The terror in Mumbai

Here is a detailed version of the terror in Mumbai which is scheduled to come out in Vanity Fair.

No comments are necessary. The story says it all.

Instruments of communication

Historically, when any new instrument for communication comes out, the reaction tends to be divided. Some people think it's the best thing since sliced bread; other people fear it as the end of civilization as we know it. So it has been from the time when quills were used for writing to today when politicians “twitter” on their cell phones.

It was Plato who said that if we depend on writing, we will lose the ability to remember things. “[Writing]” he said, “will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have came to know much while for the most part they will know nothing.” He also says that written words are essentially shadows of the things they represent and that “writing is not a recipe for memory, but for reminding, that you have discovered. And as for wisdom, you're equipping your pupils with only a semblance of it, not with truth. Thanks to you and your invention, your pupils will be widely read without benefit of a teacher's instruction; in consequence, they'll entertain the delusion that they have wide knowledge, while they are, in fact, for the most part incapable of real judgment. They will also be difficult to get on with since they will have become wise merely in their own conceit, not genuinely so."

We hear a thousand objections of this sort throughout history: Thoreau objected to the telegraph, because even though it speeded things up, he said people won't have anything to say to one another. Then we have Samuel Morse, who invented the telegraph, objecting to the telephone because nothing important was ever going to be done over the telephone because there was no way to preserve or record a phone conversation. There were complaints about typewriters making writing too mechanical, too distant -- it disconnected the author from the words while a pen and pencil connected you more directly with the page and the reader. And then with the computer, you had the whole range of "this is going to revolutionize everything" versus "this is going to destroy everything."

In reality what the computer did was to subvert many traditional gate-keeping facilities. We have had, through the history of communications, a tension between giving people the tools to express themselves and regulating that expression: Who should be allowed to publish? Whose manuscript should be allowed to appear as a play in the 17th century? In London, you had to have government approval before you could put on a play. Shakespeare had to get that approval from the authorities. In modern times, a few publishers decided which writer was worth an advance and which book was worth promoting. But now the internet even does away with all these gatekeepers. You do not need an editor or even a publisher. All you need is a Wi-Fi, a laptop and a place to sit and you’re a writer.

And the funny thing is that you could put almost anything out there, and somebody is going to read it. Writers spend their whole lives looking for readers but now with the internet, readers are there. They’re just waiting for people to put stuff online. Does this dilute the quality? Of course. But does it produce nuggets of wisdom from hitherto unknown quarters. That it does. Giving more people the authority to write – and more people seem to find things to say- they are also finding new readers as well. And that’s one criterion for successful writing: having an audience.

Each new instrument, however, brings its own issues. The cell phones spawned the “ twitter” culture where communication was reduced to a mere 114 letters. Many politicians took to this to prove their “hipness” only to find themselves fending off charges of stupidity and worse. Just ask Shashi Tharoor in India or Charles Grassley in the US. So one could communicate but 114 letters does not a classic make.

With the internet, access to books and writing has proliferated and one is inundated with sheer volume of material to be read. There has always been too much to read. But nobody read all the books at the Great Library of Alexandria. Nobody was capable of doing that then. Nobody is reading all that’s online today. What we need, and what we always seem to get, is a way to make this glut of information navigable. We now have search engines and various indexes. Google provides an engine to find any data or the quotation or the author we’re looking for. But we need more. We need intelligent and reliable guides to navigate this flood of information and opinion. Perhaps the recent spurt in the growth of bloggers worldwide will fulfill this need. While it is true that we can't read the whole internet, the web does allow social networks to filter the best content upwards. In this fast-evolving medium, the role of a blogger then becomes as a kind of a traffic cop directing the readers to the better sites and innovative writings. He still writes and edits, but he or she also acts as a kind of disc jockey for the collective mind - sampling the best, re-mixing the funny, keeping the crowd dancing in the public square.

The problem is that now there are too many bloggers!

