Desicritics Author: Lakshmikanth

Toilet Papers, India and the West - The "Western" Wo/Man's Burden?

Lakshmikanth — Mon, 3 Sep 2007 02:18:10 EDT

According to the World "Watch" Institute the fact that 67% of Indians do not have access to toilet facilities and the fact that we use "only" 1.8kgs of toilet paper per annum per capita shows that India is a really unhygienic place. While I do not want to debate the numbers (could be higher or lower). I, however, want to debate the method by which they have decided that people DO NOT have acccess to hygiene. You guessed it right - its the toilet paper.

I could not believe my eyes when I read this in The Hindu.

There are two big dumbos in the story here and both show the cultural attitude one is the boorish west towards the unquestioning east and vice versa.

One is the dumb idea that toilet paper is the benchmark of Hygiene. The report proudly claim that Americans use 21Kgs of Toilet paper per-capita per annum (read atleast one or two tree cut down per capita per annum) while we poor (South) Asians use "only" 1.8kgs.

Damn these dirty Indians who wash their asses and don't know what Hygiene is. We, the West, should teach them what it takes to be hygienic. Our Toilet Paper companies need some more business and India is a good place to do it. So lets try the "western" wo/man's burden trick (which incidentally was once used by Pears Soap to encourage the westerners to civilize the "dirty" brown people out there)

While I truly and completely believe in scientific hygiene, I find these kind of reports to be dumb, uncouth, condescending and unscientific.

The second and more interesting thing about this whole issue is that Hindu has taken this report and published it as such without even questioning the evaluation methodology. It is left for the people to judge that this report is a piece of bullcrap. It seriously brings the credibility of the paper down(to the level of TOIlet paper?). As such I consider The Hindu to be less crappy than say the TOI, but this kind of breach of integrity in questioning sure makes me more wary about believing anything the paper says.

Let me go a bit further and state this: If the Author of this article in The Hindu brought into this report then I am really disappointed as there is one more person in India who is a willing slave of the idea "Anything that comes from the west is good and can be used without question". This is a very dangerous and irrational idea, and my belief is that this was what made the entire area that was India enslaved to Britain. A belief that the "white" people from Britain somehow had a higher moral authority is one thing that has still got to be cleansed from the Indian mind, call it the Eastern Man's Burden.

We must remember that we are now independent from the clutches of the British invaders. Along with independence comes the responsibility of RATIONALLY evaluating any idea that comes our way, whether it be coming from West or the East or the North. Articles like this which criticize the (western) World bank and the "soap" mafia should be read with the same interest as given to any "hygienic" advice that is coming from the west.

Personally I think that toilet paper is the most unhygienic "sanitation" product that I have ever used. After six months of uncomfortable use of toilet paper, I got some problems near my bowel regions. I switched to softer toilet paper and then to moist wipes and then finally spent a fortune on getting a bidet. Life is as comfortable as before now. Sorry about the gross closing statements.

Cheb Mami vs. Tam Rap: Creative or Wannabe Hip Hop?

Lakshmikanth — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 01:33:41 EDT

My friend happened to forward me this Remix - Rap song and believe it or not, its in Tamil (the original of the remix is Illayaraja's):

The remix is by a desi Malaysian artist named Yogi B from the group Poetic Ammo (PMO) and the album name is Vallavan.

As a confession (from someone who knows Tamil a bit and someone who enjoys hip-hop) I must say I like this song and I don't mind hearing it, even if we judge them to be wannabes. They have raw talent in them, even if it is to Rap hard! Some of Illayaraja fans may call this a murder of the original artist, but nevertheless, I like this song.

Rap, or Hip hop music, in the US evolved in many ways, with various versions such as Gangsta Rap and Gangsta-Funk (G-Funk) [Source:Wikipedia]. Rap has an important cultural side and is intricately linked with the life and linguistic style of African Americans. This fact is difficult to appreciate unless one interacts with them and tries to understand these intricacies. The language, the style, the dress, the culture basically comes right out of someone who lives in a ghetto. This is the reason why most of the Hip-Hop artists came right out of the ghettos.

Rap had its small beginnings as a natural outcome of the Afro-American lifestyle. The affluence and the fame of the successful Hip Hop artists help promote the more recent developments of the discography of the albums and also to a large extent the Ghetto lifestyle began to evolve into a hip-hop style sophistication, such as a "bling-bling" culture[source:Wikipedia]. Hip-hop thus had a market of its own, and hence a life of its own. It became something like a fad, a "fad" which people like my dad believed would not last long, but it did and it spread around the world. Local artists emerged as a result of the popularity of American rap, giving the same "rap" tunes but in their own cultural style.

I listen to French rap as well. The group Bisso Na Bisso and the Congo Hip-hop artist Passi are some of my favourites. Here is another gem from Cheb Mami(of the "Desert Rose fame" and who, by the way, is one of the best "Rai" singers) and K-Mel which is one of my favourite songs (I don't understand a single word, but the tunes are just amazing):

Here is the LINK for the Cheb Mami video in case you are not able to see it.

