined people. And most of the inhabitants are first or second generation urban dwellers. Having a strong tie with the village home, most of them get back to meet their kins to the village during Eid. In India the scenario is quite different. For example, during Makara Sankranti/Ugaadi, most of Telugu speaking people of Hyderabad go back to their villages but the non-Telugu people stay back to keep the traffic alive. Bangladesh, unlike India, is a homogeneous country and most of the people follow the same outfit, religion, language and most of other cultural parameters, except the deeply polarized political attitude.

The influx of villagers towards Dhaka is also something similar in India, although there has been a improved situation in South India. I remember both Nehru and Gandhi were very eager for rural development since it would allow cities to develop and stop villagers to take shelter in cities for every second reason. It seems, Bangladesh, along with India, failed to achieve it miserably. In my view, rural development is the need of an hour for Bangladesh because of the high percentage of village or semi-urban people in the country.

What's Next
Next I would write up something about the culture, tv programs and common people.

Pension and the Economy

2006-11-02T20:25:00.000+05:30

India is now going through a process of Economic liberalisation. Along with reforms in many sectors, govt is looking at reforms in the existing pension system as well.

The system of pension in India is like Pay as you go - it means, the younger generation employees will contribute a part of their salary to govt which would ultimately be used to pay the pension of retired employees. This is a symbol of altruist state - as per the famous economist John Maynard Keynes.

The disadvantage of this system is it's dependence on population expansion. If the working population shrinks day by day, the old age people will soon become a burden to the govt. The issue gets complicated with debt-ridden govts goes for more borrowings to continue the pension system, that in turns adds no value to the economy.

There are four basic structural changes in the existing Pension system in India. First the employee should decide on where to invest his money and at what proportion. The pension will be maintained by some private sector company. The third is the money for pension will be invested into bonds as well. The final one is, Govt will control the expansion and regulation of the Pension fund.

Let us see how all these changes affects us in the long run. Hope it's not an end to the altruism from the Indian state towards it's citizens and ultimately, pension fund also gets a share of the economic boom the country is experiencing.

The New era of class war

2006-11-02T20:18:00.000+05:30

A series of US presidents ignored the implications of corporations relocating jobs and factories to developing nations with low labor costs. Such off-shoring has enriched a small and select group while gradually destroying US industries, occupations and communities.

“No country benefits from trading its professional jobs, such as engineering, for domestic service jobs,” claims journalist Paul Craig Roberts. He points out that scientific and technological research, design and innovation flourish inside manufacturing facilities, but US corporations steadily relocate factories and manufacturing jobs overseas.

Economists speculate that education and retraining could lead to higher-paying alternative jobs in the developed nations, but increasing population and outsourcing outpace any new jobs available. Asia takes on more design and engineering work, and US workers sell the finished products to a public that accumulates dangerous debt. “American employees have been abandoned by American corporations and by their representatives in Congress,” the author argues. The US public has less confidence in an economy based on so little manufacturing substance. The result of such trends includes widening polarization between rich and poor, contributing to social strife and less opportunity for all in the US.

Thanks to YaleGlobal. The full article is available here.

Updates around us

2006-11-02T20:04:00.000+05:30

A very good update on the future of Iraq - may be a division would save some lives.
Same view of Kashmiris from the "other side of the fence".
End of career of Shoaib Akhtar - a BBC view?
The US role in Pak Madrassa attack. It's really amazing that a country needs to kill it's own people through air strikes! Why can't they negotiate?
Politics is all about dirty power mongering. One example is today's Bangladesh.

Reinstated The Yunus Story

2006-10-15T04:45:00.000+05:30

In my last article I thought that I don't need to write more about Prof. Yunus today. But, a few blogs changed me. It's quite shameful to see that a group of people spreading anti-Grameen Bank news across the internet. Most probably these are the reaction of jealous competitors of Prof. Yunus and his Bank.

The forwarded mail posted in the blog talks about various points. Let me try to clarify the reader about the person and his concept of Microcredit. Let me go through pointwise.

Do you know in most cases it is the husband / father/ elder brother who controls
the Grameen loan taken in the name of his wife/daughter/ sister?

- Well, this does not change the facts of repayment and the noble business cause the person is after.

Do you know the bank charges around 30% interest?

- It means that no other Bank in Bangladesh charges less than that. Otherwise how did the Bank grow?

Do you know that Grameen borrowers lend the borrowed money at 80% to 100%
interest to fellow villagers?

- Why the other villagers are not elligible to get the loans directly from the Bank? The information seems to be an isolated example and not a generic one.

Do you know any other business where someone can still make a living by
borrowing at 30% interest rate?

- So, they could not repay and the Bank would have vanished within days of it's birth. Where from the money is coming that is adding to grow the Bank itself?

Do you know in some villages (especially in Sylhet) men take three/four wives to
get Grameen loan to run their lucrative money lending business?

- Again, some isolated examples of failure can not be treated as against the notion of generic success the Grameen Bank has achieved.

Do you know that the poorest of the poor (as touted by Yunus, Clintons and
others) are not eligible to Grameen loan as they cannot repay their loans in 52
instalments at 30% interest? Do you know that only middle peasants (having some
lands or assets) are eligible to the credit?

- come on man, had this been the case, the concept of micro-credit would not have any meaning at all. People are not that fool. Also, in a later point the same author has written that Grameen simply does nothing to a defaulter. So, what's the use of the assets of the borrower?

Why do you think Monsanto, the giant US corporation, engaged in marketing
genetically modified seeds (disastrous in the long run as peansants will have to
buy the seeds before every sowing season) is a big promoter of microcredit?

- The concept of business is simple. Monsanto wants people to buy seeds. People has to have money to buy seeds. So, Monsanto would encourage micro-credit. The same concept is applied when Microsoft gives free training on Microsoft platforms in poor countries. They simply want people to use their products and make it a de-facto standard, which will give them an edge in emerging countries, that they could leverage later.

Why does Grameen Bank pay no income tax to Bangladesh?

- It's a decision of Govt of Bangladesh and I hope they have found the cause reasonable enough.

This is the largest cellphone company in Bangladesh, charging for localincoming
calls as well.

- Charging for incoming calls is a part of their business strategy. If they can survive with that in the market, I see no reason why this should be criticised.

Is there a link between thisaward and Grameen Phone's (Dr Yunus's cell phone
company) partnership with the Norweigian telephone company, Nortel?

- First of all, Nortel is a Canadian company. Nortel is a giant and has relationships with many telecom service providers. We can not conclusively derive anything from this fact.

Do you know that the Nortel has been siphoning off millions of dollars to Norway
withoutpaying any income tax to Bangladesh?

- According to the author anybody else who would have supplied switches (Nortel is famous for switches) would have taken away money from Bangladesh. So, is there another company who gives similar equipment at lower cost? Why then Nortel is still a giant Telecom equipment manufacturing company.

If micro-credit could alleviate poverty, why on earth hundreds of thousands of
Bangladeshis are going to Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Singapore,
borrowinghundreds of thousands of takas (two lakh per head on the average) to
work as menials? If borrowing fifty or sixty dollars could alleviate poverty,
why are theydoing so? Are they stupids?

- The last argument exposes the stupidity of the author. Grameen Bank is not a panacea which will cure the poverty disease of Bangladesh. It's an effort and each effort has it's own limitation. He cannot make people rich overnight, nor he has ever claimed so. He has got the Nobel prize as a recognition of his effort. Regarding migration, everyone wants more. So, they migrate with the hope of more earnings, a better life.

It's quite irritating to respond to these foolish anti-Yunus campaigns. Still, I can take the pain of writing my view so that I can stop the anonymous route of defamation messages. I think I have succeeded, but the reader has the last say.

N.B. - I am adding this after a few repercussions around this writing. I hereby explicitly declare that I have no stance for or against the blog which I am referring to at the beginning of my writing. The person has copied the mail into his blog. I was trying to counter the logic presented by the author of the mail (Taj Hasmi) only and I am aware of neutral position taken by the author of the blog.

Prof. Yunus and his Microcredit

2006-10-15T03:35:00.000+05:30

I thought that I would write a lot on his achievements in my blog. But, I found Rezwanul has already covered almost all of them. So, no writing and only a link to the interested readers. In my opinion, he's a person who can inspire a whole generation to create a better world for all of us.
Read the followings :
1. Rezwan's first compilation.
2. The updates from several blogs.
3. A old touchy CNN article on him.
4. His autobiography.

Religion, Morality, Humanity and Law

2006-09-25T02:43:00.000+05:30

Today I went to a cinema hall to watch and enjoy the sequel of Munnabhai MBBS. The new film, named Lage raho Munnabhai, is a very good blend of humour, emotion and thought. But, in this blog, I am not going to discuss about the film, but about a slide of a public awareness campaign displayed at interval. The message was against child labour and it reads like : "Don't enslave children - they are God's gift to us". Given an Indian context, it's not so striking to see a reference to God in a public awareness program, where the author of the message has chosen the religious ground against child labour ahead of moral, humanitarian or legal provisions. But, does it really matter? Are these grounds really different? All of these suggests or orders you a few do's and dont's - still they have differences.

Let me discuss them one by one. I accept that religion was one of the sources of the rest three though those terms were distinctively identified only after a lot of progress made by humankind in modern era. All of these are actually the result of unending feedback mechanism running in human society - the experience gathered out of an event, it's repercussions and the outcome. This feedback mechanism makes the latter three more powerful than religion, which is static by definition. Hence, the rest three, being not cluttered by divinity, are very different entity from religion. For example, one can see the basis of Hindu laws and the current Indian laws and notice the transformation.

Next it comes to the morality and humanity. Morality refers to the concept of human ethics which pertains to matters of good and evil and it is closely attached to culture. Humanity is the most popular term among these in modern era - which is defined through commitment towards a set of Human Rights. At a first glance it might ask that at what respect we are considering good and evil. If the scale is Humanity, then these terms become synonymous. But the matter of fact is that, we are run not only by our personal ethics and morality, but we also have to share the moral values of the society - known as public morality. But, humanity is to ensure rights for every human being. So, violation of human rights of a single individual is still considered 'moral' in a typical human society, if the action conforms to public morality. A good example of this can be censorship or dress-codes.

The interesting fact is that the definition of morality and humanity differs in different societies. There are a few different terms on this - one is moral relativism and the other is moral pluralism. Relativistic positions often see moral values as applicable only within certain cultural boundaries or in the context of individual preferences. The value pluralism acknowledges the co-existence of opposing ideas and practices, but does not require granting them equal validity. There is a third opinion by Friedrich Nietzsche that identifies morality as an error introduced in human beings through the concept of dualism (every action can be categorized as good or bad) and nurtured by the religion. He believed that mankind would progress and fulfill this potential only by starting to act naturally and instinctively according to each individual's desires and drives. Coming back to difference of views, it was obvious that if human beings cannot agree on morality, they can't define the basic human rights to be acknowledged globally. The outcome was the lack of universal appeal in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that was later openly opposed by CDHRI(Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam).

The Law, is the set of rules or norms of conduct which forbid, permit or mandate specified actions and relationships among people and organizations. As per Aristotle's natural-law theory, the law is driven by morality. In that sense, it is nothing but an encoded form of public morality implemented and made by representatives of a typical democratic society. So the law and the entire legal system depend on who exactly makes the law and who interprets and implements it. The fact of dependence on a few people to serve the society makes law fallible, as per modern legal philosophers like Ronald Dworkin.

Coming back to the point where I began my journey, the slides of the public awareness program, I must say that a social human being generally responds to either of religious, moral, humanitarian or legal obligations. It depends on the maturity and character of the human being and the respective society how they prioritize them. So, if a set of slides to be made for public awareness programs, it should try to focus on all four aspects. A typical set of slide will look like (I'm not an expert, so don't mind the gender-bias):
1. "Don't enslave children - they are God's gift to us." (belief on God)
2. "Today's children are future's leaders, let's not enslave them." (feedback mechanism of the society on good and bad)
3. "Every child has his right to enjoy his childhood." (Human Rights awareness)
4. "Employing a child under the age of 18 is a punishable offence." (under legal obligations)
I hope the authors of any awareness program will survey the targetted society and decide on a ideal blend of all four of this perspectives to make the campaign successful, something that was done in Lage Raho Munnabhai to make it a hit in Indian market.

