The future has arrived. But, which future?

In this blog, and with my students (I have only one more term to engage with them!) I have often discussed my concerns about the China model for development and its superficial attractiveness not only to developing countries but even to "thinkers" right here in the US.  In 2013, for instance, I wrote in this post against the backdrop of a federal government shutdown:

It is tempting, in such situations, to look across at Russia and China and note that their governments are more “efficient.”  A few months ago, well before this partial shut down, even the New York Times columnists, Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof, had written about how the Chinese get things done while we squabble here.  When Valdimir Putin effortlessly pushes ahead with his agenda, there are appreciative comments as well.

The Chinese model looks "efficient."  The American model of democracy, on the other hand, has always seemed messy, and the past five years of tRumpian politics has only worsened the standing of American politics and governance.

No wonder then that I was attracted to this essay in The Atlantic, in which the author argues that when Joe Biden worries about China it is not merely about the economic competition.  Nope.  His worry is something much bigger.  "In Biden’s view, the United States and other democracies are in a competition with China and other autocracies."

The old rules-based international order has come apart, and two broad constellations of countries are emerging in its place—one consisting of democracies, the other autocracies. Each side is motivated more by insecurity than by an ambition to transform the world in its image. Xi and his fellow autocrats worry that the free flow of information, the attractiveness of democracy, and economic interdependence would destabilize their regimes. Biden and America’s allies are concerned that Xi’s attempt to make the world safe for the Chinese Communist Party will undermine freedom and democracy, pushing international rules in an illiberal direction and empowering autocrats worldwide.

Sure, there are other interpretations of China in the global stage.  Biden gets my vote on this with his concern that the China model is a serious threat to liberal democracy.

And, yet again consistent with my world view, another essay argues that the fate of democracy in the world depends on the fate of democracy in one country--India, where liberal democracy has been rapidly losing ground to authoritarianism that is favored by mOdi and his toadies.

And the rest of the world doesn't even need a microscope to examine what the tRumpian Republicans have been doing in the states that are governed by them: Democracy is already dying in those states!

As Biden says, we are at an inflection point.  What we do and say have immense implications for the global future of liberal democracy.

When developed countries are worse

When Covid went global, we worried in our own ways about nightmarish scenarios in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, and other countries.  These are countries with huge populations, and with very little medical infrastructure.

I was practically getting panic attacks from thinking about the old country.  My sleep was getting disturbed, and no amount of playing bridge was of help.

A year into the pandemic, conditions in India and elsewhere have become a medical mystery, which Siddhartha Mukherjee writes about in The New Yorker: "While the virus has ravaged rich nations, reported death rates in poorer ones remain relatively low." 

[If] you look at the pattern of covid-19 deaths reported per capita—deaths, not infections—Belgium, Italy, Spain, the United States, and the United Kingdom are among the worst off. The reported death rate in India, which has 1.3 billion people and a rickety, ad-hoc public-health infrastructure, is roughly a tenth of what it is in the United States. In Nigeria, with a population of some two hundred million, the reported death rate is less than a hundredth of the U.S. rate. Rich countries, with sophisticated health-care systems, seem to have suffered the worst ravages of the infection. Death rates in poorer countries—particularly in South Asia and large swaths of sub-Saharan Africa—appear curiously low.

How do we explain this?

Mukherjee goes through the typical hypothesis you and I might propose--from younger population to prevalence of infectious diseases leading to immunity, to undercounting , to ... you name the possibility and Mukherjee addresses them all. It is a wonderful read, and an awesomely informative one.

Towards the end, Mukherjee writes:

The covid-19 pandemic will teach us many lessons—about virological surveillance, immunology, vaccine development, and social policy, among other topics. One of the lessons concerns not just epidemiology but also epistemology: the theory of how we know what we know. Epidemiology isn’t physics. Human bodies are not Newtonian bodies. When it comes to a crisis that combines social and biological forces, we’ll do well to acknowledge the causal patchwork.

Meanwhile, another Indian-American medical writer, Atul Gawande reports on the worst-hit county in the worst-hit state in the worst-hit country.  The county is the US.  North Dakota is the state.

Gawande writes:

When an entire community must decide how to tackle a serious problem—must choose what it is and is not willing to sacrifice—matters get more complicated. In business, the decision-maker is generally clear, and, if you don’t like the decision, too bad. The boss can insist on obedience. But that’s not how democracy works. We designate decision-makers, but the community has to live with dissent. This is why businesspeople so often make terrible government leaders. They’ve never had to manage civic conflict and endure unending battles over priorities and limits.

Keep in mind who presided over the federal government when the pandemic broke.

As of writing this post, 510,458 have died because of Covid here in the US.

I hope we will learn the lessons from this pandemic and be absolutely ready for the next one.

The fear of the "other"

Consider Germany and the US.  If I were asked which country is the land of immigrants, well, the answer is a no-brainer.  That's what I would think.

As with many things in life, what I think might not be correct!

Take a look at the chart below:

Source

Really?  Germany's foreign-born population slightly exceeds (percentage-wise) that of the US?

Sure, a significant component of the foreign-born in Germany are from other EU countries.  But, still, that high a percentage?

We live in a remarkable time when it is so easy to physically move to a new place that could be far from where we are born.  A plane ticket and a few hours later one could be on the other side of the planet.  It is practically magic.

But, the magic does not happen more only because countries--we, the people--prevent the movement.  And collectively we are losing:

If everyone who wanted to migrate were able to do so, global GDP would double, estimates Michael Clemens of the Centre for Global Development, author of a forthcoming book, “The Walls of Nations”. No other policy change comes close to generating such colossal rewards. If there is $90 trillion a year up for grabs, you might think that policymakers would be feverishly devising ways to get a piece of it. They are not.

How bizarre our behavior is!

It has become physically much easier to move, but bureaucratically much harder. Only 2% of those who arrived at Ellis Island a century ago were turned away.

Ahem, a century ago, those arriving at Ellis Island were not brown-skinned people!  But, ok, point taken.

Now it is extremely difficult to migrate legally from a poor country to a rich one, unless you are highly skilled or a close relative of a legal resident. America’s green-card lottery last year attracted 294 applicants for each of its 50,000 slots. Partly because of Mr Trump’s efforts to make life hard for them, the net inflow of all migrants fell by 74% in 2018, to 200,000 people. Globally, many more people would like to move than can. A Gallup poll suggests that 750m people—15% of the world’s adults—want to settle permanently abroad. That includes 33% of sub-Saharan Africans and 27% of those in Latin America and the Caribbean.

We can do better. But, when even an American citizen of Iranian descent is suspect, when the President's adviser on immigration wants to peddle racist tropes, ... I will conclude by quoting Branko Milanovic again:

[As] economic migration faces increasing obstacles in rich countries (and, it has to be added, not solely because of xenophobia but for economic reasons as well), the ideal of a world “without injustice of birth” recedes.

Le Deuxième Sexe en Amérique

I grew up in an India that had a woman as a Prime Minister.  I grew up with an elder sister. In my classes, girls were smart, and attractive.

Even though I was fully aware of the restrictions on women of all ages, while men of all ages had a lot more freedom, I never thought twice about the ability of women to be engineers, doctors, or political leaders.

Here in the adopted land, I am shocked day in and day out on how much women are not taken seriously, especially in politics. 