During my stay in Los Angeles and my interactions with a few young hip-hop singers here, I did notice that they were culturally very attached. They had a strong cultural identity, which probably will never go away. It's the same with most "Rap" artists from any other culture.

The point about the cultural attachment is what I want to bring to your notice. Check out the Cheb Mami Video for example. It is good hip-hop and yet they dont have that "bling-bling" nature, the dress is modern yet its NOT ghetto style. Contrast this with our Tam Rap video, and one just has to say that our brothers are just wannabes. The music is good. The lyrics are strong. But man, why do you have to throw away your cultural background and act as someone who you do not even understand! Even if one throws away his culture and dresses "casually", it's fine. But trying to be something that you are not and CANNOT be is something extremely stupid.

Why are we desis like this? Why are we wannabes in everything? Can't we define anything of our own? One need not have to be culturally bound to be creative, nor do we need to be a wannabe to be creative. Creativity is something inherent and it rings well with the concept of originality. If these people were singing that Hip-hop song in a desi dress, like a lungi and jubba/shirt I would have appreciated them more. I would have appreciated them even more if they did not show any cultural biases.

To all the talented young men and women out there: Please don't be wannabes, be yourself.

Spam, Constitution And Forums Aka Random Ramblings Of A spammed Victim

Lakshmikanth — Thu, 11 May 2006 00:18:52 EDT

Can we be protected from spam/spammers by the laws of the land? Or rather, is it ok constitutionally to get angry and feel frustrated when you get bombarded with spam? Does my anger violate the freedom of speech of another individual?

When I was a software engineer back home, I was troubled by incessant phone calls for a new credit card/or a new home. On one hand I was rejected by Citibank when I applied for one and on the other they would call my cell/mobile and my office line, during my working hours.

Once I was in an important meeting with my project manager, I got a call from one of those fine young women in HSBC asking me whether I needed a credit card. Under normal circumstances I would not have bothered to take the call, but since I was expecting an important call, I decided that the call should be attended to, only to find someone asking me to apply for a credit card. I knew at that particular point that I was having a bad day and after giving her an earful on privacy, I let her have it too.

After a few days the calls stopped because of this, but they resumed soon, because they found some new loopholes to get past the law.
Call it plagiarism, the Ancient Greeks wrote most of our constitution. Whether our founding fathers had a notion of freedom is a debatable issue. It is debatable albeit without a resolution and without much of pragmatic utility.

The Indian Constitution's Preamble is given in the next paragraph. I have highlighted those words which have been violated from virtually the first day. It is also of interest to note the word socialist in the first line of the preamble. I would say that this is a philosophical error, the same mistake that U.S.S.R made. Socialism is a philosophy in itself and so is any constitution. The preamble represents the metaphysics/axioms of the constitution and it is easy to run into inconsistencies if they themselves state an abstract and not well defined term such as socialism. In short this preamble needs another preamble which defines what they mean by socialism. All the other terms are pretty axiomatic and well defined. Contrast this with the US constitution. The word dignity is also of a questionable nature, in the sense it has to be objectively defined to avoid inconsistencies.

Preamble
WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;
IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.

When I first saw the constitution I was really amused at the level at which the preamble was violated. The issue about socialism was pointed out by my Professor:- Prof.Bart Kosko, who is also a lawyer. It is interesting to note that socialism also prevents economic liberty. It also kills much of economic justice, by assuming the society to be primary over the individual. This assumption is what created the USSR and it is the same flawed assumption that made it go down the drain.

Arguing over something that is inherently prone to inconsistencies will never yield any constructive outcomes. Neverthless, let us try to analyse spam in a constitutional manner.

Does SPAM represent freedom of speech? Does it represent the exercizing the right of an individual to shout what he wants on any forum that he wants to shout on? Before we argue further, let us try to define the terms in the question.

Freedom of speech can be constructed in a consistent manner from our preamble combine Justice and Liberty:- translated into concrete terms it says:- I believe in what I believe and I dont get shot for saying it out.

All this breaks down on the Internet. In one case it destroys the boundaries set by nature and the society (like geographical distance, religion etc), on the other it also destroys the definition of an Individual. Viewed from that angle our constition would be erring in the FIRST word i.e. the word "WE". Who are we? How many identiies can an individual have? Does "WE" include all those identities? Does "WE" include the chat bots and the automatic bulk emailers?.

Our preamble assumes that "WE" are a set of individuals associated in the formation, and the running of a society called nation. "WE", our constitution assumes, are mature enough to understand what our constitution means.

In a press conference, you have to be really cranky to go and boo at someone like say, Deve Gowda. You know that consequences of such an event and you would not be doing it. Nor would you go and boo at a press conference of someone like Arundhati Roy or Medha Patkar. The main problem there is the individual identity, which gets exposed! It is a risky thing to do though our constitution protects us for the boo-ing.

Contrast the same with an hypothetical online press conference of Shri. Deve Gowda. There will be a few hundred people who would aggressively spam it, shouting Deve Gowda Murdabad, booing all over, with their thousand faced identities. That would be a sad sight to watch.

