Imagine you get invited to a feast and when you arrive, at the door they hand you a ticket randomly drawn out of a hat. That ticket determines which of three different meals you will receive at this feast. You, like 15% of the invitees, could get a top-class ticket. You would have a lavish meal with meats, fruits, and desserts seated at a nice table and be served the food.
Continue reading “The Hunger Banquet (or How to Fix the System for Good)”
Calvin: It’s true, Hobbes. Ignorance is bliss.
Once you know things, you start seeing problems everywhere…
And once you see problems, you feel like you ought to try to fix them…
And fixing problems always seems to require personal change…
And change means doing things that aren’t fun! I say phooey to that!
But if you are willfully stupid, you don’t know any better, so you
can keep doing whatever you like!
The secret of happiness is short-term, stupid self-interest!
Hobbes: We’re heading for that cliff!
Calvin: I don’t want to know about it.
[They go over a cliff and land in a heap at the bottom.]
Hobbes: I’m not sure I can stand so much bliss.
Calvin: Careful! We don’t want to learn anything from this.
from the incomparable comic strip
Calvin and Hobbes
What do we want in India? If foreigners want these things, we want them twenty times more. Because…in spite of our boasted ancestry of sages, compared to many other races, I must tell you that we are weak, very weak. First of all is our physical weakness. That physical weakness is the cause of at least one-third of our miseries. We are lazy, we cannot work; we cannot combine, we do not love each other; we are intensely selfish, not three of us can come together without hating each other, without being jealous of each other. That is the state in which we are — hopelessly disorganized mobs, immensely selfish, fighting each other for centuries as to whether a certain mark is to be put on our forehead this way or that way, writing volumes and volumes upon such momentous questions as to whether the look of a man spoils my food or not! This we have been doing for the past few centuries. We cannot expect anything high from a race whose whole brain energy has been occupied in such wonderfully beautiful problems and researches!
And are we not ashamed of ourselves? Ay, sometimes we are; but though we think these things frivolous, we cannot give them up. We speak of many things parrot-like, but never do them; speaking and not doing has become a habit with us. What is the cause of that? Physical weakness. This sort of weak brain is not able to do anything; we must strengthen it.
First of all, our young men must be strong… You will understand the Gita better with your biceps, your muscles, a little stronger. You will understand the mighty genius and the mighty strength of Krishna better with a little strong blood in you. You will understand the Upanishads better and the glory of the Atman when your body stands firm upon your feet, and you feel yourselves as men.
I am deliberately leaving the quote above anonymous. Who is this guy who speaks of Indians being weaklings, physically and mentally? This passage was pointed out to me by a visiting friend. (The book is in my library and like scores of others sitting there, I have all sorts of good intentions about reading them but never seem to find the time.)
Gratuitous fault-finding is silly. Looking unflinchingly at reality, on the other hand, is absolutely required if you want to have any hope of solving the problem. This I believe is the first mistake that we make in India. The Mera Bharat Mahan attitude will ensure continued poverty and irrelevancy.
We are an underdeveloped poverty-ridden over-populated nation of over a billion people. Does anyone ever ask the question: Why is India the way it is? No. If we cannot ask this question because the answers may be unpleasant, I don’t see much hope for India. If we do not ask this question and answer it honestly, we may continue to blunder as we have done at least since independence 57 years ago under the flawed policies of the Nehruvian socialism and cargo-cult democracy.
When was the last time you ever heard of a conference where serious people with lots of knowledge and understanding got together to examine that question? Here is a suggestion for the movers and shakers of the great nation of India: commission a series of lectures by accomplished sociologists, economists, historians, philosophers, etc, which will examine the causes of India’s failures and what can be done to fix them. That lecture series can form a good counterpoint to the over-optimistic, rose-colored glasses-wearing, rocket-weilding India-superpower shouting, pyramid-power cult-worshipping, internet-surfing digital village hyping craziness so much in vogue.
PS: So who do you think is the author of the opening extended quote? Fabulous prizes for the correct answer. Please don’t cheat by using google.
Rajesh’s blog has an item on Amartya Sen on India and China. Of late Indians have been forced to accept unfavorable comparisons between India and China. And with good reason. But Indians find some grounds — often flimsy — to tilt the comparison in India’s favor. Sen writes:
While India has much to learn from China about economic policy and also about health care, India’s experience with public communication and democracy could still be instructive for China…With stunning success, China has become a leader of the world economy, and from this India—like many other countries—has been learning a great deal, particularly in recent years. But the achievements of democratic participation in India, including Kerala, suggest that China, for its part, may also have something to learn from India.