Heck, even in college administration.  In the history of my university, which has gone through many transformations from its founding in 1856, guess how many female presidents we have had?  Let me make the math simple: How many female presidents of my university over the past 163 years?

One.

Yep. Only one. From 1995 to 2002.

But, hey, the consolation is that our story is more the rule than an exception. At least we had one female president.  The flagship university in the state hasn't had even that many. I don't think they have even had a female provost!

I have threaded together a few tweets about how the Democratic Party has a number of qualified female candidates in the contest and yet it is the (white) men who are being considered as electable. Even in 2019, women are considered not electable. 

In a potential toss up between the pussy-grabber and a qualified woman, the pussy-grabber winning because his opponent is a woman says a lot of awful things about my adopted home!

Seriously, the pussy-grabber?

Meanwhile, in the old country, a man who ditched his wife in order to freely go about his divine mandate of Hindu-fying India and restoring traditions is all set to win another election.

Something is rotten.

trump reveals who we really are

Blogging serves me in many ways.  It helps me think and learn.  Sometimes, the posts are also bookmarks for me to use the materials in my classes.  And, yes, in the lonely life, the possibility of having substantive conversations in the cyber-salon ...

Above and beyond that, blogging, like any kind of writing, is therapeutic.  If not for the writing, I would have become a wreck from all the internal struggles.

Even when I have plenty of time, I usually post only once a day here.  It is all a part of the regimented life.  But then there are exceptions.  Like today.

I want to let go of an issue that has been bothering me for a couple of weeks.  Ever since trump shrugged away the brutal murder of a Saudi journalist, who was a permanent resident here in the US, by talking about the billions of dollars of arms trade with the Saudis.

Like many people, I too found that equation to be disgusting.  And tweeted in plenty.

But, there is more to it. 

America looking the other way is not anything new.  The US has a long and dirty track record of supporting thugs who abuse, torture, and kill their people.  We even affectionately called it the our-son-of-a-bitch policy, as in, "“He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."

trump merely makes that SOB approach public.  As with everything else, he is the most transparent politician we have ever had, except when it comes to his own taxes!

When it comes to important trading partners, or allies in some strategic geopolitical arrangements, the US has more often than not looked the other way when those partners commit horrible abuses.  We have always done that, as a government and as businesses.

We were crass then, and are crass now.  trump has merely revealed who we really are.

I have blogged in plenty here on this issue. My favorite is about how we treat the Dalai Lama.

Because we "value" the trade with China, we have always prostrated before the Chinese and obeyed their commands on how we dealt with the Dalai Lama.  Back in 2009, I even authored an op-ed on this.

Remember who the President was in 2009?  Yep, the "liberal" and "principled" Obama.

I wrote there about "the remarkably under-reported news that President Obama has “quietly postponed an audience with the Dalai Lama until after he visits China in November.”

Why did Obama postpone his meeting?  Because he wanted to keep the Chinese leaders happy.  The very leaders who were making life miserable for the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans, the Uighurs, and, heck, the entire country.  Human rights and freedom were not what the Chinese leaders cared for.  And Obama said ok to them.

I wrote there: "The postponement of the meeting confirms, yet again, the triumph of realpolitik over principles."

That was a mere meeting.  With somebody who does not even have an army.  Whose only "weapons" are words of kindness and humanity.  Yet, Obama wussed out and did not want to stand up to the Chinese leaders.  Tell me again why trump's comment on the Saudi arms sales is different from Obama's behavior?

We have always played fast and loose with moral principles.  We were selective about morality.  trump takes that to a logical conclusion by revealing the stark nakedness of our situation.

Of course, the torture and murder of an individual is atrocious. Of course, we should rise in protest.  But, keep this in mind whenever a Democrat is in the Oval Office too.  Do not give her a pass just because she is from your party!

Like I said, getting all these out is therapeutic.  I can now go on about my day!

The future has arrived

In an op-ed back in January 2015, I wrote:

 I increasingly worry that there is a huge disconnect between how undergraduates spend their four or five — or even six — years in college and the real world, which is changing by the minute.
Some of the important issues of the day, which will influence our lives well into the next few decades, arise from China, India, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.
Will it shock readers to know that a typical college student can earn a diploma without learning anything substantive about these areas, which account for half of the world’s population even now, and whose share will increase in the future? Wouldn’t we want students to know at least a little bit about the global drivers of economic and political decisions?

Nobody cares for what I worry about!  We continue to graduate students who have no idea about China, India, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.  I wish I could ask every graduating student at my university to name the leaders of the governments of China and India, and to point out where Syria is on a map of the Middle East.

Students are like most Americans who simply have no idea how rapidly China has transformed.  If I were to present the following to them, they might simply collapse from hyperventilation:

China became the world’s largest economy (measured by purchasing power parity, PPP) in 2014. What isn’t so well known is how astonishingly fast the end came for the 140-year reign of the American economy as the world’s largest. According to numbers Rachman cites, China was just 12 percent of the size of the US economy in 2000 and only half as big as late as 2011. Such meteoric growth has been enough to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty, finance the US deficit, and still allow China to increase its military spending at double-digit rates every year for two decades.
In matters of national security the momentum of Chinese growth has meant, for example, that while Japan’s military spending was triple China’s in 2000, it was only half as large by 2015.

Go ahead, and re-read those previous sentences.

Seventeen years ago, China was merely an eighth of the US economy.  During those years, while the US was busy fighting wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and wherever we wanted to drop bombs, China went about expanding its economic and military might.  Here we are in 2017, with China launching a home-built aircraft carrier.

In that op-ed, I wrote about the need to learn the languages that we will need to learn and become fluent in, if we want to understand the future.  Especially Chinese and Arabic.  But, of course, most universities couldn't care!

I cannot figure out how much longer we can go on without truly understanding China, and recognizing it as an important player.

China is a challenge to the United States on several fronts; not an enemy. However, the relationship is riven with tensions that could escalate into open conflict. Neither side understands or trusts the other. Avoiding these thorns will depend on steady leaders and skilled diplomacy in reading each other’s behavior. Improvisation or short-sighted deals made for a domestic audience are likely to end badly. History also warns that success will not be easy. Most often, in the past, rising new powers have clashed with reigning ones. The US–China relationship will remain the most consequential in the world for decades to come.

And if we continue to insult China?

Never before has a president suggested handing over most of the currency of US global leadership to others, free of charge. China will not hesitate to seize every opportunity offered. A much diminished and less influential America, and consequently a much less secure Asia, would be the result.

Alas, we gleefully continue eating "Asian Salad"!

Off with the head!

As I get older, I find myself to be more and more against violence.  Especially violence that is the state-sponsored kind.  It is gross. It is inhuman. To call state-sponsored violence beastly is an insult to the predators in the wild.

It is even more fucked up when it is the passionately religious who seem to be more supportive of state-sponsored violence in democratic societies.  It is bizarre when, for instance, those who are ready to kill people using the government machinery are also the ones who use the imagery of Jesus to tell us how we should live.  I suppose Jesus never talked about peace and love!

And hence the odd situation that the US, with all its bible-thumpers, continues with the death penalty.

the U.S. has ended up in some rough company, particularly when it comes to the death penalty. In the past generation, the number of countries that have stopping using the death penalty has doubled, from about fifty to about a hundred. Of the fifty-seven member states of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and of the thirty-five member states of the Organization of American States, only the U.S. carried out executions last year. The countries that executed the most offenders were, in order, China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.

