Tis the season for giving. But sometimes it is easier to give than to receive, simpler to express sympathy than to accept it with grace,
I was reminded of this from an event in San Francisco. I was visiting with an old college friend, Tom Swift, and we were on our way to an early breakfast in Sausalito when we got off the highway ramp and were stuck at a red light. There was an old couple, relatively well dressed but standing mournfully at the lights with a cardboard sign seeking help. I gave it no thought till I saw Tom roll down his window and gesture to the woman who ran up to our car and to whom Tom handed over a few dollars. That seemed to start a chain reaction among the motorists at the light and pretty soon a few more cars owners beckoned the couple to give them a few dollars. As we rolled past the couple, I could see the man overcome with emotion with tears in his eyes while his wife cuddled up and kissed him, both their faces were awash with wonder and gratitude. He may have been cynical before but no more and her belief in the goodness of random strangers seemed justified. Receiving help and sympathy apparently is sometimes more difficult than the act of giving…
Yet there are different reactions to these acts of individual generosity. I have seen a beggar woman who has been around the World Bank building in Washington for the last twenty years. She has been at the same corner with the same sign “help me” and passerby’s often drop coins into her outstretched hands. She has not changed and indeed her reaction to the alms is curiously one of a sense of entitlement. People going to the bank are rich and she is poor and so the rich owe the poor.
Then there is the reaction of wonder and gratitude reflected in the face of that couple in San Francisco. These are most often people who have fallen unexpectedly on hard times, and as Tom explained, a prime cause has been the rising cost of healthcare.
Then there are still others who receive a gift when they are down and out but which stimulates in them a determination to give back to others when they prosper.
But what I really wanted to explore is the mind set of the receiver of gifts. It is easy to understand what drives the Good Samaritan, but what about the beneficiary of these gifts?
A great many cultures deliver variations of the message that it's better to give than to receive. This identifies us as good people, selfless, and perhaps even self-sacrificing.
Thus, by being giving people we believe that we earn the approval of others and avoid being the recipients of their disapproval. The self-esteem issue is often closely entwined with the nature of a giver. Often we may unconsciously believe that we don't deserve to receive. As long as we are giving we don't have to deal with the issue of what we deserve to receive.
Of course it is easy to give. After all then people thank us for our kindness and generosity, and we get to view ourselves as good people. Being kind and generous also gives us power. We have the ability to effect change and improvement in the lives of others. A related benefit is that we get to avoid feeling vulnerable. To me, this was initially the least obvious benefit of not receiving, so I suspect that it might be the most powerful one.
But it is in receiving that you discovery the challenge of who you are. For we have been given the message while growing up is that the appropriate response to a compliment is modesty to the point of humility. Ideally, we imply that we have never given a thought to the possibility that we have even a minor talent or gift. Some of us may have been even conditioned to the point where we believe that even to contemplate receiving in any form marks us as selfish and self-centered.
Giving spontaneously, without the need to bolster low self-esteem, to create a favorable appearance, to control relationships, or to protect oneself from vulnerability is the really true act of generosity. When it is practiced in a way which is designed to protect our fixed ideas of who we are it bears little relationship to generosity. Similarly when we refuse the generosity of others, our energy is tied up in resistance, in the attempt to preserve our emotional/mental status quo. We find, as well, that our attempts to genuinely love and nurture ourselves feel like a struggle. And it should not for gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.
“Perhaps the most overrated virtue on our list of shoddy virtues is that of giving” writes John Steinbeck, “Giving builds up the ego of the giver, makes him superior and higher and larger than the receiver……. it is so easy to give, so exquisitely rewarding. Receiving, on the other hand, if it be well done, requires a fine balance of self-knowledge and kindness. It requires humility and tact and great understanding of relationships. In receiving you cannot appear, even to yourself, better or stronger or wiser than the giver, although you must be wiser to do it well”.
So in this holiday season, give a thought to the receiver of your gifts.
anil
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Mothers and sons
In a strange, faraway country, each boy believes that his mother is a virgin,
and each mother believes that her son is God.
In many eastern cultures, a woman is expected to depend on her father till she is married, her husband till she is a widow and her son till she dies. This dependence has a price. But the most interesting of these relationships is the one between a mother and her son.
Teenage behavior helps parents to cut themselves loose from their children: as your children love you less, they, rather helpfully, become less lovely. But not for mothers. They continue to believe that their son is a work in progress and is well on its way to perfection just give her enough time! She wants her son to find the right girl- usually one who closely resembles her and settle down. From his birth, her son is her major lifetime project. However, when it does happen, and another woman displaces her in her sons life, she feels adrift and with no major project in mind.
All mothers feel the pain of no longer being needed, but wont admit to it. They may passionately want their son to find the right woman, but when it happens, the mother often feels that she is cast aside. Perhaps it does all come down to Oedipus after all: the mother-son relationship is a deep and intense one during childhood, but, unlike the mother-daughter bond, a specific rupture has to be made before the child can be fully adult.
Thus the most delicate aspect of mother and son relationship comes, when another woman enters into his life, either as a girlfriend or as a wife. This is the time, when almost every mother starts feeling insecure and becomes apprehensive. From being the only woman in her son's life, she has to share the affection with someone, who is as important in her son's life as she is.
There is an irony in all this, of course. That the pressure to disavow our mothers might come not from fellow men, but from women – the very women who are theoretically sizing us up as the person who might, ultimately, turn them into a mother – is curious to say the least. Are men, perhaps, merely the intermediaries in an intergenerational rivalry between women?
A mother and son relationship is a very unique one. Boys generally look up to their fathers or a father-figure for how to interact with others, show affection towards others, and respond to different situations. But the mother, on the other hand, has a chance to show her son how a girl wants to be treated and how he should expect to be treated by the opposite sex. But men don’t look cool talking about their mothers since other women – with good reason – run a mile from a man who loves his mother too much. However wonderful and adorable a man’s mother is, the slightest mention of this fact makes him look as if he has not quite grown up and, therefore, is deeply unattractive. . A woman who reveres her parents will make a different impression. Daddy’s girl has a better connotation than a Mama’s boy. Does it not?
It is not easy for the son to make his mother understand that she has and will always be the most special person in his life but that now that there is another woman in his life. While this new person- his wife- can never take her place, there is a change. On the other hand, a mother should also understand that she has to stop holding on to her son all the time and let go of him. If he is not careful, he can sometimes end up living with two mothers- his wife and his mother. One does not want to be his mother, the other refuses to let him be any thing else but her son. Therein lies his dilemma. Whom should he please?
and each mother believes that her son is God.
In many eastern cultures, a woman is expected to depend on her father till she is married, her husband till she is a widow and her son till she dies. This dependence has a price. But the most interesting of these relationships is the one between a mother and her son.
Teenage behavior helps parents to cut themselves loose from their children: as your children love you less, they, rather helpfully, become less lovely. But not for mothers. They continue to believe that their son is a work in progress and is well on its way to perfection just give her enough time! She wants her son to find the right girl- usually one who closely resembles her and settle down. From his birth, her son is her major lifetime project. However, when it does happen, and another woman displaces her in her sons life, she feels adrift and with no major project in mind.
All mothers feel the pain of no longer being needed, but wont admit to it. They may passionately want their son to find the right woman, but when it happens, the mother often feels that she is cast aside. Perhaps it does all come down to Oedipus after all: the mother-son relationship is a deep and intense one during childhood, but, unlike the mother-daughter bond, a specific rupture has to be made before the child can be fully adult.
Thus the most delicate aspect of mother and son relationship comes, when another woman enters into his life, either as a girlfriend or as a wife. This is the time, when almost every mother starts feeling insecure and becomes apprehensive. From being the only woman in her son's life, she has to share the affection with someone, who is as important in her son's life as she is.
There is an irony in all this, of course. That the pressure to disavow our mothers might come not from fellow men, but from women – the very women who are theoretically sizing us up as the person who might, ultimately, turn them into a mother – is curious to say the least. Are men, perhaps, merely the intermediaries in an intergenerational rivalry between women?
A mother and son relationship is a very unique one. Boys generally look up to their fathers or a father-figure for how to interact with others, show affection towards others, and respond to different situations. But the mother, on the other hand, has a chance to show her son how a girl wants to be treated and how he should expect to be treated by the opposite sex. But men don’t look cool talking about their mothers since other women – with good reason – run a mile from a man who loves his mother too much. However wonderful and adorable a man’s mother is, the slightest mention of this fact makes him look as if he has not quite grown up and, therefore, is deeply unattractive. . A woman who reveres her parents will make a different impression. Daddy’s girl has a better connotation than a Mama’s boy. Does it not?
It is not easy for the son to make his mother understand that she has and will always be the most special person in his life but that now that there is another woman in his life. While this new person- his wife- can never take her place, there is a change. On the other hand, a mother should also understand that she has to stop holding on to her son all the time and let go of him. If he is not careful, he can sometimes end up living with two mothers- his wife and his mother. One does not want to be his mother, the other refuses to let him be any thing else but her son. Therein lies his dilemma. Whom should he please?
The death of shame
Webster's New World College Dictionary defines shame as a painful feeling of having lost the respect of others because of the improper behavior, incompetence, etc. of oneself or another; or as a dishonor or disgrace. People have been complaining about other people’s manners since the beginning of civilization and yet rude and immoral people have still somehow managed to flourish everywhere.
Recently ND Tiwari , governor of Andhra Pradesh and once considered as a potential prime minister of India, was caught in bed with three women – not one, not two but three. When caught he denied it and then complained that it was the result of opposition traps. There was neither an admission of guilt nor a hint of shame.. Fortunately, the body politic was suitably outraged that he was removed without delay.
These incidents of public servants have become all too common place and only rarely do they lead to a public humiliation or some degree of effective outrage.
It is true that in 2008, when the New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was caught fooling around on his wife with a high-priced escort named Ashley Dupre, he did resign. But his replacement, David Paterson, who admitted to numerous affairs -- as well as marijuana and cocaine use – was sworn in as a governor of the largest state in the US shortly thereafter. Another governor, Mark Sanford of South Caroline, who was caught in an extramarital affair, rather than resign with whatever shred of dignity he had left, brazenly addressed the entire nation in a bizarre news conference that involved tears, true confessions, and apologies to nearly everyone he ever met. But he opted to remain as governor.. Not to be outdone, senators like Vitter and Ensign even when caught in dalliances, brazenly refused to resign and the press, true to its short term memory, gave them a pass and they still routinely opine on all matters moral and immoral. Not only that like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan, these public figures have become richer from behaving like tramps.
Even outside the steamy world of celebrity sex-capades, shame has become an outmoded concept. No longer is there any shame in staying on welfare or having a child out of wedlock. There is no shame in being just a mediocre student in school. Elbows on the dinner table and interrupting are accepted. We can talk and text in the movies -- and screaming at someone in public is OK. We put up with crude, even filthy, language on the radio, in music, and more and more on television. Four letter words and worse, is heard everywhere, every day. Coarse behavior is considered acceptable with people shouting “liar” at the president within the house. Senators, who should know better, routinely decry the opposition party members as traitors and some even wish that they would die before casting a vote!
We teach our kids that self-esteem is something entitled simply because one exists. We tell children that they are all great kids and they deserve to be appreciated just the way they are. Perhaps a little old-fashioned shame could serve us well. This is not to advocate a return to the harsh judgments of yesteryear. No one wants to see someone tarred and feathered for making poor choices or behaving badly -- but perhaps just a wee touch of accountability could have some positive effects.
The sense of shame is a kind of cement in any decent society. The fear of shame reminds each of us that some things must not be done. You don't become a criminal because you would bring shame to your family. You don't employ muscle against the weak. You don't beat up women or prey on the old. You don't father children and then abandon them. You don't cheat or swindle because exposure would coat you with the tar of shame. You don't preach high ideals and live a lie. But it's clear that we are now awash in shamelessness. It's clear that the sense of shame needs to be revived and the shameless held to account.
It is time to start being judgmental and critical of actions that are considered immoral or wrong by society. What's wrong with shaking one's head or uttering a well-placed, "tsk, tsk," or even telling someone you don't want to hear bad language? What is to prevent the press from giving publicity to these hacks and ill-mannered boors? I, for one, would be very happy if the Washington Post would stop writing series on idiots like Salahis or Tom Coburns. Good riddance, I say, to all of them. Take your filth and meanness somewhere else and not on national TV or papers—just take them away.
For as Salman Rushdie points out “shame is like everything else; live with it for long enough and it becomes part of the furniture.”
Recently ND Tiwari , governor of Andhra Pradesh and once considered as a potential prime minister of India, was caught in bed with three women – not one, not two but three. When caught he denied it and then complained that it was the result of opposition traps. There was neither an admission of guilt nor a hint of shame.. Fortunately, the body politic was suitably outraged that he was removed without delay.
These incidents of public servants have become all too common place and only rarely do they lead to a public humiliation or some degree of effective outrage.
It is true that in 2008, when the New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was caught fooling around on his wife with a high-priced escort named Ashley Dupre, he did resign. But his replacement, David Paterson, who admitted to numerous affairs -- as well as marijuana and cocaine use – was sworn in as a governor of the largest state in the US shortly thereafter. Another governor, Mark Sanford of South Caroline, who was caught in an extramarital affair, rather than resign with whatever shred of dignity he had left, brazenly addressed the entire nation in a bizarre news conference that involved tears, true confessions, and apologies to nearly everyone he ever met. But he opted to remain as governor.. Not to be outdone, senators like Vitter and Ensign even when caught in dalliances, brazenly refused to resign and the press, true to its short term memory, gave them a pass and they still routinely opine on all matters moral and immoral. Not only that like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan, these public figures have become richer from behaving like tramps.
Even outside the steamy world of celebrity sex-capades, shame has become an outmoded concept. No longer is there any shame in staying on welfare or having a child out of wedlock. There is no shame in being just a mediocre student in school. Elbows on the dinner table and interrupting are accepted. We can talk and text in the movies -- and screaming at someone in public is OK. We put up with crude, even filthy, language on the radio, in music, and more and more on television. Four letter words and worse, is heard everywhere, every day. Coarse behavior is considered acceptable with people shouting “liar” at the president within the house. Senators, who should know better, routinely decry the opposition party members as traitors and some even wish that they would die before casting a vote!
We teach our kids that self-esteem is something entitled simply because one exists. We tell children that they are all great kids and they deserve to be appreciated just the way they are. Perhaps a little old-fashioned shame could serve us well. This is not to advocate a return to the harsh judgments of yesteryear. No one wants to see someone tarred and feathered for making poor choices or behaving badly -- but perhaps just a wee touch of accountability could have some positive effects.
The sense of shame is a kind of cement in any decent society. The fear of shame reminds each of us that some things must not be done. You don't become a criminal because you would bring shame to your family. You don't employ muscle against the weak. You don't beat up women or prey on the old. You don't father children and then abandon them. You don't cheat or swindle because exposure would coat you with the tar of shame. You don't preach high ideals and live a lie. But it's clear that we are now awash in shamelessness. It's clear that the sense of shame needs to be revived and the shameless held to account.
It is time to start being judgmental and critical of actions that are considered immoral or wrong by society. What's wrong with shaking one's head or uttering a well-placed, "tsk, tsk," or even telling someone you don't want to hear bad language? What is to prevent the press from giving publicity to these hacks and ill-mannered boors? I, for one, would be very happy if the Washington Post would stop writing series on idiots like Salahis or Tom Coburns. Good riddance, I say, to all of them. Take your filth and meanness somewhere else and not on national TV or papers—just take them away.
For as Salman Rushdie points out “shame is like everything else; live with it for long enough and it becomes part of the furniture.”
Friday, December 11, 2009
Obama's Nobel Lecture
This is a lecture worth studying
I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility. It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations -- that for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.
And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who have received this prize -- Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela -- my accomplishments are slight. And then there are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened of cynics. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women -- some known, some obscure to all but those they help -- to be far more deserving of this honor than I.
But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by 43 other countries -- including Norway -- in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.
Still, we are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill. Some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the cost of armed conflict -- filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.
