Is The Matrix coming true?
by Ritwik on July 26, 2009
Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.
Theatre of the absurd: outcomes of the Lyngdoh Committee Report
by Ritwik on July 22, 2009
The following is a riveting drama possible only in the contradiction that is India.
*a nod to history: all characters & situations in the following work are imaginary. Any resemblence to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
The players:
The Long Arm of The Law: it is omniscient. It extends everywhere, in every domain, in every direction.
JM Lyngdoh and minions – tasked by The Long Arm of The Law to rewrite the rules of student union elections.
“Student” “Leaders” – who are neither one nor the other.
Universities – the canvases on which above artists show-off their wizardry.
Jawaharlal Nehru University – it happens to be an actual university [gasp!] with a functioning and vibrant students union [big gasp!] comprised of people who are students as well as leaders [gasp leading to asphyxiation]
Narrator: at times, a direct victim of aforementioned wizardry; at other times, a scarcely believing observer of this theatrical production.
AND ….
The Report: it is the final word, to be applied in unaltered form all over the country. Logic, common sense, practicality all be damned.
Synposis:
Act 1
It is felt that student union elections are infested with corruption, overt political interference and unaccountability. The Long Arm of The Law tasks JM Lyngdoh and minions to rewrite the rules of student union elections.
Act 2
JM Lyngdoh and minions tour the country. Write what is already known: student union politics is dirty. Then they visit JNU, and document the election process in that university and immortalize it in the form of The Report. They effect certain cosmetic changes [no printed posters, for example] but otherwise are so impressed by the JNU election process that they essentially plagiarize it. They mention that elections in JNU are vibrant, participative, issue-oriented, non-violent and non-coercive.
Act 3
The theatre shifts to Delhi University. The Report mandates that “Student” “Leaders” must have a certain minimum attendance, otherwise they’d be barred from the election process. This results in established party candidates magically acquiring 90% attendance overnight. A clean independent candidate like the Narrator is conveniently dispensed with through this filter.
Other points of The Report – like campaign expenditure limits, non-use of vehicles, even non-use of printed posters all lie in tatters. Voter turnout plummets to 25%, from 45% an year ago. Thus, voter participation also lies in tatters.
The Result: DU elections proceed as before, with no qualitative change whatsoever. However, on paper The Report has been implemented. This is to the satisfaction of The Long Arm Of The Law.
Act 4
JNU elections are held. Lyngdoh recommendations are not implemented because they are already in place [Lyngdoh copied from JNU, remember?]. Printed posters and pamphletes are still allowed. Unlike DU, these pamphletes stress on issues and ideology. They are not modelling portfolios of candidates like in DU.
A new students union is chosen. It does good work, like raising the issue of labourers on campus not being paid minimum wages. [contrast this with illustrious “Student” “Leaders” in other universities].
But The Long Arm Of the Law is unamused. Criticizes JNU for not implementing The Report. Suspends the union.
Result: Union is still suspended. The country’s most vibrant and effective students union movement has suffered a massive setback. Nobody knows what is going to happen next.
Act 5 – Conclusion:
The Report set out to duplicate the JNU model in other universites. Other universities function as before; the report is implemented only on paper.The JNU election process is on life-support, desperately seeking blood transfusion.
The Law is satisfied in its glory.
Recent comments on this blog
by Ritwik on July 21, 2009
Some interesting recent comments on this blog:
Naval Das comments on Why statues won’t help Mayawati:
Ritwik and Shivam, you don’t truly understand this matter: you shouldnt be talking about this.
Mayawatiji is truly the heroine of the hindus of this country.
Like dayanand, the struggle of ambedkar and mayawati is an internal struggle of hinduism.
Mayawati has never said that she will convert to another faith. she now accpets hindu iconography openly (haathi nahi ganesh hai, brahma vishnu mahesh hai)
The act of erecting statues is a truly pagan, hindu act.
Its christians who find it odd that someone is erecting their own statues. The kings of vijaynagar did this often. so did other hindu kings. and the romans and other pagan people. Ritwik, when people like you feel odd that statues of a living person are being put up, I shake my head at the christianisation of this country!the dalit struggle is an internal reform movement of hinduism, and that is the reason why mayawati has never had a problem in joining hands with the BJP.
inspite of political tensions, mayawati chose to stand with narendrabhai in his hour of distress, when she campaigned for bjp after the 2002 “riots”. This when so-called allies like the unpatriotic paswan had withdrawn support to the nda.
wishy washy liberals like Ritwik and pseudo-friends of dalits like shivam can debate all they want, but unless they realize the true nature of the dalit movement, they will always miss the truth.