Take a look again at the company that we keep: China, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.  Puke-worthy about how we treat life!  The US is a religious country alright, as much as the theocratic Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are.  As the late Christopher Hitchens wrote (I quoted him in this blog-post from more than five years ago)

The point of the penalty was that it was death. It expressed righteous revulsion and symbolized rectitude and retribution. Voila tout! The reason why the United States is alone among comparable countries in its commitment to doing this is that it is the most religious of those countries. (Take away only China, which is run by a very nervous oligarchy, and the remaining death-penalty states in the world will generally be noticeable as theocratic ones.)

Whether or not the US is loved around the world, what the US does--not the rhetoric--is keenly watched by everybody.  Therefore, when the US government machinery kills its own people, then it is a convenient justification for other countries to kill their own people.

In August at a rally in Istanbul, after the failed coup attempt in Turkey, the BBC reported, the country’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said, “They say there is no death penalty in the E.U. … Well, the U.S. has it; Japan has it; China has it; most of the world has it. So they are allowed to have it. We used to have it until 1984. Sovereignty belongs to the people, so if the people make this decision I am sure the political parties will comply.” He said that the Turkish people might want to restore the death penalty to punish those responsible for killing hundreds of citizens during the attempted coup. That has not happened yet, but, if it does, its purpose, Erdogan suggested, will be a display of cold-blooded power.

Now that we in the US too will have a strongman president, the likes of Erdoğan will be all the happier to kill their own people, and will feel justified to do so.

the voters—the populists—continue to back the death penalty, as does the President-elect. (Donald Trump notoriously called for the execution of the Central Park Five, fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-olds who were charged with a high-profile rape and beating, in 1989. Even though the five were later exonerated, Trump, during this year’s campaign, reiterated his belief in their guilt.)

Of course, in the US, politicians who want to reach the Oval Office dare not oppose the death penalty, especially because of the racial dimension of the punishment.  Remember what happened to Michael Dukakis?  Or how Bill Clinton had to prove his mettle to the White Christian voters by putting to death a mentally-impaired black man?  Yep, the US lives according to Jesus's words!

The only ray of hope is the trend of remarkable fall in the number of executions and death sentences.  Aziz Ansari joked that for racism to go away, we simply have to wait for the racists to die--the younger generation is a lot more progressive than the middle-aged and older whites are.  Similarly, we simply have to wait for another generation to exit the world for the US to end the horrible practice of state-sponsored killing.  And maybe by then we will also stop electing the likes of the worst human being ever to reach the Oval Office.

American lifestyle can no longer remain non-negotiable

One of the many tough lessons that we learn while growing up is that life is unfair.  It is a tough lesson.  Even worse is the lesson that we humans will not work towards making life at least a tad less unfair.

Today's exhibit on unfairness: the global climate change discussions.

We are rapidly counting down the days towards that global meeting of the minds, which will happen in Paris from November 30th to December 11th.  It is the latest in a long-running series of meetings that began in 1979.

Except for a few nutcases, who operate mostly from the US and from within the Republican party, there is an overwhelming consensus on climate change and its potential to wreak havoc on conditions for human life, via the impacts on the natural environment.



Those nutcases aside,,

climate experts estimate that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions need to be reduced by 40-70% by 2050 and that carbon neutrality (zero emissions) needs to be reached by the end of the century at the latest.

But, that is where the "fairness" and "unfairness" begins.

Rancorous negotiations over a draft version of a universal climate treaty took place this week in Bonn, Germany. The treaty is supposed to be adopted by nearly 200 nations at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris in December. The fight in Bonn is over how much the countries of the world should cut their emissions of greenhouse gases, by what year they should complete those cuts, and who should pay for the transition.

Remember those expressions like, "talk is cheap" or "put your money where your mouth is" and the like?  It is one thing to wish for a wonderful planet, but another when it comes to who has to the dirty work and how to pay for it.

Fairness and fair share arguments kick in, and they kick in faster than the time it takes you to yell "climate change":

The activists calculate that rich countries need to boost their domestic reductions from 5.5 billion tons to 9.1 billion tons. They also call for "a vast expansion of international finance, technology and capacity-building support." This means the rich countries should provide poor countries with the wherewithal to reduce by 15.1 billion tons the greenhouse gases they would otherwise have emitted. ...
What do the activists think is the U.S.'s fair share of reductions? Historically, the U.S. is responsible for about 30 percent of the cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide since 1850. The fair share activists calculate that the United States is promising to cut its annual emissions by only 2 billion tons by 2030. Without going into the arcana of the climate equity calculations, the activists argue that the U.S. should instead cut its emissions by the equivalent of 13 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2030. 

If you even remotely think that the most affluent country that the planet has ever known will even remotely agree to paying for fairness, well, I have only these words for you: lobotomy by Dr. Carson!

Shikha Dalmia adds to these:

Western countries, especially America, have been arguing that China and India with their billion-plus people and dirty energy sources are a major part of the problem. Therefore, unless they do their "fair share" to cut — not just slow the rate of — their emissions, no amount of mitigation by the West will make a dent in global temperatures.
However, India and China counter by dragging out the West's historic emissions. ... As these countries see it, America (as the rest of the Western world) is in their ecological debt. It needs to put itself on a drastic energy diet — and effectively undo the industrial revolution that has generated untold wealth for it. Especially since India has used only 7 percent of its share. "For the sake of the world's future, American lifestyle can no longer remain non-negotiable," froths India's leading environmentalist, Sunita Narain.

The Indian stand is understandable:

Over 300 million Indians still live below the poverty line, earning less than $1 per day. India's per capita energy consumption is 15 times less than the United States'. India has to keep boosting its energy use — and therefore carbon emissions — for at least another two decades to eliminate dire poverty

The selfish gene is not wired for fairness, it seems.

Cameroon: The latest attempt to educate Americans about the world

Remember that old Mark Twain quote about the geographic illiteracy of Americans?  What?  You don't?

God created war so that Americans would learn geography.

Are you not impressed that he said that a long time ago?  And, therefore, are you not mighty relieved that our collective ignorance about the rest of the world, and the apathy, is not anything new?  I suppose if there is one thing that we can hold on to as a truly American trait, it is that we don't know much about geography and we don't care either.  After all, that ill-informed view was what led to the formation of these United States, thanks to Christopher Columbus stumbling upon "India"!

But then, we try our best to learn about the countries and people in different parts of the world by bombing the shit out of them.  In the past seventy years, since the ending of the world war that followed the world war that was supposed to end all wars, the US has bombed an impressive list of countries:

Awesome, right?

How many Americans will be able to accurately identify all those countries on a world map, and say something substantive about those countries and the people?  We try our best but Americans still don't care.  (BTW, a special note on Syria: for the first time since the end of WW II, the US and Russia will be bombing the same country!)

In this important task of continuing education, we are dispatching the next set of teaching assistants--armed with the latest gadgets, of course--to Cameroon.  Hey little boys and girls, do you know Cameroon?

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the mission would be "part of a broader regional effort to stop the spread of Boko Haram and other violent extremist organisations in West Africa".

More details, please?

The force, which will be 300 strong, will conduct airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations in the region.
Cameroon and Chad have been targeted by the Islamist militants from northern Nigeria.
Mr Obama said the forces would remain in Cameroon until "no longer needed".

