A shameful day for India

A country that can not welcome writers like Salman Rushdie must not expect high hopes of intellectual achievements coming out of the country. Government’s refusal to provide security to him is very condemnable but totally expected. No government will touch this issue in the election year.

Book: River of smoke

Just finished River of smoke: the latest book by Amitov Ghosh. This book is the sequel of Sea of Poppies. This book takes the story from India to China. The most part of the book follows an Indian merchant who is trying to sell opium in China, while Chinese government is about to crackdown on opium trade. As usual, Amitov Ghosh’s firm understanding of history makes the story all too vivid. Endlessly revealing.

River of smoke is not as convoluted story as Sea of poppies. Therefore, sometimes doesn’t feel that captivating. This may be because the River of smoke is more locked into the actual historical events and there was not much scope to add turns and twists.

Worth reading!

Book: Curfewed night

Curfewed night by Basharat Peer is a well written book about the rise and fall of Kashmiri Militancy in the duration of last two decades. His account is very personal. He describes his experience of the early stages of armed conflict when he was in his early teens. During the later part of the armed conflict, he was out of Kashmir and educated himself in Delhi and he watched his homeland being torn apart.  After the decline of armed conflict, he went back and collected the stories of the conflict. He interviewed the ordinary people who caught up in between equally abusive Militants and Indian Army. He also tried to capture the militants and the army perspectives but I would say that was not fully comprehensive.

As an Indian, I was deeply troubled by the accounts of Human rights abuses by Indian army. Indians often counter these stories by calling them as fabrication or telling another story of militant abuse on Kashmiri pundits or may be Kashmiri Muslims. The first counterpoint is just state of denial. Answer to the objection is an impartial international investigation. I hope one day Indian government will see some wisdom of conducting investigations on these allegations. But the other counterpoint is the real sinister one.  Two wrongs does not make one right. Such argument gives a license to Indian army to abuse as much as they like with no accountability. We do not really know how much abuse has been done. In a decent society, we can not let slightest of abuse go unpunished. Specially by our own side. We must aim to create a decent society but not an India that is build on top of pile of corpses.

Until Indian population does not developed certain sympathy for Kashmiri people and recognize the abuses against them by Indian army, there will be no solution.

My fellow Indians, Please read this book!

Book: The Quest

The Quest by Daniel Yergin is about development of business of energy in last 20 years. He wrote another book called “The prize” in early 90s that covered the history of oil industry and this book is a kind of squeal. This book tells a grand story in which the world started looking  for energy instead of oil, while oil remain a significant policy issue of the governments.

Book is an easy and fluent read to learn about the world of energy: major players, major technologies, major technical challenges, major sociopolitical challenges, and major environmental issues. The author is a pro-business American and he has inherent biases in his presentation of various political issues around energy business. Sometimes ridiculously simplified view of some political conflicts. For example, his description of coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002 is full of false statements (If you read the book then try to understand his explanation of the failure of the coup). Another example, the recent Bahrain protests are defined as ‘protracted violence’ therefore Saudi king had to send an army there to ‘restore law and order’. And of course in his view, 2009 protests in Iran were a long cry for freedom. I hope technical aspects are accurate or at least he truly reflected the world view of the businessmen who run the world energy companies.

Here are the key questions one may ask about energy. I also list a summery of his answers.

• How much oil is left?
• At least 5 times the humanity used so far… that means a lot..
• How much natural gas is left?
• Not much exploited so far. New technologies and gas fields are arriving fast. No one knows really..
• How much damage oil/gas drilling can do to environment?
• All you can learn from accidents. The impact of all the accidents have been limited.
• Is nuclear energy safe?
• It depends to whom you ask. France has excelled in error free mass nuclear energy production. US and other developing countries are not totally sure what to do. It is very much clear that one major accident and whole nuclear energy dream is off the table.
• How much nuclear material is out there?
• This book did not discuss this issue.
• Is climate change real? and how urgent?
• Very real! Data is becoming undeniable. The book stands with the scientists.
• Are renewable energy sources viable?
• This book has a lengthy discussion about each kind of renewable energy. Each one has enormous challenges to make them acceptable. May be things will work out.
• Can electric car replace normal cars?
• There is a big push around the world to go electric. It will depend a lot on government policies if they make sure electric remain competitive against oil cars.

