Folks-- By way of introduction Arundati Roy is a booker prize winner for her first novel - The god of small thing - 6 years ago.Since I was not a literary book reading type and also due to the hype I ended up not reading the book. BUt most said that more than the story her flair for the language and the mastery of the imagery was evident in the novel. Ever since she has been seen and heard in every other context other than about books.I suppose being a writer gives her a right to worry about the world in general and opine on most things! I have always felt that she was shallow, iconoclaustic and had too much opinion on everything. Few years back she was one of the main activist in a dam construction controversy(govt. wanted to relocate an entire tribal village to construct the dam) and got a lot of TV time and I thought to myself that she is doing it all for the 15 minutes.The politicians of that time accused her of being exploitative of an emotive issues(!) and I believed them. She has also written hundreds of articles on world issues like Iraq, where every one, including myself, seems to think of oneself as an expert and the others to be driven by ideologies, it is very clear where she comes from. Many say taht she is aspiring to be the Naom Chomosky of India. All this context was to establish that I was no great fan of hers, i.e up until now. Last week I bought an independance day special issue of a widely read english magazine called Outlook. It carried a featured interview with A.Roy on all things under the sun. I was stunned to see the range of indepth understanding she had on most issues on how most of it was first hand.I personally know how i feel once i read a half page article on "inflation" on a broad sheet-like an expert! Here was a lady who in the course of a one-to-one interview was waxing eloquent on most things I care about as if they well chisled articles. It was enlightening to say the least on how I can be so easily prejudiced against people who say things that dont echo my thoughts(planted by half a page articles!)... --Bhooshan Excerpts from the interview: (I have removed some questions and answers which had some local language and content which may not be understood by all) http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20050822&fname=IInterview+Arundhati&sid=1 Q1: There�s been an outsourcing boom. The Indian IT and IT-enabled services industry business touched $17.2 billion in 2004-05. Fifty per cent of Fortune 500 companies are clients of Indian IT firms. Surely, some people are benefiting? Of course, some people benefit. Otherwise there wouldn�t be the kind of vocal support that it does have among sections of the people and the national media.The outsourcing industry has created thousands of jobs, mostly in urban areas, and in India that small percentage amounts to a huge number of people.But in return, there is a larger section that gets disempowered, dispossessed. The point, as always, is: who pays, who profits? This section that benefits is full of the joy of having cars, mobile phones, lifestyles that they could not even have dreamt of a few years ago.They control the media, television, they make the movies, they fund them, act in them, distribute them. They form a little universe of their own, sending each other signals of light. For the rest, the darkness deepens. However, be assured: if at any point outsourcing begins to cost America, if it begins to affect their population seriously, outsourcing operations will be shut down in a flash.We live on sufferance. And that�s not a safe place to build a home. Q2: The UN this April appointed two special rapporteurs to investigate and find solutions for caste-based discrimination in India. Can something come out of this internationalisation of the Dalit issue? The UN is such a shaky organisation. It has not been able to bring any kind of authority to international issues of late, as we have seen from what happened in Iraq. The UN was used to disarm Iraq before the attack, and then was just kicked aside. Maybe their (the UN rapporteurs�) coming is a good thing. But I�ll believe it when I see something really happening. Because today India is a market. All the major corporations are looking at India with greedy, greedy little eyes. Whether it is the genocide that took place in Gujarat, or whether it is everyday discrimination against Dalits, I don�t see any of this being allowed to come in the way of Thomas Friedman�s dreamland project. The treatment of Dalits in India is by no means any less grotesque than the treatment of women by the Taliban. But is any of the violence against Dalits in the Indian or international mainstream press? But if you are a willing and open market, will they bomb the caste system out of India, like they wanted to bomb feminism into Afghanistan? I am not a believer in these UN-driven institutional