The Best Web-Based Computer Applications For Small Business

2006-09-24T23:59:00.000+05:30

Here's a list by Forbes. Looking at the winning softwares, it seems that AJAX is going to rock in web-applicatios for small business. Also, it is obvious that Microsoft is still the best innovator of the small business softwares technologies, although it's own product Windows Live gets the last position in the list.

Superpower syndrome : Why the world hates America

2006-09-02T03:00:00.000+05:30

Introduction
After Michael Medved has written his article on "Why the world hates America", there has been many debates around this topic. I don't know if it's a wastage of time for me to spend a few words on this topic, but I can't resist.

From an American's perspective
Let me start with the Medved's article. He viewed the whole scenario as a result of negative approach from the rest of the world and gave almost clean chit to USA. His claims are based on how the world views USA. Three basic reasons he referred to, are envy (towards World's only Superpower), legacy (of communism and socialism) and toxic culture(Americanisation or Westernization as we say). The most common phenomenon that supports the above points is the rank of US as the most preferable destination of migrants. These reasons are definitely valid and present among the rest of the world and highlights the way American's think about the rest, but only a few non-Americans would agree to it.

From a non-American's perspective
The last line of the previous paragraph shows that there is a lack of awareness among common Americans about the rest of the world. Let it be my first point of non-American perspective on this topic. A huge article with lots of reference helped me to figure out what's non-American's view on this topic. The basic reasons are : History of war and the resultant sense of insecurity(Hirosima and Nagasaki, Vietnam, Iraq and many more), oil-affinity and manipulation of oil-rich states, commercial aggression, support of obnoxious regimes and International discord (Kyoto, Land Mine treaty and the Arms trade). Another reason cited in the list is the violent crime statistics in USA, which is the only US internal reason mentioned there, is absolutely meaningless. It might cause 'dislikings', but hatred is a much stronger feeling.

From History to Modern days
Historically, the contemporary Superpowers are always loathed by their neighbours. Those hatred can mostly be attributed to their affinity to expand their territorial boundaries. There were few states who used to be pro-superpower, and the rest tried to resist it. But, the hatred or at least strong sense of disliking to the Superpower was always shared among them. In the era of colonialism, Britain was hated across it's colonies due to it's exploitation of those countries. After WW-II, the cold war initiated the hate towards USA, mostly by the Communist Nations in East Europe and Asia. But, the basic reasons of the hatred towards the superpower remains the same - (security) threat and (fear of) exploitation. Every superpower of the world wanted to shape the world according to their wishes, which generated much anger among the neighbours. In the era of globalization, rest of the world qualifies as the neighbour of USA.

Future Superpowers
USA is definitely a better superpower than it's previous ones in terms of comparions of the contemporary worlds. Along with the hatred, the respect for USA is also noticable in many countries, which was historicaly less present. The fact also signifies the progress of humanity and a simple extrapolation tells us that the future superpowers might actually be respected across the world. The reason behind this improvement is closely attached to the cause why it has become a Superpower. Historically, aggression and arms were the only means to become a superpower. Slowly, innovation started taking place as the major cause. And today, USA is a Superpower primarily because of innovations. May be, the innovations will be saturated or available to everyone instantly in future. The country which'll manage them in the best possible way - will become the Superpower. Or, the artificial concept of the 'country' will be erased out, and an individual will become a superpower (as shown in The Matrix) by sheer intelligence.

Conclusion
From the neutral point of view and with historical references, it's quite obvious that the hate-America syndrome is natural in political ecosystem of the World. An ecosystem is such a system, where nobody can refuse to participate. Hence, the world is increasingly getting polarised between pro and anti-US people and will get so in coming few decades.

This is an endless debate. If you are still interested to carry on the debate, you can avail this book from Amazon.

Indians and Israel-Lebanon Conflict

2006-08-06T02:44:00.000+05:30

I have found a lot of my fellow bloggers to draw a parallel of India and Israel. A lot of them are related to Jewish-Indian Reception’ held earlier this year at Columbia University in New York. The invitation letter is present in many of the sites. Let me link to some of them :
1) Haroon Moghul describes how right wing politics made India and Israel allies. He has copy-pasted from a writing of Mike Marquese(next link in the list) of Zmag.org about ties of India and Israel.
2) Palestine News reports on the axis between India-Israel-US.
3) India News points out how Israel could learn from India in dealing the extremism. The summary is :
Israel can learn from India’s emphasis on dealing with the source of the problem rather than the manifestation. Israel has used violence in Lebanon under the mistaken impression that it will make Israel more powerful. It could not be more wrong

But it neglects the difference of India and Israel in terms of population and shock-absorption capability.
4) Indian strategies in the Israel-Lebanon war is being discussed in this blog. It noted that :
This is a good reason for India to not take a moralistic position in favor of one side against the other. Beyond humanitarian considerations India has no immideate stakes in the conflict between the Hezbollah and Israel. There are however long term Energy Security concerns. Therefore India should restrict itself inside deplorations of Human Rights violations only, no moral support should be given to any of the parties.
5) This one discusses about Indian diplomats sandwiched between Neuclear deal and supporting US stance in Israel-Lebanon conflict.
6) An Israeli blogger argues that India will learn from Israel. Here's a few positive words from his writings :
India and Israel must and probably will stand together in the near future against a common enemy. As I always grow tired of saying because I'm not in the business of prophecy: India, not China, is the world's future. It is America's natural successor and will before we know it be Israel's most important ally. One of these days I'll go into full detail as to why.
7) An interesting view from an Indonesian studying in AMU, India. He quotes from Jakarta Post :
Having a good relation with Washington is beneficial in one sense but it can also be very delicate to handle. India’s current position is an example of this. It has good relation with both Washington and the Middle East but at the same time, it has to balance the two so as not to fall into the trap of unilateralism. Furthermore, if India is still ambitious enough to play major role internationally it must take corrective actions in the current crisis in the Middle East and must balance its national and international position so as to keep multilateralism intact. A failure to do so would not only bring down the government in New Delhi but would also put India at par with Israel and other Washington’s allies.
8) The Chennai-living asks Indian Govt to act more 'proactively' against terror like Israel. Another blogger writes that the Israel and India are not the same and India is not expected to go Israel way.

My opinion

Overall, Indian educated class is quite divided over Israel-Lebanon conflict. A set of people who always find conspiracy among anything's done by West and Israel, the other group always find problems with Arabs. But, I liked the some of the more rational views.

One rational view include that we should support anything that can encourage peace. We should stop Israel so that loss of lives can be avoided. They should meet Hezbollah in a table instead of a battle ground. I see this section of people are in majority in educated class.

The other view is totally self-centered. Given the fact that I am an Indian, in the current geo-politics, I am expected to be attacked by the Hezbollah and Hamas but not the Israeli Army. Hezbollah and Hamas may not bomb us directly, but they can embrace groups like LeT who are known for their anti-India strategies. Ultimately, I live for myself, not for people of Lebanon and Israel. I saw this is the major reason behind whoever supports Israel in India.

However, I am not quite sure of if I should at all support anyone in this particular warfare. Israel is condemned because they bomb civilians - but where your enemy is hiding themselves inside the civilians (which is against International Laws - Protocol 12, Geneva Convention), the responsibility goes to Hezbollah. Hezbollah is no innocent child, they are often engaged in bombing several Israeli and Jewish targets (and of course targets include civilians) around the world. But, Hezbollah had no other option but to resort to guerilla warfare to defend Lebanon against mighty Israel. Overall, Occupation if Gaza and West Bank and attacks on civilians are deplorable Israeli actions, whereas, trying to wipe out Israel is a impractical and condemnable attempt by it's neighbours.

Conclusion
If we take a larger picture of the scenario, we'll see the majority of Middle-Eastern states are engaged in threatening to wipe out Israel from it's birth - which keeps Israel suspicious about it's neighbours. On the other hand, US and EU are pursueing hard to keep it's decision to 'implant' Israel after Second World War by Palestine Partition plan. I see that the whole Middle-East crisis as a 'gift' of Colonial masters of the world. If we forget the past; Israel, Palestine and Lebanon - all has their right to exist. But, shaking off the legacy is almost impossible and in the labyrinth process of cause and effect made peace a unattainable object. Middle-East badly needs leaders who can sacrifice for a bigger cause.

The Maritime Boundary

2006-05-22T20:09:00.000+05:30

Of late, I have come across the Oil and Gas blocks contentions between India and Bangladesh. The blocks which India put for auction in NEPL-VI, are actually overlapping Bangladesh blocks. The region is alleged to be 'overlapping' between India and Bangladesh EEZs. So, who's area is it?

EEZ
Generally a state's EEZ extends to a distance of 200 nautical miles (370 km) out from its coast. But what happens when one country's 370kms go inside the other? According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea - Part V, any such disputes between any two countries should be resolved on the basis of equity and in the light of all the relevant circumstances, taking into account the respective importance of the interests involved to the parties as well as to the international community as a whole.

India & Bangladesh Maritime Boundary
According to the articles(first and second) published in The Daily Star, the Bangladesh govt. claims that anything falls under the 370km zone from their coast line, should be given as EEZ of Bangladesh. The argument considers Bangladesh as a geographically disadvantaged country because its 720-km coastal line is concave in shape. Also, Bangladesh must have an open wide front to the high seas in the Bay of Bengal. The Author quotes the historical judgement given by ICJ (International Court of Justice) in NORTH SEA CONTINENTAL SHELF CASE (1969) and said that Germany got the access to North Sea despite the equidistant line did not allow them to get so. The judges allowed Germany to be considered 'equitably', so that they also gets some EEZ across North Sea. Harun ur Rashid also added that equidistant method (suggested in Geneva Convention - article 6) should be considered only between opposite States, like India and Srilanka.

North Sea Continental Shelf Case

Point C marks the land boundary between the Netherlands and Germany. Point A marks the land boundary between Germany and Denmark. The line C-D-E-B-A is the approximate equidistance line.

History
India and Bangladesh started their bilateral talks way back in 1974, which was inconclusive. India was looking for equidistant border where Bangladesh was for equity based boundary. The same difference in arguments rendered Bangladesh-Myanmar talks inconclusive as well. But, India and Myanmar (opposite States) agrred upon equidistant boundary.

Maps : Indian/Myanmar claim

Maps : Bangladesh claim

My Findings
1) Even if a genuine passage is allowed for Bangladesh, the Oil blocks will be inside Indian area. I am assuming, that a passage is a passage - not a continuation of EEZ to bay of Bengal. In North Sea case, Germany was allowed a passage only.
2) There are other adjascent states who've done their maritime delimitation amicably in equidistance method. For exacmple - Albania & Italy and US and Mexico. The Geneva Convention in 1958 mentions that as a method to determine the maritime boundary.
3) The ICJ North Sea case judgement sets a lot of factors to be considered as benchmarks. Also, it noted that equidistant method can be bypassed only in case of "special circumstances". In those cases, if no concesus arises between the parties then

they were to be divided between the Parties in agreed proportions, or, failing agreement, equally, unless they decided on a régime of joint jurisdiction, user, or exploitation.

4) The Maritime Boundary case (ICJ, 2002) judgement dismissed Cameroon's claim to get more EEZ from Nigeria under 'equitable' adjustment.

The Arguments were like these :

The Court notes in this respect that Cameroon contends that the concavity of the Gulf of Guinea in general, and of Cameroon’s coastline in particular, creates a virtual enclavement of Cameroon, which constitutes a special circumstance to be taken into account in the delimitation process. Nigeria, for its part, argues that it is not for the Court to compensate Cameroon for any disadvantages suffered by it as a direct consequence of the geography of the area. It stresses that it is not the purpose of international law to refashion geography.

