Showing posts sorted by relevance for query thinking indian. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query thinking indian. Sort by date Show all posts
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The 'thinking Indian's' newspaper
Of course if you are a `thinking Indian' (t. I.) you have no doubt which newspaper I am talking about. It the Mahavishnu of Anna Salai, or do I mean Mount Road. So what makes this the t. I.'s newspaper? Well, for a start, the headlines on most days are about stories in Pakistan. Thanks to the t. I's newspaper, Asma Jehangir is almost as famous as Sachin Tendulkar. And I now know what the 'Muree accord' is. Let us not forget that on the day all other newspapers, those of non-t. Is were reporting on atrocitires in Nandigram, the Mahavishnu had a lead story on lawyers in Karachi protesting against the suppression of democracy. Then on page 9 there is the story of some visiting scholar who gave a talk somewhere in Madras about why US imperialism is the worst enemy of mankind. Not police repression in Nandigram, but the machinations of Dick Cheney and Condi Rice. But it is important for the t. I. to be well-versed in matters of the Rio accord, of the most recent speeches of Hugo Chavez. Turning finally to the Mahavishnu's Sunday magazine section, normally the first page is about some horrifying story in the country about female foeticide, starving peasants, but by the time you turn the page, you read stories of how their columnist watched games of the Krishnans in various idyllic settings. In fact, not just that: you learn that the columnist's alma mater is that preminent college in Delhi, where this humble blogger recently gave a talk, and you also discover that "shift-I" is the most used letter in that column. There must be stiff competition among suppliers of this valuable letter on the keyboard to replace that on his keyboard. If some reason that columnist's column is missing, take heart: the t. I. can look forward to an article by an alumnus of the self-same college, retired official of the United Nations organization, author of novels at least one of which tailors itself loosely on the life of the big B (surprising he never faced a libel suit!). The template here is also available: start out with soup with a lady friend at a restaurant in New York, or in Paris if it is really special, move on to sylvan landscapes in Kerala, a little bit of self-indulgence and name dropping and the t. I.'s apetite for intellectual satisfaction is whetted. And then by the time the t .I. reaches the last page of the pull out section, he or she finds themselves walking along the banks of the Rhine with sunsoaked vineyards, or in Ireland, and at times in the Swiss alps. So unlike Rahul Siddharthan, why do I still keep buying the Mahavishnu? Here is the secret: the only crossword that I have a chance at cracking is the Guardian Quick Crossword that the Mahavishnu reprints in the Metrosection. But that is only on the weekdays. I must confess my addiction to the Literary Review in the Sunday edition and I can never remember which weekends it appears and so I buy every Sunday's edition.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
The forgotten poor - Part I
Anita drew my attention to an article that I had briefly noted in the Deccan Herald of April 23, 2007, which can be found here. It is good enough to be reproduced here, without permission, of course.
The forgotten poor
By K N Hari Kumar
The mass media has in recent years rarely focused on the problems and plight of the poor in India.
The need for development journalism, or journalism from the perspective of improving the living conditions of the poor, has acquired fresh urgency in recent years. For, in our country today the poor have been largely forgotten, ignored, sidelined and marginalised in the national reform agenda of liberalisation and globalisation adopted by our political leadership. Except when the latter have been hit where it hurts — as in the last general elections when it was perceived that the votes of the poor had led to the defeat of the ruling coalition in the Centre. But this challenge, by those who have got little, if any, of the much-touted benefits from the decade-and-a-half-old reform programme, has not been of such a nature as to lead to a radical transformation of the policies and actions of the government, or even those of most of the politicians and parties in the opposition. Besides a few gestures, including some handouts and much lip service, the basic programme of the nation remains unchanged. Hence, the interminable discussion day in and day out in the public sphere about the rates of growth (of Gross Domestic Product, industry, IT exports mostly) aimed at and achieved and strategies to increase, ignoring the alternative human development index which was developed to measure diverse aspects of the quality of life of the common people.