I am sure "until "no longer needed" means that the US forces will be there only for a couple of months,  Like how our forces came back from Japan after the war ended and how we no longer have military bases there. Yeah, right!

Sometime soon we will have to start educating Americans about the planetary system and outer space, given our scientific illiteracy.  Maybe we should think in terms of bombing those Martians?

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If it is Saturday, it must be ... Yemen!

The older I get, the more it seems like growing up when I did and where I did was quite a blessing.  Consider the simple, daily habit of reading the newspaper.  A habit that goes back as far as I can remember.  The news about places that I didn't even know existed, and about politicians who seemed immensely larger than life, fascinated me to no end.

So well developed was this habit that once, as an adult, when I visited with a family in the expansive tree, I was shocked that they did not subscribe to a newspaper.  There I was, up in the morning and no paper to read.  That was a torture from Torquemada's playbook ;)

The Hindu was international in its news coverage.  Its left-of-center sympathies resonated well with my own political preference of those days.  It was through that paper that I even knew that there was a country called Yemen--those were the days of a war between North Yemen and South Yemen, which was yet another war between the commie sympathizers and the others.  Recall all those proxy wars during the Cold War years?

With all the refugee crisis related to Syria, the world seems to be overlooking Yemen.  The violence there is not one between the old Cold War enemies, but is also a proxy war of a different kind.  It is a Shia-Sunni war.  Iran (Shia)-allied Houthi movement versus the rest backed by Saudi Arabia (Sunni, and that too a strict, fundamentalist version) and,, of course, the United States.  Makes you wonder why the US is always pals with the "frenemy" Saudis, right?

A few weeks ago, Amnesty released a report on the "collateral damage" that civilians have become in this unholy war.

Amnesty International has documented hundreds of cases of civilians, many of them children and women, killed or injured while asleep in their homes or going about their daily activities – fetching water, buying food, visiting relatives. Scores were struck in the very places where they had sought refuge after having been displaced from their homes by the conflict. ...
Entire neighbourhoods have virtually emptied as residents fled their homes in fear of attacks or because strikes on civilian infrastructure left the areas without water, electricity and other essential services. In some neighbourhoods, as residents fled the conflict other civilians displaced by the fighting elsewhere moved in for lack of better options. Many have been unable to relocate to safer areas due to lack of resources. With frequently shifting frontlines, residents have struggled to keep out of harm’s way, often finding themselves in the line of fire where they thought they would be safe.
The sick and wounded have faced restrictions in accessing medical care due to the shortages and high prices of fuel and medicines and to difficulties in securing safe passage through checkpoints manned by the different armed groups. The parties to the conflict have hindered the delivery of humanitarian aid to areas controlled by their opponents, causing a sharp deterioration in the humanitarian situation.

I bet that since then the damage has worsened.  Makes me wonder, as always, why humans engage in wars and why we continue to develop more and more ways to kill each other.  This world needs a lot more pacifists to counter the warmongers all over, especially here in the United States--the US sells those killing devices all over the world and seems intent on feeding the global war monster.

The BBC reports that all the chaos in Yemen has provided ISIS--yes, those maniacs--with a golden opportunity!

Human Rights Watch cites reports that on 23 August, IS dressed a number of Houthi prisoners in orange jumpsuits, placed them in a boat which was then towed out into the harbour.
Reportedly watched by local residents of Aden, the boat carrying the prisoners was then blown up, killing those on board, the report says.

As if all that wasn't enough for you to yank your hair out:

For now, it seems that the jihadists of AQAP and IS have largely put aside their differences to fight their common enemy, the Shia Houthi rebels.
Ironically, they are being aided by air strikes from the very countries - Saudi Arabia and the UAE - who normally oppose them.

Wait a second.  The US is allied with the Saudis in the Yemen conflict.  But, the Saudis are working with the Islamic State because they want to defeat the Iran-backed Shia Houthi.  So, in a way, the US is on the same side of the barbaric Islamic State?

When I reach such conclusions based on what I have read, I wonder if the newspaper reading habit from when I was a kid has not helped me.  I could have been oblivious to the happenings all around, gone ahead with a career in engineering, enjoyed a remarkably affluent life, and not worried about a damn thing.

Nah.  as Bob Dylan said, "it ain't me, babe."

(ps: my oldest post on Yemen dates back to January 2010!)

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War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength

As I get older, I am forgetting the details.  As a good chunk of life fades in the rear-view mirror--I know, I shouldn't be looking there--I am glad that I am able to recall whatever it is that I am able to.

The principal of the wonderful school--where I always longed to look at that girl--had plenty of laudable goals that were always badly executed.  We students had many mean jokes about him, and continue to do that even now whenever we get together.  One of his goals was that students ought to be interested in local and global current affairs.  Thus, during the weekly assembly under the morning hot sun, we students stood there as one of his hand-picked favorites read a few news stories for a couple of minutes.  (No, I have never been any teacher's favorite..Not anybody's.  Not even my parents' favorite. The story of my life!!!)

One day, the guy who read it out uttered "Mr. Ayatollah" while referring to the then-new leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini.  The news junkie that I was even back then, I thought it was bizarre that he said "Mr. Ayatollah."  Those were beginnings of the Iran-Iraq war and not a day passed without the The Hindu providing reports on the war, and that war was a big reason why "Mr. Ayatollah" was often mentioned at the news reports during the weekly assembly.

The war, coming on the heels of the revolution that forced the Shah of Iran to flee the country, continues to haunt the world's affairs, especially the ongoing negotiations over the nuclear deal, writes Robin Wright:

Iran suffered more than a hundred and fifty thousand dead between 1980 and 1988. In Tehran, it’s called the Sacred Defense. In the final stages, U.S. aid to Iraq contributed to Iran’s decision to pursue nuclear capability—the very program that six world powers are now negotiating to contain.

Keep in mind that this was not a war that Iran launched.  It was Saddam Hussein's war.  And, in the realpolitik of American "diplomacy," Saddam was "our son of a bitch."  Ah, yes, the twisted and tangled webs that we have woven and into which we are now trapped!

Back in the eighties, Western intelligence agencies questioned whether Iran’s eighteen-month-old revolution could survive for even a few weeks after Saddam Hussein’s surprise invasion. Tehran scrambled to mobilize remnants of the Shah’s army, the new Revolutionary Guards, and almost anyone, of any age, for a volunteer paramilitary. Tehran’s Holy Defense Museum has pictures of thirteen-year-old kids and eighty-year-old men who signed up. (Three per cent of the dead were fourteen or younger.)
Instead, the war dragged on for eight years.

 The CIA got rid of a democratically elected government in Iran so that the US and its allies could install in power the Shah of Iran who would serve as "our son of a bitch."  When the Shah was thrown out two decades later, we looked across the border and encouraged the madman Saddam.  Robin Wright narrates how that messed up things:

In 1988, for the final big Iraqi offensive, the Reagan Administration spent months advising Baghdad on how to retake the strategic Faw Peninsula, where the Shatt al Arab waterway flows into the Persian Gulf.

I was curious about the location of the Faw Peninsula.  Unlike the final year of my high school, I now have Google at my disposal, which easily informs me where this peninsula is:

Wright says this battle got worse, thanks to the madman Saddam.

