India & China: Govt. & Politics

After his recent visit to China, the Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh had a message for the Indian industry: Try to learn from the Chinese industrialists. It was widely broadcast across all the Indian media. I do not know what he meant by that - Indian industry is as great or aspiring to be greater than the Chinese regarding quality, size, or any other parameter you might choose.

Why are great Indian industrialists buying and investing in foreign companies, and not investing in India? Why is FDI flowing into China at a much greater rate than into India? Wealth and investment goes where there is least governmental interference. This is the lesson our politicians are yet to learn.

In my opinion, it would be better if the Indian government learnt from the Chinese government regarding politics and economics. Particularly, the Indian Left, who is so glad about the PM’s visit to China, will do the nation a great good if it learns from the Chinese government’s economic principles. China has welcomed all sorts of capitalist investments, which the Indian Left still myopically opposes.

I thought the Indian PM is intelligent enough not to dish out a moral lecture to the Indian industry when his own government has failed to support the industry. Does he think intelligent Indians do not see the irony and hypocrisy in his speech?

Dubai: World’s Trade Center?

These images tell a story.

The Twin Towers, a symbol of US capitalistic superpower, have collapsed. The US is busy fighting the war against terror.

In the meanwhile, Burj Dubai, the tallest free standing structure in the world, just reached a soaring 574.5m (1,885 ft) with 154 completed stories. It is predicted to be the tallest man-made structure in the world, as well as the tallest building by any measure. It’s official web site is here. Note the ‘.com’ address of its URL, it’s not a cryptic ‘.ae’ address.

Here are some of the amazing developments in Dubai:

• Dubai’s revenues from oil and natural gas currently account for less than 3% of the emirate’s revenues.
• Dubai Mall aims to be the largest mall in the world when completed.
• Its port, Jebel Ali, constructed in the 1970s, has the largest man-made harbor in the world.
• The Burj al-Arab, a luxury hotel in Dubai, at 321 meters (1,053 ft), is the tallest building used exclusively as a hotel.
• Dubai World Central will have the Dubai World Central International Airport, the world’s largest passenger and cargo hub.
• It is a hub for service industries such as IT and finance. Dubai Internet City, combined with Dubai Media City includes IT firms such as EMC Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Microsoft, and IBM, and media organizations such as MBC, CNN, Reuters and AP.
• The World is a man-made archipelago of 300 islands in the shape of a world map currently being built off the coast of Dubai.
• Dubai Financial Market’s trading volume stood at about 400 billion shares worth US$ 95 billion. The DFM had a market capitalization of about US$ 87 billion.
• The Palm Islands in Dubai are the three largest artificial islands in the world.
• Dubai Healthcare City is scheduled to open by 2010 to promote medical tourism.
• Dubailand is an entertainment complex under development, to include mega-tracts of various kinds of attractions.
• The Dubai Waterfront is proposed to become the largest waterfront and largest man-made development in the world.

Is anyone observing the contrast? While the US is struggling to fight a war against terror, a country right in the middle east is stealthily rising economically - without relying on oil - in the global economy. The contrast is stark. The US has to realize and focus on its core strengths, if it wants to remain an economic superpower, and not be swayed to distraction with the war against terror.

Climate Changes Nobel Peace Prize?

There is wide speculation that Al Gore will win the Nobel Peace Prize today, and the betting odds are highly in his favor. Let’s get this straight. Alfred Nobel’s Will says that the Peace Prize shall be given to:

the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

Sure, climate change has the potential to cause wars, but aren’t there people who have been instrumental in fighting for peace in existing wars? Ironically, this is happening when a British court judge ruled that Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth contained nine errors.

What are the various opinions being expressed?

Reuters:

“Such an award would fall under the expanded concept of peace but the activity can be linked to the climate-conflict combination and is highly timely,” said NRK veteran journalist Geir Helljesen who has a solid record of tipping prize winners.

Please enlighten me if anyone understood that.

