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Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay
Comparing China and India has become a popular pastime in some quarters, including aspects of their national economies, political systems, infrastructure, human development, environment, and more. In this audio interview, Romesh Vaitilingam interviews Pranab Bardhan of UC Berkeley about his new book ‘Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India’. It is a brisk yet insightful overview (via Robin Varghese/3QD).
Click below to listen.
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Radical Women, Embracing Tradition
Here is an inspiring lecture in which “Kavita Ramdas of the Global Fund for Women talks about three encounters with powerful women who fight to make the world better—while preserving the traditions that sustain them.” On her bio page is this quote: “Being a philanthropist doesn’t mean necessarily writing a huge check. It can mean mobilizing your community to start asking questions.”
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The Dance of Indian Democracy
(Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily.)
Why did democracy take root in India against all odds? What are its distinguishing features? What should we make of its attempts to combat inequalities among its people, especially via reservations? Over six decades later, how close is it to Ambedkar’s inspiring vision of democracy?
The Republic of India began life as an unlikely nation. Gaining independence in 1947, India adopted a democratic form of governance, a liberal constitution, and secular public institutions (at least in intent if often not in practice). None of these sprang from a living indigenous tradition.[1] Rather, they were chosen by an elite class of Indians that had developed a taste for them via its exposure to the West, and had even acquired some experience in representative self-rule in the closing decades of the British Raj. Many observers thought the experiment was doomed to failure. Among them was the stodgy imperialist Winston Churchill, who felt that if the British left, India would ‘fall back quite rapidly through the centuries into the barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages.’ Indians were unfit to govern themselves, and needed ‘the sober and resolute forces of the British Empire.’ -
NREGA: A Progress Report
Here is an excellent investigative piece full of very human stories on what I think is India’s first and only economic safety net for its citizens. Launched in 2006 via the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), it promises 100 days of employment to one member of every rural household each year. However, things have not gone according to plan and Mehboob Jeelani tells us why.
Until 2004, India had 456 million people living below the international poverty line. Yet after four years of NREGA, the number of poor, which was expected to decline, has increased from 456 to 488 million. So what went wrong? …
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Between Heaven and Earth
A most excellent article by Ronald Aronson on the false choice between god and science:
It is as subjects, indeed social subjects, that we know, we decide on truth, and we judge right and wrong. As social subjects we decide on the rules of “communicative action” in which these activities take place. And these rules include the existence of such a thing as objective truth, and the active belief that people are capable of arriving at it. If we are truth-seeking animals, we might of course ask how we got that way, but we must also ask what our truths are and what are the rules for arriving there.
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Tariq Ramadan on Muslims in the West
I liked this Al Jazeera interview by Riz Khan, in which Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, talks about a range of issues that relate to the experience of Muslims in the West. (via 3QD)
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New York’s Unique Collection of Languages
Linguists today are realizing that New York is a language “hot spot,” where they can study several of the world’s disappearing languages:
The chances of overhearing a conversation in Vlashki, a variant of Istro-Romanian, are greater in Queens than in the remote mountain villages in Croatia that immigrants now living in New York left years ago. -
The Man in the BMW
(An excerpt from a longer work of fiction. Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily, where it has received many comments.)
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Selections from Dalit Writing
Dalit writing in India has appeared in vernacular languages for many decades. Many Dalits now also write in English (as did Ambedkar) or are increasingly translated into English—the language of modernity and power in India—which also makes the Dalit experience known to the wider world. Even among this small set, there is great diversity of opinion on the caste system: its current state and trajectory, and strategies to combat it. Here are five articles I’ve read recently that I think illustrate this diversity and offer notable perspectives: -
Corporations Are People Too!
Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court pronounced that corporate speech was no different from human speech and so deserved First Amendment protection for free speech. And since political spending, as we all know, is a form of free speech, the government had no business regulating corporate spending in support of political candidates. In effect, “the Supreme Court threw out regulations that prohibited corporations from buying campaign commercials that explicitly advocate the election or defeat of candidates.” I am inclined to see this as a fundamentalist interpretation of the constitution, not an allegorical one attuned to the realities of our age. A victory of Word over telos. Thankfully, we have satire to leaven this stupidity. A corporation called Murray Hill Inc. is taking the logical next step in the evolution of the oldest democracy: it is fighting for the right to run for Congress. Why? Because in legal terms, a corporation is a person too! It can finally bypass the pesky individual politician who is a mere middleman. Watch their campaign ad below and listen to this funny interview on NPR.