Therefore we have the wrong constitution for the internet. I support the notion that internet should remain free. I also subscribe to the notion that forums and groups that form within the free internet should have well defined constitution.

One can view this in an evolutionary form. Suppose we need a system to evolve. We would set some rules in the system, which are fundamentally held true all the times (for example "Survival of the fittest!" or "Adapt or Perish", "Do or die"). Then let the system free. There would be an infinite possibilities of the growth of the system, but we can approximately predict where it would evolve into. For example one can easily see that socialistic organization almost corrupt entirely in very less time.

What defines these fundamental rules, in the case of a society, is it's constitution. The Internet does not have one. So we don't think for a second before creating alternate identities, sending a scary email to a friend from a junk id, spamming, flooding forums with noise, noise to such an extent that some of the well meaning people leave the forum and hide.

A society without a constitution, or one that does not follow a constitution can be aptly called a crowd. The Internet is a crowd and not a community. It is a jungle filled with bots, sites, viruses, a scary ecosystem to say the least. The only fundamental rule is that performance of anything is bound by technology. This is a clinical rule with no ethical information involved. No set of definitive actions to act. This is a crude world much like what our ancestors would have been through.

Forums are the next evolutionary step, where a group of individuals come together and form a community which follows its own rules. Is there a rule in that forum such as "Don't like it : Don't join it!". Well if there is then we have a controlled society which protects its citizens from the bots, the spammers and viruses of the external internet. If there is no rule like that then we have an open society which fails to protect its contributors from external attacks. The only choice it leaves to an individual is either leave the forum or fend for himself/herself.

I wish I knew the solution to this problem. The best thing would be to come up with a very strong set of axioms, which define the ethical behaviour one should follow in the forum. There should be well set terms and conditions for posting a comment. And if these are by any chance violated, then the comment should be deleted without mercy and care should be taken not to send the email to the author of the post.

My only contention is that we form a society that protects every sensible individual in it from external irrational elements. Why not build an electric fence?

Saint Dr. M.P Singh, Saint Dhirubhai Ambani and Mother Teresa

Lakshmikanth — Mon, 3 Apr 2006 19:51:29 EDT

Mother Teresa is to 'become' a saint sometime soon. She is on the 'accelerated track' to become one. She did do a lot of things in her life, she sold poverty to the west, she took 'care' of many poor people. Her brilliant achievements are chronicled, quite often based on hearsay, by our media.

All this prompted me to define the concept of 'Saint'. Being a bit oriented towards studying economics, I define a person as Saint if he has eliminated a chunk of India's poverty, or a chunk of India's hunger. We could rank Saints based on the number of people whom they have helped.

According to what our media says, Mother Teresa has 'helped' poor people. I tried googling about the statistical figures and one of the sites I could get was this, which asks a set of questions and provides no answer.

Let us look at this economically. Charity is the name of the game, you deserve charity ONLY when when you are disabled in some manner. That is why you see beggars cutting off their skin to look even more disgusting, as if that is a way to get more money. Indeed that is the only way, because if you are fit and healthy the only means you could get money was by working hard somewhere. So a charity institution, be it any, sells some kind of disability.

The value exchange system is based on a currency of disability. The more disabled you are, the more sellable you are, and the more you are in demand.

*digression*

The only form of 'charity' that I could agree with is an institution run in Bangalore (forgot its name) where some blind people made chairs and sold them. I gladly overpaid for a chair. Not because it was made by blind people, but because the genuine effort that a blind man puts into making a chair is much more than that of a normal person and therefore he deserves to be paid more. I would rather call this system a special industry rather than a charity show.

*end digression*

Mother Teresa, therefore, undoubtedly did business with Charity. I call such people , no matter how noble they appear, as charity sellers, which are very different from the special industry that I mentioned above. The difference lies in the fact that Charity is an inherently dishonest system. When a person throws his money away to a charity seller (beggar), s/he is not honest to recognize the hard work that was endured by him to earn it, for which he is exchanging it in return of nothing. It means to say that s/he considers that his work that payed him the money was worthless to have been exchanged with nothing. It could also be the case that he did not earn the money honestly, and he is sharing his guilt with the Charity seller. The charity seller is dishonest because s/he exchanges something useless in return of some value in the form of money. Thus charity sellers are inherently dishonest, and so is charity.

Economic growth of the charity seller depends on two things, his/her ability to exhibit extreme disability and his/her ability to show it to the world. If a charity seller indeed helps remove the 'wounds' on these people then that would put him/her out of business, so his/her priority would be to show and keep people as wounded, as if there is a constant social machine that generates wounded people. Democracy works here. The more wounded the better. Success does not depend on the intellectual growth of the 'employee'. Success of the Charity Seller is not happiness for his 'employee'

The harm that a charity seller does is in a different way though. S/he makes the poeple worth only of what s/he sells them. S/he does not make people capable enough to be able to make something valuble for the society and then honestly exchange it with money for what its worth. If s/he does so then her business is doomed. Thus a charity seller creates socially impotent people, therefore they are social enemies. They should be eliminated at all costs.