Salon: Why Al Gore deserves the Nobel Peace Prize

What’s world peace got to do with global warming? Perhaps everything. Or it will if things don’t change fast — if, in 10 or 20 or 40 years devastating floods and droughts displace millions of refugees and spur nations and tribes to desperate bloodletting. At which point, no one will have the slightest doubt why members of the renowned Scandinavian foundation thought former U.S. Vice President Al Gore was an obvious choice for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

There’s one ‘perhaps’ and two big ‘ifs’ in that statement. Since when were Nobel Peace Prizes awarded based on ifs?

Tennessee Center for Policy Research:

Handing a Nobel Prize to Al Gore, a proven hypocrite on the issue of climate change, would be an injustice to the many people bravely fighting for peace and freedom throughout the world. We discovered that while Gore told us to curtail our energy use, he guzzled more electricity at his posh Nashville mansion in a month than the average American family used in a year.

I don’t know about the hypocrite part, but I do think that it will be an injustice to the other deserving folks.

The Investors Business Daily (quoted on an Australian site) writes on how the stature of the Nobel Peace Prize has deteriorated over the years, and says:

“Just what the Nobel committee really needs, another fraud in its pantheon of laureates. If Gore wins the prize as expected, it will mark another step in the long politicized decline of a once highly regarded international award.”

Most environmentalists are gaga over the news. Brandon Keim, from Wired Magazine, stands out among the lot. A staunch supporter of the fight against climate change epitomizes my thoughts behind this post:

If the Nobel committee does choose Gore or Watt-Cloutier or the IPCC, they’ll certainly send a message to the world. A good message, in fact. But it would still be a shame if the meaning of the Nobel Peace Prize itself became a casualty of global warming.

If he does get it, the Norwegian Committee will have screwed up the AlGorethm for the Peace Prize.

Further Reading: Common misconceptions about the Nobel Peace Prize

Weekend Flea Market 5-Oct-07

An assortment of stuff I came across in cyberspace, offered second hand, for anyone who may be interested.

• If you haven’t read it already, Thomas Friedman’s penultimate op-ed 9/11 Is Over, is a must-read.
• China has now started blocking all RSS feeds as well.
• A woman has been sentenced to death by stoning in Iran for committing adultery. Kamangir and a group of Iranian bloggers are trying to stop that from happening.
• Microsoft launches HealthVault, an online repository where consumers can store medical information for free in an encrypted database. For once, Microsoft beats Google to something!
• Ashok talked about “Collective Intelligence” in the comments discussion on my post “Runaway Train“. Techcrunch reveals that a new site, CrowdChess, has launched. You log on and sign up for a game. Each side is made up of teams of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people. Anyone on a team can suggest the next move, and the move that gets the most votes is the one that is played out. Like Erick, I too wonder if any number of amateurs can ever beat a grandmaster in this scenario! What do you think?
• MMP has his own insightful analysis of why he blogs. He has developed an interesting universal model that shows how we all live in blogging CAVES. Check it out.
• Check out Ashok’s take on the various categories of Indian bloggers to have a healthy laugh at The Blogosphere Zoopedia.
• A US Senate Judiciary Committee has passed the Free Flow of Information Act. There is still a long way to go and final outcome seems uncertain at this stage. See Are Blogging Journalists Shielded? for background information.
• The Economist paints a sordid and bleak picture of the challenges involved in revamping Mumbai. A must-read if you care about Mumbai.
• Financial Times puts Rahul Gandhi’s first populist action after ascending to the Congress secretaryship as the backdrop to describe how political short-termism is hampering retail reforms.
• I had pondered on a few questions regarding cricket’s status in India in my 10 Thoughts on T20 World Cup Win post. Social psychologist Ashis Nandy has some interesting answers in his interview with Outlook magazine. He says there are only three areas of our life—cricket, cinema (Bollywood) and crime that recognize capability wholeheartedly and unconditionally.
• I have written about the contempt of court ruling regarding Justice Sabharwal. Vinod Mehta brings greater clarity to the issue and wisely cautions that if the media and the judiciary engage in a war, the only winners will be the politicians.
• To bring this potpourri full circle back to the US, Rajinder Puri takes on a lot of controversial issues in his take on the decline of the US. Some of his comments resonate with Shefaly’s comments in the discussion on Right To Free Speech: What does it mean?.