Let me first address the point about public communications. India does have freedom of press. You can print and publish all sorts of things, including criticism of the government and its policies. What good that freedom does in a nation of illiterates is open to debate. If only 10 percent of the population has access to books, magazines and newspapers, freedom of the press is a good idea in theory but has little practical implications. What would have had practical implications is the freedom of radio and (later on) the freedom of TV. Even illiterates can comprehend the spoken word and see video content. In the Indian context, free public communications implies freedom not just of the press but also of radio and TV. But with cynical aforethought, the Indian government did not allow the population that freedom.
I say cynical aforethought because I believe that the move was calculated to keep the population uninformed and therefore under control. Given that the population was severely handicapped informationally, the much celebrated “democracy” amounted to a sham because if one does not know what the government was up to, a vote does not amount to much. Bihar has had democracy for over 57 years. The result of that “democracy” is a government by crooks and incompetents. The outcome is not surprising given that literacy in Bihar is extremely low.
I put forth the hypothesis that India will continue to neglect making the population 100 percent literate because it will empower the population sufficiently and bring an end to the sham democracy. Those who are in power today fear 100 percent literacy because they fear losing their immunity.
What the Chinese have demonstrated is the simple fact that economic policies matter. Before 1978, China operated on a different set and was as poor — if not poorer — as India. Around ’78, they came to their senses and changed many of their policies. Twenty-five years later, they are a giant that cannot be messed around with. India’s economic policies — mostly attributable to Nehru and his progenies — have doomed India to what it is today. A balance of payment crisis forced India to change some of the policies but in general it was too little (and I pray that it is not too late.) Indian policy makers appear to be particularly impervious to reason. The two most important challenges that India faces are not being addressed. They are: the population and broad-based primary and secondary education.
Sonal Vaidya requested that I put a link to
The Color of Bhutan blog post which is about a
photo exhibition the proceeds of which will benefit
Bhutanese children.
The recently concluded elections in the US gives credence to
what H. L. Menken (1880-1956) predicted when he wrote:
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents,
more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and
glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s
desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright
moron.”
There is much truth in the saying that a country deserves the
government it gets. It is a chilling realization that India is
not exempt from that general rule and we somehow deserve the
inept government we have had since the country became independent
in 1947. The collorary to the generalization must be that a
change in the quality of government can only come about as a
consequence to an improvement in the quality of the soul of
the people of India.
Fundamental change — whether in an individual or in a people —
is extremely hard. It is sometimes triggered by some external
event, mostly of a negative nature. Only when an individual is
confronted with the dire consequences of his past mistakes does
sufficient momentum for change accumulates and he makes a break
with his past. Wars and other catastrophes, natural or otherwise,
transform societies, and are called revolutions.
If you want to have a revolution, be prepared to pay the price
of a catastrophe.
Stand-alone computing a la PCs delivering “services” is fine for those who can afford that luxury, but is definitely a show-stopper for those who have very little disposable income and yet can make use of those services that PCs deliver. I remind myself repeatedly that people do not want a PC — what they actually want are the services that a PC delivers. As long as we focus on the fact that it is services — and not the hardware nor the software — that matter to people, we will not end up putting the cart before the horse. So if a firm were to deliver those set of services at an affordable price, it is immaterial to the consumer whether the consumer (of those services) uses a PC or some other device. Continue reading “India and Utility Computing”
Anant in a recent comment on this blog concluded with the seemingly wise statement “to revenge is pleasure, to forgive divine.” I say seemingly wise because it does not withstand any level of scrutiny. Forgiving an enemy may or may not be a very wise principle if you are dealing with an individual. Being magnanimous towards someone who in a momentary lapse of reason has harmed you could be a good strategy if the person realizes his folly and is genuinely sorry about his aberrant behavior. But it could be counterproductive if a priori a person knows that forgiveness will be forthcoming irrespective of how badly he behaves. In such cases, pious hopes that forgiving someone is divine only leads to less than desirable social outcomes.
Continue reading “The Unbearable Silliness of Loving One’s Enemy”
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Oh, alright. I was getting tired of posting only development related stuff. So I thought that I would intersperse stuff that I write with stuff that I like written by others. Here is a perspective piece written by a Canadian and published by a Canadian newspaper. (I hope that I am not stepping on too many copyright toes.)