The judgement notes :

This method (equitable), which is very similar to the equidistance/special circumstances method applicable in delimitation of the territorial sea, involves first drawing an equidistance line, then considering whether there are factors calling for the adjustment or shifting of that line in order to achieve an "equitable result"....The Court’s jurisprudence shows that, in disputes relating to maritime delimitation, equity is not a method of delimitation, but solely an aim that should be borne in mind in effecting the delimitation....The Court finds that although it does not deny that the concavity of the coastline may be a circumstance relevant to delimitation, it nevertheless should stress that this can only be the case when such concavity lies within the area to be delimited. It notes that the sectors of coastline relevant to the present delimitation as determined above exhibit no particular concavity....Having further concluded that there were no other reasons that might have made an adjustment of the equidistance line necessary in order to achieve an equitable result, the Court decides that the equidistance line represents an equitable result for the delimitation of the area in respect of which it has jurisdiction to give a ruling.

Map of Cameroon EEZ by equidistance method

Map of Nigeria EEZ by equidistance method

Clearly, Bangladesh does not have concavity to the extent of Cameroon. Hence, getting favourable judgement from ICJ would be very difficult for them.
5) The outcome of a running case would be very interesting in this perspective. The case between Romania and Ukrine not only resembles India-Bangladesh case, but also has a high stake.

Solution
Basically, India or Bangladesh govt are not willing to claim their stakes before the stake is proved to be high. If at all Oil exists in those blocks, the countries may face each other in ICJ, very soon. The other option, i.e. joint exploration (as between Indonesia and Australia), is possibly not going to take place. Because, Bangladesh might once more come up with all bilateral issues to link with this one. For hostile neighbours, Court is the best place to solve disputes.

Sources : The following site shows a EEZs for various countries based on existing treaties or Equidistance line.

India to export oil?

2006-05-12T13:39:00.000+05:30

Amidst the rising oil prices, it is interesting to note that India has a lot of oil-convertible reserves that can potentially be converted to commercial usage. The sources might not be commercially viable when the oil price was steady, but with a price tag of over $70 a barrel and immediate US conflict with Iran on cards, Indians might think twice.

The two major oil-convertible resources India has, are Coal and Oil-Shale. The former one is known to all, I'll discuss about the latter. Oil Shale is a rock containing significant proportions of organic carbon "Kerogen" which can be broken down by application of heat into smaller molecules to form a liquid similar to natural crude oil. It is mined and transported in a manner similar to coal and is being used on an industrial scale at present all over the world to be converted into oil. The oil shale reserves in Assam are estimated at 137 billion tonnes with a recovery factor of 20-35% and the crude oil potential is 14 billion tonnes. This can sustain production of 140 million tonnes of crude oil for 100 years. The United States Office of Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves estimates the world supply of oil shale at 1.6 trillion barrels of which 1–1.2 trillion barrels are in the United States.

However, during the oil crisis of the 1970s, people thought that oil supplies were peaking, expected oil prices to be around seventy dollars a barrel for some time to come, and invested huge amounts of money in refining oil shale - money that they lost. Because of the astronomical sums that were lost last time around there is considerable reluctance to invest in oil shale this time around. Investors are waiting to see if oil prices really will remain this high. Prices are rising because of increased demand in developing countries, particularly China. Will high prices result in the discovery of more oil, as happened in the seventies, or will alternatives to drilling for oil have to be developed? Investors, burnt badly in the 1980s for their enthusiasm of the seventies, are in no hurry to develop oil shale. Those who lost money then are inclined to believe that more oil will be found by and by. Some others are thinking of it once more, as reported by WorldOil.

The whole scenarion has been articulated in the article by Swaminathan Aiyar. He noted :

However, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh are blessed with ample water. A small dam on a minor tributary of the Brahmaputra could provide enough water, and generate hydel power too. Possibly the dam itself could be a rock-filled one built with spent shale. The first step needed is to appoint international consultants to assess the deposits and suggest technologies for extraction.Given the potential benefit, the risks are worthwhile.

Assam coal is, technically, a sort of solid petroleum deposit (it is a marine sediment like oil, not a carbonised forest like conventional coal). This makes it especially suitable for conversion to oil. Assam coal has much sulphur, so it is a high-pollution fuel for thermal power. But coal liquefaction yields ultra-clean oil, leaving behind sulphur as a by-product that can be used for fertiliser manufacture.

The other option, Coal, is also discussed in the article.

China is planning to set up at least four plants to convert coal to oil. The Shenhua Group is setting up a direct liquefaction plant in Inner Mongolia using IFP technology. China already plans to invest over $15 billion in extracting oil from coal. India has not even started thinking about this.

The Coal-to-Oil conversion is discussed in the blog of The Indic View. The comments were though not very encouraging. The techno-leader USA also might come into business with its' huge coal-reserves.

It is often said that India has all resources except the energy resources. But, after studying these, I conclude that we need to understand that there are a lot to come in energy market, and only a research oriented approach can take us to the place where a big country like India deserves to be.

The other conclusion might be a bitter truth. It's very difficult to dry out USA, even if the entire Gulf goes against them. It might lead Iran to think twice before they start talking about war and possible shortage of oil. If the gulf-oil is cut, it will probably strengthen the US grip on the world, because, it will then invest in these areas where they haven't done earlier.

Economies and Politics Around Us

2006-05-05T13:51:00.000+05:30

Indian Economy
A reportcard of Indian infrastructure - Financial Times.
ADB says expects Indian economy to grow 7.5 pct - Reuters.
Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa - Times of India.
Debt drives Indian farmers to suicide - BBC.

Transit issue through Bangladesh
Experts favour facility against package deal - The Daily Star
Transit and free trade with India - The Daily Star
The Transit discussion - Shamokal (Bengali)

India-Bangladesh border
The 150 yard boundary : River erosion protection work remains suspended over Indian BSF protest : Bangladesh-web

The Nuke deal
India rejects proposal to amend N-deal :

Press
Freedom of Press index : 2006 : Reporters Without Borders

The progress of South Korea in last 50 years

2006-05-01T19:39:00.000+05:30

If you think India is progressing at a very high rate, think twice. I have got the graph of how South Korea progressed in last 60 years. For a fact, South Korea is now the second richest (after Japan, ignoring HK and Singapore like countries) country in Asia, while it was only a South Asian compatriot in 50's.

I read one article on how Korea progressed between 1962 and 1989. At a first glance, I put the reasons at four dimensions :
1) Good governance, this includes strong focus in education and infrastructure.
2) Help from Japan and US
3) Focussing on technology for industrialization, like Japan
4) A few world-beater private companies

South Korea scaled 8% annually between 1962 to 1989, Per Capita GDP rose 60 times - from $87 to $4830. However, the gold rush in industrialization was not replicated in Agro sector, leaving a huge gap between the rich and poor.

I can see a clear similarity in 3 out of 4 sectors between India and Korea. I am not sure of good governance, but others I am confident. India is also growng at 8% per year for last few years. Let's hope we'll also be able to replicate the success Korea had.

Bangladesh needs to change the National Anthem?

2006-04-27T23:06:00.000+05:30

Of late I am coming across several discussions in Bangladesh news sites on whether Bangladesh should change the National Anthem and incorporate a new song from Nazrul Islam. Let me categorize the different kind of discussions I have come across.

1) There are some people who support them with some unbelievable logic. The basic logics are : Tagore was an Indian Bengali. As we hate India and Indian Bengalis, let's scrap the Anthem wrote by an "Indian".

2) Some Indian Bengali came up with "suggestion" that Indian Bengalis and Bangladeshi Bengalis are carrying two different cultures. As Tagore was a poet of the former culture - his poem does not "suite" as National Anthem of Bangladesh. He has got a reply from a Bangladeshi patriot that people of Bangladesh are the proud of Bengali inheritance and they think Tagore belongs to their culture. There are some communal Mullahs who think otherwise, but they are limited in number. Another person responded in a similar tune.

3) There are some people who discuss about the origin of the song and term it as meaningless to retain as a National Anthem. As the song was written in favour of "United Bengal", that is not possible, Bangladesh should reevalute its' decision.

4) There is one scholarly article which talks about how fitting National Anthem Bangladesh has.

I don't understand a simple fact that how can a person like Prof Aftab Ahmed hold an important post as a VC of the National University even after such a proposal. Is the country running short of quality people to lead the nation?

On the topic, I found almost all the criticism to be meaningless. Tagore is the soul of Bengali literature and his poem is the most suitable choice for Bengali nation, Bangladesh. It is quite unfortunate that a few people today are starting to deny their Bengali culture. For the West Bengal person, it's one more example of comments from ignorants. West Bengal no longer inherit Bengali culture at all, they have become Indians. A century later, I doubt there will be many Bengali speaking individuals left in West Bengal. Let the Bengali culture be a property of Bangladesh, it's better for the language, better for Bengali literature.

Beyond Farakka : Need for permanent water-treaty involving SAARC

2006-04-23T20:14:00.000+05:30

A few days ago, I came across a report in a Bangladesh portal on drying up Teesta Barrage.

Till now, most of Bangladeshi people depend on water-intensive agriculture. Hence, the govt of Bangladesh should take this matter with utmost importance and go for a permanent water treaty with India. Pakistan has done it way back in 1960 by Indus water treaty. By the treaty Pakistan and India has equally distributed 6 international rivers among them. While anybody is free to build any Hydroelectric project on any river, for water-diversion projects, they have to go by the treaty. India also paid 62 million Pounds to Pakistan as compensation towards the reconstruction of Eastern river-fed canals.

For Bangladesh, most of the water comes from its' Eastern rivers, and some from Western rivers. Bangladesh can seek permanent access to to all Eastern rivers, as the North-East India is water-surplus region. In forseeable future, the region won't require any barrages. Once that is secured, Bangladesh might use the surplus Eastern water to divert(using canals) and feed Western rivers. This is similar to what Pakistan has done, it has used it's water-surplus rivers to feed other rivers, which has less water due to withdrawals from India. There are 57 rivers those enter from India to Bangladesh. Going by this framework, Bangladesh can secure the most out of them, because, the Brahamaputra basin rivers carry more than 70% of the water that enters in Bangladesh.

The Farakka case is one of the major source of trouble of Bangladesh. The treaty between India and Bangladesh is not-permanent, it's renewable in every 25 years. Every 25 years, the basis of the treaty remains the flow of water in last 25 years. There is a lower limit set in the treaty(50000 Cusec, Article II(iii)), crossing which both parties will share the burden. Due to water-withdrawals in Indian upper-riparian states and dams in Nepal, the flow in the river is diminishing year after year. Hence, a major conflict is expected between India and Bangladesh when the treaty is going to be renewed in 2020. India will come up with water-supply statistics at Farakka and Bangladesh will be defiant citing the water is withdrawn in India.

The apparent trumpcard in Indian hand is the withdrawal by upper-riparian states like UP and Bihar (withdrawal by WB is for power generation, hence it is stable). Is there a possibility that this can be reduced? Most likely - No. The reason of drying up river is the free electricity given to the farmers in UP and Bihar for last 5 years, which in turn is used to draw water from rivers using pumps. This is a truth for Ganges, as well as ground-water that are virtually connected. Moreover, Indian govts' Rural Employment Scheme targets building roads and digging irrigation canals. The canals will add up to the drying river. Unfortunately, there are no way to stop these withdrawals, because, there is no way one can convince an illiterate poor Indian farmer that the Ganges is an International river and India is bound by International treaty to supply a minimal amount of water to another country. The net output? Ganges will dry up before Farakka.

The solution from Indian point of view can be a huge water reservoir in Nepal (Kosi river) to save the surplus rain-water and supply that in dry season. The proposal has another party - Nepal, which might cry foul later and spoil the whole party (Nepal is a water-surplus country, it only lacks investment to develop them into water and power resorces). Quoting source:

"Though Nepal would like to earn revenue from selling power to India or
Bangladesh to invest in important social sectors like drinking water, education
and health for long-term development, it should remain hesitant to make huge
investments. ... At the same time, Nepal wants to extract its reasonable share
from those proposed high dam projects. Aspects like irrigation and flood control
benefits are issues that cannot be left unaddressed. ... In the case of
augmentation of low flow in the Ganga at the Farraka Barrage (the lowest
recorded flow of the Ganges at Farraka is 1,1OO m3/s), the Kosi High Dam would
be an appropriate scheme because of its proximity to Farraka and Nepal should
seek access to the sea by developing a navigational channel from Nepal's
territory. The Kosi High Dam could be a multi-country venture in sharing the
benefits it accrues in terms of power, irrigation, flood control, low flow
augmentation and navigation."