These questions are not new. War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease -- the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.
Over time, as codes of law sought to control violence within groups, so did philosophers, clerics and statesmen seek to regulate the destructive power of war. The concept of a "just war" emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when it meets certain preconditions: if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the forced used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.
For most of history, this concept of just war was rarely observed. The capacity of human beings to think up new ways to kill one another proved inexhaustible, as did our capacity to exempt from mercy those who look different or pray to a different God. Wars between armies gave way to wars between nations -- total wars in which the distinction between combatant and civilian became blurred. In the span of 30 years, such carnage would twice engulf this continent. And while it is hard to conceive of a cause more just than the defeat of the Third Reich and the Axis powers, World War II was a conflict in which the total number of civilians who died exceeded the number of soldiers who perished.
In the wake of such destruction, and with the advent of the nuclear age, it became clear to victor and vanquished alike that the world needed institutions to prevent another World War. And so, a quarter century after the United States Senate rejected the League of Nations -- an idea for which Woodrow Wilson received this Prize -- America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace: a Marshall Plan and a United Nations, mechanisms to govern the waging of war, treaties to protect human rights, prevent genocide and restrict the most dangerous weapons.
In many ways, these efforts succeeded. Yes, terrible wars have been fought, and atrocities committed. But there has been no Third World War. The Cold War ended with jubilant crowds dismantling a wall. Commerce has stitched much of the world together. Billions have been lifted from poverty. The ideals of liberty, self-determination, equality and the rule of law have haltingly advanced. We are the heirs of the fortitude and foresight of generations past, and it is a legacy for which my own country is rightfully proud.
A decade into a new century, this old architecture is buckling under the weight of new threats. The world may no longer shudder at the prospect of war between two nuclear superpowers, but proliferation may increase the risk of catastrophe. Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale.
Moreover, wars between nations have increasingly given way to wars within nations. The resurgence of ethnic or sectarian conflicts, the growth of secessionist movements, insurgencies and failed states have increasingly trapped civilians in unending chaos. In todays wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sown, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed and children scarred.
I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war. What I do know is that meeting these challenges will require the same vision, hard work and persistence of those men and women who acted so boldly decades ago. And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace.
We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.
I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago: "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: It merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. Kings lifes work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak, nothing passive, nothing naive in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.
But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitlers armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaidas leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.
I raise this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter the cause. At times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world’s sole military superpower.
Yet the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions _ not just treaties and declarations -- that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest -- because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other people's children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.
So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another -- that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier’s courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause and to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.
So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths -- that war is sometimes necessary, and war is at some level an expression of human folly. Concretely, we must direct our effort to the task that President Kennedy called for long ago. "Let us focus," he said, "on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions."
What might this evolution look like? What might these practical steps be?
To begin with, I believe that all nations -- strong and weak alike -- must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I -- like any head of state -- reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards strengthens those who do, and isolates -- and weakens -- those who dont.
The world rallied around America after the 9/11 attacks, and continues to support our efforts in Afghanistan, because of the horror of those senseless attacks and the recognized principle of self-defense. Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait -- a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression.
Furthermore, America cannot insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we dont, our action can appear arbitrary, and undercut the legitimacy of future intervention -- no matter how justified.
This becomes particularly important when the purpose of military action extends beyond self-defense or the defense of one nation against an aggressor. More and more, we all confront difficult questions about how to prevent the slaughter of civilians by their own government, or to stop a civil war whose violence and suffering can engulf an entire region.
I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.
Americas commitment to global security will never waver. But in a world in which threats are more diffuse, and missions more complex, America cannot act alone. This is true in Afghanistan. This is true in failed states like Somalia, where terrorism and piracy is joined by famine and human suffering. And sadly, it will continue to be true in unstable regions for years to come.
The leaders and soldiers of NATO countries -- and other friends and allies -- demonstrate this truth through the capacity and courage they have shown in Afghanistan. But in many countries, there is a disconnect between the efforts of those who serve and the ambivalence of the broader public. I understand why war is not popular. But I also know this: The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Peace requires responsibility. Peace entails sacrifice. That is why NATO continues to be indispensable. That is why we must strengthen U.N. and regional peacekeeping, and not leave the task to a few countries. That is why we honor those who return home from peacekeeping and training abroad to Oslo and Rome; to Ottawa and Sydney; to Dhaka and Kigali -- we honor them not as makers of war, but as wagers of peace.
Let me make one final point about the use of force. Even as we make difficult decisions about going to war, we must also think clearly about how we fight it. The Nobel Committee recognized this truth in awarding its first prize for peace to Henry Dunant -- the founder of the Red Cross, and a driving force behind the Geneva Conventions.
Where force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe that the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength. That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed Americas commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not just when it is easy, but when it is hard.
I have spoken to the questions that must weigh on our minds and our hearts as we choose to wage war. But let me turn now to our effort to avoid such tragic choices, and speak of three ways that we can build a just and lasting peace.
First, in dealing with those nations that break rules and laws, I believe that we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to change behavior -- for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something. Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price. Intransigence must be met with increased pressure -- and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one.
One urgent example is the effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and to seek a world without them. In the middle of the last century, nations agreed to be bound by a treaty whose bargain is clear: All will have access to peaceful nuclear power; those without nuclear weapons will forsake them; and those with nuclear weapons will work toward disarmament. I am committed to upholding this treaty. It is a centerpiece of my foreign policy. And I am working with President Medvedev to reduce America and Russias nuclear stockpiles.
But it is also incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system. Those who claim to respect international law cannot avert their eyes when those laws are flouted. Those who care for their own security cannot ignore the danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia. Those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war.
The same principle applies to those who violate international law by brutalizing their own people. When there is genocide in Darfur, systematic rape in Congo or repression in Burma -- there must be consequences. And the closer we stand together, the less likely we will be faced with the choice between armed intervention and complicity in oppression.
This brings me to a second point -- the nature of the peace that we seek. For peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based upon the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting.
It was this insight that drove drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after the Second World War. In the wake of devastation, they recognized that if human rights are not protected, peace is a hollow promise.
And yet all too often, these words are ignored. In some countries, the failure to uphold human rights is excused by the false suggestion that these are Western principles, foreign to local cultures or stages of a nation’s development. And within America, there has long been a tension between those who describe themselves as realists or idealists -- a tension that suggests a stark choice between the narrow pursuit of interests or an endless campaign to impose our values.
I reject this choice. I believe that peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please, choose their own leaders or assemble without fear. Pent up grievances fester, and the suppression of tribal and religious identity can lead to violence. We also know that the opposite is true. Only when Europe became free did it finally find peace. America has never fought a war against a democracy, and our closest friends are governments that protect the rights of their citizens. No matter how callously defined, neither America’s interests -- nor the worlds -- are served by the denial of human aspirations.
So even as we respect the unique culture and traditions of different countries, America will always be a voice for those aspirations that are universal. We will bear witness to the quiet dignity of reformers like Aung Sang Suu Kyi; to the bravery of Zimbabweans who cast their ballots in the face of beatings; to the hundreds of thousands who have marched silently through the streets of Iran. It is telling that the leaders of these governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation. And it is the responsibility of all free people and free nations to make clear to these movements that hope and history are on their side.
Let me also say this: The promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach -- and condemnation without discussion -- can carry forward a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door.
In light of the Cultural Revolutions horrors, Nixon’s meeting with Mao appeared inexcusable -- and yet it surely helped set China on a path where millions of its citizens have been lifted from poverty, and connected to open societies. Pope John Pauls engagement with Poland created space not just for the Catholic Church, but for labor leaders like Lech Walesa. Ronald Reagan’s efforts on arms control and embrace of perestroika not only improved relations with the Soviet Union, but empowered dissidents throughout Eastern Europe. There is no simple formula here. But we must try as best we can to balance isolation and engagement, pressure and incentives, so that human rights and dignity are advanced over time.
Third, a just peace includes not only civil and political rights -- it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.
It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive. It does not exist where children cannot aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.
And that is why helping farmers feed their own people -- or nations educate their children and care for the sick -- is not mere charity. It is also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and activists who call for swift and forceful action -- it is military leaders in my country and others who understand that our common security hangs in the balance.
Agreements among nations. Strong institutions. Support for human rights. Investments in development. All of these are vital ingredients in bringing about the evolution that President Kennedy spoke about. And yet, I do not believe that we will have the will, or the staying power, to complete this work without something more -- and that is the continued expansion of our moral imagination, an insistence that there is something irreducible that we all share.
As the world grows smaller, you might think it would be easier for human beings to recognize how similar we are, to understand that we all basically want the same things, that we all hope for the chance to live out our lives with some measure of happiness and fulfillment for ourselves and our families.
And yet, given the dizzying pace of globalization, and the cultural leveling of modernity, it should come as no surprise that people fear the loss of what they cherish about their particular identities -- their race, their tribe and, perhaps most powerfully, their religion. In some places, this fear has led to conflict. At times, it even feels like we are moving backwards. We see it in the Middle East, as the conflict between Arabs and Jews seems to harden. We see it in nations that are torn asunder by tribal lines.
Most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint -- no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or even a person of ones own faith. Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but the purpose of faith -- for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
Adhering to this law of love has always been the core struggle of human nature. We are fallible. We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us.
But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The nonviolence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached -- their faith in human progress -- must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.
For if we lose that faith -- if we dismiss it as silly or naive, if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace -- then we lose what is best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.
Like generations have before us, we must reject that future. As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago: "I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of mans present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him."
So let us reach for the world that ought to be -- that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls. Somewhere today, in the here and now, a soldier sees hes outgunned but stands firm to keep the peace. Somewhere today, in this world, a young protestor awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on. Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, who believes that a cruel world still has a place for his dreams.
Let us live by their example. We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of deprivation, and still strive for dignity. We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that -- for that is the story of human progress; that is the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.
I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility. It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations -- that for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.
And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who have received this prize -- Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela -- my accomplishments are slight. And then there are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened of cynics. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women -- some known, some obscure to all but those they help -- to be far more deserving of this honor than I.
But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by 43 other countries -- including Norway -- in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.
Still, we are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill. Some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the cost of armed conflict -- filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.
These questions are not new. War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease -- the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.
Over time, as codes of law sought to control violence within groups, so did philosophers, clerics and statesmen seek to regulate the destructive power of war. The concept of a "just war" emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when it meets certain preconditions: if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the forced used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.
For most of history, this concept of just war was rarely observed. The capacity of human beings to think up new ways to kill one another proved inexhaustible, as did our capacity to exempt from mercy those who look different or pray to a different God. Wars between armies gave way to wars between nations -- total wars in which the distinction between combatant and civilian became blurred. In the span of 30 years, such carnage would twice engulf this continent. And while it is hard to conceive of a cause more just than the defeat of the Third Reich and the Axis powers, World War II was a conflict in which the total number of civilians who died exceeded the number of soldiers who perished.
In the wake of such destruction, and with the advent of the nuclear age, it became clear to victor and vanquished alike that the world needed institutions to prevent another World War. And so, a quarter century after the United States Senate rejected the League of Nations -- an idea for which Woodrow Wilson received this Prize -- America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace: a Marshall Plan and a United Nations, mechanisms to govern the waging of war, treaties to protect human rights, prevent genocide and restrict the most dangerous weapons.
In many ways, these efforts succeeded. Yes, terrible wars have been fought, and atrocities committed. But there has been no Third World War. The Cold War ended with jubilant crowds dismantling a wall. Commerce has stitched much of the world together. Billions have been lifted from poverty. The ideals of liberty, self-determination, equality and the rule of law have haltingly advanced. We are the heirs of the fortitude and foresight of generations past, and it is a legacy for which my own country is rightfully proud.
A decade into a new century, this old architecture is buckling under the weight of new threats. The world may no longer shudder at the prospect of war between two nuclear superpowers, but proliferation may increase the risk of catastrophe. Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale.
Moreover, wars between nations have increasingly given way to wars within nations. The resurgence of ethnic or sectarian conflicts, the growth of secessionist movements, insurgencies and failed states have increasingly trapped civilians in unending chaos. In todays wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sown, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed and children scarred.
I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war. What I do know is that meeting these challenges will require the same vision, hard work and persistence of those men and women who acted so boldly decades ago. And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace.
We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.
I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago: "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: It merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. Kings lifes work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak, nothing passive, nothing naive in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.
But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitlers armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaidas leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.
I raise this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter the cause. At times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world’s sole military superpower.
Yet the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions _ not just treaties and declarations -- that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest -- because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other people's children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.
So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another -- that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier’s courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause and to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.
So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths -- that war is sometimes necessary, and war is at some level an expression of human folly. Concretely, we must direct our effort to the task that President Kennedy called for long ago. "Let us focus," he said, "on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions."
What might this evolution look like? What might these practical steps be?
To begin with, I believe that all nations -- strong and weak alike -- must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I -- like any head of state -- reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards strengthens those who do, and isolates -- and weakens -- those who dont.
The world rallied around America after the 9/11 attacks, and continues to support our efforts in Afghanistan, because of the horror of those senseless attacks and the recognized principle of self-defense. Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait -- a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression.
Furthermore, America cannot insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we dont, our action can appear arbitrary, and undercut the legitimacy of future intervention -- no matter how justified.
This becomes particularly important when the purpose of military action extends beyond self-defense or the defense of one nation against an aggressor. More and more, we all confront difficult questions about how to prevent the slaughter of civilians by their own government, or to stop a civil war whose violence and suffering can engulf an entire region.
I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.
Americas commitment to global security will never waver. But in a world in which threats are more diffuse, and missions more complex, America cannot act alone. This is true in Afghanistan. This is true in failed states like Somalia, where terrorism and piracy is joined by famine and human suffering. And sadly, it will continue to be true in unstable regions for years to come.
The leaders and soldiers of NATO countries -- and other friends and allies -- demonstrate this truth through the capacity and courage they have shown in Afghanistan. But in many countries, there is a disconnect between the efforts of those who serve and the ambivalence of the broader public. I understand why war is not popular. But I also know this: The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Peace requires responsibility. Peace entails sacrifice. That is why NATO continues to be indispensable. That is why we must strengthen U.N. and regional peacekeeping, and not leave the task to a few countries. That is why we honor those who return home from peacekeeping and training abroad to Oslo and Rome; to Ottawa and Sydney; to Dhaka and Kigali -- we honor them not as makers of war, but as wagers of peace.
Let me make one final point about the use of force. Even as we make difficult decisions about going to war, we must also think clearly about how we fight it. The Nobel Committee recognized this truth in awarding its first prize for peace to Henry Dunant -- the founder of the Red Cross, and a driving force behind the Geneva Conventions.
Where force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe that the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength. That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed Americas commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not just when it is easy, but when it is hard.
I have spoken to the questions that must weigh on our minds and our hearts as we choose to wage war. But let me turn now to our effort to avoid such tragic choices, and speak of three ways that we can build a just and lasting peace.
First, in dealing with those nations that break rules and laws, I believe that we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to change behavior -- for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something. Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price. Intransigence must be met with increased pressure -- and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one.
One urgent example is the effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and to seek a world without them. In the middle of the last century, nations agreed to be bound by a treaty whose bargain is clear: All will have access to peaceful nuclear power; those without nuclear weapons will forsake them; and those with nuclear weapons will work toward disarmament. I am committed to upholding this treaty. It is a centerpiece of my foreign policy. And I am working with President Medvedev to reduce America and Russias nuclear stockpiles.
But it is also incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system. Those who claim to respect international law cannot avert their eyes when those laws are flouted. Those who care for their own security cannot ignore the danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia. Those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war.
The same principle applies to those who violate international law by brutalizing their own people. When there is genocide in Darfur, systematic rape in Congo or repression in Burma -- there must be consequences. And the closer we stand together, the less likely we will be faced with the choice between armed intervention and complicity in oppression.
This brings me to a second point -- the nature of the peace that we seek. For peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based upon the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting.