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Source: ‘The Province’ (Tuesday, May 1, 1990)
ADOLF HITLER IN GOOD COMPANY
by Crawford Kilian
My Lawyer friend Nick Mephisto took me out for a celebration lunch yesterday, which worried me. He is a Devil’s advocate, the infernal version of a Queen’s Counsel. What he likes to celebrate usually appalls any normal person.
‘It’s the 45th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s death,’ Nick explained. ‘My client has been hosting him-and roasting him-since April 30, 1945.’
‘I suppose your Client is very proud to have such a monster,’ I said.
‘Oh, Hitler was no monster.’
‘What! The cause of World War II, the author of holocaust, not a monster?’
‘Don’t forget my client has known them all. Hitler was just a garden variety politician.’
‘Absurd! He was inhuman.’
‘Well, what was his big offence? He believed in racial and cultural superiority. And he thought superior races and cultures were entitled to invade other people’s countries, enslave them, and even exterminate them.’
‘I said he was a monster.’
‘But isn’t that exactly what other Europeans have been doing since Columbus? In the 80 years after the Spanish conquered Mexico and South America, the native population fell by 90%. That was about 40 or 50 million people. Hitler was faster, but he wasn’t responsible for any more deaths than Spaniards were.’
‘Aw, come on Nick-‘
‘The French conquered parts of Africa and South East Asia, not to mention Quebec. The English thought they deserved to rule what Kipling called ‘the lesser breeds,’ all over the world. The Belgians ran the Congo like a big concentration camp. The Dutch and the Portugese-‘
‘Sure, the old colonial empires were bad, but they weren’t as bad as the Nazis.’
Nick Mephisto shrugged. ‘The Europeans believed that their supposed superiority justified slavery, massacres, deportations and suffocating of other people’s cultures. And Europe has flourished on that basis for centuries. In my client’s opinion, Hitler made just one mistake.’
‘Which was?’
‘He picked on Europeans.’
‘True enough, but-‘
‘If he’s massacred native Indians, African blacks, or Asians, his neighbors wouldn’t have minded much. After all, they’d all done the same thing. But treating his fellow-Europeans that way was simply unforgivable.’
‘That’s enough! If Hitler had won, we’d have centuries of horror.’
‘Just as native Indians have had since 1492, and the Africans for almost as long. Oh, my Client gives full marks for effort, but he saves his real respect for the successful conquerors, the ones who commit genocide and become national heroes.’
‘So you are saying that we’re as bad as the Nazis?’
‘Tut-tut, we’re much more genteel. My Client does point out, though, that Canadian defence policy is based on inflicting nuclear genocide on any nation that threatens to keep us from shopping in the mall of our choice. And the vast majority of Canadians frimly support that policy, no matter how many peace marchers turn out in Vancouver every year.’
Something began to dawn on me. ‘Does this mean Hitler has a lot of company?’
The Devil’s advocate grinned. ‘Plenty, and more coming all the time. You wouldn’t believe the housing crisis created by dead racists. It’s absolute hell.’
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Update (Jan 25th, 2006): See this article by George Monbiot “How Britain Denies its Holocausts“
An interesting press release was forwarded to the India-Gii mailing list this morning by Venky. He wrote:
IndLinux.org has launched a Hindi Interface for GNOME, the GUI for the GNU/Linux operating system. We request users to download the software from http://www.indlinux.org and give us their comments and feedback. Those interested in volunteering are requested to go through the web site–we need volunteers with technical skills as well as volunteers with skills in translating from English to Hindi, Gujarati, Telugu, Kannada and other languages.
I responded saying that it was a commendable effort. I had a look at the screen shots. I suppose that it is a work in progress and therefore the screen shots show a hybrid of Roman and Devnagri fonts.
Also, upon reading the press release I thought that the operating system was being localized by changing the language from English to Hindi. Upon viewing the screen shots, I realised that I was mistaken. It appeared to me that Devanagari is being used for transliteration of English words (mainly technical words) and held together in a sentence with Hindi syntax and structure. For instance, one information pop-up says:
“is folder ki sabhi executable files script menu mein dikhai degi. menu say koi file chunnay pur vuh chalnay lageygi…”
It feels as if our dear departed Rajiv Gandhi is speaking directly to us
“is country ki development kay liye, humay bahut effort laganey ki necessity hai”.