The river-interlinking project to connect North-East Indian rivers with Gangetic rivers, hence came into study. This will harm the Bangladesh interest in a broader way. If that happens, they might be forced to share Brahamaputra river water as well. From Indian perspective, RILP is a painfully cost intensive affair.

It shows that the water-problems between India and Bangladesh is not "Farakka-deep". It revolves around 6 major regions -

Water-scarce West and Central India,
Water-stable Gangetic India,
Water-stable Bangladesh (except dry season),
Water-surplus North-East India,
Water-surplus and Glacier-rich Bhutan/Sikkim
Water-surplus and Glacier-rich Nepal

It will be great, if SAARC and World Bank can be involved in a water sharing treaty. A few water-reservoirs at a quarter the cost of river interlinking can solve all problems for India and Bangladesh. The reservoirs can be located in water-surplus regions like Bhutan, Nepal North-East India and even in China. Notable fact is, World Bank pays a loan only when it is assured of a stable treaty (Indus water treaty resulted in loans to India and Pakistan) among the parties.

These drying up rivers are a wake up call to Bangladesh. They should start the water-management policies soon, internal and foreign, with a do and die attitude. For India, this might bring a long-term stability of relationship with one of its' neighbors. Nepal and Bhutan are willing to materialize their power generation potential to their economic benefits. End of the day, all parties need water resources in order to secure better living of its' large agrarian society.

Some other news sources on Hydroelectricity in the region :
The Hindu : "Water is to us what oil is to Arab" : The Bhutanese King.
Quoted from Rediff :
A few years ago Bhutan's per capita income was around $230. This was at about the same level as Nepal's per capita income. After the construction of the 336 MW Chukha hydroelectric project, Bhutan's per capita income is around $600 today, with the country experiencing a remarkable improvement in its human development indicators. When construction of the 1020 MW Tala hydroelectric project is completed in 2004, Bhutan's per capita income will reach $1,000. More ...
International Herald Tribune : The untapped might of the Himalayas
New Concept : Micro-Hydroelectricity in India and Nepal
Organization : The South Asia Regional Initiative for Energy Cooperation and Development.
The Wikipedia : The Tidal Power

Some other news sources on Barrages in the region:
Maoist Threat to Kosi river barrage
India-Pakistan talks on Wuller Barrage
Ganges Waters in BBC
Trans Boundary Waters : India-Bangladesh Ganges water sharing

Future Problems :
UNESCO : Sharing the Giants
In the summer of 2000, a landslide in Tibet caused a dam to collapse, unleashing a 26-metre wall of water that destroyed every bridge on the Siang, as the Brahmaputra is known in the Indian border state of Arunachal Pradesh. The water then rushed through the Indian state of Assam and, within a week, devastated parts of Bangladesh. Human casualties were light but damage to property was extensive. An effective early-warning flood system is a goal that all three governments must therefore work towards.
Rediff : Conspiracy Theory - Chinese Dam on Brahamaputra
World Bank : India bracing for a turbulant water future

River interlinking project:
Excellent analysis of the project by IISWBM scholars

Go Global

2006-04-23T18:59:00.000+05:30

Newzzz updates :

Religion around the world
Bit of Malay Culture Is Now Vanishing Under Muslim Rules
Introduced to Southeast Asia in the 13th century, Islam gradually supplanted Buddhism and Hinduism, but co-existed with ancient traditions over the centuries. Since the 1970s, however, fundamentalist Islam has spiked in multicultural countries such as Malaysia, with Muslim students and scholars galvanized by Iran emerging as an Islamic state. Political gains of Parti Islam parallel the increasing conflict between fundamentalist interpretations of Islam and traditional Malay culture. More ...

Circus : RSS chief's advice to Muslims about Krishna
So RSS Chief Sudarshan has asked Muslims to give respect to Krishna and treat him as one of the paighambars/ prophets. Mr Sudarshan, what world you live in? More ...

Anti-Christian Extremism Attacked
Newspapers in the Arab world have weighed in on recent attacks against Christian churches in Alexandria, addressing issues of extremism’s threat to Egyptian society. To overcome the forces of ignorance, hatred and sectarian sedition, leading newspapers call for concerted action on the part of government, religious and civil institutions to unify citizens against extremism that could lead to a “frightening collapse” of Egypt and possibly other nations in the region. More ...

Pakistan's Hindu Marriage "Ban" to be broken after 18 years!!!
The last traditional Hindu marriage was held about 18 years ago at the Neela Gumbad Mandir, between Jogindar and Mohlay. Mohlay’s brother, Pandit Bhagat Lal of the Neela Gumbad Mandir, said things had not been as hard for the Hindu community during the two wars with India, as they were after the Babri Masjid incident. He said several Hindus gave in to social pressure and converted to Islam or Christianity for better lives, which was why the community’s size had been decreasing. More ...

Tackling Terrorism - Varanasi,Jama Masjid Show the Way
After the blasts in Jama Masjid, Shahi Imam Syed Ahmad Shah Bukhari's statement acted as the glue of harmony and peace when he stated that "Emulate the people of Varanasi, who did not react in anger and defeated the plans of communal forces". The calm and usual chores followed in the city of Delhi, the city with rich syncretic traditions and heritage. More ...

Terrorism
'New Bin Laden tape' aired by TV
US, India agree to share data on fighting terrorism

Politics
Clever ploy Nepal king's offer throws spotlight on divided opposition
With Nepal's seven-party political alliance soundly rejecting King Gyanendra's offer that they name a new prime minister, the stage is set for a showdown. The opposition says the king's offer does not address their central concerns, and opposition leaders have pledged to continue the protests, now entering a third week. Many believe the opposition cannot embrace a king who has become so unpopular with the Nepalese public. More ...

US-China face-off in Latin America?
Not all Sino-Latin American experts see China's hunt in Latin America for secure supplies oil and other natural resources as necessarily a bad thing. In 2003, Riordan Roett of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, told Congress that it was "good for Latin America, and should be seen by Congress as complimentary to the dynamic relationship between the US and China." Roett added, "A counter plan by the United States in the region is most welcome." More ...

Sovereignty of Bangladesh in Danger (Bengali)

Dhaka again declines Delhi's transit proposal
Bangladesh yesterday reiterated its opposition to the Indian proposal for transit through it as the trade talks between the two countries in Dhaka ended on a gloomy note. Bangladesh experts said if the country accepts the transit proposal, in the long run it will lose advantage in trade with the next-door neighbour. More ...

India
Is India's rural poverty plan working?
Earlier this year, the Indian government launched a bold, multi-million dollar scheme to tackle rural poverty. It guarantees 100 days work a year for every rural household. It's manual work at the minimum wage. Critics say corruption and bad governance mean it is unlikely to work. So two months after the launch, I travelled in northern India to see if it is working. More ...

We don't need reservation, but do need social justice (Bengali)
10% a year : A distant dream in India? (Bengali)

West Bengal
Tata certificate to West Bengal (Bengali)
Farakka : A West Bengal perspective (Bengali)
Contract Farming : An Analysis (Bengali)

What's your faith?

2006-04-17T11:51:00.000+05:30

Today I came across a site (thanks to Rezwan) which asks you to fill up a questionaire, and based on what you fill up, they'll tell you from what faith you are. There are some interesting results from each person, I am not an exception to that. Here's what I got :

1.	Liberal Quakers (100%)
2.	Unitarian Universalism (95%)
3.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (93%)
4.	Reform Judaism (86%)
5.	Bah�'� Faith (79%)
6.	Jehovah's Witness (77%)
7.	Sikhism (75%)
8.	Theravada Buddhism (73%)
9.	Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (71%)
10.	Secular Humanism (70%)
11.	Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (68%)
12.	Orthodox Quaker (64%)
13.	New Thought (63%)
14.	Neo-Pagan (62%)
15.	Orthodox Judaism (62%)
16.	New Age (62%)
17.	Scientology (60%)
18.	Mahayana Buddhism (60%)
19.	Islam (56%)
20.	Jainism (54%)
21.	Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (50%)
22.	Taoism (45%)
23.	Hinduism (43%)
24.	Nontheist (42%)
25.	Seventh Day Adventist (42%)
26.	Eastern Orthodox (25%)
27.	Roman Catholic (25%)

The only Indian religion that came close to my top-10 list, is the Sikhism. The Baha'i faith also has a large number of followers in India, though it originated in Iran. The other Indian one, the Theravada Buddhism, is something new to me.

Though the results are not at are covering the whole domain of believes, still the revealations are quite satisfactory to me. The reasons are - I'm away from Roman Catholic, Hinduism(Orthodox), Islam and Orthodox Judaism; those I consider as problem to today's society as they are less flexible. I am close to Liberal Christian Protestants and Reform Judaism, followed by the most advanced people on the earth. Also there are touches of Buddhism and Baha'i Faith, which I think are impractical to certain extent, but good for Human beings.

I will be really happy to see faiths called Neo-Hinduism and Moderate Islam, which is existing in reality. Moreover, as the science will progress, it will take place of religion. The logic will take place of belief and religion itself will lose it's context. Hope that happens in 21st Century so that I can see it.

News and Views today

2006-04-05T12:11:00.000+05:30

West Bengal
Infy at Rajarhat and Tata at Kharagpur (Bengali):Tata's coveted 1 lakh rupees car will be produced at Kharagpur. It'll become a major employment generator if the project succeeds. At the same time, Infy is opening up in Kolkata.
CapGemini at Kolkata(Bengali)

Indian Growth Story
World Bank Concerned Over India’s Economic Growth at YaleGlobal : The article by Priya Basu talks about the disparities as the outcome of India's globalization story.
Tech development from the heart of rural India at Hindustan Times : Knowledge-based growth in Agricultural sector.
Where India’s Brave New World is headed at Daily Times : Disparities once more.

Nuke Deal
Congress, NSG question deal
American CEOs throw in weight behind US-India nuke deal

Bangladesh
A New Challenge for Bangladesh at YaleGlobal : The article by Sumit Ganguly talks a lot about Bangladesh but missed the focus on Bangladesh' natural secular practices, which is the way out of the problem. It also does not mention the Saudis to be the exporters of terrorism to Bangladesh by covertly funding the extremists. On the whole the article is inconclusive and lacks depth.
Trade deficit with Malayasia at The Daily Star : Bangladesh has politicised the issue of Trade deficit with India while the deficit with others is also soaring up.
Bangladesh firm plans to export version of Tamiflu at Reuters : Bangladesh to export Tamiflu which can curb the pandemic Bird flu.
This artist wants to paint a new Bangladesh at Hindustan Times : Bangladeshi artist Kanakchanpa Chakma, whose painting won the best prize at an exhibition in the US, says she wants to show to the world the rich cultural heritage of the country known more for its poverty and underdevelopment.

SAARC
Now US to join SAARC?

Economics
Excellent Bengali Article on Anandabazar on Convertibility of Rupee : This article analyses gains and losses out of Indian aim at full convertibility of Rupees.
Three years of success of Indian equity market : India does a hat-trick. Returns from Indian equities are once again the highest across emerging Asia for fiscal year '06 (April '05-Mar '06). At a 74% return, India is far ahead of the next best, which is the 41% return offered by the Korean equity market.
Global cotton prices robust, limited benefit to India

Who's the culprit?

2006-03-29T14:18:00.000+05:30

I regularly keep myelf updated on what's happening in India and Bangladesh. Today, I come to know about a strange reporting in the newspapers. The same incident has been reported differently in Indian and Bangladesi newspapers. And yes, it's another incident of border tension between India and Bangladesh. After reading both the reports, I was stunned and thought these must be reports of two different incidents. But, soon, I was convinced from the mentioned time, area and point of interests of the clash that it was the same incident.