The Genius Grants

The Genius grants were announced today. Also known as the MacArthur Fellowship, they provide a five-year grant for individuals who show exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future. The stipend for the MacArthur Fellowship is currently set at $500,000, paid in quarterly installments over five years. It is designed to provide seed money for intellectual, social, and artistic endeavors and the Fellows Program places its emphasis on individual creativity because the discoveries, actions, and ideas that shape our society often result from the path-breaking efforts of individuals. Typically, between 20 and 25 recipients are selected each year.

This program (a) identifies creative individuals with extraordinary promise for significant accomplishment; (b) selects these individuals from across a broad range of fields and professions; (c) gives them enough money to live decently, so that they would not be required to take other work; (d) pays out this money over a long enough time period to allow them the freedom to set their own agenda; and (e) leaves them alone to work on whatever they might choose, without any strings attached to the use of the funds or any reporting requirements.

There are two Indians who have been awarded the Genius grants this year by the MacArthur foundation. Manish Agarwala who is a computer scientist designing visual interfaces that enhance our ability to understand large quantities of complex information. Working at the intersection of visualization, human-computer interaction, and computer graphics, Agrawala draws on cognitive psychology to identify the key perceptual and design principles underlying graphic illustrations http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.5458001/k.92B8/Maneesh_Agrawala.htm and L.Mahadevan, who a mathematician who applies complex mathematical analyses to a variety of seemingly simple, but vexing, questions across the physical and biological sciences — how cloth folds when draped, how skin wrinkles, how flags flutter, how Venus flytraps snap closed. Through his explorations of shape and motion, in many different material types, sizes, and time frames, Mahadevan http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.5458019/k.8448/L_Mahadevan.htmstrives to identify commonalities of the fundamental nonlinear and nonequilibrium behavior driving them.

What is not as well known is the fact that India too has had its MacCarthur grants since 1967. The Homi Bhabha Fellowship Council has been selecting Fellows since 1967 and its objectives closely mirror those of the Macarthur grants.

The Homi Bhabha Council too seeks out and assists outstanding young persons to provide them with the means, training and opportunities for the full development of their abilities at an age when they are at the height of their energy and mental powers, thus enabling them to provide the leadership required in various spheres and, in some cases, to make creative and original contributions in the future. The object of the Homi Bhabha Fellowships Council is to give to young men and women of exceptional talent, opportunities to develop their abilities at a relatively early age, through study, research, travel and practical training, so as to enable them to provide in time the kind of leadership the country requires in various fields.

Here is a list of 125 Homi Bhabha Fellows selected over the past forty years http://mumbai.mtnl.net.in/~hbfc/fellows.html

But there is clearly a need for more initiatives of these kinds by the Indian industry. Surely investing in the young is a far better contribution to the future than a $ 1billion skyscraper?

Why are women so unhappy today?

It seems to most of us that modern women have it all. In the past four decades, women have secured better job prospects, greater acknowledgement for achievement, wider influence, more free time, and higher salaries. By almost any economic or social indicator, the last 35 years have been great for women. Birth control has given them the ability to control reproduction. They are obtaining far more education and making inroads in many professions that were traditionally male-dominated. The gender wage gap has declined substantially. Women are living longer then ever. Studies even suggest that men are starting to take on more housework and child-raising responsibilities. So why is it that recent studies reveal that women have gradually become less happy than they were 40 years ago, and less happy than men—and unlike men, that they grow sadder as they get older.

A recent study by Stevenson and Wolfers talks about “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness” and presents evidence that women report being less happy today than they were 35 years ago, especially relative to the corresponding happiness rates for men. This is true of working women and stay-at-home moms, married women and those that are single, the highly educated and the less educated. It is worse for older women; those aged 18-29 don’t seem to be doing too badly. Women with kids have fared worse than women without kids. The only notable exception to the pattern is black women, who are happier today than they were three decades ago.