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Is India a Flailing State?
In this interesting paper, Lant Pritchett argues that India, despite its economic strides and democracy, is a “flailing” state:
How does one reconcile the contradictions of a booming economy and democracy with world class elite institutions and yet chaotic conditions in service provision of the most rudimentary types? I argue that for India we need a new category. I argue that India is today a flailing state—a nation-state in which the head, that is the elite institutions at the national (and in some states) level remain sound and functional but that this head is no longer reliably connected via nerves and sinews to its own limbs. In many parts of India in many sectors, the everyday actions of the field level agents of the state—policemen, engineers, teachers, health workers—are increasingly beyond the control of the administration at the national or state level.
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Mathematics in India
David Mumford reviews Kim Plofker’s Mathematics in India:
Did you know that Vedic priests were using the so-called Pythagorean theorem to construct their fire altars in 800 BCE?; that the differential equation for the sine function, in finite difference form, was described by Indian mathematician-astronomers in the fifth century CE?; and that “Gregory’s” series … was proven using the power series for arctangent and, with ingenious summation methods, used to accurately compute π in southwest India in the fourteenth century? If any of this surprises you, Plofker’s book is for you.
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Chan Chan
The city of Chan Chan on Peru’s Pacific coast was the largest city in the Americas 600 years ago:
Located near the Pacific coast city of Trujillo, Chan Chan was the capital of the Chimú civilization, which lasted from A.D. 850 to around 1470. The adobe metropolis was the seat of power for an empire that stretched 600 miles from just south of Ecuador down to central Peru. By the 15th century, as many as 60,000 people lived in Chan Chan—mostly workers who served an all-powerful monarch, and privileged classes of highly skilled craftsmen and priests. The Chimú followed a strict hierarchy based on a belief that all men were not created equal. According to Chimú myth, the sun populated the world by creating three eggs: gold for the ruling elite, silver for their wives and copper for everybody else.The city was established in one of the world’s bleakest coastal deserts, where the average annual rainfall was less than a tenth of an inch. Still, Chan Chan’s fields and gardens flourished, thanks to a sophisticated network of irrigation canals and wells. When a drought, coupled with movements in the earth’s crust, apparently caused the underground water table to drop sometime around the year 1000, Chimú rulers devised a bold plan to divert water through a canal from the Chicama River 50 miles to the north.
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Basharat Peer on Kashmir
Kashmiri journalist Basharat Peer, author of the memoir Curfewed Night, discusses the Kashmir conflict with writer Pankaj Mishra (who also reviewed the book on the NYRB Blog). Basharat’s readings from his book are vivid and moving, and provide a window into ordinary life during the two-decade old Kashmir conflict (1 hr, 18 min). Basharat also appeared on the Diane Rehm radio show where, during Q&A, he was attacked by Indian nationalists (via Amitav Kumar).
Curfewed Night is a brave and unforgettable piece of literary reporting that reveals the personal stories behind one of the most brutal conflicts in modern times. Since 1989, when the separatist movement exploded, around 70,000 people have been killed in the battle between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Born and raised in the war-torn region, Basharat Peer brings this little-known part of the world to life in haunting, vivid detail. It is a tale of a man’s love for his land, the pain of leaving home, and the joy of return—as well as a fierce and moving piece of reportage from an intrepid young journalist.
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What to Make of the Naxalites?
An attack by Maoist rebels in the Eastern Indian state of Chhattisgarh resulted in the deaths of 76 policemen [6 April, 2010] … more than 500 Maoist guerrillas, known as Naxalites, were involved in a carefully planned trap … The death toll … was the largest in the 43 year history of the insurgency. Claiming to speak on behalf of India’s poor and exploited, the Naxalites … have a presence in at least 20 out of India’s 28 states [“The Red Corridor”]. The Indian government has promised a strong response with Home Minister Gopal Pillai pledging to “hunt everyone down.” … Thousands of people, including rebels, law enforcement officials, and innocent civilians, have been killed over the years in clashes between the government and the Maoist rebels.