Iraq also used U.S. intelligence to unleash chemical weapons against the Iranians in Faw. U.N. weapons inspectors documented Iraq’s repeated use of both mustard gas and nerve agents between 1983 and 1988. Washington opted to ignore it. At Faw, thousands of Iranians died. Syringes were littered next to bodies, a U.S. intelligence source told me; Iranian forces had tried to inject themselves with antidotes. The battle lasted only thirty-six hours; it was Iraq’s biggest gain in more than seven years. The war ended four months later, when Iran agreed to a cease-fire.

The apologies that the US owes to people all around the world! :(

Iranian officials told me that the theocracy debated countering Iraq with chemical weapons, but opted against it. However, aware that Baghdad had a nuclear-weapons program, Iran decided to resume the nuclear research-and-development program initiated by the Shah. After the war, Tehran decided to keep it.

I think it is remarkable that Iran didn't unleash its chemical weapons against the Iraqi forces.  

The Iraq war still haunts Iran—and shapes the theocracy’s positions at the negotiating table—partly because tens of thousands are still dying from chemical weapons, according to the Society for Chemical Weapons Victims Support. Years after the war ended, Iranian doctors noticed a pattern of patients reporting chronic pulmonary, skin, and corneal conditions associated with mustard gas. They were diagnosed with what is now known as low-dose exposure.

Wright notes this:

During my recent visit, Iran was gripped by news that the bodies of a hundred and seventy-five military divers had been recovered in Iraq—three decades after their capture by Saddam Hussein’s forces. The men had reportedly been buried alive after their wrists were tied together with wire. Tehran released gruesome pictures of the recovery, and of the decayed and bound corpses still dressed in diving gear.
The country was consumed with mourning yet again—even young people, born after the war ended, were deeply moved.

 To think that the US encouraged Saddam all those years that he was in power!  For what?

 As the country’s diplomats prepared to return to Vienna for the nuclear talks, [Mohsen Rezai, who commanded the Revolutionary Guards during the war] declared, “Iran’s enemies stood by Saddam for the whole eight years of the Sacred Defense.” It was clear that he included the United States among them.

Soon after the war ended, Saddam was no longer "our son of a bitch." 

It is unfortunate that we have never truly given peace a chance.  Oceania will always be at war, ably helped by its Ministry of Peace, wrote George Orwell in that memorable 1984. 

Perhaps it is time to start another war. Maybe against Eurasia; after all, Putin is not "our son of a bitch."

The globalizing Indians

A few years ago, I authored an oped in which I noted that Indians integrate well into the American way of life, thanks to India's long and rich history of global interactions.  Later, in another op-ed, I pointed to Sri Srinivasan's nomination to the DC Court of Appeals and the unanimous Senate confirmation as further evidence of this integration.

Despite all that, I was shocked--pleasantly, of course--to read that:

Indians, especially in the UK and US, are prevalent in business, academe, the media, medicine and the arts. In 2008, Indians accounted for 38% of doctors in the US, 36% of scientists at NASA, and 34% of employees at Microsoft, 28% at IBM and 17% at Intel.

More than a third of the doctors in the US?
More than a third of NASA's scientists?
More than a third of Microsoft employees?
WTF is the only way to respond to it ;)

Indians integrating well into the economic and social fabric of alien lands is not really new.  In the modern world, India is India, and therefore we refer to Indians, thanks to those who led the struggle for independence from the British Raj, of whom Gandhi was most influential.

Gandhi was a global migrant himself during his years in South Africa, before he returned to India for good a hundred years ago.  If Gandhi hadn't had that experience, history would certainly have been different from how it unfolded.

After one year of a none too successful law practice, Gandhi decided to accept an offer from an Indian businessman in South Africa, Dada Abdulla, to join him as a legal adviser. Unbeknown to him, this was to become an exceedingly lengthy stay, and altogether Gandhi was to stay in South Africa for over twenty years. The Indians who had been living in South Africa were without political rights, and were generally known by the derogatory name of 'coolies'. Gandhi himself came to an awareness of the frightening force and fury of European racism, and how far Indians were from being considered full human beings, when he when thrown out of a first-class railway compartment car, though he held a first-class ticket, at Pietermaritzburg. From this political awakening Gandhi was to emerge as the leader of the Indian community

To stay back in one's own community is the easy thing to do.  But, to venture out requires guts.  To have accomplished what he did, especially in an entirely different country thousands of miles away from where he grew up, Gandhi had guts that we lesser mortals cannot even dream of.  We need to dismiss Gandhi as off-the-charts so that we don't get discouraged comparing our pedestrian existence to his life ;)

Despite the long history of the wandering Indians, it appears that there are a few countries without people of Indian origin.  Perhaps before this century ends, there will be no such country in the listing, eh!

For all we know, the day is not far away when an Indian-American might even be elected as the president of the US of A!  Looking forward to it all.

Psst, is it ok to drink? Drink water, that is!

A few years ago, before my trip to Tanzania, I went to get the yellow-fever shot and medication to keep malaria away from me.  The doctor advised getting a bunch of other precautionary shots as well, which seemed reasonable to me.  "Let's do a blood test first and see where you are" he said.  "Because you grew up in India, chances are high that you already had a Hep A infection" the doctor added.

What the what?  I had Hep A?  I remember a typhoid infection during my undergraduate years, which then relapsed as well.  But, Hep A?  When did that happen?  Why me?  Woe is me!

I forget now what the blood tests revealed.  But, there is a good reason why the doctor conjectured about Hep A:

Hepatitis A is a liver disease caused by the hepatitis A virus. The virus is primarily spread when an uninfected (and unvaccinated) person ingests food or water that is contaminated with the faeces of an infected person. The disease is closely associated with unsafe water, inadequate sanitation and poor personal hygiene.

Food or water "that is contaminated with the faeces of an infected person."  Gross, right?  But, ahem, remember the crap floating in the tasty Thamirabarani River back at my grandmother's village?  And who knows what else!

These days, there is bottled water everywhere in India.  Huge containers of potable water are delivered to homes, though I have no idea whether these are safe to drink.  I trust this is ok.  At this stage in my life, I don't want to know either ;)

My daily American life is a total contrast to this life in the old country.  There, I open the water faucet, place a glass under the clear flow and drink that tasty, sweet, cold water.  No worries about germs, infectious diseases, and crap.  One of the very, very few countries in this world where drinking the water from the faucet poses no health risk.  If Rome wasn't built in a day, water that is safe to drink did not happen overnight either; it began a century ago in the US:

The first standards for drinking water in America were developed by the Public Health Service in 1914, two years after the famed aviation brother Wilbur Wright died of typhoid. The federal standards addressed bacteriological threats, but the PHS’ powers were limited, so the standards applied only to interstate common carriers such as trains, buses, and ships. Water providers to these carriers had to use chlorination, and this soon covered all the major cities.

There are paranoid environmentalists and health-nutcases who, even now, think that chlorination is harmful to humans.  Maybe. But, I don't care.  Because, unsafe water is a gazillion times worse than chlorine in water.

Our tap water is safer than it has ever been. But continued protection of our drinking water for the next 40 years will require vigilance and perhaps a transformation. It should not be surprising that something as fundamental and pervasive as drinking water cannot be fully protected by a single statute. We are used to enjoying safe water and paying monthly bills as “consumer drinkers.” Fundamental protection of our drinking water will not occur, however, unless we take on the role of “citizen drinkers,” using our political process to demand effective protection through better enforcement of our laws and renewed scrutiny of activities threatening our source waters.