Right to Free Speech: What does it mean?

The controversy started last week, when Verizon (one of the two largest telecom carriers in the US), refused to make their network available for a text message program advocating abortion. The program allows people to sign up for messages if they choose, and is a completely voluntary exercise of choice for consumers. Verizon would have earned (some) money from the business, but instead refused it.

The move led to a storm of protests. As NYT observed:

Legal experts said private companies like Verizon probably have the legal right to decide which messages to carry. The laws that forbid common carriers from interfering with voice transmissions on ordinary phone lines do not apply to text messages.

The dispute is a skirmish in the larger battle over the question of “net neutrality” — whether carriers or Internet service providers should have a voice in the content they provide to customers.

CNET opined:

The idea that a telecom carrier will refuse to carry messages based on content is incredibly scary. Could they decide to broadcast messages sent by the Democratic party, but not Republicans? Christian messages but not Jewish? Everybody has a point of view that could be viewed as “controversial or unsavory” to someone else. Apparently the First Amendment does not in itself prohibit such censorship, but we should not accept such an action, which has been likened to the mass censorship of political speech by the Chinese government, no matter whether the carrier agrees with the content or not. Laws that forbid common carriers from interfering with voice transmission on phone lines do not apply to text messages. It’s time to change that law to protect free speech, no matter how it is communicated.

In a swift turn-around, Verizon reversed its decision and decided to carry the message. The Verizon public policy blog attributed the reversal to a dusty, internal policy, but remained ambivalent about whether any such policy will continue to exist in the future.

In the US, newspapers have the right to accept or reject any advertisement for decades. Newspapers are a publishing medium, clearly protected by the First Amendment, as they are liable for what they publish. Radio stations have a right to reject and censor what spots and ads they run (an antiwar campaign was turned down during Vietnam and the court upheld the station’s right to refuse). What about search engines like Google and Yahoo? In February this year, a federal judge settled that question when it gave the same right to search engines as that of newspapers: thus, Google can refuse to accept any ad, without any explanations required.

Free speech and net neutrality advocates like Timothy Karr on Huffington Post are lobbying to convene hearings on telecom censorship policies. If the telecom companies were purely private enterprises, a ruling either way might have been simpler. Being a government regulated industry adds further complications, as Richard Koman argues.

One of the earliest advocates (I could find) who saw all this coming back in 1995, was Nicholas Johnson in the Wired Magazine:

We find ourselves a little late in the free speech day, having already lost our rights to speak through dominant newspapers, broadcast stations and cable.  But insisting on the total separation of content and conduit as the Internet is privatized may still be our best hope.  It’s the only free speech forum left for those of us without $200 million in spare pocket change to buy our own newspaper or TV station.

The court has already ruled that Google is not your public square. Are Verizon and AT&T public squares?

Indo-US Nuclear Deal: Mammoth Task Ahead

The Indo-US Nuclear Deal has become like the story of The Blind Men and an Elephant.

Let’s see how.

#1: Manmohan Singh hanging to the Tail

Thinking that this was the end of the rope for energy ambitious India, Singh decided to hold on to it. He warned others “not to miss the bus“.

Alas, he didn’t know he’ll have to cling on to it for his dear life as he had no idea of the ride that ensued. He probably hoped this was not the end of the rope for his government.

#2: Bush Administration riding on Top

Used to being a superpower, the Bush Administration thought it was on top of the situation.

With someone having read about The Dragon & The Elephant and told Bush about it, he thought he could make friends with the Elephant to fight the Dragon.

Alas, some observers thought he was trying to tame it instead of befriending it!

Having bet their money on this slow moving beast is now worrying them.

#3: Indian Right (BJP) clinging to the Ear

Looking at Bush on top, it first decided to join the ride, but the ears flip flopped, and so did the BJP. Having held onto the ears for so long, it thought everyone around would be all ears when they protested and brought down the parliament.

#4: China holding the Leg

China has been aware of this elephant for ages, and fears being trampled by it. While not openly attacking the elephant, it tries to surreptitiously overpower it. It’s afraid of striking a spear into the leg, fearing that the elephant may go berserk.