In this audio interview, Leftist Prof. Vijay Prashad provides a decent overview of the Naxalites and their politics. He laments the fact that many urban Indian intellectuals—embittered by their government’s land grabs in the name of development and the trail of social injustices left behind by its neo-liberal economic agenda—have grown sympathetic to the Maoists. Prashad includes Arundhati Roy here, calling hers a grave error of judgment. He is referring to what I myself think is her brave, necessary, yet wince-inducing reportage, Walking with the Comrades.
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George Soros on the Future of Economics
In this lecture series, Soros offers some resolutely liberal and
philosophically rich food for thought on economics—an odd thing to say, I’ll admit,
for a multi-billionaire hedge fund manager. All five lectures and Q&A are hosted on this Financial Times
page (one,
two,
three,
four,
five;
5-7 hours). The first lecture appears below and is a bit most abstract/conceptual; later ones are more concrete/practical.“George Soros unveils his latest thinking on economics and politics during a lecture series hosted by the Central European University (CEU) from Oct 26-30, 2009. These lectures are the culmination of a lifetime of practical and philosophical reflection. Mr Soros discusses his general theory of reflexivity and its application to financial markets, providing insights into the recent financial crisis. The third and fourth lectures examine the concept of open society, which has guided Mr Soros’s global philanthropy, as well as the potential for conflict between capitalism and open society. The closing lecture focuses on the way ahead, closely examining the increasingly important economic and political role that China will play in the future.”
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The Discreet Charm of Pollen
It’s that time of the year again, you folks with pollen allergies. In this video you come face to face with your allergens. Achoo!
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Joothan: A Dalit’s Life
A review of a memoir by an ‘untouchable’ starting in the 1950s in rural Uttar Pradesh.
(Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily. This review won the top award in the 3 Quarks Daily 2011 Arts & Literature Contest. Read more about it here.)
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I grew up in the central Indian city of Gwalior until I left home for college. This was the 70s and 80s. My father worked as a textile engineer in a company town owned by the Birla Group, where we lived in a middle class residential quarter for the professional staff and their families. Our 3-BR house had a small front lawn and a vegetable patch behind. Domestic helpers, such as a washerwoman and a dishwashing woman, entered our house via the front door—all except one, who came in via the rear door. This was the latrine cleaning woman, or her husband at times. As in most traditional homes, our squat toilet was near the rear door, across an open courtyard. She also brought along a couple of scrawny kids, who waited by the vegetable patch while their mother worked. -
Rorty on Plato and Freud
Richard Rorty’s review of Jonathan Lear’s Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life. It’s a decade old but shows no signs of aging:
Philosophy and psychoanalysis are related as fusion is to fission. Philosophers seek commonalities, psychoanalysts idiosyncrasies. Ever since Plato, philosophers have been trying to answer the question ”What is a good life for a human being?” This question presupposes that one size fits all — that we all have the same built-in mechanism (”reason,” ”human nature”) that steers us toward the same goal. We are all here for the same purpose. Philosophy will help us understand what that purpose is. It will do so by turning us away from appearance toward reality — from the way the world looks from some merely subjective point of view to the way it objectively is, and thus from what merely seems good to what truly is good.Jonathan Lear, who is both a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and a psychoanalyst, started out as a commentator on Plato and Aristotle, but soon became fascinated by Freud. Freud tells us that each of us is steered through life by a different mechanism, a unique set of quirky, largely unconscious fantasies. These fantasies were installed in us early on as a result of the interaction of our genes with our infantile experiences, our family circumstances and the like. They determine what each of us will count as a happy, fulfilling life.
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Spivak on the New Subaltern
Here is an entertaining and though-provoking—if also a tad dense—lecture by Columbia Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a leading literary theorist and cultural critic (she is introduced in the video), well known for her essay, Can the Subaltern Speak?