therapies.You have to wage your struggles, you have to put your foot in the door. Q3:That brings us to Friedman�s dreamland, New Gurgaon, an outsourcing hub.The Congress harped on the �aam aadmi� before the election.But the aam aadmi got pulped in Gurgaon.What lessons do we learn? Unfortunately, underpaid as they are, and humiliated as they have been, the Honda workers are not aam aadmi. They�re supposed to be the real beneficiaries of globalisation.At least they have work. Far from the glare of TV cameras, the aam aadmi has been facing not just the lathi, but also goli�in Orissa, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala.The atrocity on the Honda workers happened at the heart of corporate paradise. In Thomas Friedman land. Trouble broke out in the bubble.Gurgaon is one of three New Economic Zones where existing labour laws have never really applied.In the race to the bottom�cheaper labour, longer hours, more �efficiency��the company�s labour contractors, like all labour contractors, hired �trainees� and paid them stipends, not salaries. When their �training� was through, they fired them in order to hire more �trainees�. The TV coverage cuts both ways�it can either frighten people or enrage them. I think the police was given instructions to be so brutal and repressive in order to make an example of workers so that others would not dare to do this again anywhere. But the uproar that has ensued and the fact that Honda has been forced to reinstate those who it sacked could mean that workers realise that when they act together they do become a force to reckon with. Q4: Doesn�t the Indian elite and the middle class conveniently vent its anger on the political class and yet align with the state on most issues? This is again about the hollowing out of democracy. Even as we sell our credentials on the international stage as a democracy, even if there�s democracy at the level of panchayati raj or Laloo and Mayawati, there�s a certain amount of fear in the Indian elite that the underclasses are being elected. How do you undermine that? You undermine it by corporatisation, by creating a situation in which the politicians may hold the theatre and the audience, but the real economic power has shifted from their hands. The elite in Pakistan has seen so little democracy. So, strangely enough, they know the difference between themselves and the state. Najam Sethi can be rounded up, beaten up and put in jail. People tell me: if you had been in Pakistan, you would have been shot by now. But whoever comes to power (in India), the chances of that happening to N. Ram or Vinod Mehta are still quite remote. The Indian elite is fused with the state in many ways. We think like the state. We�re all wannabe policymakers. No one�s just a citizen. Q5: What do you think of India�s new role as a US ally? The Indian government should seriously study the history and fate of former and present US allies�the world is littered with the carcasses of their people. Only a few years ago, they were shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, and a little before that they were doing it with the mujahideen. Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Chile, other countries in Latin America and Africa. Look what happened to Argentina. And the former USSR. We are tying ourselves into an intricate economic and strategic web. Once we�re in, there�s no out. We�re in the belly of the beast. Once you�re there, you eat predigested pap. You behave. You do what you�re told, buy what you�re sold. If you disobey, you�re in trouble. Already, you can see the signs. Condoleezza Rice says the oil pipeline deal with Iran will be a bad idea.Manmohan, on cue, promptly declares to the Washington Post that he thinks it will be very hard to raise money for the project. What�s that supposed to mean? Q6:But experts say the nuclear deal with the US puts India in a �win-win� situation. If a swordfish signs a deal with a crocodile, can it be a win-win deal? Right now, it�s strategically important for the US to allow us to believe our own publicity about being a superpower. India is not a superpower.It�s just super-poor. It�s not enough to discuss the nuclear �deal� as an issue about nuclear energy and nuclear bombs�though that�s important too.Where are the studies that show that the right kind of energy for India is nuclear energy? Have we seriously explored alternative forms of energy? Why has the debate been posited as one solely between nuclear energy and fossil fuels? What are the pros and cons of nuclear energy versus energy from fossil fuels? Why has there been no public debate about these things? But the real issue is not about whether India has escaped nuclear isolation.It�s not about whether the government has capped its nuclear programme. It�s about whether it has capped its imagination. It�s about whether it has restricted its