There is a simple truth in economics that you have to produce something before you distribute it. You have to create value before you exchange it. You have to make money before you spend it. Someone has to create wealth before someone else loots it. The only real means to eliminate poverty are the following

1) Teach people to create value that can be exchanged -- This is what I call secular, uniform education.

2) Create an HONEST and JUST value exchange system. -- Free trade.

3) Search and destroy the looters. -- Minimal, efficient, Government Policing.

Let's look at a case: The Green revolution

The Bengal Famine of 1943:

Let's read what this site has to say about this:

The world's worst recorded food disaster happened in 1943 in British-ruled India. Known as the Bengal Famine, an estimated four million people died of hunger that year alone in eastern India (that included today's Bangladesh). The initial theory put forward to 'explain' that catastrophe was that there as an acute shortfall in food production in the area. However, Indian economist Amartya Sen (recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics, 1998) has established that while food shortage was a contributor to the problem, a more potent factor was the result of hysteria related to World War II which made food supply a low priority for the British rulers. The hysteria was further exploited by Indian traders who hoarded food in order to sell at higher prices.

Germany lost around 3 million men during the second world war, so one can imagine the scale of this catastrophe.

From such a pathetic situation the Green Revolution picked us up into an age of prosperity. From such a pathetic state which our greedy British bastards left us, the country forged ahead on a road to prosperity. It was not self sufficient, but very few people died because of hunger after the Green Revolution.

What was the cause of such a great poverty eradication program?

There were three important causes as the website says

1) Continued expansion of farming areas;

2) Double-cropping existing farmland;

3) Using seeds with improved genetics.

This falls under the first category of the list. Secular Uniform education. That is what fuelled it. The high yield genetically engineered seeds were not obtained by charity or by praying to Jesus Christ, they were obtained by continued research. The hero of the research was Dr. M.P Singh, and therefore to me he is a Saint.

Thus by just allowing uniform and secular education we achieved Green Revolution. The reason why most of us are sitting comfortably in US instead of being in a Somalia like India.

Saint Dhirubhai Ambani, needs no explaining why I call him a Saint. We all know how he built himself up, how many people work in reliance and how many jobs has it created. If you look at it in another perspective , Saints like Ambani have helped people pay their hospital bills thereby curing them of their wounds and also helping the hospitals become better. He has helped people pay the farmer the just amount of money that the farmer deserves, thereby helping the farmer and the Indian Farming community to grow. Dhirubhai Ambani is a Saint, in an economic manner.

So who is a better Saint. One Dhirubhai Ambani, One Dr. M.P Singh of the Green Revolution or One Mother Teresa. If India had 100 Saint Ambanis and 100 Saint Dr. M.P Singhs we would have been a developed nation by now. Compare it with the economy that 100 Charity Sellers like Mother Teresa would create.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
References:
1) Atanu Dey on Mother Teresa.
2) Fransisco's Money Speech -- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.
3) Adam Smith: The Wealth Of Nations.

A Happy Life

Lakshmikanth — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 03:56:57 EST

Not very long ago there was a husband and a wife living happily.

The wife was very happy with the husband. He was all that she wanted. A nice and handsome guy who never hissed at anything, someone who could cool her down when she felt angry, someone who could always understand what she felt, someone who she just felt at home with. He also remained very cool when she got really angry. She knew for sure that no other man in the world would do that for her.

The husband was indeed a very mature man. He was a very successful businessman. He was known to be a very jovial and sociable kind of person. He never missed an opportunity to say how great he felt about his wife, and how great a partner she had become in his life. He always took the camaraderie between them as a powerful force that bonded them.

Five years into their marriage the husband developed a peculiar hobby. He chiseled out small pieces of wood and tried to make some form of a sculpture out of it. When his wife asked him why he did so, he told her that it was something he always wanted to do.

After 10 years of marriage, his sculptures became more and more sophisticated. They became works of art that any artist would be proud to produce. Meanwhile, the wife became more and more aggressive. She got more and more angry and most of the times for no reason. He calmed her down. He gave her one of his sculptures as a gift on which he wrote

"When You Get Angry Do Something Creative"

Years flew by. There were many changes in the family, they were four instead of two. They had fun all the way. However, the wife had developed medical conditions due to anger. She was hospitalized for stress treatment and doctors told her that her chances of getting a stroke had doubled.

The gifts from the husband also continued. She started to enjoy her husband's art. It soothed her out from the anger into a state of being loved. She loved those sculptures, which had become the work of a Master craftsman by then.

The husband became a great business man. He was always the same man. He never changed and never got angry at anything. People wondered about his 'coolness'.

In course of time the wife's character changed. Whenever she got angry she used to ask her husband to make her a sculpture. He asked her what made her angry, and then used to work on a sculpture. After three or four anger episodes she had a beautiful sculpture. Which she kept in her private museum. Which always made her calm down and iron the stress out of her.

