From zest_india at yahoo.co.in Thu Jul 1 20:11:44 2004 From: zest_india at yahoo.co.in (shivam) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 07:41:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] RAGGING: Molestation slur on XLRI students Message-ID: <20040701144144.40773.qmail@web8203.mail.in.yahoo.com> Hi! Is there anyone here from Jamshedpur who can help us a little about this incident? What has appeared in other newspapers? Is anyone in touch with anyone at XLRI Jamshedpur so that we can know the inside story of ragging there? Thanks PACE Stop Ragging Campaign: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging Molestation slur on XLRI students Statesman News Service RANCHI, June 26. � Barely has the dust settled on the IIM fee-cut controversy, another of India�s premier B-schools, the Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), Jamshedpur has been rocked by a controversy of another kind. Female freshers at the institute have apparently alleged that inebriated senior students misbehaved with them under the garb of ragging on Tuesday night. Sources at the institute said the incident took place after the orientation programme for freshers at the main hall got over. Some senior students who had had too much to drink asked their juniors to assemble in front of the students� hostel. Some seniors reportedly tried to force the girls to consume alcohol and a senior student allegedly tried to kiss a fresher. She objected and tried to push him away but he held her back, a source close to a first-year student said. The girls then ran towards their rooms but were reportedly followed by the seniors who tried to enter the rooms but prevented from doing after the institute staff intervened. When this correspondent tried to speak to some freshers about the reported incident over the telephone, there were mixed reactions. While some denied such an incident had taken place, others admitted that it had but said they did not want to to �get into trouble�. Some others said the incident was blown out of proportion. A report on the incident has also been posted on a website for management students from various B-schools. When contacted, XLRI director Fr N Casmirraj, however, denied the incident. He firmly said that the entire story was �cooked up� to malign the prestige institute. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From pauline at metamute.com Thu Jul 1 21:44:51 2004 From: pauline at metamute.com (Pauline van Morik Broekman) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 17:14:51 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] RAGGING: other examples In-Reply-To: <20040701144144.40773.qmail@web8203.mail.in.yahoo.com> References: <20040701144144.40773.qmail@web8203.mail.in.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Dear Shivam and Michiel, Strange: even though I'm Dutch and have observed, or rather listened to, stories about these practices a lot in my youth, for most of your thread I didn't know what the hell ragging was. I actually had to look it up on the Net to figure out what you were talking about. As regards your interest in 'ragging' practices outside of India, and the comment someone made that, perhaps in contradistinction, the practice in Holland is a) voluntarily submitted to and b) part of a social stratum that is privileged or elite (you for example even have to pay to become a member of these fraternities/sororities), I thought you might be interested to know that I heard that in France - especially in the universities associated with the so-called 'BCBG' (Bon Chic Bon Genre) and upper level 'establishment' demographic - it is even more heinous than in Holland, and most certainly has a sexual element. I have to confess that my memory of some of the French stories is rather hazy (moreover they may be apocryphal), but nonetheless I very definitely remember they were usually sexualised vis a vis women, and in one case involved a woman having to 'hide' or totally conceal herself among the innards of a horse carcass which her peers had hauled to whatever social space the ragging was taking place in from a butchers or anatomist's. This, combined with exhortations to all kinds of sexualised and naked poses made me realise there was much worse than Holland. Regarding Abu Ghraib, although the comparison may appear totally disproportional, what I feel is relevant (and is also reflected in films like Salo), is the function of such degrading/sadistic rituals in a) consolidating social, or ideological, cohesion and obedience and b) ensuring the practice is either continued or not spoken about (the latter would be the case for Iraq, the former for Holland). Very similar to the strange repetition compulsion you witness in many British people who have gone to strict 'public' schools (here, private) and wish to continue the practice with their own children, you'll always hear the Dutch ex-frat people say it was 'really good for them', that it fostered an incomparable sense of 'community', and that nothing else would have bound them equally to the institution of the fraternity. I think if you extrapolate or intensify this logic with regards to other social scenarios, it's pretty clear what is going on. All the best and thanks, Pauline. Dear Michiel, Many thanks for your reply and for joing our mailing list. On the net i read similarly about hazing in the US, so is this practice in the Netherlands called ragging or hazing, or is some other term employed? I wonder if anyone can guide me towards the historical origins of ragging. It's bizarre, and whoever thought of it must certainly be abnormal. Can I extract the part about raagging in Netherlands in your mail, and put it in our Dossier, under the section 'Ragging outside India'. We cannot live in a vaccum and it is important to understand ragging and know about anti-ragging movements. I believe Sri Lanka has had a successful anti-ragging movement, and I'm trying to know about it. Ragging is educational institutions is sometimes ludicrously justified with the argument that even military training academies do it. Btw, the Pakistan Air Force has banned ragging after two men died of it. It would be great, Michiel, if you could elaborate about ragging in the Netherlands. For instance, does it have a sexual element in it? Are there special anti-ragging laws? Thanks and regaards, Shivam -- ..............................