It was this insight that drove drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after the Second World War. In the wake of devastation, they recognized that if human rights are not protected, peace is a hollow promise.
And yet all too often, these words are ignored. In some countries, the failure to uphold human rights is excused by the false suggestion that these are Western principles, foreign to local cultures or stages of a nation’s development. And within America, there has long been a tension between those who describe themselves as realists or idealists -- a tension that suggests a stark choice between the narrow pursuit of interests or an endless campaign to impose our values.
I reject this choice. I believe that peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please, choose their own leaders or assemble without fear. Pent up grievances fester, and the suppression of tribal and religious identity can lead to violence. We also know that the opposite is true. Only when Europe became free did it finally find peace. America has never fought a war against a democracy, and our closest friends are governments that protect the rights of their citizens. No matter how callously defined, neither America’s interests -- nor the worlds -- are served by the denial of human aspirations.
So even as we respect the unique culture and traditions of different countries, America will always be a voice for those aspirations that are universal. We will bear witness to the quiet dignity of reformers like Aung Sang Suu Kyi; to the bravery of Zimbabweans who cast their ballots in the face of beatings; to the hundreds of thousands who have marched silently through the streets of Iran. It is telling that the leaders of these governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation. And it is the responsibility of all free people and free nations to make clear to these movements that hope and history are on their side.
Let me also say this: The promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach -- and condemnation without discussion -- can carry forward a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door.
In light of the Cultural Revolutions horrors, Nixon’s meeting with Mao appeared inexcusable -- and yet it surely helped set China on a path where millions of its citizens have been lifted from poverty, and connected to open societies. Pope John Pauls engagement with Poland created space not just for the Catholic Church, but for labor leaders like Lech Walesa. Ronald Reagan’s efforts on arms control and embrace of perestroika not only improved relations with the Soviet Union, but empowered dissidents throughout Eastern Europe. There is no simple formula here. But we must try as best we can to balance isolation and engagement, pressure and incentives, so that human rights and dignity are advanced over time.
Third, a just peace includes not only civil and political rights -- it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.
It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive. It does not exist where children cannot aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.
And that is why helping farmers feed their own people -- or nations educate their children and care for the sick -- is not mere charity. It is also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and activists who call for swift and forceful action -- it is military leaders in my country and others who understand that our common security hangs in the balance.
Agreements among nations. Strong institutions. Support for human rights. Investments in development. All of these are vital ingredients in bringing about the evolution that President Kennedy spoke about. And yet, I do not believe that we will have the will, or the staying power, to complete this work without something more -- and that is the continued expansion of our moral imagination, an insistence that there is something irreducible that we all share.
As the world grows smaller, you might think it would be easier for human beings to recognize how similar we are, to understand that we all basically want the same things, that we all hope for the chance to live out our lives with some measure of happiness and fulfillment for ourselves and our families.
And yet, given the dizzying pace of globalization, and the cultural leveling of modernity, it should come as no surprise that people fear the loss of what they cherish about their particular identities -- their race, their tribe and, perhaps most powerfully, their religion. In some places, this fear has led to conflict. At times, it even feels like we are moving backwards. We see it in the Middle East, as the conflict between Arabs and Jews seems to harden. We see it in nations that are torn asunder by tribal lines.
Most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint -- no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or even a person of ones own faith. Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but the purpose of faith -- for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
Adhering to this law of love has always been the core struggle of human nature. We are fallible. We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us.
But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The nonviolence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached -- their faith in human progress -- must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.
For if we lose that faith -- if we dismiss it as silly or naive, if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace -- then we lose what is best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.
Like generations have before us, we must reject that future. As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago: "I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of mans present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him."
So let us reach for the world that ought to be -- that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls. Somewhere today, in the here and now, a soldier sees hes outgunned but stands firm to keep the peace. Somewhere today, in this world, a young protestor awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on. Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, who believes that a cruel world still has a place for his dreams.
Let us live by their example. We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of deprivation, and still strive for dignity. We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that -- for that is the story of human progress; that is the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
The strangest of tastes - Part II
I had just finished the piece of marmite, when my attention was drawn to another product which draws an equally fanatic following.. on either side. Durian.
Opponents of this food product say that eating durian is "like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory novelist ( British novelist, Anthony Burgess). Chef Andrew Zimmern compares the taste to "completely rotten, mushy onions." Anthony Bourdain, while a lover of durian, relates his encounter with the fruit as thus: "Its taste can only be described as...indescribable, something you will either love or despise. ...Your breath will smell as if you'd been French-kissing your dead grandmother." Travel and food writer Richard Sterling says: ... its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Other comparisons have been made with the civet, sewage, stale vomit, skunk spray and used surgical swabs.
One would imagine that with such testimonials, the devotees of this fruit would be chastened. Not so. Indeed lovers of the fruit call it the “King of the Fruits".The Javanese believe durian to have aphrodisiac qualities. A saying in Indonesian says “durian jatuh sarung naik” which loosely translated means that when "the durians fall ..the sarongs come up".
Durian is an expensive and exotic fruit from Asia and its name is derived from the Malay word "duri" meaning thorn - due to its thick, tough and thorny husk. The durian fruit is either loved by durian aficionados with an almost cult like fervor or hated by those repelled by its smell. The rich, buttery smooth and luscious flesh of the durian fruit is delicious and is comparable to no other fruit. However, the disagreeable odor of the durian fruit gave birth to this often repeated phrase: "durian is a fruit that smells like hell but taste like heaven".
It is said that you should
• Never burp after devouring on a Durian. The consequences are ghastly!
• Never combine Durian with carbonated drinks. This choice will leave you sorry!
• Never leave the Durian in the car on a hot summer's day or even in a hotel room. The stench will take the wind out of your sails.
• Never kiss your better half after consuming a Durian. You will end up on your rear or even a break-up.
• Never leave Durian uncovered in the fridge. Or else, the entire stuff in the fridge will smell like Durian and you will have only smelly food for dinner.
Indeed its odor has led to the fruit's banishment from certain hotels and public transportation in Southeast Asia. At least marmite is not banned anywhere that I know of!
Opponents of this food product say that eating durian is "like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory novelist ( British novelist, Anthony Burgess). Chef Andrew Zimmern compares the taste to "completely rotten, mushy onions." Anthony Bourdain, while a lover of durian, relates his encounter with the fruit as thus: "Its taste can only be described as...indescribable, something you will either love or despise. ...Your breath will smell as if you'd been French-kissing your dead grandmother." Travel and food writer Richard Sterling says: ... its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Other comparisons have been made with the civet, sewage, stale vomit, skunk spray and used surgical swabs.
One would imagine that with such testimonials, the devotees of this fruit would be chastened. Not so. Indeed lovers of the fruit call it the “King of the Fruits".The Javanese believe durian to have aphrodisiac qualities. A saying in Indonesian says “durian jatuh sarung naik” which loosely translated means that when "the durians fall ..the sarongs come up".
Durian is an expensive and exotic fruit from Asia and its name is derived from the Malay word "duri" meaning thorn - due to its thick, tough and thorny husk. The durian fruit is either loved by durian aficionados with an almost cult like fervor or hated by those repelled by its smell. The rich, buttery smooth and luscious flesh of the durian fruit is delicious and is comparable to no other fruit. However, the disagreeable odor of the durian fruit gave birth to this often repeated phrase: "durian is a fruit that smells like hell but taste like heaven".
It is said that you should
• Never burp after devouring on a Durian. The consequences are ghastly!
• Never combine Durian with carbonated drinks. This choice will leave you sorry!
• Never leave the Durian in the car on a hot summer's day or even in a hotel room. The stench will take the wind out of your sails.
• Never kiss your better half after consuming a Durian. You will end up on your rear or even a break-up.
• Never leave Durian uncovered in the fridge. Or else, the entire stuff in the fridge will smell like Durian and you will have only smelly food for dinner.
Indeed its odor has led to the fruit's banishment from certain hotels and public transportation in Southeast Asia. At least marmite is not banned anywhere that I know of!
Monday, December 7, 2009
A Very Indian Wedding ..in the US
Indian mythology says that there are eight different types of Hindu marriages. But as Indians have emigrated to different countries, particularly in the last fifty years, new traditions are emerging which struggle to blend tradition with modernity in marriage customs.
The most common form was the Brahma marriage, where a boy is eligible to get married once he has completed his Brahmacharya (student hood) and where the grooms family seeks out a suitable bride for their son. Then there is the Gandharva marriage, which is similar to love marriage, since it is without the knowledge of the parents. There are other marriages such as Daiva, where the bride is married to a priest, Arsha where the bride is given in exchange for two cows and married to an old sage, Prajapatya where the bride’s father goes in search for a groom for his daughter. In the Asura marriage, the groom is not suitable for the bride but willingly gives as much wealth as he can to cement the marriage. And there is the Rakshasa marriage where the groom fights battles with the bride's family, overcomes them, carries her away and then persuades her to marry him. Paishacha marriage is the eighth and last type of Hindu wedding but it is considered as the inferior type of marriage, since the girl's wish is not considered and she is forced to marry the person chosen for her. In Hindu dharma, marriage is viewed as a sacrament and not a contract and is performed in Sanskrit.
The traditional Indian wedding customs were formulated more than 35 centuries ago. Each ceremony, each occasion, and each ritual thus had a deep philosophical meaning and purpose. In the early days in the US, there were, however, no Brahmins around since most of the immigrants tended to be engineers or doctors. So a detailed checklist was issued by Indian associations for those wishing to get married here explaining the various customs, which read, in part: “The auspicious wedding day begins with the Mangal Vadya, the playing of the Shahenai, a traditional reed flute- like wind instrument of Indian Classical Music, and the Noubat, the small drums. The groom arrives with his family and friends at the entrance to the wedding hall and is first greeted by a young maiden, the bride's younger sister or niece, holding a water pot to quench his thirst. Next, the bride's mother welcomes the groom performing a ceremony to ward off the evil spirits he may have encountered on the way to the wedding. He is then asked to break the Saapath (the earthen clay pot) symbolizing his strength and virility and is then led to the Lagna Mandap where the wedding ceremony is to be performed.”
“The bride is brought to the Lagna Mandap by her Mama (maternal uncle) and is seated behind a white curtain, a symbol of traditional barriers. After the bride's father thanks the Gods, the curtain is removed and the couple exchange flower garlands. The bride and the bridegroom exchange garlands, made up of cotton threads, to proclaim acceptance of each other. The wedding ceremony begins with the worship of Lord Ganesha, the remover of all obstacles and Varuna, Lord of the Seas. A copper vessel containing water, flowers, and coconut is worshipped followed by the worship of the five basic elements of creation, namely fire, earth, water, air, and light. The bride's parents invoke the Gods and tell the groom, "On this Holy Occasion, we will give our daughter who is a symbol of Lakshmi, Goddess of Prosperity, to you in the presence of the Sacred Fire, friends, and relatives." The couple is then united by placing the bride's right hand in the groom's right hand. The ends of the scarves worn by the bride and the groom are then tied together signifying unity. The couple vows to remember the Divine; to look upon others with sympathy, love, and compassion; to be strong and righteous; and to show goodwill, respect, and affection to each other's families. The marriage is solemnized before the Lord Agni (the Sacred Fire) who is the symbol of light, power, and purity and acts as the principal witness to the ceremony. The invocations and offerings are also made to Lords of the nine planets to remove all obstacles and bless the bride and the groom. The bride and the groom circle the fire four times. The groom leads the bride in the first three rounds. The bride, representing Shakti, the Divine Energy, leads in the last round. At the end of each round the bride's brother or cousin gives offerings for the Sacred Fire. The first three represent the material wealth of cows, silver, and gold. The last one represents the gift of the bride herself to her new family. At the end of the ceremony, the bride stands to the groom's left, where she has taken a place closest to his heart. The groom offers Mangal Sutra (a sacred necklace made of black beads) to his wife and places Sindoor (a red powder) on her forehead. Both signify the mark of a married woman and symbols of his love, integrity, and devotion towards her.”
“The bride and groom take seven steps around or toward the sacred fire representing the seven principles and promises to each other:
1. Together, we will acquire energy to share in the responsibilities of married life.
2. Together, we will fill our hearts with strength and courage to accomplish all the needs of our life.
3. Together, we will prosper and share our worldly goods and we will work for the prosperity of our family.
4. Together, we will cherish each other in sickness and in health; in happiness and in sorrow.
5. Together, we will raise strong and virtuous children.
6. Together, we will fill our hearts with great joy, peace, happiness, and spiritual values, and
7. Together, we will remain lifelong partners by this matrimony.
With the Saptapadi—the taking of seven steps by the bridegroom and the bride jointly before the sacred fire- the marriage becomes complete and binding when the seventh step is taken. The bride and groom are now united and seek blessings from Lord Vishnu the Preserver and his consort Lakshmi, The Goddess of Wealth. The couple then seeks blessings from the Gods, parents, and elderly relatives by bowing to their feet. Married women from the family bless the bride by whispering "Akhanda Saubhagyawati Bhav" (blessing for abiding marital happiness) in the bride's right ear. The last ritual of the ceremony is where the bride begins an important role in her life as a wife and a member of the groom's family. She throws a handful of rice so that the house of her childhood remains prosperous and happy. The bride and bridegroom then retire to a bedroom suitably decorated with flowers and outside their room, a glass full of almond laced milk is placed as stimulant for the rigors of the wedding night.”
Prior to the Hindu Code Bill in 1953, there were no restrictions on polygamy, child brides or on dowry. Now however, the Indian penal code prescribes severe punishment for such acts. In fact the immigrant Indians, newly rich, in the US sometimes seek to kindle their connections with their old traditions by reverting back to some of these antediluvian, and illegal customs. So dowry in a disguised form has emerged in the form of requests for cars and houses from the family of the bridegroom. Rituals are extended over three to five days in a bid to outdo the neighbors. Sometimes this means that modernity is going backward. Fortunately the families reverting to the old are few and what is emerging is a hybrid mix of the old and the new which is fascinating.
Over the past few years, internet has replaced the old methods of finding a spouse. Portals like e-harmony.com provide opportunities for young Indians to look for a suitable mate. The Indian portals like shadi.com, however, still provide for parents to do the short listing of candidates!
In ancient times, the bridegroom never saw the bride till the wedding day. But now he goes to the parents of the bride to formally seek their permission to propose. He then takes his bride to a restaurant, kneels and proposes to her with a diamond ring along with a glass of champagne.
As in the past, the bride’s family traipses to the bridegroom’s house carrying gur and a gold coin along with sweets and presents. Sweets are often replaced with chocolates. These, called “shagun” are really meant to “reserve” the bridegroom for the bride. Once the bride’s mother has accepted these gifts, she is honor bound to continue on with the marriage.
The bridegroom used to come on a white horse to the bride’s house for the wedding. But now a white Mercedes-Benz does the trick.
The marriage is still solemnized under a lagna pandal but since now it may be within a hotel, the pandal is not constructed with banana plants but is instead a wooden frame draped with flowers. The sacred wooden fire is often replaced with gas lit flames due to fire restrictions within the hotel.
The bridegroom has to wear a dhoti but now there are ready made and tied dhotis that can be strapped on while the bride can wear jeans below her lovely sarees.
Gold retains its power as a gift but now a bridal registry is seen as a more practical alternative.
The best change however is the fact that the five days of festivities are now compressed into one day or the time the hotel will allow for a booking.
And as for that glass of milk outside the room. It is now champagne in an ice bucket in the room!
The most common form was the Brahma marriage, where a boy is eligible to get married once he has completed his Brahmacharya (student hood) and where the grooms family seeks out a suitable bride for their son. Then there is the Gandharva marriage, which is similar to love marriage, since it is without the knowledge of the parents. There are other marriages such as Daiva, where the bride is married to a priest, Arsha where the bride is given in exchange for two cows and married to an old sage, Prajapatya where the bride’s father goes in search for a groom for his daughter. In the Asura marriage, the groom is not suitable for the bride but willingly gives as much wealth as he can to cement the marriage. And there is the Rakshasa marriage where the groom fights battles with the bride's family, overcomes them, carries her away and then persuades her to marry him. Paishacha marriage is the eighth and last type of Hindu wedding but it is considered as the inferior type of marriage, since the girl's wish is not considered and she is forced to marry the person chosen for her. In Hindu dharma, marriage is viewed as a sacrament and not a contract and is performed in Sanskrit.