According to the General Social Survey, which has tracked Americans’ mood since 1972, women are getting gloomier and men are getting happier. Each year since 1972, the United States General Social Survey has asked men and women: "How happy are you, on a scale of 1 to 3, with 3 being very happy, and 1 being not too happy?" This survey includes a representative sample of men and women of all ages, education levels, income levels, and marital status--1,500 per year for a total of almost 50,000 individuals thus far--and so it gives us a most reliable picture of what's happened to men's and women's happiness over the last few decades. There have been five other major studies around the world and more than 1.3 million men and women have been surveyed over the last 40 years. But wherever researchers have been able to collect reliable data on happiness, the finding is always the same: greater educational, political, and employment opportunities have corresponded to decreases in life happiness for women, as compared to men.

First, since 1972, women's overall level of happiness has dropped, both relative to where they were forty years ago, and relative to men. You find this drop in happiness in women regardless of whether they have kids, how many kids they have, how much money they make, how healthy they are, what job they hold, whether they are married, single or divorced, how old they are, or what race they are.

The second discovery is, this: though women begin their lives more fulfilled than men, as they age, they gradually become less happy. Men, in contrast, get happier as they get older. This creeping unhappiness can seep into all aspects of a woman's life. When the researchers asked more specific questions, such as, "How satisfied are you with your marriage?" and "How satisfied are you with the things you own?" and "How satisfied are you with your finances?" the pattern was always the same: women begin their life more satisfied than men, and wind up less satisfied.

Now these trends are not caused by women working longer hours than men. We know this because women don't work more hours than men. Nor are they caused by gender-based stereotyping. Sure, forty years ago such stereotyping was still dominant but that is no longer true. Nor, surprisingly, is it caused by women bearing a disproportionate burden of the workload at home, the 'second-shift' as some have labeled it. This explanation falls not because women don't do more cooking, cleaning and child-caring than men; they still do. It falls because when it comes to the sharing of 'home' duties, the trends are all towards greater parity.

Perhaps one explanation lies in the fact that when women stepped into male- dominated realms; they put more demands — and stress — on themselves. If they once judged themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens and dinner parties, now they judged themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens, dinner parties — and grad school, work, office deadlines and meshing a two-career marriage The more important things that are crowded into their lives, the less attention women are able to give to each individual thing.

Women are generally much harder on themselves than men. They tend to attach to other people more strongly, beat themselves up more when they lose attachments, take things more personally at work and pop far more antidepressants.

Another daunting thing: America is more youth and looks obsessed than ever, with an array of expensive cosmetic procedures that allow women to be their own Frankenstein Barbies. Men can age in an attractive way while women are expected to replicate their looks of the 20s into their 60s.

In summary there seem to be a number of alternative explanations for these findings.

1. Women have become more like men and their lives have tended to imitate them as well. Men have historically been less happy than women. So it might not be surprising if the things in the workplace that always made men unhappy are now bedeviling women as well.

2. Female happiness was artificially inflated in the 1970s because of the feminist movement and the optimism it engendered among women. Yes, things have gotten better for women over the last few decades, but maybe change has happened a lot more slowly than anticipated. Thus, relative to these lofty expectations, things have been a disappointment.

3. There was enormous social pressure on women in the old days to pretend they were happy even if they weren’t. Now, society allows women to express their feelings openly when they are dissatisfied with life.

4. The changes brought about through the women’s movement may well have decreased women’s happiness. The increased opportunity to succeed in many dimensions may have led to an increased likelihood of believing that one’s life is not measuring up. Similarly, women may now compare their lives to a broader group, including men, and find their lives more likely to come up short in this assessment.

Or women may simply find the complexity and increased pressure in their modern lives to have come at the cost of happiness.

The “lie” heard around the world

It was an awful August in the US. Just as last November had brought out the best in the country with the election of the first black president, the month of August brought out the worst with the opposition to the healthcare proposals. In November people rejoiced at the country’s ability to go beyond race, but just a few months later, the world was shocked at the naked display of racism in the healthcare debate. It was depressing to see old people waving posters about socialism and wanting the government to get out of their lives, all the while subsisting on social welfare and Medicare – both signature government initiatives. Even more depressing was to see the bellicosity and ignorance of these crowds that ostensibly came out to oppose the proposed healthcare reforms but were really driven by their inability to accept a black president as the head of their government. Some yearned for older days when all was controlled by the whites- in particular the southern whites – in their plantations while the “uppity” niggers were kept in their place working in the cotton fields. All of this culminated in a white congressmen from south Carolina shouting “ you lie” during a presidential address to the joint houses of congress- an egregious display of bad manners and loutish behavior never seen before in the US congress. All the gains of the past ten months seemed to count for nothing as this obscene display of overt racism took to the air ways egged on by supine and spineless republicans and greedy radio talk show hosts. The problem of how to deal with a small group of vociferous opponents and racists has passed through the strategy of ignoring them, to downplaying them and perhaps at some stage confronting them.