Long live the dalit cause.
jai bheem!
jai bharat!(Naval Das on July 19, 2009)
In reply, Neelakshi had the following to say:
I really don’t see how the question of ‘Christianisation’ (or whatever that is) is relevant here. It may be a very ‘Hindu’ act and Ritwik is probably very very wrong in writing against it. Only thing is, Mayawati’s statues and lavish birthday are not helping the Dalits in any way. erecting massive statues to instill ‘pride’ in the Dalits is also not working. As Ritwik pointed out, the Lok Sabha elections have shown that Mayawati does not hold resonance with the Dalits any longer. And has lost pretty badly in the elections.
There is nothing wrong with statues per se but if that money was only used for the upliftment of the Dalits, it would be better. Mayawati champions the Dalit cause, but I would really like to know; how will erecting statue after statue help the Dalits in any way whatsoever? (Neelakshi on July 20, 2009)
Dilip Simeon writes on Great Danes:
The Danes were not colonised, but despite their helplessness before the Third Reich they dealt with the Nazis with much greater dignity than did Vichy France. There are different ways of dealing with the same predicament. Your blank verse implies that the gross inequalities, injustice, corruption & lack of accountability after 62 years of independence are attributable to the fact of being colonised. I find that unacceptable. We are responsible for how we manage our resources and conduct ourselves in the public realm. No light is shed on the matter by continuing to blame the British for everything. (posted by Dilip Simeon on July 19, 2009)
I reply with:
Then why is that almost all former colonies in Asia and Africa find themselves in a pretty bad shape as far as human development indicators are concerned?
Nobody is blaming the British for “everything”, but equally they cannot be absolved entirely of the blame for India’s crushing poverty merely because “62 years have passed”. If the British can’t be blamed for everything, neither can the post independence leadership be solely held responsible for all our ills.
This blank verse was only meant to highlight the fact that for many, colonialism either never took place or with time, it has become a minor blip on the radar; the gross exploitation inherent to it is being forgotten. (posted by Ritwik Agrawal on July 20, 2009)
This is what packaging should be all about
by Ritwik on July 21, 2009
Help Remedies has come up with a medicine packaging idea that is elegant and effective, yet so simple that it’s surprising nobody has thought of it before:
As lovelypackage.com notes,
This is one of the best examples of product concept and design. From the naming down to the witty copy and simple, clean design, it doesn’t get much better than this.
more images here
Thank God this doesn’t happen in India
by Ritwik on July 19, 2009
Its common to say – “this only happens in India”. Perversely, a lot of Indians have even begun saying this with a degree of affection for the chaos prevalent in this country.
To balance this perspective somewhat, and also as a concerned “citizen of the world”, I present to you a deeply unsettling development that hasn’t happened in India (yet):
The British Government has drawn up new guidelines “to help prevent unsuitable people from working with children and vulnerable adults.” A new body called the Independent Safeguaring Authority has been established which is responsible for issuing licenses to anybody who wants to work or volunteer with the aforementioned vulnerable sections of society.
I’ll just say it again: anybody intending to work or volunteer with kids, even an author who wants to read out pages from a book, will need to be certified as safe by a quasi-government body.
This is so incredible that I cannot find words to express my outrage. So I leave that to a professional writer:
It seems to be fuelled by a combination of prurience, sexual fear and cold political calculation, when you go into a school as an author or an illustrator you talk to a class at a time or else to the whole school. How on earth — how on earth — how in the world is anybody going to rape or assault a child in those circumstances? It’s preposterous.”
-Phillip Pullman
I would like to add that this move seems to have resulted from an absurd kind of political correctness, one that runs like “kids should be protected at all costs, even at the cost of social sanity”.
This really has brought home to me the sheer extent to which governments have started entering people’s life. What the f*** happened to the counter culture? Where is the universal declaration of human rights? How is this even possible under a democratic regime?
Charlie’s Diary talks about the considerable ill effects of such a move, and the very real danger of false positives.
But beyond that, this sucks also because it makes the system extremely unforgiving. There is simply no scope for an offender to reform. Commit one offence, or even be doubted of an offence and the government can bar you from working in a school, or in a day care centre, or as a school bus driver, presumably even as a traffic warden.
I can only hope and pray that common sense will prevail and the ISA will be dismantled.
Why statues won’t help Mayawati
by Ritwik on July 17, 2009
Recently there has been a fair bit of comment on the Mayawati government’s decision to build statues and memorials to “Dalit icons” [including herself] at a cost of thousands of crores of taxpayer money.
While the commentary on this matter has been relatively recent, large scale edification has been on Mayawati’s radar ever since she first assumed chief ministership of India’s largest state, back in the mid nineties. Over the last two decades and more, erecting statues of Ambedkar and other Dalit icons has been seen as a potent symbol of the shift in the dynamics of power. Like all manifestations of identity politics, Dalit leaders sought to give their followers “pride”, as a substitute for real improvement in the ground situation.
Much of the reporting and “analysis” regarding the latest statue building exercise, in newspapers and on TV [between such vital topics as “dhoni ke dhurandar” and “rakhi ka swayamwar”] hasn’t touched upon the topic of electoral gain: will this statue building spree benefit Mayawati electorally? A happy exception is Gautam Bhatia’s article in Open magazine, in which Bhatia lambasts Mayawati for wasting not only vast amounts of money, but also a real opportunity of providing change.