The traditional Indian wedding customs were formulated more than 35 centuries ago. Each ceremony, each occasion, and each ritual thus had a deep philosophical meaning and purpose. In the early days in the US, there were, however, no Brahmins around since most of the immigrants tended to be engineers or doctors. So a detailed checklist was issued by Indian associations for those wishing to get married here explaining the various customs, which read, in part: “The auspicious wedding day begins with the Mangal Vadya, the playing of the Shahenai, a traditional reed flute- like wind instrument of Indian Classical Music, and the Noubat, the small drums. The groom arrives with his family and friends at the entrance to the wedding hall and is first greeted by a young maiden, the bride's younger sister or niece, holding a water pot to quench his thirst. Next, the bride's mother welcomes the groom performing a ceremony to ward off the evil spirits he may have encountered on the way to the wedding. He is then asked to break the Saapath (the earthen clay pot) symbolizing his strength and virility and is then led to the Lagna Mandap where the wedding ceremony is to be performed.”
“The bride is brought to the Lagna Mandap by her Mama (maternal uncle) and is seated behind a white curtain, a symbol of traditional barriers. After the bride's father thanks the Gods, the curtain is removed and the couple exchange flower garlands. The bride and the bridegroom exchange garlands, made up of cotton threads, to proclaim acceptance of each other. The wedding ceremony begins with the worship of Lord Ganesha, the remover of all obstacles and Varuna, Lord of the Seas. A copper vessel containing water, flowers, and coconut is worshipped followed by the worship of the five basic elements of creation, namely fire, earth, water, air, and light. The bride's parents invoke the Gods and tell the groom, "On this Holy Occasion, we will give our daughter who is a symbol of Lakshmi, Goddess of Prosperity, to you in the presence of the Sacred Fire, friends, and relatives." The couple is then united by placing the bride's right hand in the groom's right hand. The ends of the scarves worn by the bride and the groom are then tied together signifying unity. The couple vows to remember the Divine; to look upon others with sympathy, love, and compassion; to be strong and righteous; and to show goodwill, respect, and affection to each other's families. The marriage is solemnized before the Lord Agni (the Sacred Fire) who is the symbol of light, power, and purity and acts as the principal witness to the ceremony. The invocations and offerings are also made to Lords of the nine planets to remove all obstacles and bless the bride and the groom. The bride and the groom circle the fire four times. The groom leads the bride in the first three rounds. The bride, representing Shakti, the Divine Energy, leads in the last round. At the end of each round the bride's brother or cousin gives offerings for the Sacred Fire. The first three represent the material wealth of cows, silver, and gold. The last one represents the gift of the bride herself to her new family. At the end of the ceremony, the bride stands to the groom's left, where she has taken a place closest to his heart. The groom offers Mangal Sutra (a sacred necklace made of black beads) to his wife and places Sindoor (a red powder) on her forehead. Both signify the mark of a married woman and symbols of his love, integrity, and devotion towards her.”
“The bride and groom take seven steps around or toward the sacred fire representing the seven principles and promises to each other:
1. Together, we will acquire energy to share in the responsibilities of married life.
2. Together, we will fill our hearts with strength and courage to accomplish all the needs of our life.
3. Together, we will prosper and share our worldly goods and we will work for the prosperity of our family.
4. Together, we will cherish each other in sickness and in health; in happiness and in sorrow.
5. Together, we will raise strong and virtuous children.
6. Together, we will fill our hearts with great joy, peace, happiness, and spiritual values, and
7. Together, we will remain lifelong partners by this matrimony.
With the Saptapadi—the taking of seven steps by the bridegroom and the bride jointly before the sacred fire- the marriage becomes complete and binding when the seventh step is taken. The bride and groom are now united and seek blessings from Lord Vishnu the Preserver and his consort Lakshmi, The Goddess of Wealth. The couple then seeks blessings from the Gods, parents, and elderly relatives by bowing to their feet. Married women from the family bless the bride by whispering "Akhanda Saubhagyawati Bhav" (blessing for abiding marital happiness) in the bride's right ear. The last ritual of the ceremony is where the bride begins an important role in her life as a wife and a member of the groom's family. She throws a handful of rice so that the house of her childhood remains prosperous and happy. The bride and bridegroom then retire to a bedroom suitably decorated with flowers and outside their room, a glass full of almond laced milk is placed as stimulant for the rigors of the wedding night.”
Prior to the Hindu Code Bill in 1953, there were no restrictions on polygamy, child brides or on dowry. Now however, the Indian penal code prescribes severe punishment for such acts. In fact the immigrant Indians, newly rich, in the US sometimes seek to kindle their connections with their old traditions by reverting back to some of these antediluvian, and illegal customs. So dowry in a disguised form has emerged in the form of requests for cars and houses from the family of the bridegroom. Rituals are extended over three to five days in a bid to outdo the neighbors. Sometimes this means that modernity is going backward. Fortunately the families reverting to the old are few and what is emerging is a hybrid mix of the old and the new which is fascinating.
Over the past few years, internet has replaced the old methods of finding a spouse. Portals like e-harmony.com provide opportunities for young Indians to look for a suitable mate. The Indian portals like shadi.com, however, still provide for parents to do the short listing of candidates!
In ancient times, the bridegroom never saw the bride till the wedding day. But now he goes to the parents of the bride to formally seek their permission to propose. He then takes his bride to a restaurant, kneels and proposes to her with a diamond ring along with a glass of champagne.
As in the past, the bride’s family traipses to the bridegroom’s house carrying gur and a gold coin along with sweets and presents. Sweets are often replaced with chocolates. These, called “shagun” are really meant to “reserve” the bridegroom for the bride. Once the bride’s mother has accepted these gifts, she is honor bound to continue on with the marriage.
The bridegroom used to come on a white horse to the bride’s house for the wedding. But now a white Mercedes-Benz does the trick.
The marriage is still solemnized under a lagna pandal but since now it may be within a hotel, the pandal is not constructed with banana plants but is instead a wooden frame draped with flowers. The sacred wooden fire is often replaced with gas lit flames due to fire restrictions within the hotel.
The bridegroom has to wear a dhoti but now there are ready made and tied dhotis that can be strapped on while the bride can wear jeans below her lovely sarees.
Gold retains its power as a gift but now a bridal registry is seen as a more practical alternative.
The best change however is the fact that the five days of festivities are now compressed into one day or the time the hotel will allow for a booking.
And as for that glass of milk outside the room. It is now champagne in an ice bucket in the room!
Monday, November 30, 2009
The strangest of tastes
I have never understood why and how people loved to eat Marmite. This despite the fact that my wife, daughter and son all adore it. I am more in line with John Kelley of the Washington Post who writes about " Marmite, an English condiment that is perhaps the foulest compound legally sold for human consumption".
Kelley goes on to describe Marmite, a foodstuff that, like warm beer and rainy summers, informs the English national identity. "Imagine" he continues, " putting hundreds of anchovies in a blender, adding salt and axle grease, pureeing, pouring the contents on an asphalt roofing shingle, baking under a hot sun for several weeks, then scraping off a black, gooey precipitate and eating it. That is Marmite. "
Maggie Hall has even written a book about it titled "The Mish-Mash Dictionary of Marmite: An Anecdotal A-Z of 'Tar-in-a-Jar.' " Under "vitamins," you learn that Marmite is packed with thiamine, riboflavin, niacin and folic acid; under "fishing," that some anglers think it attracts catfish and carp; under "museum," that a Missouri man has a shrine to Marmite in his basement, and under "outer space," that Yorkshire-born NASA astronaut Nicholas Patrick brought Marmite with him as his "comfort food" on a 2006 space shuttle mission. (It would also have been handy for patching damaged thermal tiles.)
"The traditional way to consume Marmite", according to Kelley, " is to butter a piece of toast and then spread a thin layer of the dark goo on it. A very thin layer. One-micron thick, ideally. That's what I tried to do anyway. My toast carefully Marmited, I took a bite and immediately felt as if I'd been hit in the face by an ocean wave, a wave befouled by oil from a sinking tanker, oil that had caused a die-off of marine birds and invertebrates, creatures whose decomposing bodies were adding to the general funkiness of the wave that had found its way inside my mouth. "
And to my general befuddlement, my entire family loves it!
Kelley goes on to describe Marmite, a foodstuff that, like warm beer and rainy summers, informs the English national identity. "Imagine" he continues, " putting hundreds of anchovies in a blender, adding salt and axle grease, pureeing, pouring the contents on an asphalt roofing shingle, baking under a hot sun for several weeks, then scraping off a black, gooey precipitate and eating it. That is Marmite. "
Maggie Hall has even written a book about it titled "The Mish-Mash Dictionary of Marmite: An Anecdotal A-Z of 'Tar-in-a-Jar.' " Under "vitamins," you learn that Marmite is packed with thiamine, riboflavin, niacin and folic acid; under "fishing," that some anglers think it attracts catfish and carp; under "museum," that a Missouri man has a shrine to Marmite in his basement, and under "outer space," that Yorkshire-born NASA astronaut Nicholas Patrick brought Marmite with him as his "comfort food" on a 2006 space shuttle mission. (It would also have been handy for patching damaged thermal tiles.)
"The traditional way to consume Marmite", according to Kelley, " is to butter a piece of toast and then spread a thin layer of the dark goo on it. A very thin layer. One-micron thick, ideally. That's what I tried to do anyway. My toast carefully Marmited, I took a bite and immediately felt as if I'd been hit in the face by an ocean wave, a wave befouled by oil from a sinking tanker, oil that had caused a die-off of marine birds and invertebrates, creatures whose decomposing bodies were adding to the general funkiness of the wave that had found its way inside my mouth. "
And to my general befuddlement, my entire family loves it!
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Reflections on the terror in Mumbai
It was exactly an year ago that my wife, Ena and I were trapped in Oberoi's Trident hotel while the terrorists rampaged outside killing almost 200 people. I had written of our experience here and here and also reproduced an outsiders chilling account here. Over the past year as the import of these events has sunk in and as I reflect on our few days under the terrorists gun for those days in Mumbai, some thoughts rise to the surface.
Leadership or lack of it. During our entire ordeal, one thing was amply clear- there was no leadership at all not at the political, not at the civil service and not at the law enforcement agencies. None. Yes, there were a few individual acts of local leadership but on the whole the entire episode smacked of a polity that was cowering and cowed without anyone rising to the challenge of confronting the terrorists. It is true that the home minister, the chief minister of the state and the inspector general of police were finally sacked after these events but it was really a case of too little too late.
Lack of media restraint. The competitive instincts of the press very early on overcame any good sense in their coverage. Some of the press even marveled that they were allowed to come so close to the events or to film the most delicate of rescue operations. But that did not prevent them from airing operations that they had to know were not going to be helpful to the hostages held inside. Love of a scoop overwhelmed all scruples. One can only say that expecting the media to exercise restraint is akin to expecting a drug addict to kick his habit and go into rehab.
The unfairness of the coverage. We always knew that life was unfair. But it was glaringly obvious in the press and TV coverage of the events. It seems that the two deaths in Nariman House rated more importance than the 80 deaths in the ritzy hotels and, of course, the 100 odd poor that died in the CST were a media after thought. The rescue of a baby did get coverage but the very many acts of valour at the CST were glossed over or at best rated minor coverage even in the local press. The international press were expected to focus their attention on the foreigners in our midst, that was to be expected, but why did the Indian press follow so blindly ?
Transience of public outrage. The terrorists had struck at the elite in Mumbai and so the outrage was deep and expected. There were candle light vigils the next day and much hand wringing about the laxity of the politicians. Yet a few months later, when the time came to vote, it seems many of the candle light vigilantes were missing in action. It is the transience of public outrage that keeps the corrupt and ineffective in power. Gestures are important but reality requires real commitment.
The terrorists striking in Mumbai finally stirred public opinion to confront the dangers of fundamentalism.. .. in Pakistan. In the early days, the press and the public in Pakistan dismissed these terrorist attacks as being orchestrated by the Indian RAW ( the Indian CIA) but as the Taliban started their attacks at home, the mood changed. Somewhere in the month of March this year, I started noticing editorials in Pakistani newspapers recognizing that the Taliban were their problem and that it was no longer possible to blame India for all their troubles. This trend has continued and with the Taliban attacks in Punjab, the home of much of the Pakistan's army, the tide may well have turned in the fight against indigenous fundamentalism in Pakistan.
There are however two major issues that fuel this terrorism that remain untackled - money and the new recruits to the cause of the Taliban. The attempts to follow the money in the funding of the Taliban have been few and fitful. Most observers cite the difficulty of intercepting hawala transactions or funds routed through Islamic charities. Others point to the fundamental difficulty in curtailing opium production and transport from Afghanistan which provide the wherewithal for the Taliban to continue its fight. It is also clear that without tackling this problem, it would be almost impossible to stem the flow of funds that essentially is the staple of the terrorism. In all of these discussions it is fascinating to find that the entire effort is directed at controlling the supply of opium and none to controlling its demand. Capitalism states that supply will always rise to meet the demand for goods and services. I have yet to see a cogent detailed analysis of the market demand for opium/heroin. Is it because the major demand is in Europe and the US? The sad fact is that without controlling demand, it will almost be impossible to curb production and supply. Ideas to tackle this opium trade have ranged from the US buying the entire opium crop from the farmers directly every year for a few years and burning it, as they did in Turkey, to deliberately spiking the opium crop, or at least a part of it, with cyanide and letting it be widely known to the consuming market. One would imagine that the demand for Afghanistan poppy would rapidly evaporate ( or course it might increase the price of Columbian heroin- but that is another issue).
While there are at least some ideas floating around for curtailing this opium trade, the other major issue of curbing the fresh recruits to the Taliban cause has had fewer initiatives. The fact is that there are over 10,000 madrassas in Pakistan that still continue to turn out half educated semi literate fanatics and no significant attempt is being made to stem this flow of cannon fodder for the terrorists. These madrassas are not being closed or monitored, the teachers are not being replaced and the funds continue to flow into their coffers from Saudi Arabia and other muslim countries encouraging the mullahs and maulvis to concentrate on teaching their own version of Koran and seeding them with terrorist principles. In the final analysis, it is only when Pakistan shows that it is able to shut down these cannon producing madrassas that we will know that it is serious about fighting terrorism and that it realizes that the cancer lies within their polity and not without.
Leadership or lack of it. During our entire ordeal, one thing was amply clear- there was no leadership at all not at the political, not at the civil service and not at the law enforcement agencies. None. Yes, there were a few individual acts of local leadership but on the whole the entire episode smacked of a polity that was cowering and cowed without anyone rising to the challenge of confronting the terrorists. It is true that the home minister, the chief minister of the state and the inspector general of police were finally sacked after these events but it was really a case of too little too late.
Lack of media restraint. The competitive instincts of the press very early on overcame any good sense in their coverage. Some of the press even marveled that they were allowed to come so close to the events or to film the most delicate of rescue operations. But that did not prevent them from airing operations that they had to know were not going to be helpful to the hostages held inside. Love of a scoop overwhelmed all scruples. One can only say that expecting the media to exercise restraint is akin to expecting a drug addict to kick his habit and go into rehab.
The unfairness of the coverage. We always knew that life was unfair. But it was glaringly obvious in the press and TV coverage of the events. It seems that the two deaths in Nariman House rated more importance than the 80 deaths in the ritzy hotels and, of course, the 100 odd poor that died in the CST were a media after thought. The rescue of a baby did get coverage but the very many acts of valour at the CST were glossed over or at best rated minor coverage even in the local press. The international press were expected to focus their attention on the foreigners in our midst, that was to be expected, but why did the Indian press follow so blindly ?