I will drink to that.  After I reach home, that is ;)

Ending Ebola begins by ending our ignorance

Anything interesting in the screenshot below?

Yep, two NFL teams, and the Virgin Galactic crash, are more important news stories than is Ebola.  And, ahem, news about Taylor Swift is more important than about Ebola.  When there are no more Ebola cases in America, and when the "rebellious" nurse in Maine has been put in her place, we Americans don't have to worry about Ebola anymore.  We are back to seeking out entertainment.

To which there is only one possible response: boy, are we f*ed up with our priorities!

So, whatever happened to the Ebolapalooza?  Ebola continues to mess up people's lives.  Not in Africa.  But, in those three countries.  The Washington Post provides us with a helpful map of Ebola in Africa:

At least there is one influential guy in America who hasn't forgotten Ebola and continues to be involved:

“The world as a whole doesn’t have the preparedness for epidemics, and we’ve had a few flu scares that got us to do some minor things, but not enough,” he said in an interview at the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene here. “If this thing had been twice as transmissive, we’d be in a lot of trouble, and there are agents that have a real chance of coming on in the next several decades that are far more transmissive than this is."

 And that guy is?  

Mr. Gates appeared moved after a 90-minute meeting at which two doctors who survived Ebola spoke. The epidemic is a key moment for global health, he said. “I think there’s a lot of lessons for future epidemics.”
Discussing the foundation’s reasons for getting involved, he said, “This disease, not only does it kill directly, it also shuts down health systems. If this thing had spread throughout West Africa, among other things you could throw out the window is the incredible progress we’ve made on polio.”

Meanwhile, scientists are slowly chipping away at understanding the virus:

What don’t we know about Ebola? In some ways, we’re only aware of how much we don’t understand because of the little that we do.

So, we are finally at Step 1--realizing how much we don't know about this virus, four decades in since the first detection.

This outbreak must not be viewed as an unthreatening “orphan infection,” a rare occurrence without global impact. The current epidemic will not abate quickly, and billions of dollars are needed in the field to limit the spread of the virus. But smart investment in research today will be repaid manifold in saved lives. In the United States, the money for Ebola has largely been a spinoff from the larger bioterrorism effort. Now representatives have awakened to its urgency, and there are calls from both sides of the Congressional aisle to revisit the level of federal research support in November after the midterm elections. Ending Ebola begins by ending our ignorance.

That's asking for too much.  Congress to revisit this after the midterm?  And to allocate money for research?  And for people to be involved, after stuffing themselves with stuffed turkeys?  Ain't gonna happen, unless the NFL is shut down because of Ebola infection!

The downward facing dog returns to India's cities

A few years ago, when I decided that it was high time that I started preparing for a healthy sixth and seventh decade (and, gasp, more?) of my life, I went to a yoga class.  It certainly felt weird with "om" and "namaste" from the yoga teacher, who was a White American woman.  I wanted only the physical fitness exercise and not any spiritual awakening during those fifty minute sessions.

I quit that.

I am yet to take up yoga again because I cannot seem to find a yoga studio or a teacher who can't keep the physical fitness regimen and spirituality in separate compartments.

source

In the old country, the land of yoga and chai (every yogini here seems to be a big time chai enthusiast as well!) the prime minister, Narendra Modi, is on a campaign to bring yoga into the forefront.  On to the international front too:

One of PM Narendra Modi's first global imprints could come soon with the fructification of his proposal - which he announced in his UNGA speech — for an International Day of Yoga. As many as 50 countries - US, Canada and China most recently — have signed up for co-sponsorship of a draft resolution which India's UN mission is preparing for declaring June 21 as international Yoga day.

One would think that India has so many problems to deal with that campaigning for an international yoga day shouldn't even be on the list.  But, hey, what Indians want to do has not been a problem for this American for many years now ;)

There are a number of reasons why Modi is pushing for this international yoga awareness.  One of them is also his fascination for another Narendra from India's past: Narendra Nath Datta.

There is a good chance that the name "Narendra Nath Datta" might be an unfamiliar one even to people in the old country.  But, tell them the other name of his, and they might even smack themselves on their foreheads for not making the connection: Swami Vivekananda.  (Did I hear you smack yourself?  hehe!)

Modi's fascination for Vivekananda runs deep.  Troublingly deep.  It is a rich topic for another day.  For now, I want to stay focused on yoga.

Yoga first came to mass North American attention in 1893 when Narendra Nath Datta, better known as Swami Vivekananda, gave a lecture on the principles of spiritual yogic practice at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago.

America is a trendsetter, thanks to its economic, military, and cultural dominance.  Thus, when America's popular TV shows and movies routinely feature yoga studios and attractive men and women, well, it should be no surprise that India's affluent class is now taking up yoga:

In recent years the practice of American-style yoga has come into vogue with the Indian middle class. While hatha yoga never disappeared from Indian society, the how and why of its new popularity reflects a shift toward the consumer culture associated with yoga in the West.

I am reminded of my grandmothers' comments about men wearing earrings.  In the old traditions in the old country, it was not uncommon for men also to wear earrings.  That tradition is also why my earlobes were pierced as a part of my first birthday celebrations.  Alas, I have no photo of the young me wearing earrings!

Trust me, that's how I looked as a kid! ;)

But then it soon became unfashionable--my parents did not go through that ceremonial ear-piercing for my brother, who is only two years younger than me!  As it became fashionable for men in America and Western European countries to sport studs on their ears, that fad spread to India too and my grandmothers had quite some chuckle over it.  If only they had lived long enough to see the number of young women with nose-rings here, perhaps even outnumbering the number of young women with nose-rings back in the old country.

So, no surprise that yoga has returned to India.

The researchers found that the new, Westernized yoga was often scrubbed of its traditional spiritual aspect, and was now “easier” and “more fun,” as well as an indication of high social status. “It is now becoming like a designer stamp to be doing yoga,” one woman said. Its association with the West makes it glamorous.

Ah, yes, it is all about the fashion trends.

It is one crazy world; but, dammit, all these make life so fascinating!

Caption at the source: "Indian students from a Delhi Public School perform yoga"

Ditch the testing mania if we really want students to learn

It is time for midterms.

No, not that one in which the two parties will once again come together in order to choke the lives out of us regular people.

I am referring to midterm exams in the academic quarter system in which I work.  The students in my classes know all too well that I hate "tests."  Instead, what I provide them are structured opportunities for them to demonstrate their understanding of the materials.  This is no semantics here.  After all, the whole point of education is for students to learn and show us how much and how well they have learnt?

But, we focus on testing.  And that too via standardized tests.  Why?  Because that is easy.  Way easier than to systematically find out what every individual student has understood, and why they have not understood something.

Any half-brained politician--ok, there are very few fully-brained ones!--loves talking about more testing as if that is the panacea.  And then the idiotic demagogues look across the seas at a Japan or a China or a Russia and then jingoistically beat their chests and yell out that more testing is what we need in order to beat the crap out of the countries that threaten our number one status in the world.

Seriously, is that what we really want from education?

As Diane Ravitch puts it in this NYRB essay:

There was no educational problem, it seemed, that could not be cured by more testing.

Yep. Every few years, the Geriatrics Only Party and the Democrooks take turns arguing in favor of more testing.  First it was the patriotic alarm over the Soviets. Then the economic alarm against the Japanese.  And now the economic and patriotic alarms that the Chinese are taking over the world.

