VINDICA

A nice photo essay that follows a group a women as they undergo training to be officers in the Indian Air Force.

A story about forced prostitution in the name of religion in Telengana. Government and NGO efforts are making a dent on the practice, but a long road seems to wait ahead.

An Indian Express editorial about the imminent change of guard in Karnataka and its implications for governance and development work in Bangalore. India is fast becomming diversified, moving away from its core competence in IT. Part of this diversification has been the spread of IT prowess out of Bangalore into other cities like Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and Kolkata. However, Bangalore will still be the star of the show. The city that started it all. It is a disgrace to see it fall away like this. Best wishes for the city to get the governance it deserves.

A good speech with inputs as varied as Thirukkural, Koran, Bible and Gandhi all converging on the theme of working for a better India.

A brilliant summary of the differences between the three big streams of philosophical thought written by Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, a Professor at Lancaster University.

KPS Gill on extremist tendency among the Hindu community.

A long but brilliant and engaging article written by Daniel C. Dennett, a Professor at Tufts University. It is filled with outrageously illuminating one liners like: H.L. Mencken cynically said, "For every complex problem, there is a simple answer ... and it is wrong." It ends with a thought for the ages: It is time for the reasonable adherents of all faiths to find the courage and stamina to reverse the tradition that honors helpless love of God — in any tradition. Far from being honorable, it is not even excusable. It is shameful. Here is what we should say to people who follow such a tradition: There is only one way to respect the substance of any purported God-given moral edict. Consider it conscientiously in the full light of reason, using all the evidence at our command. No God pleased by displays of unreasoning love is worthy of worship. I could not agree more.

This story is about how the private airlines in India are planning to share resources in order to cut costs. What interested me was a comment about the manpower in these airlines: Significantly, the airlines had agreed not to poach licensed manpower from each other subject to sharing of technical manpower and training instructors. "They will establish a common compensation package for all licensed expatriates," the sources said. The BPO companies pretty much do the same thing, agreeing not to hire from each other. I wonder about the ethics of such agreements. In an increasingly service oriented industry, how is such an agreement different from price fixing? Should not anti-trust laws protect the right of workers to earn as much as the market conditions dictate?

VAT, or Value Added Tax is a progressive taxing system that was adopted by 21 Indian states a while back. By taxing goods and services at every stage of value addition, it improves tax collection and reduces tax evasion. In spite of the fact that the NDA government had initially proposed it, the BJP directed the states ruled by it to stay away from VAT. However, now that the benefits of the new regime are becomming amply clear, the BJP has decided to join the trend. This story was surprisingly under-reported. As this editorial from Good News India reports, it was a fitting climax to a slow thriller. More information about VAT and its specific implications for India can be found here . The Good News India editorial also has a great example of how VAT works. What VAT aims to do is to charge tax only for value added to a product or service. Say you bought a bottle for Rs. 10 and a lid for Rs. 2 and each incurred a tax of 10%, a tax of Rs. 1.20 had already been paid. If you then stu...

The nuclear deal is still not out of the woods yet. The Non-Proliferation hawks in Washington are going to put up a stiff fight against it. One of the arguments that is being advanced is that special treatment of India would lead to calls for similar concessions from other nations, such as Pakistan and Iran. However, it seems to me to be ridiculous to equate India's status in terms of responsibility and size with those of Pakistan and Iran. This is one issue in which American and Indian interests would both be well served with the realization of the simple fact that India is looking for a reason to finish its transformation into a pro-American country. The nuclear deal and support for permanent seat in the UN security council are the acid tests, that the Indians will use to see how much of a friend America really is. A bump in this path is not in Indian interest, as it would have to turn to other powers like China, with whom it has a lesser sense of ideological affinity. Howe...

A well written article about the course of the peace process. Although it is one sided and puts all the blame on the Pakistani Army (but not its people), it does make a couple of interesting points. highly publicised but vague offers of quick-fix solutions that do not take into account the trust deficit would be made to show to his mentors Pakistani flexibility and Indian rigidity. My own feeling about this issue centers on the trust deficit. As long as India and Pakistan cannot trust each other, there is no chance of a solution to the contentious issues.

An essay about how the media looks at tiny and impermanent trends to project such absurdities as the "New Deal Democrat" and "Small Government Republican" and how there is now a "Permanent Republican Majority". 2004 election results supposedly revealed deep culture-war differences concerning religion that sealed the Republicans' permanent majority status... But what a difference a year makes. According to the Washington chattering class, Bush and the Republicans' governing majority are suddenly but surely in decline. The centerpiece of the essay is the following comments: There is only one problem with this latest conventional political wisdom. It is, like the conventional political wisdom that immediately preceded it, almost completely wrong in virtually every respect...Conservative Republicans, beset by deep ideological divisions, are not even close to becoming the country's permanent ruling class... Just the same, neither the GOP nor the pr...

An article in Spiegal about why the State is heavier in Europe than it is in America. ...for Germans, after two world wars and the collapse of almost every religious certainty, the welfare state has become a spiritual necessity, which can be reformed but not revolutionized without damage to the collective soul. The argument that the state is somehow the doctor that heals a nation wounded by Hitler and the Nazis is difficult to understand. I myself believe that in spite of its deeper traditions, Europe can be as conservative as America. It just is not.