#5: Indian Left on the Trunk

The Left soon realized that it can easily arm-twist the trunk. Riding in the air for a while distanced them from ground reality, not to mention getting used to a lot of hot air.

Finally, the Left decided to blow its own trumpet, giving a deaf ear to the discordant trumpets from their own group.

Moral of the Story? Feel free to use the comment box!

A Case of Contempt

In a contemptuous ruling, the Delhi High Court today sentenced four journalists of Mid-Day newspaper to four months in jail.

It ruled that articles and a cartoon in the newspaper accusing former Chief Justice of India, Mr. Y. K. Sabharwal, were tantamount to contempt of court and would tarnish the image of the highest court in the people’s eyes.

Sabharwal Controversy

Former CJI Sabharwal retired in January this year, after a series of high-profile rulings in his career. In the past few months, he has been embroiled in controversy, especially related to his ruling over banning commercial establishments in residential parts of Delhi. The accusations are that this ruling benefited his son’s commercial enterprises.

Sabharwal broke his silence this month, when he responded to the charges in The Times of India. The Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms, has issued a rejoinder to his defense.

Contempt of Democracy

I wish to focus on the contempt of court ruling by the Delhi High Court, which interestingly was a proceeding initiated suo moto by the Court itself.

The Midday Editor, who was also sentenced, has clarified that they have taken truth to be their defense. They are going to appeal in the Supreme Court.

What is the ‘truth defense’ in this context? The archaic Contempt of Court Act (1971) was amended in 2006 (PDF) to add contempt acts not punishable:

“The court may permit, in any proceeding for contempt of court, justification by truth as a valid defence if it is satisfied that it is in public interest and the request for invoking the said defence is bona fide.”

If the journalists believe they’re telling the truth, why shouldn’t they be allowed the truth defense? Let further inquiry and investigation determine whether the articles and allegations were false, and if so, the journalists can be proceeded against. Gagging the media in such a way is tantamount to contempt of democracy!

Not surprisingly, there is going to be media outrage over this ruling. Experts have argued in the past about how the amendment to the act itself falls short of expectations, and as such is impotent to curtail the draconian contempt powers of the judiciary. A TOI editorial, Contempt for the Pen argues on Mid-Day’s behalf. 18 eminent personalities say “We Are Equally Guilty” on Outlook.

State of the Judiciary

Financial Times from London highlighted the state of affairs in the Indian courts today:

• No. of cases pending before the Supreme Court in June 2007 is over 43,000. In 1998, there were less than 20,000.
• There are 3.7 million cases in High Courts and 25 million in lower courts.
• World Bank rated India 173rd out of 175 for contract enforcement.
• An employment termination dispute takes 20 years if fought all the way.
• It takes an average 3.9 years to enforce a contract (compared with less than 10 months in China).

With such a state of affairs, the Judiciary is showing contempt to itself, to justice, to democracy, and the nation. It better start focusing on reform and clean up its act, rather than hold freedom of expression ransom in this struggling democracy.

Poverty is not the root cause of terrorism

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has gone on record in an interview with CNN to say:

“”You can never win a war against terror as long as there are conditions in the world that make people desperate — poverty, disease, ignorance, et cetera.

He said the disparity between the rich and poor in parts of the world causes instability and insecurity, but added that he was hopeful the relationship between the two was becoming clear.

In which world is Desmond Tutu living? There is poverty is many regions of the world from where terrorism doesn’t originate. There are many ways in which impoverished people have tackled their poverty - by immigrating to foreign shores or raising the overall economic development of their countries.

Terrorism in our age has been fueled by Osama, who is wealthy, and perpetrated by Islamists who are educated and well-to-do.

Africa is one of the poorest continents in the world - strife with poverty, disease, and ignorance. How many terrorists has it produced?

Forget the fact that terrorism needs an inordinate amount of wealth - those weapons and the educated sophistication cannot come without it - terrorism cannot thrive without an ideology behind it.

It is the fundamentalist, extremist, Islamist ideology that is fueling terrorism, not poverty. And Mr. Tutu, until leaders like you fail to recognize this, we will continue to suffer from it.