They went on for 50 long years. The wife had built a big museum by then and the husband was a well known artist apart from being a good businessman.

On the 51st year the husband died. The wife was devastated. Along with other things he had left her a letter titled "Confessions". She started reading the letter with trembling hands. It read:

My confessions
Dear Wife,

I love you.

More than any gift that I could give you in my life, I have given you my friendship and my time and the same I got back from you. I am proud that we have come this long and this far in our life. We lead beautiful lives.

However, I have a confession to make. Wooden art was something that I
wanted to do all my life. Eventhough I loved to do business, wood craft was a parellel hobby. I had forgotten all about it during my student life. It never really occured to me as a hobby even after I graduated, got married and started a business.

In the first years of our marriage I used to get angry at you, at my business and all the things that were affecting me at that time. There was no end to the miseries at that time, my business was not doing well, we were having tensions and I was having problems with my business partners. Those were the most miserable years of my life.

One day I decided to finish everything. To leave you and to end the business. That evening I was driving home on the freeway and due to my disturbed mind I took the wrong turn. I got angry at myself for not thinking about driving. I was completely lost and decided to ask someone about the way. I stopped in front of a house. A lady was gardening. I asked her the way back.

While she was telling me the way to return, I saw a kid neaby who was trying to make something out of wood. It was something like a wooden doll. He was trying to fix one piece to another. I felt a jolt of joy. I saw innocence in his eyes. His proud mind trying to piece the things together. I envied him for the happiness that he was deriving out of it.

The return journey to our home was a return to innocence for me. I had found the solution to my anger. I found something that would allow me to return to my childhood days. I found something apart from my business which I could find unadulterated and innocent joy in. I found a vent to my uncontrollable anger.

The next time I got angry I used to start working on some sculpture. I would divert all my anger into some expression in the sculpture. To me the sculpture was a means to getting back my childhood and also a means through which I could change my anger into creativity.

Whenever you got angry I used to give you one of my creations with my message on it. I am glad that it served the purpose and you found joy in it.

Now even after I am gone, you have a big museum where you can remember
the product of our love, or rather our product of love distilled from our
anger.

I hope you shall pardon me for this small fact I had kept from you.

Your loving husband.

~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~

Sambandam: Women as Utility?

Lakshmikanth — Wed, 8 Mar 2006 00:20:23 EST

Here is a story that set me thinking about some women in Kerala in the near past.

There was a paragraph from the post and a related quote from the book which set me thinking of a similiar mechanism among the Nambudiri Brahmins in Kerala. I quote the relevant lines here:

It is about a 'caste' called the handmaid. She has only a reproductive function in society. And she sent from family to family to procreate. And, in this society there is only one way left to procreate - the natural way. There is a brilliant bit where the central character, Offred, describes the process of reproducing:

My red skirt is hitched up to my waist though no higher. Below it the Commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body. I do not say making love, because this is not what he's doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven't signed up for.

Some years back, there was this rampant custom among the Nambudiri Brahmins who would associate(sexually) with a woman of a lower caste(mostly Nairs/Menons), this was called sambandham. The institution of marriage/association at that time caled 'Veli' allowed a Nambudiri to have multiple sambandhams. Most of the 'women' in sambandham were 13 year old girls, whereas the Nambudiri himself would be, in some cases, more than 60 years of age. I always consider this an institutionalized rape, but I never think the girls would have thought that it was rape.

They would have considered themselves to be lucky to be fucked by a Nambudiri. While being drawn into the contract of sambandham they would know what exactly is in store for them. The subtler part here is whether the girl would have had an opinion of NOT associating with a Nambudiri, if there was such a girl then I would consider her to be raped by the customs. However the general rule in those times was that a girl never has the rights to her life and that the KEY to her life is in associating with a man. Man's 'power' is her source of protection. So I "guess" almost all of the girls would have volunteered to be associated with a Nambudiri.(This is a guess, i cannot support this with statistics)

When I used to hear such stories from my mom about such customs, I would just imagine how the sexual part between a 13 year old lean girl and a 60 year old (fat) man would be. One has just to change the words in the book and instead of travelling forward into time to view a handmaid you can travel backwards and view a girls mind in Sambandham.

My red 'pawada' (skirt) is hitched up to my waist though no higher. Below it the Nambudiri(Commander) is associating(fucking). He is associating with me physically as a matter of divinity(What he is fucking is the lower part of my body). Eventhough I don't feel anything; I am supposed to be blessed by this association and therefore I should feel happy.This is what I expected when I associated with him.(I do not say making love, because this is not what he's doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven't signed up for.)

I used to hear some old tales(puranas) from my Grandma. From whatever little of what i know about the Puranas I dont think anywhere there was a woman treated like someone in sambandham; this sytem was not mentioned anywhere. Though women were considered lower to men in making choices, even in the ranks of the gods and godesses, they were always considered to be powerful and could make some, if not all, choices. For example Gandhari, Kunti in Mahabharat. Sita in Ramayana. They were power houses and were very well respected(even now). I consider the Krishna devotee Meera also to be a woman of independent choice and also very powerful.