It is in this context that the mantra 2020, the avowed goal of which is to transform us into a developed nation by that year, should be seen. That objective is sought to be achieved by a variety of methods and strategies. Among these are, first, providing huge monetary incentives to the rich and super rich largely in the urban areas as an incentive to greater entrepreneurial initiative. Second, providing massive support to develop Indian multi-national companies (MNCs) in modern industry and services largely in the private sector, while neglecting agriculture and those sectors serving the poor and the rural areas. Third, motivating the young to become greedy entrepreneurs with a get-very-rich-quickly at-any-cost and by-any-method ambition and drive. Fourth, focusing almost exclusively on English even for the masses and in the rural areas as a passport to great global professional and business success to the neglect of Indian languages. Fifth, encouraging the citizenry to mimic the consumerist and ostentatious lifestyles of the advanced western societies. And, finally and rather incredibly, attempting to get advanced nuclear and other largely military technologies from the United States in particular, by toeing its line on major foreign policy issues, to the detriment of the nation’s longstanding commitment to an independent, non-aligned foreign policy.
The ultimate goal of all this is said to be to transform our nation into a global economic, political and military superpower. By thinking and acting big, even gigantic, it is said, we can become big and great. And eventually we can join the club of the rich and the powerful and sit at their table and discuss issues and influence decisions affecting the destiny of nations and all of mankind. All this is sought to be encapsulated in the much-proclaimed slogan — the 21st century will be India’s. To what end is not clear. It could be surmised that the protagonists of such fantastic ambitions are the urban propertied and professional elite, whose income and wealth the reform programme has increased vastly, as well as those who really feel that by their getting to sit around the table in the rich man’s club they may actually be doing something worthwhile.
Following this lead, the mass media also has in recent years rarely, if at all focused on the problems and plight of the poor and the damage to their means of livelihood and the environment under the new policy regime. Nor has it deliberated on the need for initiatives and programmes to improve their condition and enable them to take control of their lives. Rather, reflecting perhaps its ownership and readership which has largely been the educated and propertied elite, it has only been expending large amounts of energy in enthusiastically exaggerating stories of great business successes in the domestic arena. It has been even more enthusiastic in devoting vast amounts of paper, words and pictures to hype the real and putative success stories of Indians, living in India and abroad, even those with foreign passports, in professional and entrepreneurial roles and in R and D, in the advanced western nations, especially in the US. These men and women, including sportspersons who have achieved greater and lesser international success, are the heroes of the new reform agenda and the values, ideology and perspective on which it is based. They are seen to have, almost miraculously, succeeded where their compatriots back home have tried and failed. They are being sought to be promoted as models to inspire the nation, especially its youth, to greater ambition and endeavour. Their successes are seen to give confidence to a nation that has lost faith in itself. They are evidence for our belief that we as a nation can, indeed, do it.
In trying to swim against what has lately become the mainstream of Indian opinion and policy, and focus attention on the plight of the poor, powerless and oppressed — their needs and hopes, their troubles and obstacles, their frustrations and demands, development journalists face an uphill task. For, it is not enough to divert readers/viewers away from juicy stories glorifying the successes of Indian and Indian-origin buccaneers in the national and global arena and celebrating their vulgar and gross conspicuous consumption and ostentatious lifestyles. (Amazingly, the national public outrage led by the media at the extravagantly ostentatious wedding celebration in Mumbai of a fabulously rich diamond merchant family from Antwerp just two decades ago has completely faded from memory). It also has to contend with the cheap titillation and voyeurism of the stories, photos and videos of the rich, famous and successful of diverse varieties, but especially youthful and nubile models and film stars, that have now become the staple of the media.
( The above essay was published in the second edition of Samparka Sethu, the Karnataka Directory of Development Writers. The writer thanks the publishers, Communication for Development and Learning for allowing its republication)
(To be concluded)
The forgotten poor
By K N Hari Kumar
The mass media has in recent years rarely focused on the problems and plight of the poor in India.