You know the peace process is in trouble when a leftist columnist like Praful Bidwai writes a blunt piece critisizing Pakistan. Normally his views are much more balanced.

Much of the ideas presented in this piece were inspired by Richard Dawkin's book, The Selfish Gene . More children of a doting mother survived because the absent minded mother did not notice when her children wandered onto the freeway. Since apples fall near the tree, and since doting mother begets doting children, should not the absent minded mother gene be wiped out from the gene pool over the course of a few generations. Why then are there still absent minded mothers? The diligent crow finds a way to procreate. So does the un-doting cuckoo. The crow slaves while the cuckoos have all the fun. If the crow is to maximize its chances, it need to evolve to be able to identify a cuckoo egg from its own. Evolution, in case you did not notice, is a scary perpetual warfare with bigger guns being brought into the maidan with each passing generation. Our genes are selfish and make us behave in ways that seek to ensure their own survival. Our genes make us identify "ours" f...

Amartya Sen's recent book, The Argumentative Indian had an assertion that startled me. India was Buddhist majority country through hundreds of years of its history. And yet, I never met a single Buddhist growing up in India. I have met far greater number of Americans, who are practicing Buddhists, than I have met Indians. Things change. The only constant is change. Change is a good thing. I hate change. People seem to have a lot to say about change, and express their opinions strongly. Yet, we hardly notice it when we are in the middle of its happening. One such change hit me in my face when I read an old column written by MJ Akbar. Before partition, India was well on its way to becoming a truly composite culture where a Hindu and a Muslim were only partly Hindu and partly Muslim with both being completely Indian. The partition of India has meant that Pakistanis of today relate to Hinduism in about the same way as Indians relate to Buddhism, as something from the past th...

A poor man is as good as a dead one. The above piece of wisdom is compliments of the Ramayan, not the Republican party. The Ramayan argues that enlightenment requires peace of mind and time for leisure and further that an empty wallet does not provide either. Had he been around, Valmiki would have told newly independent India that simple living and high thinking don't mix very well together. It is not an accident that so many of the great philosophers of the past were born rich. Buddha was. Gandhi was. Akbar was. Ashoka was. Universal love for mankind is not a thought that sits well on an empty stomach. Nor is an empty stomach satiated by the slogans of the left. A failure to acknowledge the importance of personal motivation and incentives for work meant a half hearted jump from feudal to a socialist economy. My teacher at primary school bemoaned a poor India, and attributed the nations backwardness to its people's laziness. It took me many years to realize that the p...

This review of a new book "The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century" seeks to debunk the central pessimistic assumptions that drive the tone of the book. The book seems to be a run of the mill doomsday scenario book, with as much chance of being right as Malthus' theory of population growth leading to mass starvation and death. However, one thing that interested me is the comment about the publications that gave this book a warm welcome: The Long Emergency has received a warm welcome, featuring on the front covers of both the leftish British publication the New Statesman and Pat Buchanan's old-right American Conservative. Last time I heard, the blue staters were supposed to be the pessimistic ones raising scare about the environment and global warming and such. Maybe things are changing.

A Spiegel reporter talks to Islamic fundamentalists in Indonesia. If fostering democracy in other Muslim nations has enabled the return of extremism, how can Baghdad avoid a similar fate?

A compilation of clever quotes from authors, present and past, arranged by nationality. Gore Vidal on being told his friend and rival Truman Capote had died: That was a good career move. Alexandre Dumas on women: It is only rarely that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman. There is a good one from Mr. Akbar himself: It is remarkable how poignant the stiff-lipped English can get when they are helpless. When they can help themselves, they help themselves to an empire on which the sun never sets. When they become helpless, they can’t see beyond the White House.

An NRI delegate stands up and protests loudly upon another delegate, one Dr. Sudhir Parikh, being given the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman award. The good Doctor is aparently too close to the Modi/RSS camp. Talking to the media about this incident, another delegate, Mr. Narayana Reddy commented: This is part of the Indian culture. They fight among themselves wherever they are We still dont seem to get it. Our penchant for arguing and fighting, and our success in preserving this culture through all the years as a poor nation has been the saving grace in the otherwise dismal post independence picture. Long live free speech.

Through the years of "India Shining", it was obvious that the final destiny of India, whether good or bad, was somehow tied to Bihar. Bihar is the heart of India, and not just geographically. Now finally, winds of change are blowing by. The stoy ends with a quote from President Kalam. If India is to succeed, Bihar must prosper.

Went for a 10 day Vipassana retreat in North Fork, California. Tough both mentally and physically, but I am glad I did it. The basic idea behind the technique is to meditate and observe very fine sensations on the body. There are sensations of pleasure and pain, and we train the mind to consider both with equanimity. No craving for pleasure, no over-reaction to pain. The movement seems to be well established now, with centers opening all over the world. The greatest thing about the whole thing is that it is a completely volunteer run effort. You don't have to pay for anything, not even for the 10 days of food and accommodation. They will not even take a donation from you unless you complete the whole 10 days.