Bangladesi Report
Let me get into the details of the reports now. Bangladesi newspaper The News Today reported that - "Indian miscreants attack BDR men, loot 3 magazines". The report says that

"police and eyewitnesses as saying that over 1,000 armed Indian nationals backed by BSF soldiers of Zikatola camp started illegal construction of a road along the zero line opposite to Kuchlibari outpost ... Commander of Kuchlibari outpost of BDR went to the zero line immediately and requested the Indians and BSF personnel to stop such illegal construction work as per the Indo-Bangladesh Joint Border Guide Line of 1975 ... Commander of Nabinagar Company Headquarters of BDR went to the spot and asked the Indians and his BSF counterparts not to violate border rules and stop such illegal activities within 150 yards off the zero line ... But the Indians rushed 400 yards inside Bangladesh territory under BSF coverage, gheraoed 11 patrolling BDR members and started beating them. BDR opened one round blank fire in self- defence and to disperse them. One Indian criminal was killed 300 yards inside Bangladesh territory ... Two BDR men and four villagers sustained serious injuries. Three SMG magazines and 90 bullets were also looted from the injured BDR men by the attackers."

Indian Report
Now, let me quickly take a look at what Indian major dailies are saying. The Times of India has reported it in relatively less importance - but with a view opposite to what the Bangladesi newspaper said. The report "BDR Men cross over, kills 3" says it's BDR who came inside Indian territory and attacked Indian labourers. A more details can be found in The Telegraph, Kolkata. It says

"At least three people were killed and several injured when Bangladesh Rifles personnel opened fire on unarmed villagers repairing a road near the border in a Cooch Behar village this afternoon. ... The arrival of a large contingent of the Border Security Force at Jamaldahabalapukuri — around 70 km from Cooch Behar town — two hours later did little to diffuse the simmering tension that has gripped the border hamlet in the Mekhliganj police station area. ... Police said most residents have fled the area for fear of the BDR. .... Dhirendranath Roy, one of the men accompanying the injured to Jalpaiguri, said about 100 men were levelling a kutcha road along the border under the Sampurna Grameen Rozgar Yojna. ... The work was being supervised by the Kuchlibari village panchayat (see map). Suddenly, the BDR asked the men to stop work. That was in the morning. The Bangladesh force had talks with the BSF and the work resumed again. ... But in the afternoon, there was a change in shift and the new group of BDR personnel entered into an altercation with the workers. They beat them up with lathis and then suddenly started firing, they fired on unarmed people."

Further, it reports :

"S.S. Sandhu, an additional deputy inspector-general of the BSF, said from Siliguri the border force has registered its protest against the unprovoked firing.“We have already held a flag meeting with the BDR at the spot and deployed jawans so that the BDR does not cause any more problems for the villagers. Our men from Jhikabari reached the spot soon after the incident,” Sandhu said.The BSF officer said one person had died on the spot and the other is in hospital.Jalpaiguri MP Minati Sen visited the injured in the hospital, where she met the shocked wife and son of Mohammad Manglu. “Parliament is no longer in session, so I will write to the Union home minister about the heinous crime committed by the BDR,” Sen said."

So the difference between the reports is very easy to identify. Also it is obvious that they are talking about the same incident, started off a allegedly illegal construction work near Bangladesh border.

Analysis of the reports and falacies
Let me try to dig deep into the incident. The claim from Bangladesi side is that the firing has been provoked by labourers(safe to assume, this is true from Indian side), who came inside Bangladesi territory and beaten them. These men were backed by BSF as well. The claim from Indian side is BDR came inside Indian territory and fired indiscriminately. Also, the BSF was not at all present there.

Sherlock Holmes would have loved to merge these two reports to extract the truth. Anyway, let me put a few of my words and try to understand where exactly the falacies are.

1) The News Today report says thousands of armed Indians started construction. The question is - what is the definition of 'armed' - is a labourer with 'lathi's, 'shabol's and 'kodal's can be called 'armed'? The report did not mention what kind of 'arm' they had.
2) It is highly unlikely that BSF were involved in this incident. Had it been the case, I guess there would have been casualties in the Bangladesh side from their firing - from past reports I can conclude that.
3) It is not at all possible that there were no physical and verbal provocation from the labourers before BDR started firing.
4) Indiscriminate firing from close range, after getting gheraoed, standing among a crowd of 400+ would result in 10+ deads and 20+ injuries. Hence, it is unacceptable.

My Guess
The actual fact might be something like this (my imagination):
1) Road construction started in the morning, BDR objected verbally.
2) Labourerers shouted and provoked them, verbal altercation starts by noon.
3) To disperse the adament labourers - BDR fires by afternoon, might be it injured some. Till nobody has crossed the border.
4) Now the labourers started chasing the BDR personnel. Mob crosses the border. To stop them, BDR fires in the air, and then at the mob. Some labourers dies. Before backing off, BDR leaves some ammunitions behind, that are looted by the mob.
5) A couple of BDR personnel are injured by the stones thrown by the mob. However, they are successful to disperse the mob. Ultimately, mob backed off along with the injured.

To the people who always thinks in religious lines, let me add the information that all the labourers died in Indian side are muslims.

Conclusion
The question left out of the controversy was : was it an illegal construction? Let me turn to Indira-Mujib Defence Agreement, 1975. It mentions that defence constructions are not allowed within 150 yards of the zero-line. Now, what's a "Defence Construction"? A road? Well, opinions vary from people to people. A road is a civil infrastructure, which can be used in a defence purpose. By the way, I think, maximum of the infrastructure can be used in dual purpose. Till there is a strict definition of what exactly is a defence construction, these incidents will take place. The ambiguity in the definition brings altercation - that leads to firing. So, working and living in the borders will become more and more risky. PMs comes and visits countries. But, in last 10 years, there are no efforts from either side to list up what exactly is a 'defence construction'. They seldom discuss problems of people, but they discuss politics. It is proved once more, at the cost of a few lives.

A third story by Anandabazar Patrika.

Solar Pyramids Being Built in India

2006-03-20T15:48:00.000+05:30

A Singapore-based company, MSC Power Corp, is building its first "solar pyramid" in India. The solar pyramid works by drawing in air, heating it with solar energy and moving it through turbines to generate electricty. The company aims to be listed this year on NASDAQ in an initial public offering that it says could be worth more than $5 billion.

The small scale of the power generation - up to 36 MW with the current design means it is more suitable for rural areas than for powering cities.

A 10 MW pyramid plant would be about 45 metres high and take up about 2,500 square metres of space, including an associated desalination plant.

The firm, MSC Power Corp, backed by private investors from the Middle East and Asia, will finish constructing a small $10 million five megawatt (MW) power station by June in Pune near Mumbai that will use solar energy to power wind turbines.

Bangladesh PM visits India

2006-03-15T13:48:00.000+05:30

I have read a very good article in The Daily Star, one of my favoutite newspapers across the world. The article sets out an agenda for Prime Minister Khaleda Jia to be tabled in India. It mentions also that the Prime Minister, who's known for her anti-India stance for years, should bargain judiciously to gain the maximum possible benefit out of the visit.

Let me try out a few possible responses of Indian govt. in these topics of the agenda.

Common rivers
Needs a permenent solution rather than problem at each dam. The South Asian chaotic democracies need some strict solutions to this problem, like what was done in Indus Water Treaty with Pakistan. The treaty stands firm till date. For India-Bangladesh case, the distribution can be East-West as well. Barrages can be built only on Western rivers (Ganges, Teesta) and not on Eastern ones. The Eastern rivers might be allocated entirely to Bangladesh for consumptive purpose, as those river areas (North-East India) does not depend on river water for agriculture. The generated hydroelectricity can be shared with Bangladesh with a share in investment. Bangladesh also needs to recognize India as the upper-riparian State and get ready to consider shortage of power as an obstacle of Indian services industry.

Land Borders
Exchange of land and corridors should take place in phases and in a transparent way. The fate of these 300,000 people, who are locked in enclaves inside other country, has to be decided by these countries in a sympathetic way. The land-people swapping should be done with the consent of the people involved.

Immigration
I think Indian govt should start looking at this issue more seriously. Bangladesh produces surplus man-power in Technological sector, where India has a shortage. A lot of the technocrats of Bangladesh goes to West for jobs. India can allow some of them to work in India as we are in shortage of technocrats. It will be a win-win solution for India-Bangladesh.

Regional Energy Grid
This comes under Common Rivers problem The sharing of electricity from surplus-potential electricity regions (Nepal, Bhutan, North-East India) to energy hungry regions (West Bengal, Bangladesh and Jharkhand) can reduce Indian dependency on coal to produce electricity. However, the investments should be shared between the countries.

Joint Iron/Fertilizer plants
I don't think this will be a necessary item to discuss once Tatas are dealing with it. A good deal with Tatas can solve these problems for ever.

Trade deficit
This is a topic where I think Bangladesh is unfair with India. Bangladesh has similar Trade deficits with Japan, China and even Pakistan, but nobody raises finger at them. Japan returns a lot in terms of aids, but China does not. The Trade deficit with India is now gone down to second place below China. Besides, Bangladeshi exports to India is growing at 80% (89.3mn to 144mn in 2005) compared to only 25% (45mn to 56mn) with China. Hence, Bangladesh should understand that politicizing business is not good for business. The Indian exports are now being substituted by Chinese ones, according to the Daily Star report. Hence, till date, the reason of trade deficit with India was mainly lack of investment and lack of industrialization. A sincere effort to attract investment should solve this issue.

The points those India will be interested to put in Bangladesh table are the followings :
1) Investment opportunity 2) Transit ( the most important) 3) Use of Bangladesh ports.

Investment opportunity
Indian govt. might ask for preferential investment opportunity of Indian companies into Bangladesh, as it has similar agreement with Srilanka. This can open a floodgate of investments in a capital-hungry country.

Transit
Already discussed in my previous posts, I think Bangladesh govt. should throw away it's non-progressive look out and embrace the transit route as a geographical reality. Tagging this issue with other one's will hamper the prospect of Bangladesh's earning potential from this specific issue. It will also block future investments in infrastructure, such as land ports, roads and rail-line. The below picture(Kolkata-Agartala) shows what could be the positive effect of the transit if allowed. The transit should have a reciprocity clause, India should allow Bangladesh the same favour in case of it's trade with Nepal and Bhutan.

Use of Bangladesh ports
This is a different issue than the above, as Bangladesh never officially rejected this one. Bangladesh shows the lack of infrastructure in Chittagong port to be the reason of not allowing India to use it. But, at the same time, they are interested to become proxy-port of Nepal and Bhutan. I think, Bangladesh should go for equity in foreign policy and offer use of Chittagong port to India. India should invest in port infrastructure of Chittagong to facilitate trade though that.

Conclusion
As historically seen, India seems to have reservation in dealing with BNP govt in Bangladesh. They prefer Awami league for all major deals with Bangladesh. The situation is more complex, because a positive India deal is can give BNP a potential breakthrough before the election, which India never wants. Same way, any sacrifice from Indian point of view might hamper the position of Congress in Assam and West Bengal.

Besides, of late, a shift of strategy from Indian policymakers' has been noticed. They want to take on hostile countries in a multilateral meeting (SAARC), rather than bilateral ones. This potentially reduces the risk of direct confrontation and bitterness in relations. Hence, I am not expecting a miracle from Indian govt. on any of these issues, we have to wait longer to discover a friendly neighbour in the East.

Another similar article can be found in The Hindu.

Make Way for India — the Next China

2006-03-03T16:18:00.000+05:30

The following is copied from Arab News website.

Hamish McRae, The Independent

“Bush in India” may never become an opera like Nixon in China — though maybe Bollywood will some day have a crack at it. But the president’s visit to India, which began yesterday, does signal a warming in the US toward the world’s greatest democracy. While it may not quite match President Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972, which started the rebuilding of relations with the People’s Republic, presidential visits to India are pretty rare events. Only four serving US presidents have visited the country since independence: Eisenhower, Nixon, Carter and Clinton. So this visit matters.