In general it claims, there are significant problems but trust businessmen. They will solve them.

Book: The lac operon — How do we know what we know?

I read The lac operon, which is a book about the history of the scientific work that led to our understanding of the DNA mechanisms that regulate the cell activities. The title ‘lac operon’ is from the name of a DNA mechanism that regulates lactose ‘eating’ in E. coli bacterium. The lac operon was one of the first examples that were analyzed.

The book is not so well written. The narration in the book is convoluted with the experiments and some anecdotes about the scientists behind those experiments. Very often these anecdotes pop up suddenly and break the flow of some scientific argument and vice versa. This book has great content but needs a good story teller like the author of Logicomix.

One anecdote caught my attention.  According to the anecdote, 50th birth day of Francis Crick was celebrated by presenting him a naked woman at a scientific conference! (You can find it at the end of the top paragraph of the page in this link). Even if it was not a real one (not clear from the text), it is outrageous. Was there no woman in the conference? Well it was still 60′s. Perhaps in those days, you could do such things without being called sexist and thrown out of scientific community.

Being citijan*

I saw an interview of Salman Rushdie, in which some caller asked him about his reasons to live in US. He answered, “Do I live in US? I didn’t know that. I live in New York.” He subsequently explained that he does not identify him self with the nation state, an intangible idea,  but with the city, which he can feel tangibly.

After living 5+ years in various cities in Europe, I  share his feelings about living in a city rather than in a nation state. I can feel the city. I can walk across it. I see neighborhoods. I recognize shop keepers. I feel that I know the city but not the nation state. The city is my home not the nation state.

In India, it was opposite. I had distinct feeling about being in India, which was pushed into my conscience by patriotic songs and propagandized education. But, once I step out of the mother country.  I do not have that emotional attachment with any other nation state. When I move to a foreign nation state, the attachments  that I form are with the streets on which I walk to my workplace, the shops where I buy bread, and the passersby to whom I say hi. The city becomes the home. I do not know if this feeling is shared by many people who move every other year. But, it is an interesting idea. This feeling saves one from the dreadful nationalism.

The current conception of an identity implies that citijan(city person) can not be a unit of identity for modern society. Since world is globalized and people are increasingly interdependent, city identity is too fragmentary. We need to rethink the notion of identity and tone down some emotional aspect of an identity. I think that the concept of nation states are getting more and more at odds with the social and technological world in which we are living. May be the city identity can serve our need to feel part of some thing greater and derive a social support system. Emotional element can be removed from the nation state and it will reduce into an administrative body such as UN.

* citijan == city+jan == city person

History of IITs

Here is an academic article about History of IITs and computing in India. I found this article via blog of Dheeraj Sanghi. This article chronicles creation of IITs and their subsequent impact on establishment of IT industry in India. IITs were created by direct patronage of US(IITK), Britain(IITD), USSR(IITB), and West Germany(IITM). Indian political elite were able to convince the major powers of the time to contribute in creation of IITs. The article also notes that

Not building the IITs would not necessarily have insured that those resources would have been spent instead on an effective mass education system, but if India’s IT industry is one legacy of Nehru’s policies, so too are its generally low levels of education and persistent poverty.

Indeed, IITs has been acting as an elite and exclusive club that can be joined by seemingly fair process of entrance exam. This club can catapult one into the world of highly skilled professionals.  The destination of such professionals is US. IITs are only good at producing export quality undergraduates, which is by no means a bad thing. The problem is that IITs failure to do high quality research. In the same time,  public imagined IITs to be like a ‘fairy palace’ that is not accessible to normal human being. IITs can not hope that their status as government funded elite club is sustainable. One day or another, Indian polity will challenge its structure. Given that their research record is ‘international zero’.

Indian government has been attempting to change IITs and sometimes in very foolish ways. Recently, a massive expansion of IITs has been started. Now they are expanded to 14 from 6 IITs. This is very interesting experiments in many ways. No one can deny need for more high quality technology institutes. Yet, there are many objections on this expansion. Many IITians are worried about dilution of their brand name. Some are worried that there will not be enough qualified faculties willing to join IITs, given the salary levels. Quality control of these many IITs will be increasingly hard.