Transience of public outrage. The terrorists had struck at the elite in Mumbai and so the outrage was deep and expected. There were candle light vigils the next day and much hand wringing about the laxity of the politicians. Yet a few months later, when the time came to vote, it seems many of the candle light vigilantes were missing in action. It is the transience of public outrage that keeps the corrupt and ineffective in power. Gestures are important but reality requires real commitment.
The terrorists striking in Mumbai finally stirred public opinion to confront the dangers of fundamentalism.. .. in Pakistan. In the early days, the press and the public in Pakistan dismissed these terrorist attacks as being orchestrated by the Indian RAW ( the Indian CIA) but as the Taliban started their attacks at home, the mood changed. Somewhere in the month of March this year, I started noticing editorials in Pakistani newspapers recognizing that the Taliban were their problem and that it was no longer possible to blame India for all their troubles. This trend has continued and with the Taliban attacks in Punjab, the home of much of the Pakistan's army, the tide may well have turned in the fight against indigenous fundamentalism in Pakistan.
There are however two major issues that fuel this terrorism that remain untackled - money and the new recruits to the cause of the Taliban. The attempts to follow the money in the funding of the Taliban have been few and fitful. Most observers cite the difficulty of intercepting hawala transactions or funds routed through Islamic charities. Others point to the fundamental difficulty in curtailing opium production and transport from Afghanistan which provide the wherewithal for the Taliban to continue its fight. It is also clear that without tackling this problem, it would be almost impossible to stem the flow of funds that essentially is the staple of the terrorism. In all of these discussions it is fascinating to find that the entire effort is directed at controlling the supply of opium and none to controlling its demand. Capitalism states that supply will always rise to meet the demand for goods and services. I have yet to see a cogent detailed analysis of the market demand for opium/heroin. Is it because the major demand is in Europe and the US? The sad fact is that without controlling demand, it will almost be impossible to curb production and supply. Ideas to tackle this opium trade have ranged from the US buying the entire opium crop from the farmers directly every year for a few years and burning it, as they did in Turkey, to deliberately spiking the opium crop, or at least a part of it, with cyanide and letting it be widely known to the consuming market. One would imagine that the demand for Afghanistan poppy would rapidly evaporate ( or course it might increase the price of Columbian heroin- but that is another issue).
While there are at least some ideas floating around for curtailing this opium trade, the other major issue of curbing the fresh recruits to the Taliban cause has had fewer initiatives. The fact is that there are over 10,000 madrassas in Pakistan that still continue to turn out half educated semi literate fanatics and no significant attempt is being made to stem this flow of cannon fodder for the terrorists. These madrassas are not being closed or monitored, the teachers are not being replaced and the funds continue to flow into their coffers from Saudi Arabia and other muslim countries encouraging the mullahs and maulvis to concentrate on teaching their own version of Koran and seeding them with terrorist principles. In the final analysis, it is only when Pakistan shows that it is able to shut down these cannon producing madrassas that we will know that it is serious about fighting terrorism and that it realizes that the cancer lies within their polity and not without.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Two Indian stories
Two great stories about India and Indians.
The first one describes the innovative approach of Dr Shetty in reducing the costs of open heart surgery and his plans to take his hospital to the Cayman islands so that Americans can fly over and get a surgery at one tenth the cost in the US. Mother Teresa's cardiac surgeon, Dr. Devi Shetty, keeps a photo of her on his desk that says "Hands that serve are more sacred than lips that pray." Shetty has kept that in mind, offering heart surgeries to those who couldn't afford them, but he's doing it with a business model that would make Henry Ford proud. The doctor has transformed Indian health care by opening huge hospitals (1,000 beds, compared to 160 on average in the U.S.) that offer procedures at sharply reduced prices. At his flagship hospital, an open-heart surgery costs about $2,000, while in the U.S., the surgery would cost between $20,000 and $100,000. And counterintuitively, the quality of care has increased, in part because doctors get more practice and specialize in just one or two types of surgery. Shetty plans to open four more "health cities" around India, and one in the Cayman Islands. More than 6 million Americans are expected to go overseas for affordable health care next year. And Dr Shetty plans to provide them an opportunity to do it at much lower costs than in the US.
The second story is about how Indian companies are now reaching world standards in terms of developing leaders. Fortune magazine selects the most successful businesses that know how to develop talent. Among the list of the ten best companies that develop leaders are such names as IBM, Proctor and Gamble, McKinsey, GE, McDonalds etc but they also include two Indian companies. The first one
ICICI BankHeadquarters: MumbaiRevenue: $7.4 billion*Employees: 36,335CEO: Chanda Kochhar
ICICI doesn't just have recruiters trolling for talent outside of the company; it also has 600 employees who act as talent scouts internally, identifying coworkers with leadership potential.
These internal recruiters tap 5,000 candidates a year, and a panel reviews a profile of each prospective leader and assigns a grade. Top -- or "A" and "B" -- employees complete a four-day residential training program with a set of structured exercises, guest speakers that include the CEO, and screenings of films such as "12 Angry Men." And throughout the year, the company brings in influential leaders such as management guru Ram Charan to share their expertise with the chosen employees. Another bonus: These trainees are the only employees who get company stock options.
The second one is Hindustan UnileverHeadquarters: MumbaiRevenue: $4.4 billion**Employees: 15,000CEO: Nitin Paranjpe
This consumer goods company likes to think of itself as a talent factory. And with more than 1,000 alumni sitting on boards globally, it can certainly make a strong case for that. The company uses what it calls a "70-20-10" model for developing its workforce: 70% of learning happens on the job, 20% through mentoring, and 10% through training and coursework. That's why employees go through a job rotation roughly every three years, bosses are measured on how well they coach their direct reports, and all employees take about a week's worth of leadership training and four e-learning courses every year. The company says that senior management spends 30% to 40% of its time grooming leaders.
The first one describes the innovative approach of Dr Shetty in reducing the costs of open heart surgery and his plans to take his hospital to the Cayman islands so that Americans can fly over and get a surgery at one tenth the cost in the US. Mother Teresa's cardiac surgeon, Dr. Devi Shetty, keeps a photo of her on his desk that says "Hands that serve are more sacred than lips that pray." Shetty has kept that in mind, offering heart surgeries to those who couldn't afford them, but he's doing it with a business model that would make Henry Ford proud. The doctor has transformed Indian health care by opening huge hospitals (1,000 beds, compared to 160 on average in the U.S.) that offer procedures at sharply reduced prices. At his flagship hospital, an open-heart surgery costs about $2,000, while in the U.S., the surgery would cost between $20,000 and $100,000. And counterintuitively, the quality of care has increased, in part because doctors get more practice and specialize in just one or two types of surgery. Shetty plans to open four more "health cities" around India, and one in the Cayman Islands. More than 6 million Americans are expected to go overseas for affordable health care next year. And Dr Shetty plans to provide them an opportunity to do it at much lower costs than in the US.
The second story is about how Indian companies are now reaching world standards in terms of developing leaders. Fortune magazine selects the most successful businesses that know how to develop talent. Among the list of the ten best companies that develop leaders are such names as IBM, Proctor and Gamble, McKinsey, GE, McDonalds etc but they also include two Indian companies. The first one
ICICI BankHeadquarters: MumbaiRevenue: $7.4 billion*Employees: 36,335CEO: Chanda Kochhar
ICICI doesn't just have recruiters trolling for talent outside of the company; it also has 600 employees who act as talent scouts internally, identifying coworkers with leadership potential.
These internal recruiters tap 5,000 candidates a year, and a panel reviews a profile of each prospective leader and assigns a grade. Top -- or "A" and "B" -- employees complete a four-day residential training program with a set of structured exercises, guest speakers that include the CEO, and screenings of films such as "12 Angry Men." And throughout the year, the company brings in influential leaders such as management guru Ram Charan to share their expertise with the chosen employees. Another bonus: These trainees are the only employees who get company stock options.
The second one is Hindustan UnileverHeadquarters: MumbaiRevenue: $4.4 billion**Employees: 15,000CEO: Nitin Paranjpe
This consumer goods company likes to think of itself as a talent factory. And with more than 1,000 alumni sitting on boards globally, it can certainly make a strong case for that. The company uses what it calls a "70-20-10" model for developing its workforce: 70% of learning happens on the job, 20% through mentoring, and 10% through training and coursework. That's why employees go through a job rotation roughly every three years, bosses are measured on how well they coach their direct reports, and all employees take about a week's worth of leadership training and four e-learning courses every year. The company says that senior management spends 30% to 40% of its time grooming leaders.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Expanding the sixth sense
In an earlier posting, I had mentioned the brilliance of a young Indian- Pranav Mistry- who while at MIT produced one of the most original innovation that one has seen in a long time.
Here Pranav is speaking at the TED conference in India and expands on what he intends to do with his amazing innovation of merging the physical with the digital world. He intends to publish his software to be open source and points out that the hardware is readily available at a cost of about $ 300.
Here Pranav is speaking at the TED conference in India and expands on what he intends to do with his amazing innovation of merging the physical with the digital world. He intends to publish his software to be open source and points out that the hardware is readily available at a cost of about $ 300.
Converting Jihadis
A generation of British Islamists have been trained in Afghanistan to fight a global jihad. But now some of those would-be extremists have had a change of heart.
Here is an interesting piece which explores this nether world.
Here is an interesting piece which explores this nether world.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Power to the people
Bob Zoellick, the President of the World Bank spoke recently of his experiences in visiting rural electrification in Vietnam "I went out to one of the rural electrification sites (in Vietnam) by helicopter quite far in the mountains, and I just came away with the impression of the criticality of electricity to really give a chance for development. As I recall, in Vietnam, about 98 percent of the public now has access to electricity, and this rural electrification program which we helped develop and implement was a life-changer for people. Particularly, when I saw the women in the rural communities, you can see what a huge difference it makes in terms of the ability to have a water pump so they don’t have to spend hours going to get fresh water. The ability to grind some of their grain, to have electricity so that they and the kids can read at night. They have some TV programs so they openly have access to the outside world."
My thoughts went back to 1998 when we started designing this program in Vietnam.I describe how the program was conceived and developed in my book: "A Passion to build" in some detail but here is an edited excerpt...
“ Rural electrification of Vietnam was not part of my plan when I started working in that country. It was one of those chance issues that creep into one’s life unbeknown and unsought, but soon take over one’s total life’s concentration. So it was with projects that would provide power to the rural people of Vietnam. Little did I realize when I accepted the challenge that it would turn out to be one of the most satisfying aspects of my stay in Vietnam. And it had all come by happenstance.
A new World Bank country director, Andrew Steer, young and ambitious, had just taken over in 1997 and he .. asked me if I would design and implement a rural electrification project. .. I was determined to learn all I could about rural electrification, and I delved enthusiastically into all old Bank studies and projects.
I .. was determined that before we designed the project in Vietnam, our team would visit the villages firsthand to learn from them. That year, we laid out an aggressive program of field visits – every week we would visit a different commune in a different province. During the next year, we visited 30 provinces and over 100 communes, talking to rural households and commune leaders as well as the provincial leadership. We wanted to know what they were willing to pay, what they would use the electricity for, how they wanted the cooperative to be managed etc. These visits became the highlight of my stay in Vietnam. I visited areas that most expatriates had not even heard of and began to learn of the real Vietnam in the rural areas.
These visits became a voyage of discovery. Each commune we traveled to had a different story to tell and a different lesson to teach us. But as we visited these communes – from Vietnam’s northern borders to the southern mangrove swamps, from the fishing communities in the east to the poorest Hmong communes in the central highlands- one thing remained common. The commune office where we were received was almost always a brick room, with either a bust of Ho Chi Minh or a large painting of him. There would be a few cupboards in the room with a few circulars and books. Some of the wealthier communes also had a TV set that was used for the village meetings in the evenings. The secretary of the commune Peoples Committee invariably accompanied the head of the commune, who always came armed with a children’s exercise book in which he noted down all our questions and from which he produced the data regarding his commune.
During these visits, we were to meet some of the most interesting people in the country – a vivacious chairwoman of a PPC in the north who told me that she had shut down all the beer parlors in the cities of her province as one of her first acts to make sure that all men went home after work; another PPC chairman who wanted to make sure that all the communes in his province were electrified and that his own birthplace commune would be the last to be given power; the leader of the women’s artillery corps in the American War who had returned to fishing and whose commune the country had forgotten almost for two decades. There was also an English teacher who had never before met a foreigner and had never heard English spoken before we met him; the chief of a village who would talk only after we had shared rice wine with him from the communal gourd; Joseph, the priest who had been confined to his parish for two years but was not permitted to talk to his parishioners. And then there was the Thai general secretary of Dien Bien Phu province who cheerfully told us that he had five children and was exempt from the national laws on two children because he was from a minority community group, and who then wanted to honor me with a rice bottle laced with the bile of a live bear; the young man in Pac Bo who was so smitten with my wife, who often accompanied me in these sojourns, that he kept wanting to beat me in table tennis while Ena looked on. And also the consternation of Ranjit Lamech from the World Bank, who wanted to set up a dual accounting system in the villages only to find that there was not even a bank in close vicinity and that all finances were kept in a steel trunk in the schoolhouse!
In the north, we went up to the Chinese border and visited the secret hideout of Ho Chi Minh in Pac Bo. In the west, we went onto the Laotian border where the villages were reputed to be the centre of drug running from Myanmar and Thailand. In the central highlands, we visited some of the poorest villages among the Hmong and sipped wine from their communal gourds. It was to be learning experience the likes of which I had never had. While we were planning and designing the rural energy project, we were also learning real lessons from our travels. All these formed a kaleidoscope of our journeys, but they all added up to a picture of a country restless and on the move and wanting to do things
The conventional wisdom on extending electricity access to the rural areas, particularly the poorer ones, was that the biggest constraint was the high connection charges levied by the power companies. The Bank’s “best practices” paper recommends that for increasing rural access, some method needed to be found to reduce the initial connection charges for poorer customers, or there needed to be some availability of credit to spread these costs over some years. In a number of communes that we visited in Vietnam, the situation was somewhat different. .. When asked why more households were not connecting to the existing grid, the answer was a little surprising. The villagers said that they had difficulty in paying the monthly bills with an annual income of only 2 million VND. When asked whether the high connection charges of 0.5 million VND was a major barrier, their reply was that they could afford to pay the initial connection charges. When asked for clarification, the answer came. “Oh! We can pay for the initial connection charge easily by selling a piglet. It is the monthly dues that are a problem! You city people,” he added, “don’t realize that we don’t get monthly wages in the field, but have money in our pockets only when the harvest comes in.”
The prompt collection of power bills from customers in the rural areas has always proven to be a major issue in rural electrification projects around the world. Thus, the ones that were able to successfully tackle these issues elicited particular interest. There were two cases where the managers of the rural cooperatives had solved this problem, each in his own unique way.
The Dai Hai Private Agency was an organization for rural electrification in the southern province of Soc Trang established in 1992 by Mr. Nguyen Duc Thanh, a former teacher…. One of the reasons for its success had been its ability to collect payments for all the electricity sold from all of its customers. When I enquired what the average collection ratio was, Mr. Than told me that in the initial stages, a number of customers delayed paying their bills citing their financial difficulties, but now the collections were a hundred percent. When asked how this was achieved, he said the solution was quite simple - he requested the village priest to read out the names of the defaulters after each monthly mass in the church!
Another prevalent view in the Bank was that most villagers were too poor to pay the high power tariffs that generally needed to be levied to even recover basic operational costs. A similar issue had also been raised in the poorer villages of the Philippines. Father Silva had recounted that during his visits to these villages; he would summon the family and ask them if they wanted electricity. And the answer inevitably was yes, but that they could not afford to pay the monthly dues of about 100- 150 pesos. Whereupon he would ask the head of the household how many beers he drank in a week. The answer would come, “Oh Father! I drink only one can a day.” And each can of beer cost? About 10 pesos. “OK,” Father Silva would reply, “only drink every alternate day and put that money in an empty can every week. By the end of the month, you will have enough money for electricity for your family!”