room to manoeuvre politically, economically and morally. Has it imbricated itself intimately into an embrace it can never escape? For all these experts appearing to debate and disagree on the nuclear issue, these are matters of state and foreign policy which are not to be debated in terms of morality and principles, because that�s not how foreign policy works. It�s about �strategy�. I know that. But I don�t want to think like the state. As a human being, I ask: is it alright for our prime minister, on behalf of all of us, to dine at the high table and wave from the balcony arm-in-arm with a liar and a butcher called President George Bush? A man who has lied about WMDs in Iraq, whose lies have been exposed, whose military cowardly killed 1,00,000 Iraqis after getting the UN to disarm Iraq, and killed 25,000 more subsequently? It�s worth keeping in mind that collaboration in wars against sovereign nations is a war crime. And also, if Bush is so acceptable to them (the Congress), why lose sleep over Modi, our own overseer of mass murder? We are told it�s a strategic alliance with the US, and morality doesn�t apply. But why is it that every time a government goes to war, the only reasons offered are moral reasons? "To spread democracy, freedom, feminism, to rid the world of evil-doers?" Why is it that states expect morality of us, but we as individuals can�t debate an issue in moral terms? I don�t understand. Q7: You�ve travelled in Kashmir... It�s impossible to pronounce knowledgeably on Kashmir after just a few short trips. But some things are not a mystery. Hundreds of thousands have lost their lives in this conflict. Both Pakistan and India have played a horrible, venal role in Kashmir. But among ordinary Kashmiri people, Pakistan still remains an unknown entity�and for that reason it�s become an attractive idea, an ideal even, conflated by many with the yearning for �azaadi�. It�s ironic that a country that is a military dictatorship should be associated with the notion of liberation. The ugly reality of Pakistan is not something that most Kashmiris have experienced.The reality of India, however, to every ordinary Kashmiri, is an ugly, vicious reality they encounter every day, every ten steps at every checkpost, during every humiliating search.And so India stands morally isolated�it has completely lost the confidence of ordinary people.According to the Indian army, there are never at any time more than 3,000-4,000 militants operating in the Valley. But there are between 5,00,000-8,00,000 Indian soldiers there.An armed soldier for every 10-15 people. By way of comparison, there are 1,60,000 US soldiers in Iraq.Clearly, the Indian army is not in Kashmir to control militants, it is there only to control the Kashmiri people. It is an army of occupation the Indian media�and here I include the film industry�has played a pretty unforgivable part in. In totally misrepresenting the truth of what�s really going on. How can we even talk of �solutions� when we simply deny the reality? Q8: State repression, religious fundamentalism and corporate globalisation seem interconnected. But hasn�t resistance to this nexus become symbolic, tokenist, NGO-ised and even a career for some professionals, including some would say for you? It�s true.Sometimes NGOs wreck real political resistance more effectively than outright repression does. And yes, it could be argued that I�m yet another commodity on the shelves of the Empire�s supermarket, along with Chinese cabbages and freeze-dried prawns. Buy Roy, get two human rights free! But between the NGOs and Al Qaeda�frankly, I�m with the many millions who are looking for the Third Way. Q9:And the prognosis for the War on Terror? Clearly, it�s spreading. Empire is overstretched. The Iraqis have actually managed to mire the US army in what looks like endless, bloody combat. More and more US soldiers are refusing to fight. More and more young people are refusing to join the army. Manpower in the armed forces is becoming a real problem. In a recent article, the remarkable un-embedded journalist Dahr Jamail interviews several American marines who served in Iraq. Asked what he would do if he met Bush, one of them says: "It would be two hits�me hitting him and him hitting the floor." It�s for this reason that the US is looking for allies�preferably low-cost allies with low-cost lives. Because the media is completely controlled, no real news makes it out of Iraq. But last month, I was on the jury of the World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul. We heard 54 horrifying testimonies about what is going on there, including from Iraqis who had risked their lives to make it to the tribunal. The world knows only a fraction of what�s going on. The anger emanating out of Iraq and Afghanistan is spreading wider and wider.... It�s a deep, uncontrollable rage that you cannot put a PR