It matters because it highlights the shifting perception of India’s economic prospects. Even a couple of years ago India was still regarded as an also-ran in the race with China to move from developing to developed status.

India’s success in a narrow field of export industries, such as software, was widely acknowledged. But the economy as a whole would be held back, it was argued, by a combination of adverse factors, including poor infrastructure, low educational standards, corruption and an unwelcome attitude to foreign investment. China, by contrast, was soaring.

Well, China continues to soar, with the economy still growing at around 9 percent a year. However, people are becoming more aware of the environmental and social costs of such growth, and also of the demographic shift that will soon start to affect the country. This is that the one-child policy will start to reduce the size of China’s working population within the next 10 years.

India, by contrast, will have an increasing working population for another generation at least. Naturally it, too, will suffer from environmental and social pressures — it already is — but arguably its less authoritarian society will be more sensitive to these than China has been.

This leads to one of the great questions facing the world economy: Which of the two giants, China or India, is more likely to dominate the world economy in another generation, or both? Well, it must surely be both, unless there is some unspeakable catastrophe. But whereas two or more years ago most people would have predicted that China would continue to outpace India, now they are evidently more evenly matched.

This has an important political dimension. India is a democracy; China is not. As China raced ahead, this led to the somewhat uncomfortable conclusion — uncomfortable, that is, for those of us in the West — that while economic freedom was clearly an essential condition for rapid growth, political freedom was not. Worse, an excess of political freedom might even inhibit growth.

If, however, Indian growth were to prove more durable than Chinese, or at least produce fewer unpleasant bumps, then it would, to put it mildly, be very comforting to Western democracies, including, of course, the US.

Of course, there are other issues about Indian practice. Nevertheless, on the four main governance indicators used by the World Bank — quality of regulation, rule of law, control of corruption, and voice and accountability — India scores higher than China. On the final one it is much higher.

Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the Indian take-off is that it continued under the governance of both major parties. There was a bout of reform in the early 1980s under the Congress party. But that stalled, and it was only the near-bankruptcy of the country in 1991-2 and the reforms of Manmohan Singh (then finance minister, now prime minister) that set the country on its current growth path. However the BJP coalitions of the late 1990s and early 2000s carried on the process. Congress, back again, carries it on.

There are a large number of roadblocks facing the Indian economy. As anyone who visits will be all too aware, progress in the country is very uneven. Inequalities have multiplied. Cities are under enormous pressure as people move in from the country. Investment in infrastructure has lagged, and, in some ways worse, maintenance of existing infrastructure can be appalling.

Bureaucratic blockages over privatization are holding up investment in the main airports. An enormous road-building program is under way, linking the main cities with high-quality highways. But while that will ease some transport blockages, it will have environmental costs. The middle-class lifestyle that is so attractive requires a lot more energy, and India is energy poor.

Indeed, all economic growth requires energy. There is a myth that Chinese growth is principally driven by manufacturing while Indian is driven by services — the former requiring more energy. That is indeed useful shorthand, for the impact on the West of both nations does appear that way. We import goods from China, and we import software and other services from India.

But if you look at both economies in the whole, India is a rapidly industrializing nation too. It actually has a trade surplus with China. New industries such as motor components are flourishing. Meanwhile the hi-tech sector, about which we hear so much, is actually quite small in the context of the whole economy. So, just like China, shortage of energy will constrain growth.

The most interesting question of all, surely, is whether a messy, multilayered democracy is more likely to cope peacefully with the pressures of growth than an autocratic but energetic bureaucracy. In other words, when things go wrong — as they inevitably will — will India be better able to cope than China? The instinct of many of us in the West would be that the Indian political system is more flexible and ultimately more robust.

In 2001 the investment bank Goldman Sachs produced a research paper on the BRICs. That stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China. A follow-up study a little over two years ago argued that China would become the world’s biggest economy by 2050, passing the US, while India would become the third biggest, passing Japan.

Yesterday a book from the Goldman team who prepared that study landed on my desk, The World and the BRICs Dream. Since that initial study both China and India have grown even faster than projected. The new book poses the question: Is India poised to be the next China? Its answer, in a nutshell, is yes. If it carries on with its path of reform, it will become the “sleeper success story” of these fast-growing economies.

If President Bush wants a useful briefing on what he needs to know about the Indian economic success story he should get one of his staff to highlight the important bits of this study for him. Every previous president was visiting a Third World economy. Things are different this time.

US Companies Eye Indian Skills

2006-03-03T11:23:00.000+05:30

The following is the article published in BBC site. The article deals about Indian potential to become R&D hub for the world. The US companies, known for their advanced technologies, are ensuring Indians to be on the right track. The world can see a huge change in hi-tech but cheap technologies, if the effort succeeds.

President Bush meets Indian business leaders in the south of the country on Friday. There is plenty to talk about.
In a quiet suburb of the southern Indian city of Bangalore, some 2,500 Indians are working in a multi-million dollar facility using some of the most advanced technology in the world.
Spread over 50 acres, the John F Welch Technology Centre is one of only four such research and development (R&D) centres in the world, and was set up in 2000 by American giant General Electric (GE). Its laboratories employ highly-skilled Indian engineers, scientists and researchers who work on developing applications for GE's businesses worldwide.

In 2000, when the then US President Bill Clinton visited India, many US companies were cashing in on India's fast growing IT sector. But most of them were using low-skilled workers, mainly fresh college graduates, for a variety of basic call centre and back office processing work.

Hi-tech research

Six years later, as Mr Clinton's Republican successor George W Bush comes calling, American business interests in India have taken a quantum leap.
India has a strong foundation in its technology and engineering schools and, as a result, is an excellent source for scientific talent
Guillermo WilleDirector, GE R&D centre"Earlier US companies basically outsourced data processing, back office work etc.," says Ramesh C Bajpai, Executive Director of the American Chamber of Commerce in India.
"Now basic research work is being carried out in this country. That's what's been happening for the past two to three years."
With India registering a growth rate of 8% a year, it is beginning to attract significant amounts of high technology investment.

Another American company, Cisco Systems, is investing $1.2bn in a new R&D centre in Bangalore which will employ 3,000 people - it's single largest investment outside the US.
Microsoft has announced plans to invest $1.7bn in its own research facility and Intel another billion.
"What American companies have now realised is that the talent pool in India is now on par with the United States," says Mr Bajpai.
Now Indian skills are being used for innovation and design.
Guillermo Wille, Managing Director of the John F Welch centre believes India is becoming the preferred destination for global companies to set up their R&D centres.
"India has a strong foundation in its technology and engineering schools and, as a result, is an excellent source for scientific talent," he says.

Reverse brain-drain
The increased opportunities for highly-skilled work is also attracting many Indians who are based in the United States but are returning home to work on similar projects in surroundings that are a bit more familiar.

Rangu Salgame worked in the US for 20 years, mainly in telecom companies. In 2003, he returned to the country of his birth to head Cisco's India operations. "India as a market is very attractive," he says. "Cisco in India is replicating all the functions that it does in the United States - R&D, infrastructure and venture capital. "This is just the beginning of the telecom revolution in India."

With the political relationship between the two countries, once ranged on opposite sides of the Cold War fence, improving substantially, American companies are getting comfortable with the idea of doing business with India - a lot of business. Last year US exports to India jumped by 30% but, at $7.96bn, were substantially lower than its imports from India - which amounted to $18.8bn.

Appetite for more
But that could slowly change. Along with technology and fuel to feed India's growing energy appetite, American companies are also targeting Indian consumers. It's something that's not lost on the American chief executive. "Young Indians are acquiring a taste for pizza from Domino's and Pizza Hut," President Bush said in a recent speech.

A visit to Gurgaon, a wealthy suburb of Delhi, appears to confirm the optimism. Nestled between high-rise apartment blocks and shiny office complexes, housing leading American companies like Gillette and American Express, are a series of shopping malls that would not be out of place in Texas. Inside, young Indians browse through shops selling Nike footwear and Levis jeans, gawk at the latest Ford SUV on display and then head off to the food-court to choose between McDonalds, Dominos or Subway.

Satish Reddy used to work in a software company in California's famed Silicon Valley.
Two years later he returned to work for a leading American company based in Gurgaon.
"My wife and I were apprehensive at first. After all, we'd lived in the States for eight years," he says, speaking in a strong Californian drawl.
"But our life here is almost uncannily similar to life back there.
"Our apartment is centrally air-conditioned, is well-equipped. We work out at a gym nearby, catch a movie at the mall on weekends, grab a pizza afterwards.
"And the best part of it all is that if you are homesick, you just need to step outside."

Some more similar news : Reuters Summit - The world makes a beeline to growing India

India-US Nuclear Deal : What the world is saying

2006-03-03T10:52:00.001+05:30

The World

Dawn in Pakistan : US, India sign N-deal to seal strategic ties
MSNBC, USA : Why India got a pass with new nuke deal
Mercury News, USA : Nuclear pact between U.S., India draws fire
Daily Times, Pakistan : US-India nuclear deal comes through
Reuters, Worldwide : Critics slam India nuclear deal
Voice of America : Mixed Reaction Greets India-US Nuclear Deal
People's Daily, China : India, US seal civil nuclear deal
LA Times, USA : Bush Brokers Landmark Nuclear Deal With India
Al Jazeera, UAE : US and India reach nuclear accord
CTV.ca, Canada : Bush defends nuclear agreement with India
BBC, UK : Hurdles ahead for landmark nuclear deal
Khaleej Times : US-India civilian nuclear deal faces obstacles in Congress

Indian Newspapers

Hindustan Times : Done deal
Rediff : Why is India rejoicing?
Times of India : India, US clinch 'historic' civilian nuclear deal
Times of India : Nuke deal: Angry Left warns UPA govt
The Telegraph : India gains unique status
Countercurrents : The Reality Of India-US Nuke-deal
Anandabazar Patrika (Bengali) : Bush dekhalen tar kache Bharoter bondhutwo mulyoban
Bam-birodhita dekhiye kaj hasil korlen Manmohan

Investments in West Bengal

2006-03-02T17:51:00.000+05:30

Though West Bengal has a communist govt. and the leaders here are skeptic about the FDI issue, the flow of investment in West Bengal is rising, thanks to some solo effort by Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. The investment figures proposed in short term shows there is no dearth of people pouring money in West Bengal, be them Indians or foreigners. One major achievement the current govt cherish to achieve, is to secure some investments from China. Given the fact that Bhattacharya wants Bengal to run in China way, there are still enormous roadblocks in the way of investments coming to India. Asia Times quotes :

West Bengal, located (despite the name) in the far east of India, has been on a strong growth trajectory of late, having notched up substantial investments to the tune of US$6 billion (Rs 266.8 billion) between 1991 and 2004. The sector that received the highest amount of investment during this period was chemicals and petrochemicals, where the investment inflow was to the tune of $2.2 billion, followed by iron and steel at $1.9 billion. West Bengal has racked up the fastest rate of economic growth in India, both in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and per capita income. According to data from the Central Statistical Office, in the years since 1993-94, West Bengal has had the highest national growth rate, at 8.55% with Karnataka's 7.29% well behind. Looking at the 1990s only, West Bengal was the second-fastest-growing state in India.

According to TIDCO site, West Bengal received Rs. 89bn(US$2bn) FDI approval between '91 and '02, which is sixth largest amount among Indian states. West Bengal has a State Domestic Product of Rs. 1.02tn($23bn), which makes it the third largest productiove state in India.

China factor
The news source has also given a list of Bengal-China mutual interests in business :

West Bengal products demanded in China

plastic (waste and otherwise)

agricultural products and processed food

organic chemicals

ores, slag, ash

machinery

cotton textiles and yarn

software training and development

gems and jewelry

hides and skin

Chinese products demanded in West Bengal

machinery

woven and knit apparel

footwear

toys and sports equipment

mineral and fuel oil

furniture and bedding

Outcome
And the results are encouraging as well ...