The one problem that has dogged all efforts at rural electrification has been how to use it for productive uses. Once power came to the village and the households turned to TV programs for education and entertainment, they realized that perhaps there were other uses possible, which could bring in additional income. The productive use of electricity in the rural areas has always been hard to document. So the results of electrification of a rural area in Central Vietnam that led to a major economic improvement provided an interesting example.
Duy Son 2 in Quang Nam province had a cooperative, but had no electricity despite its proximity to the Chop Xoi Mountains and various water streams. .. As a result of his efforts, Mr. Luu Ban, the former head of the cooperative and the man who had dreamed of harnessing the waters for electricity, was awarded the title of “Labor Hero” by the government.
Over the next year, Hung, my operations officer, and I traveled the width and breadth of the country visiting different provinces and talking to commune leadership about what they wanted.
In our visits to the rural areas, a few staff from the national power utility, EVN, often accompanied us. In the early days, most of EVN staff treated these visits with disdain. Rural electrification was a loss maker in the national utility and the more ambitious staff were all busy building new power plants. But then in 1999, things changed. There was a minor rebellion in a commune in northern Vietnam where the villagers had rounded on the communist party officials for their corruption and rent seeking. Word of this slowly leaked to the outside world. The Party officials in Hanoi were grim faced to find that the rebellion had occurred in exactly the same villages where their own revolution had started some decades back. The grievances were the same: rural areas were neglected, promises made were not kept after the elections and ruthless and corrupt officials from the provinces looted the poor. The Party was sufficiently shook up by this development to order a swift reordering of priorities: the rural areas were to be given priority and their demand for electricity, water and medical facilities were to be met on a time bound plan.
The senior management of both EVN and the Ministry of Industry were delighted to inform the Party of their negotiations with the World Bank for a $150 million rural energy project, which would provide electricity to over 700 communes in the country. All of a sudden, our field visits started resembling wedding caravans as more and more senior utility staff joined in our discussions with the rural people. Many of these Hanoi or Danang based staff had never visited any of the rural areas, certainly never having examined in any depth their problems or what could be done about them. For many of them, all of this was a revelation, and they learnt more about their own country with some surprise. ..
By 1998, all these visits and discussions had gradually led us to develop our own model of rural electrification in the Vietnamese context. We all agreed that there would be no give away and that the rural households had to contribute not only to the capital cost of the development, but also in its operation and management. Having formulated the fundamental guidelines for the development of rural electrification in Vietnam, the Bank invited all the communes to participate in the project. To do so, however, they had to agree formally to certain fundamental principles. The choice was theirs, there was to be no compulsion, but every commune and provincial leadership had to provide a letter stating their willingness to abide by these conditions. These were: (a) all investments in the rural electrification project were to be economically viable; (b) there would be cost sharing between all the parties including the consumers, local governments, the national government and the World Bank; (c) the construction would be based on the most cost effective technology; (d) consumers would commit to connect to the network and agree to pay operating charges; (e) there would be no operating subsidies; (f) the local distribution utility would have a legal status with financial controls and (g) the community would accept the responsibility of managing the operations after the completion of construction. In effect, each rural household would have to pay about $20 for the capital costs and about $2 a month for the electricity they utilized. In most communes, more than two thirds of the households agreed to pay the connection charges. The provincial government would provide the land free while the national government would borrow from the Bank at low interest rates. All construction had to follow national specifications and after the completion of the construction, its operation and management would be transferred to the commune electricity cooperative.
.. the Ministry of Industry selected 670 communes to participate in the first part of the project. On this basis, the Bank agreed to provide to the ministry a loan of $150 million. Vietnam signed the loan in mid-2000 and construction work began soon thereafter to provide electricity to about 2 million people.
Vietnam’s first rural energy project progressed with great speed and by the end of 2004, it had connected over 900 communes to the national grid, thus providing electricity to over half a million new households. Not only were these rural households provided electricity in a short period of time, EVN and the Power companies also followed a strategy that provided for local people to participate in the construction and operation of the new systems. The construction contracts were designed to maximize local contracting industry participation even though it meant awarding and supervising over 600 contracts. These small construction contracts created major employment potential and became the foundation of an efficient local construction industry in the districts. After the completion of construction, it was agreed that the communes would help to manage the operation and maintenance of the local distribution grids. The power companies trained a large number of people from the communes, who then became service agents responsible for routine operations and maintenance, as well as commercial activities such as billing and collection. In most communes, two or three persons had by now been trained to perform this function. Thus, the project not only provided electricity to the communes, it also laid the foundation for local employment and management. It also had some other side effects. Mr. Hai, the Minister of Industry, told me that his election as minister was certainly helped by the fact that a large number of communes in his area had received electricity and that he had come to be known in the area as one who could really get things done.
One of the unanswered questions of rural electrification is to what extent it really helps economic development. We needed to measure this with some accuracy and so commissioned a five-year research project with the Institute of Sociology in Hanoi. But even before that, I undertook a travel program to see what I could find empirically on my visits….
I was curious to see what had happened to Tran Thi Hoanh who I recalled had seemed such a shy and unlikely leader of a women’s battalion. We went in search of her in the neighboring village of Ngu Thuy. Her husband greeted us and showed us the photograph we had taken on that day two years ago. I recognized her in the photograph, but wondered if she would remember the foreigner who had showed up one day two years ago at her village to switch on the power in her commune. Hoanh was busy organizing the women in the village, but consented to leave the meeting to come and meet with us. She walked in and greeted us exclaiming that indeed she remembered me from me from that past visit. Over tea I asked her if her life had changed since electricity came to her village and whether she had bought the ice box she told me she planned to buy. She smiled and said that life in the village was now much better and that she was busy organizing the women in her commune. But, no, she had not bought the ice box....
..I was pleased that we were having an impact in rural Vietnam. The word of the success of this project spread far and wide. We had managed to provide electricity to one new commune every day for the past three years!
Vietnam became one of the leading countries in the world to have provided electricity to over 90% of its total population. It had gone from only 50% coverage of households in 1996 to 90% in 2004. As I saw the success of Vietnam’s rural electrification program, I wondered if it were possible to repeat the success of Vietnam in rural electrification in my own country.
In December 2004, I was presented with a medal by the government of Vietnam and EVN for my contribution to the development of the energy sector in Vietnam at a simple but touching ceremony. But even more than this official recognition was a simple gift from one of the power distribution companies. At my farewell reception, Lien presented me with a painting on behalf of his company. It was a beautiful rural landscape and I had merely glanced at it. Then I saw the inscription at the bottom of the painting. It said, “To Dr Anil Malhotra. For helping change the rural landscape of Vietnam.”
This work has now been documented by the World Bank in a must see video
My thoughts went back to 1998 when we started designing this program in Vietnam.I describe how the program was conceived and developed in my book: "A Passion to build" in some detail but here is an edited excerpt...
“ Rural electrification of Vietnam was not part of my plan when I started working in that country. It was one of those chance issues that creep into one’s life unbeknown and unsought, but soon take over one’s total life’s concentration. So it was with projects that would provide power to the rural people of Vietnam. Little did I realize when I accepted the challenge that it would turn out to be one of the most satisfying aspects of my stay in Vietnam. And it had all come by happenstance.
A new World Bank country director, Andrew Steer, young and ambitious, had just taken over in 1997 and he .. asked me if I would design and implement a rural electrification project. .. I was determined to learn all I could about rural electrification, and I delved enthusiastically into all old Bank studies and projects.
I .. was determined that before we designed the project in Vietnam, our team would visit the villages firsthand to learn from them. That year, we laid out an aggressive program of field visits – every week we would visit a different commune in a different province. During the next year, we visited 30 provinces and over 100 communes, talking to rural households and commune leaders as well as the provincial leadership. We wanted to know what they were willing to pay, what they would use the electricity for, how they wanted the cooperative to be managed etc. These visits became the highlight of my stay in Vietnam. I visited areas that most expatriates had not even heard of and began to learn of the real Vietnam in the rural areas.
These visits became a voyage of discovery. Each commune we traveled to had a different story to tell and a different lesson to teach us. But as we visited these communes – from Vietnam’s northern borders to the southern mangrove swamps, from the fishing communities in the east to the poorest Hmong communes in the central highlands- one thing remained common. The commune office where we were received was almost always a brick room, with either a bust of Ho Chi Minh or a large painting of him. There would be a few cupboards in the room with a few circulars and books. Some of the wealthier communes also had a TV set that was used for the village meetings in the evenings. The secretary of the commune Peoples Committee invariably accompanied the head of the commune, who always came armed with a children’s exercise book in which he noted down all our questions and from which he produced the data regarding his commune.
During these visits, we were to meet some of the most interesting people in the country – a vivacious chairwoman of a PPC in the north who told me that she had shut down all the beer parlors in the cities of her province as one of her first acts to make sure that all men went home after work; another PPC chairman who wanted to make sure that all the communes in his province were electrified and that his own birthplace commune would be the last to be given power; the leader of the women’s artillery corps in the American War who had returned to fishing and whose commune the country had forgotten almost for two decades. There was also an English teacher who had never before met a foreigner and had never heard English spoken before we met him; the chief of a village who would talk only after we had shared rice wine with him from the communal gourd; Joseph, the priest who had been confined to his parish for two years but was not permitted to talk to his parishioners. And then there was the Thai general secretary of Dien Bien Phu province who cheerfully told us that he had five children and was exempt from the national laws on two children because he was from a minority community group, and who then wanted to honor me with a rice bottle laced with the bile of a live bear; the young man in Pac Bo who was so smitten with my wife, who often accompanied me in these sojourns, that he kept wanting to beat me in table tennis while Ena looked on. And also the consternation of Ranjit Lamech from the World Bank, who wanted to set up a dual accounting system in the villages only to find that there was not even a bank in close vicinity and that all finances were kept in a steel trunk in the schoolhouse!
In the north, we went up to the Chinese border and visited the secret hideout of Ho Chi Minh in Pac Bo. In the west, we went onto the Laotian border where the villages were reputed to be the centre of drug running from Myanmar and Thailand. In the central highlands, we visited some of the poorest villages among the Hmong and sipped wine from their communal gourds. It was to be learning experience the likes of which I had never had. While we were planning and designing the rural energy project, we were also learning real lessons from our travels. All these formed a kaleidoscope of our journeys, but they all added up to a picture of a country restless and on the move and wanting to do things
The conventional wisdom on extending electricity access to the rural areas, particularly the poorer ones, was that the biggest constraint was the high connection charges levied by the power companies. The Bank’s “best practices” paper recommends that for increasing rural access, some method needed to be found to reduce the initial connection charges for poorer customers, or there needed to be some availability of credit to spread these costs over some years. In a number of communes that we visited in Vietnam, the situation was somewhat different. .. When asked why more households were not connecting to the existing grid, the answer was a little surprising. The villagers said that they had difficulty in paying the monthly bills with an annual income of only 2 million VND. When asked whether the high connection charges of 0.5 million VND was a major barrier, their reply was that they could afford to pay the initial connection charges. When asked for clarification, the answer came. “Oh! We can pay for the initial connection charge easily by selling a piglet. It is the monthly dues that are a problem! You city people,” he added, “don’t realize that we don’t get monthly wages in the field, but have money in our pockets only when the harvest comes in.”
The prompt collection of power bills from customers in the rural areas has always proven to be a major issue in rural electrification projects around the world. Thus, the ones that were able to successfully tackle these issues elicited particular interest. There were two cases where the managers of the rural cooperatives had solved this problem, each in his own unique way.
The Dai Hai Private Agency was an organization for rural electrification in the southern province of Soc Trang established in 1992 by Mr. Nguyen Duc Thanh, a former teacher…. One of the reasons for its success had been its ability to collect payments for all the electricity sold from all of its customers. When I enquired what the average collection ratio was, Mr. Than told me that in the initial stages, a number of customers delayed paying their bills citing their financial difficulties, but now the collections were a hundred percent. When asked how this was achieved, he said the solution was quite simple - he requested the village priest to read out the names of the defaulters after each monthly mass in the church!
Another prevalent view in the Bank was that most villagers were too poor to pay the high power tariffs that generally needed to be levied to even recover basic operational costs. A similar issue had also been raised in the poorer villages of the Philippines. Father Silva had recounted that during his visits to these villages; he would summon the family and ask them if they wanted electricity. And the answer inevitably was yes, but that they could not afford to pay the monthly dues of about 100- 150 pesos. Whereupon he would ask the head of the household how many beers he drank in a week. The answer would come, “Oh Father! I drink only one can a day.” And each can of beer cost? About 10 pesos. “OK,” Father Silva would reply, “only drink every alternate day and put that money in an empty can every week. By the end of the month, you will have enough money for electricity for your family!”
The one problem that has dogged all efforts at rural electrification has been how to use it for productive uses. Once power came to the village and the households turned to TV programs for education and entertainment, they realized that perhaps there were other uses possible, which could bring in additional income. The productive use of electricity in the rural areas has always been hard to document. So the results of electrification of a rural area in Central Vietnam that led to a major economic improvement provided an interesting example.
Duy Son 2 in Quang Nam province had a cooperative, but had no electricity despite its proximity to the Chop Xoi Mountains and various water streams. .. As a result of his efforts, Mr. Luu Ban, the former head of the cooperative and the man who had dreamed of harnessing the waters for electricity, was awarded the title of “Labor Hero” by the government.
Over the next year, Hung, my operations officer, and I traveled the width and breadth of the country visiting different provinces and talking to commune leadership about what they wanted.
In our visits to the rural areas, a few staff from the national power utility, EVN, often accompanied us. In the early days, most of EVN staff treated these visits with disdain. Rural electrification was a loss maker in the national utility and the more ambitious staff were all busy building new power plants. But then in 1999, things changed. There was a minor rebellion in a commune in northern Vietnam where the villagers had rounded on the communist party officials for their corruption and rent seeking. Word of this slowly leaked to the outside world. The Party officials in Hanoi were grim faced to find that the rebellion had occurred in exactly the same villages where their own revolution had started some decades back. The grievances were the same: rural areas were neglected, promises made were not kept after the elections and ruthless and corrupt officials from the provinces looted the poor. The Party was sufficiently shook up by this development to order a swift reordering of priorities: the rural areas were to be given priority and their demand for electricity, water and medical facilities were to be met on a time bound plan.
The senior management of both EVN and the Ministry of Industry were delighted to inform the Party of their negotiations with the World Bank for a $150 million rural energy project, which would provide electricity to over 700 communes in the country. All of a sudden, our field visits started resembling wedding caravans as more and more senior utility staff joined in our discussions with the rural people. Many of these Hanoi or Danang based staff had never visited any of the rural areas, certainly never having examined in any depth their problems or what could be done about them. For many of them, all of this was a revelation, and they learnt more about their own country with some surprise. ..
By 1998, all these visits and discussions had gradually led us to develop our own model of rural electrification in the Vietnamese context. We all agreed that there would be no give away and that the rural households had to contribute not only to the capital cost of the development, but also in its operation and management. Having formulated the fundamental guidelines for the development of rural electrification in Vietnam, the Bank invited all the communes to participate in the project. To do so, however, they had to agree formally to certain fundamental principles. The choice was theirs, there was to be no compulsion, but every commune and provincial leadership had to provide a letter stating their willingness to abide by these conditions. These were: (a) all investments in the rural electrification project were to be economically viable; (b) there would be cost sharing between all the parties including the consumers, local governments, the national government and the World Bank; (c) the construction would be based on the most cost effective technology; (d) consumers would commit to connect to the network and agree to pay operating charges; (e) there would be no operating subsidies; (f) the local distribution utility would have a legal status with financial controls and (g) the community would accept the responsibility of managing the operations after the completion of construction. In effect, each rural household would have to pay about $20 for the capital costs and about $2 a month for the electricity they utilized. In most communes, more than two thirds of the households agreed to pay the connection charges. The provincial government would provide the land free while the national government would borrow from the Bank at low interest rates. All construction had to follow national specifications and after the completion of the construction, its operation and management would be transferred to the commune electricity cooperative.