Secularism: An Ambiguous Concept

The recent debate over the proposed destruction of the Ram Sethu to build a shipping canal and the associated affidavit filed by the UPA Government, which was later withdrawn, has enraged the people of India and caused a lot of anguish and debate because of religious sentiments being hurt.

Keeping the project of destroying Ram Sethu aside, it is interesting to focus on how the people of India are responding to the Government supported affidavit (later withdrawn) by the Archeological Institute of India, which stated that: “the mythological texts of Ramayana formed an important part of ancient Indian literature, but cannot be said to be historical record to incontrovertibly prove the existence of the characters, or the occurrence of the events, depicted therein.”

While political parties are obviously milking it for what it’s worth, the debate has spread among the educated intellectuals as well. Hence we have different viewpoints like The Rational Fool on one hand, who says that the affidavit is one step closer to a secular democracy, and Nita, with a Wide Angle View of India, who thinks that the government did a wrong thing in (supporting) filing of such an affidavit. The core issue being debated is: should a democratically elected government meddle with the religious sentiments of the public that elected it? And in the course of this debate, the word ’secular’ is being used often, without anyone actually defining what it means. And that, I think, is (one of) the roots of the problem.

What is meant by a “secular democracy”?

Interestingly, such a term does not have a definition in Wikipedia. Instead, Wikipedia defines “secularism”:

Secularism is generally the assertion or belief that certain practices or institutions should exist separately from religion or religious belief…In the extreme, it is an ideology that holds that religion has no place in public life.

In one sense, secularism may assert the freedom of religion, and freedom from the government imposition of religion upon the people, within a state that is neutral on matters of belief, and gives no state privileges or subsidies to religions. In another sense, it refers to a belief that human activities and decisions, especially political ones, should be based on evidence and fact rather than religious influence.

The country of the United States was founded on the principle of separation of the Church and the State. What was the founding principle of secular democratic India? Nehru says:

We talk about a secular India…some people think it means opposed to religion. That obviously is not correct. What it means is that it is a State which honors all faiths equally and gives them equal opportunities; India has a long history of religious tolerance…In a country like India, which has many faiths and religions, no real nationalism can be built up except on the basis of secularity.

My Merriam Websters Collegiate Dictionary defines secularism as: “indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations”.

Some commentators on this topic prefer to define secularism as being neutral to religious beliefs. A review of Jeffrey Stout’s “Democracy and Tradition” interestingly expresses his opinion thus: “A secular democracy recognizes that people differ in their religious commitments; secularism, on the other hand, requires them to pretend that they don’t have those commitments.” The concept of secular democracy has even been used to propagate religious beliefs!

Thus, there is a lot of ambiguity in the concept of secularism itself. Does Nehru’s “honor” entail respect and acknowledgment? Are the dictionary definitions of the term wrong? Wikipedia’s entry epitomizes the ambiguity involved: secularism means different things to different people.

In a country with a one billion plus population founded on an ambiguous concept that is not well defined, the resulting chaos in this instance is not going to be one of a kind. This is one of the great lessons of Epistemology: if we do not define our concepts and leave them ambiguous to random interpretations, conflict ensues. The current uproar over Ram Sethu is just another epidemic of this viral root cause, that began with Nehru in India.

Technorati Tags: india, politics, epistemology, ram sethu, secularism, secular democracy

A 9/11 Tribute from Voyager & Carl Sagan

                                                 

This image was taken, at Sagan’s suggestion, by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As the spacecraft left our planetary neighborhood to the edges of our solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, when it captured this portrait of our world.

“We succeeded in taking that picture, and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you know, everyone you love, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines. Every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds…

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish this pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

- Carl Sagan, commencement address delivered May 11, 1996.

This tribute is to hope and pray on behalf of the 2996 people who were killed on that fateful day. Many more have been killed before and after, all over this pale blue dot. Just like Voyager, we also need to turn and look back at man’s history on this fragile planet. Will we learn to cherish what we’ve got, or wipe ourselves out of existence?

Technorati Tags: terrorism, politics, iraq, 911, september 11, world trade center, news, war on terror, tribute, space, carl sagan

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