Salim Group of Indonesia investments - Mahabharat Motors will have an initial investment of Rs.10 billion ($226 million), the township is a Rs.21.56 billion ($488 million) project.
Bhattacharya also opened a spanking Rs.180 million ($4.06 million) food park in the vicinity that would directly benefit the farmers who have been made out to be the victims of the chief minister's pro-investment policies.
Kolkata-based Motijug Group, the West Bengal government and Uralaz of Russia, will soon start assembling heavy-duty and high-capacity trucks, dump trucks and tippers at its manufacturing facility that is being set up at Haldia at an investment of Rs.5.5 billion ($124.2 million).
Ambani signed the memorandum of understanding with the West Bengal government for the 50-acre IT institute at Kalyani, two hours from here, that will have an outlay Rs.1 billion ($22.5 million).
In an unprecedented move, Britain's Department for International Development (DFID) is spending Rs.15 billion ($338.7 million) in West Bengal to fund generous retirement packages for employees of loss-making state-owned companies.

Some more news in the Bengali newspaper about Chinese Knowledge based industries investing in Kolkata.

Indians are pro-US?

2006-03-02T13:16:00.000+05:30

Despite protests and anger at Bush visit to India, the urban India views Bush and his country, the sole superpower, US, a safe heaven. The Pew Global Attitudes survey once more points out Indian inclination towards Bush. By the way, this survey does not cover the Indian poors, who are indifferent to Bush and USA. Let's see some of the survey reports and statistically analyse how much favour does Indian pay to USA. Read the original article at the YaleGlobal site.

" Across a range of measures, Indian public opinion is consistently pro-American. The 2005 Pew Global Attitudes survey found that about seven-in-ten Indians (71%) have a favorable view of the United States. Of the 17 countries polled in the survey, only Americans themselves hold a more favorable view of their country. And while U.S. favorability ratings have plunged in many countries, Indians are significantly more positive about the United States now than they were in the summer of 2002, when 54% gave the U.S. favorable marks.
Indians also have a strongly positive impression of the American people - 71% have a favorable opinion of Americans, up from 58% in 2002. Moreover, Indians tend to associate Americans with positive character traits, and generally do not associate Americans with negative characteristics. Eight-in-ten (81%) Indians consider Americans hardworking, and 86% - the highest percentage of any country surveyed, including the U.S. itself - say Americans are inventive. Fewer (58%) regard Americans as honest, but even among U.S. respondents, Americans receive mediocre marks for truthfulness (63%). Meanwhile, Indians are among the least likely to associate Americans with negative traits such as greed, violence, rudeness, and immorality."

The Figure beside points to the fact that after the Americans, it's the Indians who are having the positive view of the USA. The negative side of the ladder are Pakistan, Jordan and Turkey, who are increasingly getting away from USA.

The Indians have more confident on war-monger Bush. They are just below US itself on the ladder. Interestingly, in both of these tables, the sequence is almost the same, i.e., people who view US positively, also view Bush as positive. However, this is sad that the view of the US has been aligned with their President. The other US achievements, like globalization efforts, and knowledge based industries are been ignored completely.

Interestingly, the US foreign policy, is being viewed more positively even in the negative-US minded countries like China and Pakistan. However, as it goes on all along, Indians have liked it as well.

Indians have given Bush a pat on his back in the case of removing Saddam from his seat. This shows growing Indian concern over Middle-East funding of the extremist elements inside their own country.

But the world-view where US found themselves almost alone, is the 'sole' superpower status. Overcoming the China-factor, Indians responded that they want another superpower in place to counter US hegemony. May be the legacy of the Soviets in the cold war era are still there in Indian minds, or might be every Indian as aspiring for India to be the next superpower after USA.

" Still, there is less support among Indians for China becoming as militarily powerful as the United States. Indians are split over this issue, with 45% saying that if China became America's military equal this would be a good thing and 45% saying this would be a bad development. Here, India occupies something of a middle ground between European countries, which generally oppose the potential military rise of China, and majority Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Jordan, Indonesia, and Turkey, which generally welcome the idea of a strong China that could rival U.S. military strength."

Cartoon Controversy : Both parties won at the cost of tolerance

2006-02-27T00:58:00.000+05:30

After the event is a passe to most of the world, let me try to recapitulate the whole sequence of incidents and the effect it may have on the world. I guess, by today, everyone is quite familiar with the cartoon controversy, how it originated and how the violence spread.

Brief Description of the event
The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy began after editorial cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on September 30, 2005. As the controversy has grown, some or all of the cartoons have been reprinted in newspapers in more than fifty other countries, leading to violent protests involving hundreds of deaths, particularly in Muslim countries. Critics say that the cartoons are culturally insulting, blasphemous, and intended to humiliate a marginalized minority. However, supporters of the cartoons say their publication exercises the right of free speech and that counter to the idea that Islam and its followers have been targeted in a discriminatory way, similar cartoons are made relative to other religions and their followers.

The detail timeline of all the events can be found on the BBC site. There is some Q & A as well in the site.

The Mohammed Images can be found on this site. All the retaliations are archived in the following site.

What is freedom of speech - the Danish Definition
Section 77 of the Constitutional Act of Denmark (1953) reads: “Any person shall be at liberty to publish his ideas in print, in writing, and in speech, subject to his being held responsible in a court of law. Censorship and other preventive measures shall never again be introduced.”[63]
Under international law, freedom of expression in Denmark is also protected by among others the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Danish freedom of expression is quite far-reaching, even for Western standards. Despite official German protests, Denmark has for long been a safe heaven for printing of neo-nazi propaganda. The organization Reporters Without Borders ranks Denmark on the top of the list of freedom of speech. The article of The Economist analyses why the freedom of speech is more powerful than religion. A list of incidents came out of this blasphemy vs. free speech can be found here.

Was it a racist attempt against Islam?
Probably, YES. The fact that the same newspaper refused to print cartoons those might be offensive to Christians.

The Danish daily turned down the cartoons of Christ three years ago, on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers and were not funny. In April 2003, Danish illustrator Christoffer Zieler submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection of Christ to Jyllands-Posten. Zieler received an email back from the paper's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them."

The Protests
The protests were almost everywhere in the world. Some of the protests saw some deaths, others were limited to property damages. A brief list of human and economic cost of the cartoon controversy is posted here. The updates can also be found here.

In the subcontinent, Pakistan was in forefront of the protest. The protesters burnt Norwegian, Danish and American company outlets, burnt some flags and went rampant. Five people got killed when the police opened fire at them. In India, almost a riot broke out when 10,000 people gathered at Old Hyderabad and battled it with police.

Out in the Middle East, a priest was burnt in Turkey. In Syria, the Norwegian and Danish embassies were set on fire. In Libya, at least 10 people died in a clash with the Police. As of February 22, 2006 at least 139 people have been killed in the protests, mainly in Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The worst form of the protest was in Nigeria, which alone claimed almost 200 lives after it turned into a Communal riot between Christians of South and Muslims of North. The incident of Maiduguri started it all, and retaliations followed.

The Analysis of The Cartoon Incident
First let me analyze the cartoon issue. In my view, it was a racial attempt by all measures. The free speech definitely should come with responsibility. One should not pinch other taking the advantage of it. India, where there are multi-ethnic and multi-religious society co-exists peacefully, can be a good lesson for all those preaching for "Free Speech".

Saying so, I must reiterate that, even if this particular attempt was a racial one in my view, Europe has completely different idea. Voltaire and many other western stalwarts of Renascence and French-revolution already directed Europe against religious fanaticism. There has been many Movies, Articles and Books those defy Christianity. They have seen a lot of blasphemy cases and know the ill-effect of religious fanaticism. They have seen Galileo and later the Protestant reforms. The Europe has accepted them as well. But, it is regrettable, that Europe still has a significant double-standard (Holocaust_denial) when it comes to religion. Europe should move forward to remove those double standards, so that their grounds get strong enough.

So, there's a significant gap between the thoughts of an Indian and a European. The world must recognize the difference. Indians should practice the free speech on Indian contents, and Europeans should concentrate on their own. In a globalized world, they may not always be confined, but one should handle other's sentiments with care.

Analysis of the protests
The next part is the protests. In my view, the incident deserves protest, but not in the way it has taken place. It could have been debates, inter-country meeting, peaceful rallies and UN involvement.

Well, let me first brief that the people, who are marching on the streets and damaging property, are really damaging the image of the Islam. The protests are more racist than the actual cartoon. In an article, in context of Nigeria, a newspaper wrote :

"The barbarity in Maiduguri was wrong. The one in Bauchi was equally wrong. And the reprisal in Onitsha and Nnewi were wrong. All these wrongs can never make a right ..... why should the northern Muslim begin to kill the southern Christian because some reckless people drew an irresponsible cartoon all the way in Denmark? Why should a Nigerian pay for the sins of harebrained, negligent cartoonists thousands of miles away, if not that malice had been an underlying factor of the relationship?"

Besides, the Arabs routinely denigrate the Jews and Israel with cartoons. The Arabs also denies the Holocaust, that's a crime in 10 European Nations. They should leave their practice first before demanding other's apology.

A very good article on the protest has come into a Bangladeshi newspaper just a few hours ago. The article sums up the whole protest event and talks critically of what could have been done. I don't know whether that newspaper will be torched or not(though Bangladesh does not record events of violence on this issue), but I can quote a few points out of that article on internet :

"In many countries, extremist elements of the society are trying to create a law and order situation under the cover of religious fervour. In Iraq, Nigeria and Pakistan, the minority Christians have been attacked and killed and their churches have been burnt down. "
"While we condemn in the strongest terms the demeaning act of publishing the cartoons, we shall have to remember that acts of violence only bolster the hands of those who want to prove that Islam, as a religion, is violent and dysfunctional in the 21st century."
"It is interesting to note that although the cartoons were printed in September 2005, there was hardly any reaction till January 2006. Just when people were accusing the Saudi and Egyptian governments for their gross failures in the Mina Stampede and the Red Sea Ferry disaster, respectively, the cartoon incident came as a respite for both."
"Take the case of Amina Lawal of northern Nigeria, who gave birth to a child outside marriage in 2002. Sharia court ordered her to be stoned to death for adultery and the punishment would be carried out only after the child has grown out of suckling. This verdict was turned down by the appeals court after a world-wide outrage on this issue. Surprisingly, there was neither a street protest in support of the victim nor a Muslim lawyer of international repute available to defend her. Recently a minor girl named Nazneen has been ordered to be hanged by the Islamic court in Iran for allegedly killing a male assailant. There is a world-wide campaign launched to save the little girl's life. "
"Over the last few years, a human tragedy, many times larger than Iraq or Palestine, has been going on in Western Sudan's Dharfur region. Hundreds of thousands have been killed, thousands of women have been raped, and millions have been made homeless and facing starvation and death -- all because the victims are black Muslims, former slaves of Arab masters. Sudanese militia of Arab descent were systematically carrying out an ethnic cleansing unknown to the outside world until BBC, CNN and others got the news and flashed it to the world. "
"Today, the outlook for the Islamic world is bleaker than ever before....Of all the major religious communities of the world, the Muslims are the poorest, most backward, and least educated, and consequently least prepared to face the challenges of the 21st century. Among the emerging powers in the world, there is not a single Muslim majority state. Along with the US and EU, the destiny of the 21st century will be shaped by countries such as Russia, China, India, and Japan. Where will the Islamic world be?"
"Who would be the beneficiaries if the Muslims remain backward? The beneficiaries would be the despotic rulers and the tradition-bound clergy. The two would rather keep the populace backward so that they would be easier to control, manipulate, and exploit."
"We need a liberal society that thinks rationally and interacts with the rest of the world peacefully. Peaceful protests are possible only where democratic culture is nurtured. Until that happens, violence will be the only language of protest in the Islamic world."

The author was quite rightly pointed out the problems with the protests. Thank you Ishfaq Ilahi Choudhury for your brave article.