One knows what is the status of women in the present and in the near past. But what was the status of women, during the time of say Ashoka the great? If they were treated with respect and had the right to take decisions and make independednt choices, then we have a BIG question in our hands.

What made Indian society change from one that respects women as its members to one that uses women as a utility.

The answer to this question will be something that will have a cure in it for the present society.

Notes :

1) Eventhough I have used terms like Nambudiri/Nair/Menon etc etc I do not mean EVERY ONE of that society. I mean to address only those members of the society who participated in this crime.

2) I am an atheist and I do not hold any beliefs whatsoever, and this article is more of a philosophical review of the historical section of a society; i.e i have tried to analyse the beliefs and understandings commonly held in the society at that time (something we call culture)

3) I have tried to extrapolate the lesson from one particular custom into a question that we should all, as Indians, ask ourselves. One can find counter examples, but it would be surprising to if one comes up with something like "Women are respected all over India"! or "Women are not viewed as objects in India"!, Note that these allegations that I make are directed to the mass, and the counter examples that one would be finding are mostly exceptions.

4) This is NOT a part of the Blog-a-thon! It is a very old post and i did not intend to write this as a response to the Blog-a-thon call.

Veto Or No Veto - Does The UN Matter?

Lakshmikanth — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 00:16:27 EST

No Veto for India was the news that rocked all of us in the months of April Last year. According to the Times of India report here, Kofi Annan said:

"I believe enlargement without veto is a major step forward," Annan said on Thursday. "Let us not get so focused on the veto. What is important is to have effective representation to make the council more democratic and ensure voices of all the regions are heard," Annan said.

These are the words hurled against the great ego of the Indian Leaders who, for some reason believed that because of our great population and because of our great middle class' voice we will gain immediate veto power; well, our leaders earned to be saluted with one more four letter word apart from the normal ones which sensible people of India call them; the word is Fool, or rather Fools.

I had one doubt then and still do: Mr. Annan, the Veto itself destroys the meaning of democracy, does it not? Then how can our permanent membership guarantee "effective representation" to make the council "more democratic"? The last phrase is a pun, i guess. It means "voices of all regions are heard (and conveniently ignored)!

The words of Kofi Annan are an euphemism for "You Idiots are not worth for all the power you are going to get with a Veto. Do not think all our big five bully brothers will ever dream of allowing you into their bully gang. So keep quiet and keep your f**king tail between your f**king legs and be a good dog of the big five in the permanent council"

I believe that committees never achieve anything unless every member is streamlined. Even in a streamlined committee an idea is central to a person. I am talking in the sense that an idea can originate only in one person's mind. Other people may follow it or plagiarize it or innovate on it.

A single idea which is the unit measure of any invention is a product of the effort of a single and conscious human mind. This concept is central to any achievement that man has made till date. This also holds true with the greatest and the most beautiful inventions in the world, be it economic, scientific, industrial or organizational innovations.

It is this beautiful and central concept that is violated in the UN and also in every word that Kofi Annan says.

UN is a bunch of countries with conflicting ideological set of values and there is no coherence. Such a committee never produces anything productive.

The UN is a dead organization or at least it is caught with this malignant cancer which will lead it to its death. It has got less teeth (provided to it by the US) recently and it holds no relevance (other than humanitarian efforts) to many millions of people in the world.

So power in such a senseless organization would be a senseless thing to achieve.

Why fight for useless things like having Veto power in a useless organization?

Instead let us concentrate more on national development!

Movie Review: What I Think Of Rang De Basanti

Lakshmikanth — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:07:02 EST

I have decided to join the Band Wagon of people talking about the movie Rang De Basanti(RDB). I think its a great movie and here are my justifications.
(This was originally posted here as a comment. I previewed it and thought it would look better as a Desicritics post.)

1) This movie has lit up the spirit of atleast 50% of the people i know who have seen the movie. It proves (to me atleast) that how many people are desperate enough to see something positive. It shows the EDUCATED, LITERATE and LEARNED India is desperate for a change. All we miss in such a group is a set of individuals who DO something rather than crib and comment (like me :-) ). This movie shows this happening.

2) I think the message of the movie was to set a towering example of integrity towards principles. It did succeed in that. I guess if the story really happened then these characters would be worshipped in India as equals of the Great Bhagat Singh. The only thing that I don't like in the movie was that it set the wrong ideals of revolution and violence. I think India needs reforms and not revolution. Also a revolution is mostly possible in a homongenous country where people are homogenous. We are the exact opposites of homogenity, because of centuries of irrational casteism and hundreds of languages(which by the way are used to divide and rule by the politicians just like our British masters did) So a revolution is not possible. We have to ACT and not REACT. We have to attack layer by layer. That would take a long path of struggle, and probably would make a long story spanning decades.