In my opinion, time is ripe for the expansion. Lets hope that the new IITs will succeed.

Rating agencies : the undoubted authority

Rating agencies are cited in economy news like an honest arbiter of evaluating assets. Their opinion are never challenged. Nobody seems to say that I do not agree with Standard & Poor’s, one of the top rating agencies.

I have read some articles criticizing their power but they are rare.

For example, recent news reports and commentaries about Greek debt crisis tells the following story. Greece borrowed too much money and wasted that money. Therefore, it doesn’t have any money to return. Every chunk of money you borrow, you have to return on fixed date and such a date is approaching for Greece soon. Greece will have to default but not if someone else comes in and pay back to the private creditors. European central bank, other EU countries, or IMF can be the someone. All of them are hesitant because this refinancing will not solve the problem but only shift the debt from private to public. Now EU governments are asking private banks to extend the return date and Greece should pay this money back over time. Even if this settlement happens, rating agencies may consider this situation as failure to pay back and lower the rating of Greek government. This possibility of lowering of the ratings makes everybody worry but not the continuous indebtedness of the Greek government.

Who the fuck are these rating agencies? They threat to lower rating of everybody, including US government. The big assumption of news commentators is that if these rating agencies lower your rating then no one will lend money to you. But, why all investors(not people) in the world trust them? The rating agencies failed completely in evaluating toxic debts that caused 2008 economic crisis. Their ratings were wildly wrong. Somehow this economic crisis failed to harm reputation of these rating agencies. (Here is a link to videos of US law makers shouting at rating agencies for partly causing the crisis)

It is a good economic sense to return indebted money in time. Most probably rating agencies will only apply probability theory to compute expected return and evaluate the rating. But, there is a big element of hunch that goes in their rating and of course politics and greed can alter their hunch. I think this good economic sense should be the ruling argument rather than unchallenged authority of rating agencies. Both may not coincide all the time. Since opinion of rating agencies matter so much, they must be grilled publicly.

US independence

Recently, I read about the process and the war for independence of US. It is an amazing story. This war was fought in a time when the French king lost his head to a revolution and Napoleon ended up occupying the throne. US ending up as a democracy is not the most likely outcome of the war.

In India, my education taught me that there were bunch of revolutions happening in the lands of whites, those resolutions brought renaissance, and renaissance launched them way ahead with respect to rest of the world. Before India could have such revolution, Brits were occupying India. I had to re-read the history again and again to demolish such simplistic narration of history. US independence was one of those events which I had to re-narrate to myself.

US independence was a result of tussle between the traditional authority and the new industrial power structures. One of the reasons that lead to creation of the US democracy is the mistrust among the original 13 states. They wanted to be together as long as it benefits them. They always had doubts over centralized power. The result–a hodgepodge democracy. So many aspect of US government structure were not democratic. For example, sanction to slavery, no votes for women, and annihilation of native Indians. But, it had a flavor and possibility of becoming a strong and vibrant democracy. Sometimes achieving this  possibility is a big deal.

Book: Sea of poppies

I do not normally read fiction books. I was recently bored by reading many technical papers and one day I got ‘Sea of poppies‘ in my hands and I couldn’t stop reading it.

The story in the novel is situated in 19th century British india,  which was addicted to opium trade.  The story attempts to bring together all kinds of people of the time on a ship traveling to Mauritius. The author has crafted a marvelous story to illustrate  views of these people about the world around them. The story is full of drama and planted with many historical facts and circumstances. I am very much impressed with the author’s understanding about the 19th century India.

An Indian can see nothing but evil in the British empire and a Brit tends to engage in cost benefit analysis. The Brit will ask you if there are no benefits of the empire to India. Certainly, we can count some benefits. For the Brit, this is sufficient for not calling the empire as absolute evil. In my view, nothing is absolute evil, but the British empire was work of some very nasty people and their perpetual pretense of building a virtuous empire.  This pretense still continues in the minds of many people, like Andrew Roberts. Sea of poppies very well exposes this pretense.