.. the Ministry of Industry selected 670 communes to participate in the first part of the project. On this basis, the Bank agreed to provide to the ministry a loan of $150 million. Vietnam signed the loan in mid-2000 and construction work began soon thereafter to provide electricity to about 2 million people.
Vietnam’s first rural energy project progressed with great speed and by the end of 2004, it had connected over 900 communes to the national grid, thus providing electricity to over half a million new households. Not only were these rural households provided electricity in a short period of time, EVN and the Power companies also followed a strategy that provided for local people to participate in the construction and operation of the new systems. The construction contracts were designed to maximize local contracting industry participation even though it meant awarding and supervising over 600 contracts. These small construction contracts created major employment potential and became the foundation of an efficient local construction industry in the districts. After the completion of construction, it was agreed that the communes would help to manage the operation and maintenance of the local distribution grids. The power companies trained a large number of people from the communes, who then became service agents responsible for routine operations and maintenance, as well as commercial activities such as billing and collection. In most communes, two or three persons had by now been trained to perform this function. Thus, the project not only provided electricity to the communes, it also laid the foundation for local employment and management. It also had some other side effects. Mr. Hai, the Minister of Industry, told me that his election as minister was certainly helped by the fact that a large number of communes in his area had received electricity and that he had come to be known in the area as one who could really get things done.
One of the unanswered questions of rural electrification is to what extent it really helps economic development. We needed to measure this with some accuracy and so commissioned a five-year research project with the Institute of Sociology in Hanoi. But even before that, I undertook a travel program to see what I could find empirically on my visits….
I was curious to see what had happened to Tran Thi Hoanh who I recalled had seemed such a shy and unlikely leader of a women’s battalion. We went in search of her in the neighboring village of Ngu Thuy. Her husband greeted us and showed us the photograph we had taken on that day two years ago. I recognized her in the photograph, but wondered if she would remember the foreigner who had showed up one day two years ago at her village to switch on the power in her commune. Hoanh was busy organizing the women in the village, but consented to leave the meeting to come and meet with us. She walked in and greeted us exclaiming that indeed she remembered me from me from that past visit. Over tea I asked her if her life had changed since electricity came to her village and whether she had bought the ice box she told me she planned to buy. She smiled and said that life in the village was now much better and that she was busy organizing the women in her commune. But, no, she had not bought the ice box....
..I was pleased that we were having an impact in rural Vietnam. The word of the success of this project spread far and wide. We had managed to provide electricity to one new commune every day for the past three years!
Vietnam became one of the leading countries in the world to have provided electricity to over 90% of its total population. It had gone from only 50% coverage of households in 1996 to 90% in 2004. As I saw the success of Vietnam’s rural electrification program, I wondered if it were possible to repeat the success of Vietnam in rural electrification in my own country.
In December 2004, I was presented with a medal by the government of Vietnam and EVN for my contribution to the development of the energy sector in Vietnam at a simple but touching ceremony. But even more than this official recognition was a simple gift from one of the power distribution companies. At my farewell reception, Lien presented me with a painting on behalf of his company. It was a beautiful rural landscape and I had merely glanced at it. Then I saw the inscription at the bottom of the painting. It said, “To Dr Anil Malhotra. For helping change the rural landscape of Vietnam.”
This work has now been documented by the World Bank in a must see video
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Mahatama Gandhi and MIT
There is a connection strange as it may seem between Mahatama Gandhi and MIT. I came to know of it in a rather strange way myself. A few months ago I received a call from a professor at the University of North Carolina who said he was writing a book about Indians who had graduated from MIT and had made major contributions to India. Prof Ross Basset said that my name had been given to him by some alumni from MIT during his research as one of those.
During the colonial period, roughly one hundred degrees were awarded by MIT to Indians.One of them was Kalelkar who was then not an occasional satyagrahi, but a committed freedom fighter and Gandhian. Yet Bassett revealed that this young man would later go to the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and take a degree in engineering. In fact families associated with Mahatma Gandhi sent a total of nine sons to MIT during the nationalist movement. Their importance to India and to the historical understanding of India is disproportionate to their numbers. These men—and they were all men—often from elite families, formed a technological elite in the last days of colonial India. Their careers show a technological nationalism in India and represented an important foreshadowing of the period after independence.
Perhaps one reason Indians were drawn to MIT was that it was based on a notion of
engineering and engineering education largely antithetical to that held by Indian engineering colleges.The first engineering college in India began operation in Roorkee in 1847. The British established the engineering college at Roorkee and the later engineering colleges in Sibpur, Poona, and Madras, as a way to produce intermediate grade engineers for the British Public Works Department, which had control over the schools. As a consequence, these schools had a very limited curriculum, focused on civil engineering, the discipline most needed by the Public Works Department, and within civil engineering, focused on narrow vocational training in such areas as surveying and estimating.
Although the first Indian attended MIT in 1880, only in the twentieth century is it
possible to trace the lives of Indians who went to MIT with any specificity. The first MIT student to play a significant role in the technological development of India did so through a larger social movement. In 1908, after two years of study at MIT, Ishwar Das Varshnei came to Poona to set up a glass factory under the umbrella of a nationalist organization, the Paisa Fund. The Paisa Fund, so called because it raised money by asking for donations of a paisa each (a paisa was a sixty- fourth of a rupee) from a broad spectrum of Indian society, was supported by Tilak and sought to develop indigenous Indian industry.
During the 1930s, a small princely state in Kathiawar, Bhavnagar, was the leading source of Indian students at MIT. In fact, Bhavnagar, representing less than 2 percent of the population of India, produced almost half the Indians who earned degrees from MIT in the 1930s. This concentration in Bhavnagar was further concentrated in the family of a lifelong friend of Mahatma Gandhi, Devchand Parekh. Parekh had a vision of a technological India built around Indians trained at MIT and worked to realize this vision within his family.
Between 1920 and 1939, MIT had enrolled on average 7 Indian students per year. By the fall of 1944, that number had increased to 24. But in April 1945, with the Indian government’s offering unprecedented funding for graduate training abroad, MIT had 271 applications on hand from Indian students, a number representing over half of the scholars the Indian government was planning to send to the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. Although MIT was able to admit 16 for the fall semester, it had placed 180 Indian students on its waiting list, implicitly stating that the students were well qualified for MIT but that there was no room for them.
MIT made another little known contribution to the technological development of India after independence. The Sarker Committee, after its chair, N. R. Sarker, has become well known in India for its role in laying out the framework of the Indian Institutes of Technology. This committee of twenty- two had nine Britons and thirteen Indians. Among the Indians were some of India’s leading scientists, such as J. C. Ghosh and S. S. Bhatnagar, and representatives of India’s leading industrial enterprises, such as A. D. Shroff, who worked for the Tatas. On the committee also, but unnoticed before by historians, were two young Indian engineers with doctorates from MIT: Anant Pandya and M. D. Parekh.
In the decades after independence, the Indians did have means and opportunity. The sons of Indian elites—lawyers, civil servants, educationalists, businessmen, and engineers—went to MIT in increasing numbers in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. And this trend has continued. The contributions of these Indians who returned from MIT to rebuild the nation are manifold and hopefully Prof Basset's research will be provide us the details.
During the colonial period, roughly one hundred degrees were awarded by MIT to Indians.One of them was Kalelkar who was then not an occasional satyagrahi, but a committed freedom fighter and Gandhian. Yet Bassett revealed that this young man would later go to the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and take a degree in engineering. In fact families associated with Mahatma Gandhi sent a total of nine sons to MIT during the nationalist movement. Their importance to India and to the historical understanding of India is disproportionate to their numbers. These men—and they were all men—often from elite families, formed a technological elite in the last days of colonial India. Their careers show a technological nationalism in India and represented an important foreshadowing of the period after independence.
Perhaps one reason Indians were drawn to MIT was that it was based on a notion of
engineering and engineering education largely antithetical to that held by Indian engineering colleges.The first engineering college in India began operation in Roorkee in 1847. The British established the engineering college at Roorkee and the later engineering colleges in Sibpur, Poona, and Madras, as a way to produce intermediate grade engineers for the British Public Works Department, which had control over the schools. As a consequence, these schools had a very limited curriculum, focused on civil engineering, the discipline most needed by the Public Works Department, and within civil engineering, focused on narrow vocational training in such areas as surveying and estimating.
Although the first Indian attended MIT in 1880, only in the twentieth century is it
possible to trace the lives of Indians who went to MIT with any specificity. The first MIT student to play a significant role in the technological development of India did so through a larger social movement. In 1908, after two years of study at MIT, Ishwar Das Varshnei came to Poona to set up a glass factory under the umbrella of a nationalist organization, the Paisa Fund. The Paisa Fund, so called because it raised money by asking for donations of a paisa each (a paisa was a sixty- fourth of a rupee) from a broad spectrum of Indian society, was supported by Tilak and sought to develop indigenous Indian industry.
During the 1930s, a small princely state in Kathiawar, Bhavnagar, was the leading source of Indian students at MIT. In fact, Bhavnagar, representing less than 2 percent of the population of India, produced almost half the Indians who earned degrees from MIT in the 1930s. This concentration in Bhavnagar was further concentrated in the family of a lifelong friend of Mahatma Gandhi, Devchand Parekh. Parekh had a vision of a technological India built around Indians trained at MIT and worked to realize this vision within his family.
Between 1920 and 1939, MIT had enrolled on average 7 Indian students per year. By the fall of 1944, that number had increased to 24. But in April 1945, with the Indian government’s offering unprecedented funding for graduate training abroad, MIT had 271 applications on hand from Indian students, a number representing over half of the scholars the Indian government was planning to send to the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. Although MIT was able to admit 16 for the fall semester, it had placed 180 Indian students on its waiting list, implicitly stating that the students were well qualified for MIT but that there was no room for them.
MIT made another little known contribution to the technological development of India after independence. The Sarker Committee, after its chair, N. R. Sarker, has become well known in India for its role in laying out the framework of the Indian Institutes of Technology. This committee of twenty- two had nine Britons and thirteen Indians. Among the Indians were some of India’s leading scientists, such as J. C. Ghosh and S. S. Bhatnagar, and representatives of India’s leading industrial enterprises, such as A. D. Shroff, who worked for the Tatas. On the committee also, but unnoticed before by historians, were two young Indian engineers with doctorates from MIT: Anant Pandya and M. D. Parekh.
In the decades after independence, the Indians did have means and opportunity. The sons of Indian elites—lawyers, civil servants, educationalists, businessmen, and engineers—went to MIT in increasing numbers in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. And this trend has continued. The contributions of these Indians who returned from MIT to rebuild the nation are manifold and hopefully Prof Basset's research will be provide us the details.
Monday, November 2, 2009
A new age of publishing
The rapid advances in technology have interesting consequences in the area of book publishing. In the earlier part of the year, Amazon brought out its e-book called Kindle on which you are able to read books that can be downloaded from the internet. While the screen is only 6 inches, I found it quite readable since it replicates a paper printed book. Its real strength, however, lies in your ability to download the latest books from Amazon.com in a few seconds and that at a sale price almost half of that for the hard or soft cover books. The sheer convenience of this has led me to read even more books that I normally do. Kindle has now gone international and their e- reader is available in a large number of markets outside the US.
And now there is another twist that is even more fascinating. Publishing. Kindle provides an avenue to publish your own books directly and to sell them on the Kindle store. So now you can write your book, upload it on to the Kindle bookstore, set a price that you want it to sell for with no directive from any agency. Your e-book can now be read by anybody who has a Kindle worldwide at the price you have set. And all this can be done within two weeks and without waiting for arrogant publishers who often keep aspiring authors on tenterhooks for almost an year.
This new world of book publishing is likely to gain even more adherents as other agencies are rapidly producing their own e book readers and their own bookstores. The famous US book chain Barnes & Noble recently released its e-book reader called Nook and both Apple and Microsoft are likely to enter the scene in early 2010. Thus e-books will now be available around the world at a touch of button without the heavy cost of postage. Many classical books can be obtained for a song. For example you can obtain the entire works of Jane Austen for less than $1.
As is usual each new technology brings its own particular set of issues. In the case of e-book publishing, the real problem becomes marketing. There are so many e- books that are now being published on the internet, that it is difficult to decide which unknown author to read even if the price of the book is only $ 0-5. Yes, there are a large number of books that are available free.. I am sure though that it is only a matter of time that the internet will give birth to critics who will review these books and publish their comments to encourage new writers and to provide some avenues to determine the quality of these books.
But it is a uniquely democratic breakthrough and one which as a budding writer I heartily commend. You can start by encouraging this trend by reading my latest book on your Kindle –“A Passion to build” for only $ 4!!
And now there is another twist that is even more fascinating. Publishing. Kindle provides an avenue to publish your own books directly and to sell them on the Kindle store. So now you can write your book, upload it on to the Kindle bookstore, set a price that you want it to sell for with no directive from any agency. Your e-book can now be read by anybody who has a Kindle worldwide at the price you have set. And all this can be done within two weeks and without waiting for arrogant publishers who often keep aspiring authors on tenterhooks for almost an year.
This new world of book publishing is likely to gain even more adherents as other agencies are rapidly producing their own e book readers and their own bookstores. The famous US book chain Barnes & Noble recently released its e-book reader called Nook and both Apple and Microsoft are likely to enter the scene in early 2010. Thus e-books will now be available around the world at a touch of button without the heavy cost of postage. Many classical books can be obtained for a song. For example you can obtain the entire works of Jane Austen for less than $1.
As is usual each new technology brings its own particular set of issues. In the case of e-book publishing, the real problem becomes marketing. There are so many e- books that are now being published on the internet, that it is difficult to decide which unknown author to read even if the price of the book is only $ 0-5. Yes, there are a large number of books that are available free.. I am sure though that it is only a matter of time that the internet will give birth to critics who will review these books and publish their comments to encourage new writers and to provide some avenues to determine the quality of these books.
But it is a uniquely democratic breakthrough and one which as a budding writer I heartily commend. You can start by encouraging this trend by reading my latest book on your Kindle –“A Passion to build” for only $ 4!!
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Brave Thinkers
For more than 150 years, the Atlantic has told the stories of people who commit acts of moral and intellectual bravery by espousing unpopular or controversial positions. Recently, in a special issue of the magazine, the editors chose 27 leaders - from business and politics to science and media - who embody this great tradition today. These are people who are risking careers, reputations, and fortunes to advance ideas that upend an established order.
In business and technology,Shai Agassi,Thorkil Sonne, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.,Jeff Zucker and Mark Zuckerberg.
In Politics,John Fetterman,Ralph Nader,Craig Watkins,Jim Webb,Iftikhar Chaudhry and
Morgan Tsvangirai.
In science and health Danny Day,Alex de Waal,Freeman Dyson,Henry Greely and Camille Parmesan
In culture Walter Hussman, Jr., Steve Jobs,John Lassater,Montgomery McFate,Trey Parker and Matt Stone
In business and economics,Shelia Bair,Ben Bernanke,Barack Obama,Paul Polak and
Meredith Whitney
For details on these choices, you need to read the Atlantic monthly. The more interesting issue for me is if we could do this in India? And when? Here is a challenge for the likes of Vinod Mehta in Outlook and Arun Purie of India Today.
In business and technology,Shai Agassi,Thorkil Sonne, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.,Jeff Zucker and Mark Zuckerberg.
In Politics,John Fetterman,Ralph Nader,Craig Watkins,Jim Webb,Iftikhar Chaudhry and
Morgan Tsvangirai.
In science and health Danny Day,Alex de Waal,Freeman Dyson,Henry Greely and Camille Parmesan
In culture Walter Hussman, Jr., Steve Jobs,John Lassater,Montgomery McFate,Trey Parker and Matt Stone
In business and economics,Shelia Bair,Ben Bernanke,Barack Obama,Paul Polak and
Meredith Whitney
For details on these choices, you need to read the Atlantic monthly. The more interesting issue for me is if we could do this in India? And when? Here is a challenge for the likes of Vinod Mehta in Outlook and Arun Purie of India Today.