spin on. America isn�t going to win this war. Q10: It has been eight years since �The God of Small Things�. Is there a second novel in you or has too much politics meant the end of Arundhati Roy�s imagination? You have also been talking of disengaging from political writing? All writing is political. Fiction is especially subversive. But it�s time for me to change gear. I am sort of up for anything right now, which is exciting. Let�s see what happens. Q11: Any positive thoughts to end this dark conversation? Let me share a sweet little thing. I saw a news report about two Adivasi girls getting married to each other. And the whole village was saying: if that�s what they want, it�s fine. They had this ceremony, with all the rituals and customs, and they let them get married. That�s a moment of magic. It reveals their level of modernity, of their sophistication. Of their beauty. This message was sent using the Comp.DSP web interface on www.DSPRelated.com
OT: Thought Provoking Interview of A.Roy
Started by ●August 20, 2005
Reply by ●August 20, 20052005-08-20
"bhooshaniyer" <bhooshaniyer@gmail.com> wrote in message news:C7SdnV2H990_SZveRVn-vg@giganews.com... Interesting stuff snipped> people.According to the Indian army, there are never at any time more than > 3,000-4,000 militants operating in the Valley. But there are between > 5,00,000-8,00,000 Indian soldiers there.An armed soldier for every 10-15 > people. By way of comparison, there are 1,60,000 US soldiers inBhooshan, Can you explain the numerical formatting. I'm not familiar with the format such as 5,00,000. Is this 5*10^6 or 5*10^5?? I just never seen unequally spaced commas being used in numbers like this before. I am used to some Europeans swapping the use of "." and ",". I wonder if they call "," a decimal point or a decimal comma. Clay
Reply by ●August 20, 20052005-08-20
Thanks for the long article. bhooshaniyer wrote:> Folks-- > > By way of introduction Arundati Roy is a booker prize winner for her first > novel - The god of small thing - 6 years ago. ...I heard or read a few interviews she gave. I don't always agree with her interpretation of events, but they've always been plausible and rational. She speaks her mind, and gives me no feeling tat there's a hidden agenda to what she says. We'd be better off if out politicians were like that. Jerry -- Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get. �����������������������������������������������������������������������
Reply by ●August 20, 20052005-08-20
Reply by ●August 20, 20052005-08-20
>Bhooshan, > >Can you explain the numerical formatting. I'm not familiar with theformat>such as 5,00,000. Is this 5*10^6 or 5*10^5?? I just never seenunequally>spaced commas being used in numbers like this before. I am used to some >Europeans swapping the use of "." and ",". I wonder if they call "," a >decimal point or a decimal comma. > >ClayOh that! Many people get confused with this even in India these days especially because some of us try to confirm to the US standards (apparently unsuccessfuly!) and some others stick to the legacy formatting which is based on the Indian unit of "Lacs". In the article what you saw was actually what we call as 5 Lacs. It goes something like this: Units: 0 Tens: 00 Hundreds: 000 Thousand: 0000 Ten Thousands: 00000 Lac: 000000 Ten Lacs: 0000000 Crore: 00000000 Indian Quotation Amount International Quotation ---------------- ------ ----------------------- 1 Lakh 100,000.00 100 Thousands 10 Lakhs 1,000,000.00 1 Million 1 Crore 10,000,000.00 10 Million 10 Crores 100,000,000.00 100 Million 100 Crores 1,000,000,000.00 1 Billion I dont know where we got this from! --Bhooshan This message was sent using the Comp.DSP web interface on www.DSPRelated.com
Reply by ●August 20, 20052005-08-20
>>Bhooshan, >> >>Can you explain the numerical formatting. I'm not familiar with the >format >>such as 5,00,000. Is this 5*10^6 or 5*10^5?? I just never seen >unequally >>spaced commas being used in numbers like this before. I am used to some>>Europeans swapping the use of "." and ",". I wonder if they call "," a>>decimal point or a decimal comma. >> >>Clay > >Oh that! Many people get confused with this even in India these days >especially because some of us try to confirm to the US standards >(apparently unsuccessfuly!) and some others stick to the legacyformatting>which is based on the Indian unit of "Lacs". In the article what you saw >was actually what we call as 5 Lacs. > >It goes something like this: > >Units: 0 >Tens: 00 >Hundreds: 000 >Thousand: 0000 >Ten Thousands: 00000 >Lac: 000000 >Ten Lacs: 0000000 >Crore: 00000000 > > >Indian Quotation Amount International Quotation >---------------- ------ ----------------------- >1 Lakh 100,000.00 100 Thousands >10 Lakhs 1,000,000.00 1 Million >1 Crore 10,000,000.00 10 Million >10 Crores 100,000,000.00 100 Million >100 Crores 1,000,000,000.00 1 Billion > >I dont know where we got this from! > >--Bhooshan >Iam sorry Clay, the formatting just took off, I dont know why! The idea was: 1 Lakh = 100,000.00 = 100 Thousands 10 Lakhs = 1,000,000.00 = 1 Million 1 Crore = 10,000,000.00 = 10 Million 10 Crores = 100,000,000.00 = 100 Million 100 Crores = 1,000,000,000.00= 1 Billion --Bhooshan This message was sent using the Comp.DSP web interface on www.DSPRelated.com