The need for development journalism, or journalism from the perspective of improving the living conditions of the poor, has acquired fresh urgency in recent years. For, in our country today the poor have been largely forgotten, ignored, sidelined and marginalised in the national reform agenda of liberalisation and globalisation adopted by our political leadership. Except when the latter have been hit where it hurts — as in the last general elections when it was perceived that the votes of the poor had led to the defeat of the ruling coalition in the Centre. But this challenge, by those who have got little, if any, of the much-touted benefits from the decade-and-a-half-old reform programme, has not been of such a nature as to lead to a radical transformation of the policies and actions of the government, or even those of most of the politicians and parties in the opposition. Besides a few gestures, including some handouts and much lip service, the basic programme of the nation remains unchanged. Hence, the interminable discussion day in and day out in the public sphere about the rates of growth (of Gross Domestic Product, industry, IT exports mostly) aimed at and achieved and strategies to increase, ignoring the alternative human development index which was developed to measure diverse aspects of the quality of life of the common people.
It is in this context that the mantra 2020, the avowed goal of which is to transform us into a developed nation by that year, should be seen. That objective is sought to be achieved by a variety of methods and strategies. Among these are, first, providing huge monetary incentives to the rich and super rich largely in the urban areas as an incentive to greater entrepreneurial initiative. Second, providing massive support to develop Indian multi-national companies (MNCs) in modern industry and services largely in the private sector, while neglecting agriculture and those sectors serving the poor and the rural areas. Third, motivating the young to become greedy entrepreneurs with a get-very-rich-quickly at-any-cost and by-any-method ambition and drive. Fourth, focusing almost exclusively on English even for the masses and in the rural areas as a passport to great global professional and business success to the neglect of Indian languages. Fifth, encouraging the citizenry to mimic the consumerist and ostentatious lifestyles of the advanced western societies. And, finally and rather incredibly, attempting to get advanced nuclear and other largely military technologies from the United States in particular, by toeing its line on major foreign policy issues, to the detriment of the nation’s longstanding commitment to an independent, non-aligned foreign policy.
The ultimate goal of all this is said to be to transform our nation into a global economic, political and military superpower. By thinking and acting big, even gigantic, it is said, we can become big and great. And eventually we can join the club of the rich and the powerful and sit at their table and discuss issues and influence decisions affecting the destiny of nations and all of mankind. All this is sought to be encapsulated in the much-proclaimed slogan — the 21st century will be India’s. To what end is not clear. It could be surmised that the protagonists of such fantastic ambitions are the urban propertied and professional elite, whose income and wealth the reform programme has increased vastly, as well as those who really feel that by their getting to sit around the table in the rich man’s club they may actually be doing something worthwhile.
Following this lead, the mass media also has in recent years rarely, if at all focused on the problems and plight of the poor and the damage to their means of livelihood and the environment under the new policy regime. Nor has it deliberated on the need for initiatives and programmes to improve their condition and enable them to take control of their lives. Rather, reflecting perhaps its ownership and readership which has largely been the educated and propertied elite, it has only been expending large amounts of energy in enthusiastically exaggerating stories of great business successes in the domestic arena. It has been even more enthusiastic in devoting vast amounts of paper, words and pictures to hype the real and putative success stories of Indians, living in India and abroad, even those with foreign passports, in professional and entrepreneurial roles and in R and D, in the advanced western nations, especially in the US. These men and women, including sportspersons who have achieved greater and lesser international success, are the heroes of the new reform agenda and the values, ideology and perspective on which it is based. They are seen to have, almost miraculously, succeeded where their compatriots back home have tried and failed. They are being sought to be promoted as models to inspire the nation, especially its youth, to greater ambition and endeavour. Their successes are seen to give confidence to a nation that has lost faith in itself. They are evidence for our belief that we as a nation can, indeed, do it.