Brain Drain- a new argument
In this rather interesting piece, Michael Clemens and David McKenzie present evidence against the conventional view on brain drain and how it affects the developing countries.They argue that the flow of skilled emigrants from poor to rich countries can actually benefit both parties.
“The common idea that skilled emigration amounts to "stealing" requires a cartoonish set of assumptions about developing countries. First, it requires us to assume that developing countries possess a finite stock of skilled workers, a stock depleted by one for every departure. In fact, people respond to the incentives created by migration: Enormous numbers of skilled workers from developing countries have been induced to acquire their skills by the opportunity of high earnings abroad. This is why the Philippines, which sends more nurses abroad than any other developing country, still has more nurses per capita at home than Britain does. Recent research has also shown that a sudden, large increase in skilled emigration from a developing country to a skill-selective destination can cause a corresponding sudden increase in skill acquisition in the source country.
Second, believing that skilled emigration amounts to theft from the poor requires us to assume that skilled workers themselves are not poor. In Zambia, a nurse has to get by on less than $1,500 per year -- measured at U.S. prices, not Zambian ones -- and a doctor must make ends meet with less than $5,500 per year, again at U.S. prices. If these were your annual wages, facing U.S. price levels, you would likely consider yourself destitute.
Third, believing that a person's choice to emigrate constitutes "stealing" requires problematic assumptions about that person's rights. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that all people have an unqualified right to leave any country. Skilled migrants are not "owned" by their home countries, and should have the same rights to freedom of movement as professionals in rich countries."
Again the "belief that skilled emigrants must cause public losses in the amount of their training cost is based on a series of stereotypes. First, large numbers of skilled emigrants are funded by themselves or by foreign scholarships. A survey of African-born members of the American Medical Association conducted by one of the authors found that about half of them acquired their medical training outside their country of birth. Second, many skilled emigrants serve the countries they come from for long periods before departure. The same survey found that African physicians in the United States and Canada who were trained in their country of birth spent, on average, over five years working in that country prior to emigration. This constitutes a substantial return on all investment in their training.
Third, there is the stereotype that skilled migrants send little money to their home countries, as they tend to come from elite families and bring their immediate families with them when they leave. But new research reveals this to be simply unfounded. Skilled migrants also tend to earn much more than unskilled migrants, and on balance this means that a university-educated migrant from a developing country sends more money home than an otherwise identical migrant with less education. The survey of African physicians mentioned above found that they typically send home much more money than it cost to train them, especially to the poorest countries. This means that for a typical African country as a whole, even if 100 percent of a physician's training was publicly funded, the emigration of that physician is still a net plus.
Fourth, it is simply not true that all higher education in low-income countries must take place under massive public subsidy. When publicly subsidized higher education is the only way for someone who is not already wealthy to acquire higher education, that person's emigration necessarily means that the subsidy emigrates too. But even in very low-income countries, there are alternative ways of financing higher education. One is to create ways for students to pay up front for their own training, as Makerere University in Uganda has done, but many African universities do not. Another is for the government to give student loans so that students can pay for their own training after the fact, which Kenya has done, but many African governments do not. Both of these break the necessary link between the departure of a worker and the departure of a public subsidy.In the Philippines, training of the vast majority of nurses who leave the country is financed by the students themselves, the recruiters, or the foreign employers, not by the public; there is no reason whatsoever why similar professional schools could not be established throughout Africa.
Then there is the common view that skilled migrants who leave for a rich country never come back.Again this is not true. "A striking example comes from recent research in the Pacific, which has amongst the highest rates of skilled emigration globally. Consider Tonga, a small island nation with a population of only 100,000, where skilled workers might stereotypically be thought to have little incentive to go back. Even in this case, by age 35, just over a third of the nation's academic brightest who had migrated after high school were already back working in Tonga. And in Papua New Guinea, half of the most academically skilled migrants had returned home by their early 30s.
In the United States, more than 20 percent of foreign students receiving Ph.D.s already have firm commitments to return to their home countries at the time of graduation, and many more will likely return in subsequent years. Of course there is large variation across countries: Migrants are much more likely to return to booming economies with good job prospects, as is seen by the flows of Indian tech workers back to India in the last decade. But even in cases where few migrants return, those that do may be particularly motivated by a desire to help their home country and may return to key leadership positions. One recent calculation finds that since 1950, 46 current and 165 former heads of government received their higher education in the United States.
One of the more persistent beliefs is that the" emigration of doctors kills people in Africa.Allowing or encouraging doctors to leave Africa for rich destination countries can reduce the number of doctors within the countries they come from, although even this is not clear if more people undertake medical training with the hope of migrating. However, the level of medical care provided by doctors in Africa depends on a vast array of factors that have little or nothing to do with international movement -- such as scant wages in the public health service, poor or absent rural service incentives, few other performance incentives of any kind, a lack of adequate medical supplies and pharmaceuticals, a mismatch between medical training and the health problems of the poorest, weak transportation infrastructure, or abysmal sanitation systems.
To illustrate just one of these -- the lack of rural service incentives -- policies that limit international movement choices per se do not change the strong incentive for African physicians to concentrate in urban areas far from the least?served populations. Nairobi is home to just 8 percent of Kenya's population, but 66 percent of its physicians. More Mozambican physicians live in the capital Maputo (51 percent) than in the entire rest of Mozambique, though Maputo comprises just 8 percent of the national population. Roughly half of Ethiopian physicians work in the capital Addis Ababa, where only one in 20 Ethiopians lives.
This and the many other barriers to domestic effectiveness of physicians may explain why, across 53 African countries, there is no relationship whatsoever between the departure of physicians or nurses and poor health statistics as measured by indicators such as child mortality or the percentage of births attended by modern health professionals. If anything, the relationship is positive: African countries with the largest number of their physicians residing abroad in the rich country are typically those with the lowest child mortality, and vice versa. This suggests that whatever is determining whether or not African children live or die, other factors besides international migration of physicians are vastly more important. Fiddling with immigration or recruitment policies of destination countries do precisely nothing to address those underlying problems.
But do skilled emigrants build trade and investment ties. "Not always. Just as fears about possible negative effects of brain drain are typically overblown, so is the hype over the ability of countries to tap their diaspora to set up trade and investment. The well-known case of emigrants in Silicon Valley facilitating the growth of the Taiwanese, Chinese and Indian information technology industries is an important example demonstrating that high-skilled workers abroad can have transformative impacts on home country industry. But unfortunately, this is the exception rather than the rule.
In particular, skilled migrants from small islands and from sub-Saharan Africa, where highly skilled emigration rates are the highest, are not likely to be engaging in trade or investment. New surveys find that less than 5 percent of skilled migrants from Tonga, Micronesia and Ghana have ever helped a home country firm in a trade deal, and when they have, the amounts of such deals have been modest. Few migrants from these countries had made investments in their home countries -- at most they had sent back amounts of US$2,000-3,000 to finance small enterprises.
However, skilled workers do engage with their home countries in a number of other ways apart from remittances. They can be an important source of tourism for their home countries; more than 500,000 visitors to the Dominican Republic each year are Dominicans living abroad. They are also tourism promoters: 60-80 percent of skilled migrants from four Pacific countries and Ghana advise others about traveling to their home countries. They indirectly spur trade, through consuming their home country's products, and they transfer knowledge about study and work options abroad. The lack of involvement in trade and investment therefore largely reflects a lack of productive opportunities at home, not a lack of interest on the part of migrants in helping their home countries.
Conventional wisdom once held that the wealth of a country declined when it imported foreign goods, since obviously cash was wealth and obviously buying foreign goods sent cash abroad. Adam Smith argued that economic development -- or the "wealth of nations" -- depends not a country's stock of cash but on structural changes that international exchange could encourage. In today's information age, the view has taken hold that human capital now rules the wealth of nations, and that its departure in any circumstance must harm a country's development. But economic development is much more complex than that.
But thanks to new research, we have learned that the international movement of educated people changes the incentives to acquire education, sends enormous quantities of money across borders, leads to movements back and forth, and can contribute to the spread of trade, investment, technology, and ideas. All of this fits very uncomfortably in a rhyming phrase like "brain drain," a caricature that would be best discarded in favor of a richer view of the links between human movement and development.”
“The common idea that skilled emigration amounts to "stealing" requires a cartoonish set of assumptions about developing countries. First, it requires us to assume that developing countries possess a finite stock of skilled workers, a stock depleted by one for every departure. In fact, people respond to the incentives created by migration: Enormous numbers of skilled workers from developing countries have been induced to acquire their skills by the opportunity of high earnings abroad. This is why the Philippines, which sends more nurses abroad than any other developing country, still has more nurses per capita at home than Britain does. Recent research has also shown that a sudden, large increase in skilled emigration from a developing country to a skill-selective destination can cause a corresponding sudden increase in skill acquisition in the source country.
Second, believing that skilled emigration amounts to theft from the poor requires us to assume that skilled workers themselves are not poor. In Zambia, a nurse has to get by on less than $1,500 per year -- measured at U.S. prices, not Zambian ones -- and a doctor must make ends meet with less than $5,500 per year, again at U.S. prices. If these were your annual wages, facing U.S. price levels, you would likely consider yourself destitute.
Third, believing that a person's choice to emigrate constitutes "stealing" requires problematic assumptions about that person's rights. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that all people have an unqualified right to leave any country. Skilled migrants are not "owned" by their home countries, and should have the same rights to freedom of movement as professionals in rich countries."
Again the "belief that skilled emigrants must cause public losses in the amount of their training cost is based on a series of stereotypes. First, large numbers of skilled emigrants are funded by themselves or by foreign scholarships. A survey of African-born members of the American Medical Association conducted by one of the authors found that about half of them acquired their medical training outside their country of birth. Second, many skilled emigrants serve the countries they come from for long periods before departure. The same survey found that African physicians in the United States and Canada who were trained in their country of birth spent, on average, over five years working in that country prior to emigration. This constitutes a substantial return on all investment in their training.
Third, there is the stereotype that skilled migrants send little money to their home countries, as they tend to come from elite families and bring their immediate families with them when they leave. But new research reveals this to be simply unfounded. Skilled migrants also tend to earn much more than unskilled migrants, and on balance this means that a university-educated migrant from a developing country sends more money home than an otherwise identical migrant with less education. The survey of African physicians mentioned above found that they typically send home much more money than it cost to train them, especially to the poorest countries. This means that for a typical African country as a whole, even if 100 percent of a physician's training was publicly funded, the emigration of that physician is still a net plus.
Fourth, it is simply not true that all higher education in low-income countries must take place under massive public subsidy. When publicly subsidized higher education is the only way for someone who is not already wealthy to acquire higher education, that person's emigration necessarily means that the subsidy emigrates too. But even in very low-income countries, there are alternative ways of financing higher education. One is to create ways for students to pay up front for their own training, as Makerere University in Uganda has done, but many African universities do not. Another is for the government to give student loans so that students can pay for their own training after the fact, which Kenya has done, but many African governments do not. Both of these break the necessary link between the departure of a worker and the departure of a public subsidy.In the Philippines, training of the vast majority of nurses who leave the country is financed by the students themselves, the recruiters, or the foreign employers, not by the public; there is no reason whatsoever why similar professional schools could not be established throughout Africa.
Then there is the common view that skilled migrants who leave for a rich country never come back.Again this is not true. "A striking example comes from recent research in the Pacific, which has amongst the highest rates of skilled emigration globally. Consider Tonga, a small island nation with a population of only 100,000, where skilled workers might stereotypically be thought to have little incentive to go back. Even in this case, by age 35, just over a third of the nation's academic brightest who had migrated after high school were already back working in Tonga. And in Papua New Guinea, half of the most academically skilled migrants had returned home by their early 30s.
In the United States, more than 20 percent of foreign students receiving Ph.D.s already have firm commitments to return to their home countries at the time of graduation, and many more will likely return in subsequent years. Of course there is large variation across countries: Migrants are much more likely to return to booming economies with good job prospects, as is seen by the flows of Indian tech workers back to India in the last decade. But even in cases where few migrants return, those that do may be particularly motivated by a desire to help their home country and may return to key leadership positions. One recent calculation finds that since 1950, 46 current and 165 former heads of government received their higher education in the United States.
One of the more persistent beliefs is that the" emigration of doctors kills people in Africa.Allowing or encouraging doctors to leave Africa for rich destination countries can reduce the number of doctors within the countries they come from, although even this is not clear if more people undertake medical training with the hope of migrating. However, the level of medical care provided by doctors in Africa depends on a vast array of factors that have little or nothing to do with international movement -- such as scant wages in the public health service, poor or absent rural service incentives, few other performance incentives of any kind, a lack of adequate medical supplies and pharmaceuticals, a mismatch between medical training and the health problems of the poorest, weak transportation infrastructure, or abysmal sanitation systems.
To illustrate just one of these -- the lack of rural service incentives -- policies that limit international movement choices per se do not change the strong incentive for African physicians to concentrate in urban areas far from the least?served populations. Nairobi is home to just 8 percent of Kenya's population, but 66 percent of its physicians. More Mozambican physicians live in the capital Maputo (51 percent) than in the entire rest of Mozambique, though Maputo comprises just 8 percent of the national population. Roughly half of Ethiopian physicians work in the capital Addis Ababa, where only one in 20 Ethiopians lives.
This and the many other barriers to domestic effectiveness of physicians may explain why, across 53 African countries, there is no relationship whatsoever between the departure of physicians or nurses and poor health statistics as measured by indicators such as child mortality or the percentage of births attended by modern health professionals. If anything, the relationship is positive: African countries with the largest number of their physicians residing abroad in the rich country are typically those with the lowest child mortality, and vice versa. This suggests that whatever is determining whether or not African children live or die, other factors besides international migration of physicians are vastly more important. Fiddling with immigration or recruitment policies of destination countries do precisely nothing to address those underlying problems.
But do skilled emigrants build trade and investment ties. "Not always. Just as fears about possible negative effects of brain drain are typically overblown, so is the hype over the ability of countries to tap their diaspora to set up trade and investment. The well-known case of emigrants in Silicon Valley facilitating the growth of the Taiwanese, Chinese and Indian information technology industries is an important example demonstrating that high-skilled workers abroad can have transformative impacts on home country industry. But unfortunately, this is the exception rather than the rule.
In particular, skilled migrants from small islands and from sub-Saharan Africa, where highly skilled emigration rates are the highest, are not likely to be engaging in trade or investment. New surveys find that less than 5 percent of skilled migrants from Tonga, Micronesia and Ghana have ever helped a home country firm in a trade deal, and when they have, the amounts of such deals have been modest. Few migrants from these countries had made investments in their home countries -- at most they had sent back amounts of US$2,000-3,000 to finance small enterprises.
However, skilled workers do engage with their home countries in a number of other ways apart from remittances. They can be an important source of tourism for their home countries; more than 500,000 visitors to the Dominican Republic each year are Dominicans living abroad. They are also tourism promoters: 60-80 percent of skilled migrants from four Pacific countries and Ghana advise others about traveling to their home countries. They indirectly spur trade, through consuming their home country's products, and they transfer knowledge about study and work options abroad. The lack of involvement in trade and investment therefore largely reflects a lack of productive opportunities at home, not a lack of interest on the part of migrants in helping their home countries.
Conventional wisdom once held that the wealth of a country declined when it imported foreign goods, since obviously cash was wealth and obviously buying foreign goods sent cash abroad. Adam Smith argued that economic development -- or the "wealth of nations" -- depends not a country's stock of cash but on structural changes that international exchange could encourage. In today's information age, the view has taken hold that human capital now rules the wealth of nations, and that its departure in any circumstance must harm a country's development. But economic development is much more complex than that.
But thanks to new research, we have learned that the international movement of educated people changes the incentives to acquire education, sends enormous quantities of money across borders, leads to movements back and forth, and can contribute to the spread of trade, investment, technology, and ideas. All of this fits very uncomfortably in a rhyming phrase like "brain drain," a caricature that would be best discarded in favor of a richer view of the links between human movement and development.”
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