There is only one word that is appropriate to describe these: chickenshit!

Back to Ravitch:

It is worth noting that American students have never received high scores on international tests. On the first such test, a test of mathematics in 1964, senior year students in the US scored last of twelve nations, and eighth-grade students scored next to last. But in the following fifty years, the US outperformed the other eleven nations by every measure, whether economic productivity, military might, technological innovation, or democratic institutions. This raises the question of whether the scores of fifteen-year-old students on international tests predict anything of importance or whether they reflect that our students lack motivation to do their best when taking a test that doesn’t count toward their grade or graduation.

The typical fifteen year old is immensely smarter than the chickenshit demagogues!

Tell us more, Ravitch:

Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, members of Congress, and the nation’s governors and legislators need to read: Yong Zhao’s Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World. Zhao, born and educated in China, now holds a presidential chair and a professorship at the University of Oregon. He tells us that China has the best education system because it can produce the highest test scores. But, he says, it has the worst education system in the world because those test scores are purchased by sacrificing creativity, divergent thinking, originality, and individualism. The imposition of standardized tests by central authorities, he argues, is a victory for authoritarianism.

Yes, indeed.  A victory for authoritarianism.

So, how were things in China?  Yes, "were":

A system called keju lasted for thirteen hundred years, until 1905, when it was abolished by the emperor of the Qing dynasty. This system maintained Chinese civilization by requiring knowledge of the Confucian classics, based on memorization and writing about current affairs. There were local, provincial, and national examinations, each conferring privileges on the lucky or brilliant few who passed. Exam scores determined one’s rank in society. The keju was a means of social mobility, but for the ruling elite, it produced the most capable individuals for governing the country.

And what did it achieve for the culture that was ever so dominant?

keju diverted scholars, geniuses, and thinkers away from the study or exploration of modern science. The examination system, Zhao holds, was designed to reward obedience, conformity, compliance, respect for order, and homogeneous thinking; for this reason, it purposefully supported Confucian orthodoxy and imperial order. It was an efficient means of authoritarian social control. Everyone wanted to succeed on the highly competitive exams, but few did. Success on the keju enforced orthodoxy, not innovation or dissent. As Zhao writes, emperors came and went, but China had “no Renaissance, no Enlightenment, no Industrial Revolution.”

And, for the most part, this system continues in China, South Korea, Japan, India, ... On top of that, the focus on testing means that students, teachers, parents, and everybody else tries to then figure out ways in which they can game the system. Cheating and fraud follows.

Is it any surprise then to read something like this?

The announcement by administrators of the SAT college entrance test that scores are being withheld for students from China and South Korea who took the exam earlier this month has infuriated many and raised anxiety about what for a number of them is a high-stakes college application process.
The Educational Testing Service, the company that administers the test worldwide, said Wednesday that it was withholding the scores of those who took the test on Oct. 11, at least temporarily, because of suspicions of cheating “based on specific, reliable information.” The company referred in a statement to “organizations that seek to illegally obtain test materials for their own profit, to the ultimate detriment of all students.

Ahem, isn't SAT one heck of a standardized test?  ;)

In 2007, administrators voided 900 SAT scores from South Korea. Last year, administrators canceled an exam in South Korea scheduled for May 2013 after accusations of attempts at widespread cheating were reported in the domestic news media. That forced some of the 1,500 South Korean students who had signed up for the exam to scramble to apply to take the exam elsewhere.
In November 2013, South Korean prosecutors said they had indicted eight “SAT brokers” who had hired students to memorize questions of exams taken abroad or posed as test-takers themselves, using secret cameras to take pictures of questions. Prosecutors also indicted 22 managers and teachers at test preparation companies in South Korea for buying the illegally acquired SAT data.
In both South Korea and China, academic cheating has been a long-running problem. Professors, officials and celebrities have been exposed for having plagiarized dissertations or even faked degrees.

I am worried that the Baptists and the Bootleggers will end up with a lot more of the standardized tests.  I suppose I should simply give up, shrug my shoulders, collect my paycheck, and participate in the enterprise called education whose mission is to screw the students.

"மெட்ராஸ்ல மூணு வாரமா?"

"You will most likely use kiosks at immigration" came the announcement as we were preparing to land at Chicago.  "There will be staff to help you with the touchscreen" she added.

I was utterly disappointed.  Not because I don't like those touchscreen systems.  For the most part, I love to use those machines.  And, in the case of immigration, I can then even avoid the gazillion questions from officers who think my brown skin and a beard and traveling to a neighbor of Pakistan's adds up to a huge red flag.

I was disappointed because despite the poker-faced, stone-cold, officers, I hope against hope that I will encounter a warm and friendly face who will scan my passport and say "welcome home!"  No kiosk can provide that kind of a warm welcome.

The neon-art at Chicago's O'Hare

I stood in line after we deplaned. It looked like a crew of trainees or college interns guiding us to the kiosks.  She saw my US passport and pointed towards a machine that looked like an ATM.  Perhaps at the end of the transaction it will even dispense cash?  Nah, this is the US--no free money! ;)

I went through the questions, which were the same ones as in the form that the cabin crew had given us just in case it was not going to be the kiosks.
I was asked to look straight into the camera.
Click.
My photo appeared on the screen, and the system asked me to confirm the image.
I did.
I grabbed the receipt it printed, which included that photo, and walked to join a couple of others who were in line.

I noticed that the officers were merely checking that the photo in the passport matched the person carrying the passport and the photo in the receipt.

It was now my turn.

The officer gave me the widest grin a human--not merely an officer in uniform--could have given anybody.  He looked like he, too, was from the old country.  His badge said "Philip."

"Where were you in India?" he asked me with a smile.

"Madras" I said.  I know, I know, it is Chennai.  But, instinctively I always say Madras.

"மெட்ராஸ்ல மூணு வாரமா?" (three weeks in Madras?) he asked me in Thamizh.

I could have hugged him right there, but I didn't.

"That's not a typical South Indian name" he said, obviously referring to my last name.

"Yes, I was K. Sriram back in India ..." and he finished it for me with "oh, so you made it Sriram Khe."  I smiled a yes.

"Welcome home!" he said as he waved me through with the best smile ever.

I wish I had given him a hug.  Nah, this is the US--you would never have heard from me had I done that ;)

I grabbed a salad before boarding the connecting flight to home, sweet home.

So, why blog about it now?  So many days since I wrapped up the India blogging?

The answer is plain and simple.  I thought Philip deserved a special, a very special, post.

Three neighbors with nuclear weapons ... surely nothing can wrong!

I have no idea whether Osama bin Laden chose 2001 for his ghastly plan because he knew that it would be the first year in office for a newly elected US President.  Given the evils that bin Laden schemed up, it is probable that the timing was intentional.

September 2001 was not the first time that the newly elected President was tested either.  On April 1st, only ten weeks into his presidency, Bush had to deal with the Hainan Island incident that became a gripping geopolitical news story for ten days.

I think about those incidents of April and September 2001 as I follow the news stories from India about the elections and now the upcoming inauguration of a new government led by Narendra Modi.  Modi, like Bush, comes with a couple of terms of governing experience in a state, and very little of international experience.  Bush was even quite proud of his regular guy life and how he had not spent time outside the US unlike those Democratic elitists.