* Mute has moved! We are now at: Unit 9, The Whitechapel Centre, Myrdle Street, London E1 1HL, UK T: +44 (0)20 7377 6949 / F: +44 (0)20 7377 9520 W: www.metamute.com & W: www.openmute.org.......* From zest_india at yahoo.co.in Thu Jul 1 20:01:41 2004 From: zest_india at yahoo.co.in (shivam) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 07:31:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Ragging at ISB&M, Pune Message-ID: <20040701143142.42708.qmail@web8202.mail.in.yahoo.com> The Principal / Director, International School of Business & Media Pune Sir, We are an NGO working to eliminate ragging from educational institutions. Details of our work can be had from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging . After an article on our activities appeared in the Pune edition of the Indian Express, also available at http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=89634 , we received a complaint of severe, brutal ragging of MBA-I students by their seniors. The complaint also alleged that Institute authorities are not taking adequate measures to stop ragging, leave alone punish the guilty. We urge you to fulfil your duties as head of the International School of Business & Media. You are obliged to prevent ragging at your institution by a Maharashtra state law as well as a Supreme Court 2001 verdict. A copy of the Supreme Court verdict is available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging/message/21 The judgement reads: "Failure to prevent ragging shall be construed as an act of negligence in maintaining discipline in the institution on the part of the management, the principal and the persons in authority of the institution. Similar responsibility shall be liable to be fixed on hostel wardens/superintendent. It also says: "If an institution fails to curb ragging, the UGC/Funding Agency may consider stoppage of financial assistance to such an Institution till such time as it achieves the same. An University may consider disaffiliating a college or institution failing to curb ragging. And excerpts from the Maharastra anti-ragging laws are available at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging/message/51 The Maharashtra law, passed in 1999, says: "If the head of the educational institution fails or neglects to take action in the manner specified in section 6 when a complaint of ragging is made, such person shall be deemed to have abetted the offence of ragging and shall, on conviction, be punished as provided for in section 4. We request you to please look into the matter and see that ragging does not take place in your college or hostels. Looking forward to your co-operation. Thanks and regards, Sachin Agarwal 30 June 2004 __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From zest_india at yahoo.co.in Thu Jul 1 20:24:22 2004 From: zest_india at yahoo.co.in (shivam) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 07:54:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] =?iso-8859-1?q?=91The_Spread_of_Christianity_in_Ka?= =?iso-8859-1?q?shmir_and_Its_Unholy_Designs=27?= Message-ID: <20040701145422.38840.qmail@web8207.mail.in.yahoo.com> sorry for the formatting.... Book Review Name of the Book: Wadi-i Kashmir Mai Isaiyat Ka Farogh Aur Uske Makruh Aza�im: Ek Tafsili-o Tahqiqi Ja�iza (�The Spread of Christianity in Kashmir and Its Unholy Designs: A Detailed Survey�) (Urdu) Editor: Muhammad Saeed ur-Rahman Shams Publisher: Shaikh Mohammad Usman & Sons, Madina Chowk, Gaukadal, Srinagar, Kashmir (sh_usman at rediffmail.com) Year: 2004 Price: Rs.10 Pages: 46 Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand Two years ago a flood of reports suddenly appeared in the Indian press revealing an alarming number of conversions of Muslims to Christianity in Kashmir. Figures of the number of such converts in the past ten years varied greatly, with some putting the total as high as 20,000. In the absence of any detailed research on the subject it is difficult to make a reasonable estimate, but the number is sizeable enough to have caused considerable consternation as well as soul-searching among Muslim religious authorities in Kashmir, as this booklet reveals. This booklet consists of three articles written on the subject of Muslim conversions to Christianity, with an introduction by the Mirwaiz of Kashmir, Maulvi Muhammad Umar Faruq, head of the Muttahida Majlis-i �Ulama of Jammu and Kashmir (MMUJK), a recently-established association of Kashmiri �ulama that is involved in seeking to counter the threat of Christian evangelism in the region. The articles provide interesting glimpses into the social, economic and political factors behind the spate of conversions, the methods used by Christian missionaries to win converts as well as the responses of Kashmiri Muslim religious organisations. In his brief introductory note, Mirwaiz Umar Faruq describes the work of the Christian missionary groups in Kashmir as a major threat, suggesting that the missionaries use material inducements to win converts, and hence claiming that their work can hardly be said to be sincere. He refers, in this regard, to the work of the MMUJK, and suggests that it undertake a range of activities and programmes to promote Islamic awareness