Hey, that’s a thought. Since Indians love to name every bloody thing after their idiotic leaders (Rajiv Gandhi this, and Indira Gandhi that, and Jawaharlal Nehru the other), perhaps this IndLinux should be named “RajivLinux.” And if and when a Hindi language OS (as opposed to a Devnagri font OS) comes about, it should be called “DesiLinux” or some such thing.
Seriously though, it is a great beginning and I hope this effort is successful in lowering some of the many barriers to entry to the world of IT for some Indian non-English speakers.
To which Rishab responded with
perhaps you would like to suggest a “truly hindi” alternative to this sentence? i don’t know if there is an extensive usable vocabulary among hindi-speaking computer users that has hindi alternatives for most technical words. after all, there’s no point inventing words of the kanth-langot variety.
I am neither a linguist nor do I play one on the usenet/internet/web. So I cannot suggest a ‘truly Hindi’ alternative to English technical words. But that does not mean that no one has the expertise to do so. Indian languages — Hindi included — have rich vocabularies and I am sure a rich mine of roots from which one can derive all the specific words that one needs to describe concepts that are new. What we have to do is to intelligently use the roots to create appropriate equivalents now.
It is important that we don’t repeat the idiocy of kanth-langotisms. That is a braindead attempt at translation of specific words into descriptive phrases. Such as translating the word steam-engine into the Hindi equivalent of the phrase humongous iron machine that runs on iron roads while puffing clouds of vapor and making loud clanking noise as it pulls wagons behind it.
There are alternatives to wholesale importing of English words on the one hand, and the silly unimaginative direct translations of descriptions into hindi on the other. For instance table tennis in Hindi should not be table kay upar, batti kay neechey, lay thaka thak, dey thaka thak. It could be a word that is constructed from some Sanskrit root (probably) or could be an entirely new word that enriches the language and is invented out of the blue but has some resemblance to the existing set of words in the language. Import the concept but localize it to fit into the existing scene, so to say.
Hebrew is an entirely reconstructed language and it not only serves the Israelis well, it creates a sense of belonging and ownership among them.
The time is now when we can have a discussion about what to do regarding this issue. The vast majority of Indians have little or no access to computers. We don’t have the burden of a legacy of the sort that is represented in the qwerty keyboard. We can, after due deliberation, decide to go one way or the other. It will be too late to change once about 100 million users with Hindi as their mother tongue come on board.
I cannot agree more with Mahesh when he wrote in the ensuing discussion that:
“I think there is a need to comment, to praise and condemn, to discuss and decide, to change opinions if we can. That’s why we’re here. Because we have this medium. And regardless of whether we can actually change things or not, we HAVE to try.”
The question of whether we can burden people with new words or not is not really relevant. If the made up Hindi word for ‘file’ is ‘limi’, then to a person who is learning the concept of a file, it does not matter whether the concept is called file or limi. It is too late to change the qwerty keyboard now. But it is not too late in the life cycle of the Hindi or other Indian language OS to discuss what should be done regarding technical words.
To which Venky wrote back to say
The challenge for us with localization is–How far do we go with keeping the language pure? If we take this to the extreme, we should call the computer “sanghanak” but even Hindi speaking people would wonder what a “sanghanak” is. At the same time, the example that Atanu pulled out from one of the Indlinux Hindi dialog box veers to the other extreme!
Always willing to help, I dug up an old piece that I had first seen in 1997 on the usenet. So here it is — for the record.
Windows Commands in Hindi version shoonya bindu shoonya ek (0.01).
Phile = File Kholo = Open Bandh Karo = Close Naya = New Khatara = Old Bachao = Save Aise Bachao = Save as Paise Bachao = Save money Bhaago = Run Chaapo = Print Dekh Ke Chaapo = Print Preview Paise Deke Chokri Dekho = Pay Per View Phirsay = Edit Kaapi = Copy Kaato = Cut Kato = Stupid Houseguest Chipkao = Paste Payshul Chipkao = Paste Special Goli Maaro = Delete Nazaara = View Bakwaas Nazaara = View From My Apartment Hatyaar = Tools Hatyaar Khamba = Toolbar Uh Buh Kuh Duh Thik Thak = Spell Check Isko Kya Kehte Hain = Thesaurus Khuli Chaadar = Spreadsheet Iska Bhi Naam Nahin Aaata = Database Futaas Ki Goli Kha = Exit
{Reposted from April 2003}
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 