Modi and his people have said and done enough to make Pakistan cautiously pessimistic.  As for the other nuclear neighbor,

Modi noted that Beijing would have to shed its “expansionist policies and forge bilateral ties with India for the peace, progress and prosperity of both nations.” India has in the past complained about China’s refusal to accept Indians from Arunachal Pradesh as Indian citizens and its insistence that Arunachal Pradesh is disputed territory.

Both Pakistan and China will closely watch every move that Modi makes over the next couple of weeks.

I would think that the US Ambassador to India will be one heck of an important position at this point, not only to keep track of the goings on, but also to play the role of an intermediary should situations arise.  Oddly enough, the Obama administration did not make it a high priority to nominate anybody even though the ambassador announced her retirement back in March?

 Kathleen Stephens, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, will serve as head of mission until a new permanent ambassador is nominated and confirmed.

With this oppose-everything Republicans in the Senate, who are also sensing control of the body come November, and with the summer lull fast approaching, the US might not have a permanent ambassador until the new year?  Why the low, low priority to that part of the world?  

A nightmarish scenario could be something along the following lines: crazy militants with ties to Pakistan strike terror in India, perhaps in Delhi or in Gujarat, in order to test the new prime minister.  Modi is pushed into retaliation by the very forces that worked hard to get him elected.  

Or, China tests Modi by placing a few military feet on India's side of the border.  Modi is pushed into retaliation by the very forces that worked hard to get him elected.  

O course, all the three have enough and more nukes to settle scores.  Don't be fooled into thinking that Mutually Assured Destruction always works as a wonderful deterrent--"states waging conventional wars might escalate to using nukes."

Why worry about this, right?  It will all be rosy as was September 10, 2001.

Tomorrow is another day!

I am a wuss even at supporting the anti-war cause?

When driving back from work, if I leave campus during a certain time block, I can expect to see a dedicated anti-war group standing on the curb by the courthouse and waving signs advocating for peace.  As I pass them, I sound the horn once or twice and wave out to them.  These are no spring chicken, but, dedicated as they are, rain or fog or the sun never stops them, it seems.

The older I get, the more I am becoming anti-war and anti-violence. I suspect it is because I understand way more now than ever before how fragile life is.  When young, too, I was against war and violence, but I had no idea about the fragility of life. The commitment to peace is, thus, a lot deeper than it ever was.

Yesterday, when I left the parking lot, I knew I would see them. The pacifist in me smiled at the thought of waving at like-minded people.

I was about a mile away from the courthouse when a vehicle changed lanes and ended up ahead of me. The licence plate caught my attention--it was a "veteran" plate.

As we neared the courthouse, I now had a serious dilemma.  Will it be ok to honk and wave in support of the anti-war stance when driving right behind a veteran?  If it is the veteran driving the vehicle, as opposed to some other family member using the vehicle, then wouldn't it be rude?  Should I worry about the veteran's feelings when, after all, this was a public space? What if the veteran is also anti-war?

I told a friend the other day that sometimes I want my brain to shut down. It seems to be always at work. I am not sure how good or harmful that is. In this case, too, I would have preferred if my brain hadn't started analyzing all these and I had simply sounded the horn and moved on.

But, I am what I am, I suppose!

I drew parallel with the group on the curb. My hand came off the horn. I merely waved out at them. I drove on.

Does life always have to be this complicated?

The day ended with the nerdy me catching up on my reading. And, this chart on the US defense expenditure fed my anti-war feelings:

I will remember this chart the next time around and sound the horn four times to make up for the lost time!

The importance of expression means that democracy is messy!

It has been a few days since I last posted anything here, because I had imposed on myself a ban on blogging until Monday.  For personal reasons.

The ban did not work out the way I thought it would.  I was becoming more and more unproductive.  It was seriously affecting my state of mind.

Thus, when I found that I was wide awake at almost the same ungodly hour when the whole thing began a few days ago, I knew that as the one who imposed the ban, I had to release myself from that ban.

I wonder if that experience was also the subconscious trigger behind this piece, which I have sent to the editor for possible publication.

Even as the the US government reached partial shutdown, newspaper cartoonists and friends in India started wisecracking on the topic. Their jokes were typically variations of “India is far ahead of America. Congress shut down our government years before Congress shut down the US government.”

The reference in India is to the party that is currently in power--the Indian National Congress, which is almost always referred to as the Congress Party--and the ineffectiveness of the government led by the prime minister, Manmohan Singh.

Dysfunctional politics and governance in the two largest democracies on either side of this world offer plenty to think about.

At the outset, these are situations in which we can recall Winston Churchil’s wonderful observation that “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Of the many reasons why democratic governance becomes messy, opposition to ideas plays a significant role. Humans we are with our own perspectives on life and the role of government, we are bound to differ on how to govern ourselves.  The more argumentative the culture, the more diverse and spirited the views are and, opposition, does not always have to constructive either.  The result is what we see both in the United States and in India.

It is tempting, in such situations, to look across at Russia and China and note that their governments are more “efficient.”  A few months ago, well before this partial shut down, even the New York Times columnists, Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof, had written about how the Chinese get things done while we squabble here.  When Valdimir Putin effortlessly pushes ahead with his agenda, there are appreciative comments as well.

But, such a mess that we find ourselves in comes with the package of democracy that we prefer.  We engage in the war of ideas, however extreme some are, because it is only democracy that allows for such expression--a freedom that does not exist in Russia or China and many other countries of the world.

In India, there are plenty of people who then fondly look across the border at China and wonder whether their country would benefit from lesser freedoms.  Commentaries are in plenty there on how a Putin-like strong leader is what the country needs now.

There is, therefore, a significant support for Narendra Modi, who is the anointed prime ministerial candidate if his party were to win the elections next spring.  But, Modi comes with a huge baggage of anti-democratic past.  His decisions as the chief minister (the equivalent to the governor here in the US) of the state of Gujarat, especially during the religious riots in 2002, are why the US government has consistently refused to grant him a visa.   Of course, it is not that the US holds every foreign leader to the same standard--after all, we do heartily welcome leaders from other countries with a lot more anti-democratic baggage.  But, that is realpolitik!

The mess of democracy will only get messier into the future.  The more individuals feel empowered, the more we can and should expect them to voice their opinions.  Compared to the the bad old days of India, contemporary India has truly enfranchised millions of people.  The US of today is vastly better than the country of even two decades ago when it comes to the involvement of women and minorities in political discussions.  Both these democracies have progressed along a healthy path of systematically including into the fold those who had been systematically excluded before.  There is a lot more work to be done, yes, but the progress is to be lauded.

The internet and social media have further provided immensely more opportunities than have ever existed before for people to rally behind ideas with which they sympathize   We can expect a lot more “Twitter Revolutions.”  All these will also make easy to organize a significant vocal minority, which is all it takes to make governance in India or the US seemingly dysfunctional.

It does not mean that I am delighted with the chaos in these two large democracies.  I wish that opposition would always be responsible and constructive, and not merely for the sake of opposing.

I even worry that other countries that are slowly emerging from dictatorial and authoritarian regimes might then prefer a Russia or a China model for their own governance, instead of being inspired by Lady Liberty, who was such a powerful symbol even during the fateful protests in China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.

However, at the end of it all, there is no doubt that I am delighted to have a life that has been enriched by two democracies, warts and all!