It reminds me of our conflict last year when a small group of fundamentalist politicians in Bangalore went into bars and pulled young girls out shouting that they were demeaning Indian womanhood and national character by their behavior. At that time, there had been a major public outcry against attacks by the fundamentalist’s – on the women in the pubs of Mangalore, immigrant workers in Mumbai and on the Muslims in Gujarat. Most newspapers were quick to editorialize on the them as a pernicious evil in the body politic – indeed Outlook went so far as to headline its weekly edition as “The Talibanization of Karnataka”. Others, more moderate like Vir Sanghvi, wanted us to learn lessons from Mangalore, suggested asking questions of all the politicians as to who gave them the right to define Indian culture and realizing that underlying many of these attacks were an unease with the emergence of women in the workplace—remember the pubs were not attacked when only men patronized them. In all these depredations, there were three common elements – they were led by a small but vocal minority, these were done in the name of religion or culture, and they became violent in the presence of the media to heighten their cause. Many commentators compared these outbursts to a virus whose causes have varied – anti Muslim in Gujarat, anti women in Mangalore, anti immigrant in Mumbai, anti Christian in Orrisa. But the intelligentsia were at least agreed on one issue, this was a dangerous virus that needed to be stamped out. Unfortunately few had any specific actions to recommend on what we could do.

After all these BJP louts displayed the same anger and defiance as their counterparts in the US and perhaps it originated from some of the same insecurities. After all BJP represented the majority Hindu community and by extension, the nation. A nation which was now represented by a Muslim President, a sikh prime minister and a roman catholic leader of the congress party. It was their policies that had led to globalization which in turn had provided women with equal rights and jobs in the market place and the ability to drink in bars with their male colleagues. Women, according to these BJP fundamentalists, needed to stay at home to look after the children. These small groups, too, were egged on by ambitious politicians whose leaders refused to condemn them. It took a spontaneous movement, spurred by the internet, started by a girl to send “pink chaddis” ( underwear) to shame the movement and its leaders into silence and retreat, at least for the moment.

The behavior and actions of these goons put me in mind of adults who have to deal with the “terrible two” tantrums of children. There too the tantrum is brought on by some deep seated psychosis and an apparent minor ( at least to us) issue like someone denying them a chocolate treat. The ensuing wailing and crying are out of all proportions to the issue but no amount of love and cajoling will quiet them. Any sort of reasoned discourse is, of course, impossible at least during the tantrum, which needs to run its course. Of course there will be some damage as the child throws anything within reach to the ground or hurls them to the one trying to soothe them. But the tantrum will eventually pass and life resume its usual rhythm.

But in the case of the adults having these temper tantrums, the resolution is not that simple. For one, the response is emotional, springing from deep insecurities and unlikely to yield to rational discussion. For another, the things they hurl are not childish things but guns!

The dilemna of Afghanistan

Ahmed Rashid has been one of the most perceptive observers and writers of events in Pakistan and Afghanistan. His latest piece provides a summary of the latest events even as they evolve in Afghanistan. It is worth a read simply because there are so few journalists who can write with authority on one of the more difficult issues of the day.

The forgotten benefactor of humanity

I met Norman Borlaug in 1969 when I was working with an organization to set up an International Action Corp, modelled on the Peace Corps but directed at the developing countries. We were trying to get funding for our initiative and seeking wisdom and support from those who were deeply involved in development of poor societies. Norman Boraug was certainly one of them.Indeed he has been called the forgotten benefactor of humanity and the man who saved a billion lives.