3) This movie (especially during the last sections) shows our political masters of today as equal to our british masters of the past. Both are fucked up (pardon me for the language but i have to use it and i MEAN it) and both have fucked up and plundered the country to the current state. 'Pre-independence', the Great Bhagat Singh and the likes of he decided to do something about the fucked up masters and he did it. He sent waves amongst the people. According to me Bhagat Singh was a very learned man, having a towering integrity.

What we need right now is to identify that we are still not free. We have the same fate if our fucked up british masters had continued ruling us or our fucked up political masters continue to rule us. I do not blame the political masters or the British masters completely for this. For it is we the people that are TOLERATING this nonsense and we react by refusing to act against nonsense.

Gandhi used Tolerance as a virtue, and now we see it being used against us by our political masters. The more we tolerate here the more we get fucked, period. And we see tolerance everywhere. A government officer asks for a bribe, we tolerate and give in and say 'chalo bhai, 300 ruppaye mein kya hai? De do'. Someone breaks the Red Light Signal, we say 'chalo bhai, usko koi urgent Kaam Rahega, usse jaane do!!!'. A Politician rapes someone's child and the news spreads, we say 'Thank God, Meri Beti nahi hai. Woh politician hai, hum uske against kuch bhi nahi kar sakenge'. The more we show the other chin the more slaps we get. And they will slap us till we are doomed. Which is the state of contemporary India.

Tolerance is an ethical attribute of a philosophy. Tolerance is an action which presupposes a situation and a set of principles to act on. If you have integrity you shall never tolerate something against it. Say for example bribing is against your principles, you shall never tolerate the offer of a bribe nor shall u tolerate the demand for a bribe. Perpetuating tolerance as a virtue to be held true at all times is suicidal idealism, and it does more harm than good. There can be no perfect example than India.

Bhagat Singh realized this and decided NOT to tolerate. That is what we ought to do. This is why Rang De Basanti is a GREAT movie. It contains the message of Intolerance. It contains the message of WHAT to tolerate and WHAT NOT to tolerate.

I am surprised that so many people miss out onthe richness of the movie.

I am also saddened that most people need movies like Rang De Basanti and Swades to think about India. This shows how much we tolerate!!

A Tale Of Two Cities: A Socioeconomic Analysis Of Outsourcing - Part 1

Lakshmikanth — Fri, 3 Feb 2006 15:15:59 EST

Having lived in the US as a student for around 6 months, and having worked as a software engineer back home (Bangalore) for almost 2 years, I have come to understand the hue and cry raised by people in the US against outsourcing. This article is my attempt to paint a balanced picture of the situation. I also attempt to analyze it in a rational manner, i.e., applying the rules of Laissez Faire economics, i.e., the economics of a free man.

I work as an inventory maintenance worker at an online bookstore. I get paid minimum wages, and so does my coworker. The difference between him and me is that I am a part time student working in order to pay my rent and he is a qualified graphic designer not able to find any job due to rampant outsourcing of that kind of work. I look forward to an upcoming internship in order to pay off my loans. He looks forward to a bleak future of being a part time employee without any retirement benefits. Moreover he has to take care of a 50,000$ loan he owes the government for the 4-year bachelor course that he did, and he is forty years old.

Quite often my co-worker gets frustrated. "Why?", he asks, "Why are you guys eating away our jobs?". He rants again "What did we people do to deserve this?" He knows that I worked as a software engineer in Bangalore. He knows that I was a part of an organization that is partly responsible for his state. His eyes show all that he feels for me. I do not usually argue against what he feels. I avoid him when he is in a bad mood. Sometimes I boil inside. I ask myself. Would he ever work for the same pay that I got back home? I get around $1000 per month here, which is approximately Rs. 50,000 per month in India which is 2 times my salary when I was working day and night to create software solutions for a new microprocessor. My work here is to fold clothes and put them in boxes. The pay, however, is twice as that of my pay in India. Was I paid in a just manner? . Even though I was living like a king back home, why was my salary so inferior compared to what people get for the same work here? Why?

A tale of two cities:

The answer to the question "Why?" came to me in something like an analogy, which is highly idealistic but nevertheless reflects some facts.

Suppose there were two cities. One was great and rich because of numerous historical reasons and the other was poor. The rich city traded in gold coins, produced excellent goods, and had a few people who were poor. The poor city traded in copper coins and produced substandard goods. The goods from the rich city were always inaccessible to the common man of the poor city, because they had to give gold coins in return. Even something as commonly available as milk required a humongous number of copper coins. The people from the rich city never wanted finished goods from the poor city, because they were not good enough in quality. These cities had a free trade agreement. However that did not seem to make much of an impact because of the above mentioned reason.

In economic terms these two cities were isolated economies. Isolated economies have different pricing schemes based on the demand and supply of the resources that are produced inside the respective economies. For example a Masala Dosa in India has a huge supply compared to the demand and hence it is priced at say Rs. 12 . A Masala Dosa in US is $6. I get an Internet connection in the US for around $12. The equivalent service in India would cost me around 4000Rs (I cannot exchange two Masala Dosas to get good internet in India:-) ).