Reply by ●August 21, 20052005-08-21
Clay S. Turner wrote:> "bhooshaniyer" <bhooshaniyer@gmail.com> wrote in message > news:C7SdnV2H990_SZveRVn-vg@giganews.com... > > Interesting stuff snipped > > >>people.According to the Indian army, there are never at any time more than >>3,000-4,000 militants operating in the Valley. But there are between >>5,00,000-8,00,000 Indian soldiers there.An armed soldier for every 10-15 >>people. By way of comparison, there are 1,60,000 US soldiers in > > > Bhooshan, > > Can you explain the numerical formatting. I'm not familiar with the format > such as 5,00,000. Is this 5*10^6 or 5*10^5?? I just never seen unequally > spaced commas being used in numbers like this before. I am used to some > Europeans swapping the use of "." and ",". I wonder if they call "," a > decimal point or a decimal comma.India has a high reputation for mathematics. I think they to try to add a little complexity to something they obviously find too easy. They came up with this wacky scheme for breaking up numbers. In Europe numbers have long been broken into group of three digits - thousand, million, etc. In China they have long been broken into groups of four digits - Chinese numerical terms mean 10k, 100M, etc - try looking at a Mah Jong set. In India numbers are broken up in a seemingly meaningless way. When Indians in India are conversing in English still use these strange Indian terms - lakhs (100k), and crores (10M) - even when conversing with me. I have to take a few moments out to convert what they say to a rational number system (European or Chinese is OK for me :-) ). Regards, Steve
Reply by ●August 21, 20052005-08-21
Steve-->India has a high reputation for mathematics. I think they to try to add >a little complexity to something they obviously find too easy. They came>up with this wacky scheme for breaking up numbers.On some more thought, I guess this might have something to do with soci-economical scenario as well.In India we have named description of wealthy person (like in US- A millionaire) at the entry level as a Lakhpathy(A master of 100 thousand rupees) and at the higher level as Crorepathy ( A master of 10 Million rupees). May be it all finally comes down to inflation?! Anyways,If you consider *that* wacky, try *this*(Indian principle of time or Kaala takes the cake any day on complexity): According to our ancient vedas time is spherical and hence was referred to as the wheel of time- "Kaala-Chakra". It has no begining, no end (no "aadi", no "anth"). Much before the advent of modern clock, the ancient vedic Indians(2-3 thousand years back) had quite an interesting method to calculate time both at the micro and macro levels.Here is the table I got from one of my grand father's old books(19th century vintage): Classification of Time: ----------------------- 1Paramanu = 1/379675 ; i dont get this, btw! Why this figure? 2Paramanu = 1 Anu 3Anu = 1 Triyasarenu 3Triysarenu = 1 Truthi 100Truthi = 1 Vedha 3Vedha = 1 Lava 3Lava = 1 Nimisha 3Nimisha = 1 Kshana ; My Grand father used this often in speech! 5Kshana = 1 Kashta 15Kashta = 1 Laghu 15Laghu = 1 Gatika ; 24 Minutes! 2Ghatika = 1 Muhurta 3.75Muhurtha = 1 Prahara 8Prahara = 1 Day 15Days = 1 Paksha 2Pakshas = 1 Month 2Masa = 1 Rutu 6Rutu = 1 Year Concept of the life of Universe: There are four Yugas -------------------------------- Satya Yuga = 17.28 Lac Years (1.728 Million Years) Treta Yuga = 12.96 Lac Years ( 1.296 Million Years) Dwapara Yuga = 8.64 Lac years (.864 Million years) Kali Yuga = 4.32 Lac Years (.432 Million Years) ( We are supposed to be in this age) All the yugas repeat itself 71 times, which period is know as "Manvantara". 1 Manvatara = 30.85 Crore Years (300.85 Million Years) 14Manvataras= 432 Crore Years (4.32 Billion Years) or 1 Kalpa 1 Kalpa day and night = 1 Brahma(creator) day 365 Kalpa day and night = 1 Brahma year! Even today as a part of their daily rituals many recount the day from the origin of the present universe it seems! According to calcualtions based on the above, we are living in the 28th Yuga of 7th Manvantara in Kaliyuga and that our universe is about 197.29 Crore years old (1.97 Billion years), circa 2003 A.D. On a more somber note, the present universe has about 2.35 billion years left before it is destroyed in a pralaya(the flood) --Bhooshan This message was sent using the Comp.DSP web interface on www.DSPRelated.com
Reply by ●August 21, 20052005-08-21
Reply by ●August 21, 20052005-08-21