Borlaug was the Father of the Green Revolution, the dramatic improvement in agricultural productivity that swept the globe in the 1960s. For spearheading this achievement, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

Norman Borlaug was truly a great man and deserves to be remembered for what he did for world hunger.

Profiles in courage

Throughout his political career, President Kennedy inspired people to follow their conscience and to work for the benefit of their communities, their country, and their world. He believed that each person can make a difference, and that everyone should try. In particular, he wanted to restore a belief in politics as a noble profession and a calling to public service. The Profile in Courage Award was created in 1989 to recognize and celebrate the quality of political courage and sought to make Americans aware of the conscientious and courageous acts of their public servants, and to encourage elected officials to choose principles over partisanship – to do what is right, rather than what is expedient.

"In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience – the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men – each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient – they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration." John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage

In recent days, though, one is increasingly forced to conclude that present times require instead a different kind of award—a profile in cowardice award. This award needs to be given to politicians and public servants who betray the public trust, who refuse to stand up for their own beliefs, who cower behind platitudes and lies, and who find truth to be too uncomfortable to embrace.

It is not difficult to select them today—in the US it is the republican leadership who have been unable to stand up to the worst instincts of their followers, who have declined to uncover lies about death panels and health care and who have dragged the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt to an abyss of nihilism and know-nothingness. In India, the BJP leadership’s reactions to a book by one of their own, Jaswant Singh, shows a similar level of cowardice and stupidity.

Recent tributes to Walter Cronkite highlighted another area of such awards – TV journalists who find it difficult to tell the truth. Nothing has degraded the public discourse than the TV networks and newspapers spawned by Rupert Murdoch in the US. Yet main stream media are, with a few rare exceptions, afraid of calling them out on their outrageous assertions and instead cower under the flimsy pretext of being objective and presenting both sides of an issue. These too are deserving of the profiles in cowardice awards.

So it is reassuring to find that there still lives a level of courage and hope in public figures. And it is captured so perfectly in the last letter that Ted Kennedy wrote to Barack Obama even as the doctors pronounced that his cancer was terminal in May of this year.


Dear Mr. President,

I wanted to write a few final words to you to express my gratitude for your repeated personal kindnesses to me – and one last time, to salute your leadership in giving our country back its future and its truth.

On a personal level, you and Michelle reached out to Vicki, to our family and me in so many different ways. You helped to make these difficult months a happy time in my life.

You also made it a time of hope for me and for our country.
When I thought of all the years, all the battles, and all the memories of my long public life, I felt confident in these closing days that while I will not be there when it happens, you will be the President who at long last signs into law the health care reform that is the great unfinished business of our society. For me, this cause stretched across decades; it has been disappointed, but never finally defeated. It was the cause of my life. And in the past year, the prospect of victory sustained me-and the work of achieving it summoned my energy and determination.
There will be struggles – there always have been – and they are already underway again. But as we moved forward in these months, I learned that you will not yield to calls to retreat - that you will stay with the cause until it is won. I saw your conviction that the time is now and witnessed your unwavering commitment and understanding that health care is a decisive issue for our future prosperity. But you have also reminded all of us that it concerns more than material things; that what we face is above all a moral issue; that at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.

And so because of your vision and resolve, I came to believe that soon, very soon, affordable health coverage will be available to all, in an America where the state of a family’s health will never again depend on the amount of a family’s wealth. And while I will not see the victory, I was able to look forward and know that we will – yes, we will – fulfill the promise of health care in America as a right and not a privilege.

In closing, let me say again how proud I was to be part of your campaign- and proud as well to play a part in the early months of a new era of high purpose and achievement. I entered public life with a young President who inspired a generation and the world. It gives me great hope that as I leave, another young President inspires another generation and once more on America’s behalf inspires the entire world.

So, I wrote this to thank you one last time as a friend- and to stand with you one last time for change and the America we can become.

At the Denver Convention where you were nominated, I said the dream lives on.
And I finished this letter with unshakable faith that the dream will be fulfilled for this generation, and preserved and enlarged for generations to come.

With deep respect and abiding affection,
[Ted]