At the end of the war, both parties are claiming victory. Europe is saying : "Look, how extremist these Muslims are", and the Middle East is saying, "Look, how blasphemeous these Westerners are". End of the day, both have double standards, both are victims of rightists and both are showing lack of tolerance. Only how they express, are different. Will our world be a better place to live on after this event? I am not so hopeful.

Secularism, Democracy and Justice

2006-02-24T14:02:00.000+05:30

Indian judiciary proved once more that they are as secular as Indian constitution is. They sentenced people who are accused to be involved in the Best Bakery case. The Best Bakery case was one of the worst incident ever in Indian history. 12 musllims were burnt alive during Hindu-Muslim riot at Baroda in Gujarat in 2002. The chargesheet was filed. The earlier court acquitted all these aftter the main witness Zahira and her family turned hostile. They blamed it on Teesta, the Human Rights Activist, who made her tell a lie before the court. Some TV channels in India broadcast the Tehelka report that Rs. 18 laks was paid to Zahira for her to turn hostile. The secular India is hoping to deliver justice on each of almost 1000 cases registered during those days.

At last law prevailed and most of the accused got convicted for life-term. However, Zahira Sheikh is given two weeks time to show cause why they turned hostile.

Meanwhile, in a similar case in Pakistan, the court has acquitted all the 88 accused persons allegedly involved in the Sangla-Hill church-burning case. The court acquitted them on the ground of 'lack of evidennce'. Had Pakistan been a secular democratic country, the verdict would not have that easy to deliver - I think.

In this reference I would like to refer to an article published in a Pakistani newspaper on why India is intact where Pakistan and Soviets broke.

The Friday Times, Lahore, Pakistan October 4 - 10, 2002
Why is India intact?
by Farrukh Saleem

Here are some statistics on India. More than a billion people spread over a land mass of nearly 3 million sq km (the size of four Pakistans); twenty-eight thousand dialects spoken across 28 states and 7 union territories; fourteen official languages including Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi, Bengali, Kashmiri, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya and Assamese.

The population comprises 800 million Hindus, 120 million Muslims, 25 million Parsis, 23 million Christians, 19 million Sikhs, besides Buddhists and Jains. Hindus are further divided among 2,800 unique communities. The caste system has Brahman, Kshatriya, Vashya, Sudra, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes.The Scheduled Castes are further divided into 450 distinct communities. The Scheduled Tribes have 461 distinct communities and Other Backward Classes are divided into 766 distinct communities.
This is a division like in no other country. All the possible fault-lines exist: religious, ethnic, linguistic, geographic and communal. And these divisions run deep. On top of that, for the past half-century there have been at least nine significant centrifugal movements seeking autonomy, secession or independence from India. Among them: Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF); Dalitstan Organization that seeks "independence for the Dalits, or black Untouchables, also know as Dravidians, the original inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent before the arrival and dominance of the Caucasian Hindus"; Free Tamil Nadu that "seeks independence for the Tamil people of south India and perhaps a union with the Tamils of Sri Lanka"; United Liberation Front of Assam that seeks independence of the State of Assam; National Socialist Council of Nagalim that seeks the independence of Nagaland and surrounding areas in the Northeast; Revolutionary People's Front of Manipur (RPF) that seeks the independence of Manipur; People's Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK); eighth, there has been a Declaration of Independence of the Sikh Homeland; ninth, National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) in the state of Tripura.

Some of the above secessionist movements continue to allege that India is an example of "Brahmanist Imperialism" or that India is becoming a "de facto Brahman state". In 1947, many had predicted that India, because of its uncounted diversities, would not be able to survive as a sovereign state. India, it was said back then, would be divided up in several small perhaps more homogenous states. They have all been proven wrong.

The Pakistan the Quaid gave us was practically all Muslim. We had one official language. But, within 24 years of Independence, we managed to lose half of what the Quaid gave us. General Yahya violated the basic principles of democracy and Bangladesh now celebrates March 26 as Independence Day and December 16 as Victory Day.

India is pathetically poor and so is Pakistan. India is the 29th most corrupt country while Pakistan is the 25th most corrupt. India is marginally more literate than we are. India has had 14 prime ministers; Pakistan has had 20. India has had 12 presidents (three were Muslim); Pakistan has had 11. We have had four military governments. India has had none. Pakistan has been split into two. India should have been split into four.

Just what has really kept Brahmans, Sudras, Muslims, Christians, Tamils, Dalits and Assamese together? What has kept India united?

India is democratic we are not. Could that be it?

Updates from newspapers

2006-02-23T11:13:00.000+05:30

News

Why this politicians are not arrested for promoting violence? They are shame to a peaceful nation. "As a fallout of UP minister Yaqoob Qureshi's fatwa that he would pay Rs 51 crore for killing Danish cartoonist for caricaturing the Prophet, an unheard of body called the Hindu Law Board declares a bounty of 101 crore on MF Hussain's head."
Another trans-Kashmir road set to open up this summer.
Bush speaks on Indo-US Neuclear ties.
GAIL waitting for Govt. nod to bid for Pakistan Co.s
India and China - competing for cartoon outsourcing business.
Indian Balance of Payment miseries continue.
Bangladesh buying 16 Fighter Aircrafts for $93mn while ignores power crisis. (Why?)
After Pakistan, it's turn of China to have CBMs with India.
India-Banngladesh relations : Fence Construction, Terrorist camps prevail.
Killing of civilians and children by Army in Kashmir continues. Protests followed.

Articles

The role of China and Japan in East Asia.
Connecting Developing World through cheaper cellphones.
Mumbai and its' problems.
Role of immigration in global economy.

Blogs

Chinese one-child policy and pension system.
Stonned to death in Iran.
After muslims against cartoon, Hindus are gathering against Russia.
Champions' League - Arsenal 1-0 Real Madrid, Chelsea 1-2 Barca with Del Horno sent off.
Brief narration of yesterday night events at UCL from Ravi.

Updates from fellow bloggers and newspapers

2006-02-22T13:14:00.000+05:30

Somebody accusing Kolkata to be the conspirator to deny sovereignity of Bangladesh.
Agartala-Chittagong rail link is proposed by India.
Updates on Indian Budget 2006.
Happy to see somebody lobbying for us to increase H1B quotas.
What's the PM's daughter doing as a lawyer? She's a law graduate from Yale. She's fighting against Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of Iraqi prisonars.
Goldman Sachs update on how BRICs are doing now, along with N-11 countries.
The grassroot innovations to be showcased in Discovery channel.

Plastic Cars to Set a Revolution in South Asian Car Market

2006-02-14T15:33:00.000+05:30

Tata motors is planning to launch it's much-awaited Rs. 1 lakh ($2000 approx) mini-car by 2008. What could be the major material used in the car apart from steel and aluminium? It's going to be plastic !!!!!

For the sceptics, it's a fact that on an average 20% of a car are already made of plastic. However, this plastic is not the one we are familiar with, but it's a much improved version of that. According to GE Plastics Global Marketing executive Mark Kingsley, it can be easily scaled upto 40%. This implies a further 10% reduction in weight which will translate into 5% reduction in fuel consumption.

GE Plastic is known for their Front Fascia plastic. It is used in Tata motors' best selling mini-truck Tata Ace. The Front Fascia is capable of withstanding high impact.

Whatever the technology might look like, the 1 lakh car is all set to bring joy to many Indian homes, who are just away from cars because of the price-tag. And we all know, necessity is the mother of invention. Let's wait and see how this innovation takes place on Indian roads.

Bangladesh Border : Killings Continue ...

2006-01-28T10:50:00.000+05:30

When I visited Hilli, a border town of India alongside Bangladesh back in 1992, I noticed a few points of border economy of India. People, in 'collaboration' with BSF and BDR, has established a virtual 'free trade' with the other side of the border. The main 'export' item was cattle, sugar and rice, whereas the 'import' item was petrol and diesel. The trade used to fund the local clubs and small organizations, as well as bigwigs like Adhir Chaudhury(MP, Murshidabad, WB). The business was well-structured to avoid the tarriffs between two countries. The border was as porous as it would have been in any other populous borders.

The things started to change since 2000, mainly due to political interests. Firstly, the right-wing BJP govt tried to establish a threat caused by infiltration from Bangladesh. The terrorists working out of their 'den' in the other country was a common notion in both India and Bangladesh. The relationship worsened with the border-fencing started in Bengal, and the protests along the border. The border fences left 150 yards of land to the other side of the border, in accordance to Bangladesh-India defence agreement in 1975 and various other international treaties. Secondly, the rise of Congress in the border areas to counter the CPM hegemony in West Bengal. This concern has triggered CPM to join the anti-infiltration rheotics.

The change in political climate did affect the behavior of BSF as well. They are now ordered to go 'offensive' to stop infiltration. The BSF responded with regular killings in the border. Yes, the count is 377 in 2000-2005. This 'political will' to 'stop Bangladesis at their border' did not stop, hence, the killing continues. But, the smuggling business continues its' growth, completely in accordance with common-sense economic theory.

Though the damage is significant in both sides, why none of the interested parties are inviting the other in a bilateral dialogue? The answer is in multi-party 'immature' democracies of both nations. Some of the political parties of Bangladesh will always try to portray India as evil to gain popularity in Bangladesh. Similarly in India, the prime accused was Pakistan. But, along with the peace-process with Pakistan, the Pak-card is losing its' glamour. Hence, the easy alternative, is Bangladesh. The recent rise of fundamentalism in Bangladesh fuelled that anti-Bangladesh stance among Indian political parties. It's a known tactics around the world that parties amend their failure at home by pointing out towards neighbours. Indian failure to curb North-East insurgencies is guiding Indian politicians to raise fingers at Bangladesh. Similarly, their Bangladesh counterparts are pointing towards India for their trade imbalance and development roadblocks. All these people want the problem to stay for years so that they don't run into shortage of 'foreign' issues in local politics. The million-dollar question is : How long will we be playing puppet to our politicians? Looking at the current world, well, only God knows.

Some other interesting updates on this issue from Anandabazar Patrika. The report is on vilage Karimgunge, Assam, where the village young men are guarding routinelytheir properties from Dacoits of the other side of the border. They themselves have arranged a 'chowki' for BSF to protect their village. They are also collaborating with border fencing program.

Stuck in Shallow waters

2006-01-26T13:47:00.000+05:30

In my last blog, I discussed about how non-muslims are taking part in West Bengal madrassas. In this one, I will discuss about why West Bengal muslims are still struggling to get out of 'shallow waters' - to join mainstream education. The article I would like to take as benchmark, is written by a couple of Muslim educationists of West Bengal.

The facts they pointed out are :
1) Indian literacy rate still has weaker impact among socially backward communities, like 59%(Muslims), 52% (SC/STs), females (54%) against all-India average of 65% (2001 cencus). The literacy is lower among rural areas (59%), a figures that could have got worse if slums in cities would have counted inside it.
2) Coming to West Bengal case, 30% Muslim children never really enroll in schools, whereas the overall state average 14.2%. The literacy rate for Muslims (47%) is still way behind of that of Hindus(72%).
3) In India, only 3% of Indian Muslim children in age group 7-15 enrolls in madrassas, the rate is 5% in West Bengal. There are many Bengali Muslim children who attend both mainstream education and madrassa education, similar to what is popular in Kerala. These 'maqtab's complement the secular mainstram education.
4) It is a failure of West Bengal government not to cover all sections of society. The needs are - attention to the education in Muslim majority areas, provide hostel facilities to Muslim girls and recognition of madrassas.

The whole article missed an important point that I would like to take into account, is the poverty of Muslims in West Bengal. The people in South Bengal still dominates the rest in all fields, and they're really way ahead of others. This is partly because of they were the first among the country to adopt science and social reforms. They were the first in India to adopt to knowledge based jobs under the British govt. Hence, the edge they have, both economically and socially, is unlikely to disappear. At the same time, the Muslims are still mostly rural, stuck in poverty. To bring them to mainstram jobs, major education reforms are to be introduced, the sooner the better, at least before this 'class difference' translates into a 'class hatred'.