In trying to swim against what has lately become the mainstream of Indian opinion and policy, and focus attention on the plight of the poor, powerless and oppressed — their needs and hopes, their troubles and obstacles, their frustrations and demands, development journalists face an uphill task. For, it is not enough to divert readers/viewers away from juicy stories glorifying the successes of Indian and Indian-origin buccaneers in the national and global arena and celebrating their vulgar and gross conspicuous consumption and ostentatious lifestyles. (Amazingly, the national public outrage led by the media at the extravagantly ostentatious wedding celebration in Mumbai of a fabulously rich diamond merchant family from Antwerp just two decades ago has completely faded from memory). It also has to contend with the cheap titillation and voyeurism of the stories, photos and videos of the rich, famous and successful of diverse varieties, but especially youthful and nubile models and film stars, that have now become the staple of the media.
( The above essay was published in the second edition of Samparka Sethu, the Karnataka Directory of Development Writers. The writer thanks the publishers, Communication for Development and Learning for allowing its republication)
(To be concluded)
Friday, July 03, 2015
Dr. B. Ananthanarayan: Rustum Choksi Award for Excellence in Research - 2014
Dr. B. Ananthanarayan: Rustum Choksi Award for Excellence in Research - 2014
Balasubramanian Ananthanarayan, a Professor at the Indian Institute of Science and Chairman of the Centre for High Energy Physics, is one of the most prominent researchers in the field of elementary particle physics and field theory. He is currently working on improving the predictions of low energy and developing an effective theory of the standard model, and also on searches for physics beyond the standard model.
“Curiosity about the integrity of the theories we have and to test them at the extremes of precision and logical consistency, is the main motivation in this exciting field,” says Dr. Ananthanarayan. The beauty and simplicity of ideas and the possibility of transcending man-made phenomena is what attracted him to this field. For years, among other topics, he has been involved in developing the theory of unitarity bounds to obtain precise information on form factors (which are the basic observables in the forces and confinement of particles in Physics), which is a crucial test of the theory of strong interactions. He has collaborated with Dr. Irinel Caprini from Bucharest on this subject along with co-workers at IISc. He has also been working extensively on collider physics in the recent years. Recall that the Higgs boson and its properties are sought after by most physicists all over the world. This is because it was the missing key in standard physics which can explain all the fundamental particles and forces. The project of collider physics is basically for the intense research on this particle, besides trying to discover new particles.
Dr. Ananthanarayan completed his bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 1985. After this, he decided to change tracks and went on to pursue a Master of Science in Physics at the University of Delaware, Newark, USA. Then he completed his PhD in Physics in the same university in 1991, under the supervision of Prof. Qaisar Shafi.
Dr. Ananthanarayan recollects the interesting experiences he had changing his subject of study to physics. “Undoubtedly a very risky decision to have taken, I did set about it quite methodically. I registered for 3 courses of the M.Sc. in Physics program and went through the course work meticulously,” says Dr. Ananthanarayan. There was no internet those days, so he had to write to some US universities for their course booklets. “I basically drew mental Venn diagrams and isolated those courses which defined a basic minimum. Many long hours were spent in the IIT Madras library looking up textbooks spelt out in those course booklets and simply sitting down and working out missing steps and learning the basics. I must also emphasize that one great skill I did learn from the B. Tech. at IIT Madras was problem solving, a skill that is useful whether one goes in physics, managements, finance, computer science, IAS or what have you,” adds Dr. Ananthanarayan.
He believes that anyone can identify their weaknesses and work on them by putting themselves in a structured routine and emerge as a better student, if not as an expert. He presents his story as an example to all those who are thinking twice about taking a risk in their careers and says, “The moral of this story is that if this worked for me, it will work for anyone. Such professional physicists, for that matter scientists and engineers, are the need of the hour for the country.”
Dr. Ananthanarayan has worked as a post-doctoral fellow at three institutions, namely, Physical Reseach Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India; University of Lausanne, Switzerland and University of Bern, Switzerland. After this, he joined IISc as an Assistant Professor. He was awarded the Fellowship of the Homi Bhabha Fellowships Council in November 2009 - 2011. He has now received the prestigious “Rustum Choksi Award for Excellence in Research for the year 2014” from the IISc Court. On receiving the award, he modestly says, “The recognition of academic excellence by my employer, the leading institution in the country, and recognition of this by the Institute Management and senior colleagues is the main value of this award.”