Bhatia’s piece aside, the lack of electoral speculation is hardly surprising – the Indian media [particularly of the English language variety] has a terrible record of predicting electoral outcomes.
We must not forget that this is the same media which was projecting no more than 150 seats for BSP in the 2007 UP assembly elections [BSP finally got 200+ for a simple majority]. After that stellar performance, the media pendulum swung the other way, with commentators falling over themselves projecting 40+ parliamentary seats for the BSP. Some went so far as to project Mayawati as a viable candidate for Prime Ministership.
The people, sadly for the commentators and happily for the country, gave Mayawati a total of 19 seats, way less than any opinion poll prediction.
The media, still licking its wounds, has apparently decided not to stick out its neck once again, and is thus refusing to speculate about the electoral dividend [if any] generated by what one reporter has charmingly called the ‘BSP School of Architecture’. The reporter, an avid propagandist of the BSP movement, seems to have temporarily stopped writing on Dalit issues ever since the Lok Sabha results. Now, he wisely devotes his attention to matters such as LGBT rights and persecution of Uighurs in China.
Since I am not a journalist, nor connected to the media in any way, I will go ahead and do what most Indians are very happy doing in their drawing rooms/paan shops/offices/playgrounds etc etc – predict the fate of politicians and political parties.
I contend that this grand architectural exercise is not going to help Mayawati in any way. The fact remains that BSP candidates lost 15 out of 17 reserved constituencies in UP in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. This clearly implies that BSP’s trustworthy core votebank of Dalits deserted it in large numbers. It is my hunch that non-jatav dalits didn’t vote for Mayawati this time as enthusiastically as 2007.
Mayawati seeks to win back these sections through the tired old formula of “pride”. I firmly believe that his formula is now past its sell-by date.
How will I prove my assertion?
Well, certainly not through a “caste based voting pattern survey”, or whatever the hell it is called. In a secret ballot, how the hell do you get to know that 33.67% leuva patels voted for BJP?
I have a much more reliable formula on which I base my political predictions. My weather vane is our ever unreliable Indian English media. Much as when the Met department predicts rain, I apply sunscreen, when I see a topic garnering massive attention in the English language press, it is clear that the issue has no great resonance with the masses.
For example, almost nobody wrote about Mayawati’s “social engineering” [going on since at least 2003] before the 2007 UP elections. After her stunning victory,social engineering was the buzz in town. This time, the English press focused only on social engineering, forgetting about such petty matters as crime and ganglordism, and the BSP was swept aside. In much the same way, statues had resonance in the 80s and the 90s, when the press was busy elsewhere [high number of beauty queens from India, for example]. Now that the press focuses on statues, I am sure the real issues lie elsewhere, such as water scarcity in Bundelkhand.
A world of sheep
by Ritwik on July 16, 2009
courtesy: xkcd, a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language.
Common sense just died
by Ritwik on July 13, 2009
Rock band Deep Purple has been fined for playing “unlicensed” music during a performance in Russia.
According to rules, all performers have to obtain a license from Russian Authors Society, an NGO that represents the rights of foreign performers in Russia.
The problem: Deep Purple has been fined for playing their own songs. According to a local court, the rock band should’ve obtained a license from Russian Authors Society before playing their own music.
It gets better: The offender [Deep Purple] has been asked to pay the fine to the affected party, which is, umm, a band named Deep Purple.
Full story on Contact Music
Equal Rights are not a zero sum game: Response to Swapan Dasgupta
by Ritwik on July 8, 2009
Appliepiecrust has written a strong rejoinder to Swapan Dasgupta’s diatribe against gay rights.
You can read it here
Excerpts:
Mr. Dasgupta is concerned about “in-your-face-gayness” and militant gay activism, and believes all gay activism to be defined by this “perverseness.” This concern can be addressed with two brief points. The first is that some amount of what he terms “in-your-face-gayness” isrequired for increasing the visibility of an otherwise invisible minority. The second is simply that not much gay activism is militant or “in-your-face” at all – a lot of this activism is happening in the courtrooms, on editorial pages such as these, and in day-to-day lives of people living their lives honestly and openly.
Great Danes
by Ritwik on July 8, 2009
Danish friends of a friend were recently in town.
They decided to go on a bus trip.
Just before boarding their bus, in Connought Place, they had their first encounter with poverty
poverty, of the killing kind
the one that kills you, and kills your dignity.
They were shocked, and moved to comment:
In denmark, we don’t have such things
In our country, we tax the rich
and give to the poor, and
thus nobody is really poor.
we have free education, world class hospitals
and no crime, grime and grimness.
my friend, listened, with envy
and also rattled, by jaw dropping naivete
small problem, he said,
really minor, indeed
the only thing is: you were never, in fact, a colony.