Ideally this set of isolated economies could continue to be isolated forever. However, situations are hardly ideal. What was NOT ideal in these cities was the economy of knowledge. Science developed as a field common to both the cities (again these are assumptions and not actual stories). Information began to flow across the borders. People in the poor city began to learn new things. Advanced mathematics, reasoning, engineering etc. became the vortex of studies in the poor city. Men became skillful, as skillful as the men in the rich city.

Some smart businessmen who were aware of the situations in both the cities decided to create some value out of it. They argued: " An engineer in the poor city gets paid 50 copper coins a month. For the same job he would get 25 gold coins in the rich city. One gold coin is equal to 40 copper coins. Now if we provide the services of the engineer in the poor city to the customers/entrepreneurs in the rich city at half the rate that an engineer in the rich city demands, then we can have a good win-win business running, in both the cities. The poor engineer (the engineer who hails from the poor city) will get more copper coins than he can imagine. The rich customer spends less than he can imagine. We charge our service fee from both.". This is a win-win-win situation. The only loser is the rich engineer. This is a perfectly legal and just system too.

The above is a major economic event. In economic terms there are two major changes here. The first is the change in demand and supply curves of both the isolated economies. That is the first stage. The second stage is a deeper one and is one fundamental result of the first stage, i.e., the coalescing of the two economies.

The first stage: A shy beginning.

Let us look at the demand and supply curve of the rich entrepreneur (i.e., the entrepreneur from the rich country). He has a HUGE supply of engineers (from the poor city) to meet ANY demand, and to add to that the demand/supply equation he has to care about is the poor city's and not the rich one's. So he can pay them (the poor engineers) much less than the price that would result if the same demand/supply equation was applied in the rich economy. This is an exceptional situation. It changes the demand equation of the rich economy. There is suddenly no demand/reduced demand for the rich city engineers. It shifts the entire demand for engineers to the poor city. So, the rich engineers are more in number(supply) than the job offerings(demand). Hence, they have no option but to work at the rate at which the poor engineer works. They cannot however do that because that would mean that they would earn less than the beggar in the rich city. So, in a way the economy/productivity of the rich economy reduces a bit. However one should note that because of the poor engineer's efforts the rich entrepreneur is making fantastic products which sell well and infuse more money into his economy, and thus it does not hurt much to outsource.

As more and more jobs are thus outsourced there will be money infused into the poor country by means of salary paid for the services. The poor man becomes a consumer. He begins to be able to afford a quality life. He demands more quality in his life. He demands good products in his life. The rich city finds its export to the poor city increasing. Thus, the demand curve for consumer goods gets altered thus altering the prices of everything.

Also due to the money influx, there is more chance of really good industries coming up in the poor city, producing goods at a much lower price than of the rich city and still having better quality than the products of the rich city. This changes the supply curve of both the rich city and the poor city. This causes the death of incompetent industries in the rich city, just as it caused the ouster of incompetent engineers in the rich cities. Thus, it increases the export from the poor city to the rich city.

The Second stage: The Merciless Equalization

The macro picture is this:

1) Incompetent people in the rich city are out of jobs

2) Highly competent people in the poor city are in 'well-paid position'. (Well-paid according standards of living in the poor city).

3) On an average poor city people can afford more stuff.

4) Incompetent industries in the rich city die (Incompetent in meeting cost, productivity etc.).

5) Competent industries in the poor city grow.

6) Exports from the poor city to the rich city increase.

7) Exports from the rich city to the poor city increase.

8) The price of products keeps on falling in the rich city. (because of abundant supply of products/services by the industries in the poor country)

9) The price of products keeps slowly rising in the poor city. (because of the increase in demand of quality products/general products because the buying power of the people goes up)

Note the following things about the above conditions

A) Condition (1) and (2) converge and they result in the following condition in a long period of time(say 100 years)

Highly competent people in both the cities are in well-paid position

B) Condition (3) and condition (1) imply that the purchasing power will converge in the long run thus arriving at the following condition

Purchasing power in both cities will converge to the same.

C) (4) and (5) imply that the industrial prowess of both the cities will converge.

D) (6) and (7) implies that on the long run the trades between the two cities converge.

E) The most important point (8) and (9) imply that the demand and supply curve of both the cities will converge

Points from (A) through (E) imply that the economies of both the cities coalesce.

This is a fantastic result and I think it is proven in economics that two societies doing free trade coalesce in the long run.

I have neglected many scenarios, for example the lack of highly specialized talence, lack of high end research, presence of a huge population in the poor city and last but not the least, I have assumed that there are infinite resources to grow upon and also that men are free to trade and grow in both the countries. I have assumed that there are no communist laws anywhere which 'protects' the people. In short I have assumed Laissez Faire economics, which unfortunately is not true at all in India and not true in America too. I have neglected China too. All this will be considered in the next part.

I believe I have answered the question "Why?" that was lingering in my mind and my coworker's mind. It led me to many interesting thoughts about the development of our outsourcing arena. It also led me to a deep understanding of the future path of outsourcing, especially its demands and its gifts to the society.

I shall continue this with the social side of the impacts.