Dr. Ananthanarayan wishes to dedicate his achievements to all his elders who have acted as a strong support system in his life. “Acknowledgements are also due, to the kind advice, help and encouragement of my teachers , Profs. V. Balakrishnan, G. Rangarajan and the late Prof. S. Swaminathan. Prof. M. S. Ananth -- who was to later become director of IIT Madras -- was also very encouraging of my decision and was great to talk to,” he says Prof. Alladi Sitaram, a retired mathematician from the Indian Statistical Institute is another of Dr Ananthanarayan’s role models.
Dr. Ananthanarayan has published a number of papers on his work over the years, as well as general-interest science articles. IISc conducts a training program, called 'Outreach' project, every summer for promising students from India and abroad, selected through a rigorous competitive process. Dr. Ananthanarayan used to work with students over the summer break as a part of this project. To aspiring students, he wishes to give this piece of advice: “We must work very hard, think hard and also learn a lot of lateral skills. Computer skills are a must today irrespective of what one may want to do, along with mathematics.”
Contact Information:
B. Ananthanarayan
Chairman & Professor, Centre for High Energy Physics
Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru 560 012, India
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Media watch: Article on `Sleeping with the enemy' in The Hindu
Well, ladies and gentlemen: have a look at the Metro Plus pullout section (Bangalore edition) in The Hindu of April 12, 2008. See the article entitled `Sleeping with the enemy?'. The byline reads `Can spouses have murderous instincts? Here's what relationship experts have to say'. It is about generally the man losing his temper and killing the wife in a fit of rage. All very well. But don't miss the picture. It shows a supine man with his head on the lap of what is obviously the wife. The wife wears a full sleeved shirt and covers her hail with a scarf. Now, the average readership of this newspaper live in very hot climates. So what is the woman doing wearing a full sleeved shirt and a scarf? Is there a suggestion here? Jokes apart, the obvious Islamophobia is reprehensible. Which media watchdog is going to call the bluff of the thinking Indian's newspaper?
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Violence in US college campuses
So one may wonder why one more post on this subject. And from some one in India. Is there not enough violence in India to write about? Of course there is. But can I deny that there are many stories that have been in the public eye and have dominated the collective consciousness of many over the last year? Virginia Polytechnic Institute, University of Northern Illinois, etc.. The reason to respond to this is that so many of us have actually spent some years in campuses such as this. It is very sad to see such events. But many questions to pop to one's mind which is of a universal kind. The question that is asked is "how could something like this happen here?" The question is whether it is really possible to have an isolated subsystem that is totally out of contact with the rest of society. One would agree that with the launch of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the USA has become the largest purveyor of violence. In order to carry out wars like these, one has to degrade human life day in and day out. Degrade it here because the recepients of the violence are the Taliban. Degrade it there because they are Sunni extremists. And so on. Now in such an atmosphere, if guns are plentiful, what is the outcome when there are those who are on the edge of insanity? The results are there for everyone to see. There have been other sad stories about University campuses. The murder of two students in Louisiana, another at Duke University, yet another in Scranton, PA, all of Indian origin. These were young men just as I was when I got there and so I can see my own image there. Then there is the sad story of the young women in southern USA. One at Auburn University and the other at University of North Carolina. The second one was 22. I could not help noticing that she was born a few days before the demise of Meera at Philadelphia, in practically the same circumstances. Is it inequity that has caused such violence? If this is the purported reason, then it would be an insult to all those milliions and billions of poor and needy who are as gentle and non-violent as it can get. What is it then? Of course in the era of globalization we are not very far behind. There is that sad story in Gurgaon of a kid being killed by his class mates. And these were not the poor. This was in a fancy `international' school. The reason to bring up all this is to think about how to make the world secure for `our children'. If any one thinks that they can simply make it safe for their children without thinking about the children of others, then it will be just a pipe dream.
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