among the Kashmiri public, protect Muslim identity and thereby counter the Christian evangelical challenge. Two articles included in the booklet echo much the same views, and do not go beyond the level of generalities, thus providing little understanding of the exact process and factors for the conversions in Kashmir. In his article, the noted Pakistani Deobandi scholar Muhammad Taqi Usmani describes the Christian evangelical project as little less than a cheap gimmick, accusing the missionaries of using money, and promises of jobs and education to lure unsuspecting, and largely poor, Muslims into the Christian fold. In this the Maulana is probably correct, and this may well be true for some, or even most, Christian missionary groups. Yet, whatever their motives, this ought not to be used as an argument to altogether deny the important contributions that some Christian institutions and dedicated activists are making in helping the suffering and the needy. What, one must ask, are the Muslim counterparts of the Christian missionaries doing for the poor, and the victims of the unceasing violence in Kashmir and elsewhere? Pretty much nothing is the answer, except for loudly haranguing their enemies and lamenting their plight, and refusing to speak out against the barbarities perpetrated by self-styled Islamists in the name of Islam. Which, in turn, explains why Christian missionaries have moved in to do their own thing and so can hardly be blamed. The Maulana conveniently glosses over this rather inconvenient fact, and, instead, goes on to develop an elaborate and abstruse theological argument seeking to prove that Christianity as it exists today is a corruption of, and a major deviation from, the original teachings of Jesus. Roughly the same argument is made by another Deobandi �alim, Mufti Arshad Ahmad, whose article also appears in this book. Titled as �Kashmir Main Isaiyat Ke Badhtey Qadam� (�The Growing Influence of Christianity in Kashmir�), it hardly refers to Kashmir at all and consists simply of an angry, although not entirely unmerited, diatribe against the missionaries. The third article, by the Kashmiri Deobandi scholar Maulvi Muhammad Mir Qasmi, is the book�s saving grace, being well-argued and informative. Titled �Kashmir Main Kitney Musalman Isai Bane?� (�How Many Muslims Have Become Christians in Kashmir?�), it provides a fairly detailed account of the working of various Christian missionary outfits in the Valley. Qasmi provides varying estimates of the number of Muslim converts to Christianity in Kashmir in the last ten years, from 12,000, as claimed by the Srinagar-based newspaper �Greater Kashmir�, to 20,000, a figure cited by the Kashmiri Urdu paper al-Safa. He then goes on to provide a broad historical overview of the Christian missionary presence in Kashmir, starting with the first European missionary, Robert Clarke, as early as in 1854. Clarke was followed by several other missionaries, Catholic as well as Protestant, some of whom set up educational institutions catering to the Kashmiri elite, in the hope of winning them to Christianity, and then, through them, hoping to reach out to the masses as well. Some of these schools still exist and are regarded as among the best institutions in the state. Yet, Qasmi notes, these missionary endeavours were not particularly successful, and the number of Kashmiri Muslim converts to Christianity remained meagre. The situation has drastically changed in the last fifteen years in the state, Qasmi says. Taking advantage of the plight of the poor and the victims of the ongoing strife, he says, numerous Christian missionary groups have established their presence in the Valley. Most of them are generously financed by rightwing, fundamentalist Christian evangelical orgaisations based in America and western Europe. Qasmi provides a detailed account of various missionary organisations presently working all over Kashmir, suggesting a well-organised campaign to spread Christianity, often disguised in the garb of helping hapless Kashmiris. Some of them are engaged in some sort of social work, such as providing employment, medical assistance and education, details of which Qasmi provides, but these are clearly meant simply as an evangelical tool. Qasmi speaks about a carefully designed division of labour between various missionary organisations in order to make their work more effective. Thus, for instance, Frontiers works among the Gujjars of Dar, near Srinagar, Agape Mission is based among the Hanjis or house-boat owners in Srinagar, Gospel for Asia focuses on the villages along the border with Pakistan, The Goodway is active in the Patan-Magam-Tangmarg triangle, Campus Crusade for Christ works among students in Pulwama and Srinagar, Eternal Life Ministries among leprosy patients in Nagin, and Operation Agape among surrendered militants. Some missionary organisations have tried to develop culturally more acceptable forms of communication in order to make for more effective communication with prospective converts. This, for instance, is the case with the Noor-i Hayat Church, the al-Bashar Fellowship and the al-Masihi Jama�at Fellowship, whose �Muslim� names have probably been deliberately chosen in order to make them seem somewhat innocuous and culturally familiar to their Muslim target audience. Some of these groups have also prepared propaganda material in the Kashmiri language, using forms and styles that the local Muslims can easily identify with. Such, for instance, is the case of an organisation that distributes free audiotapes on Christianity at Batamaloo, located in the very heart of Srinagar. Qasmi argues that for many Muslim converts, conversion is simply an economic choice. He writes that a sizeable number of the converts adopt Christianity simply in order to avail the educational, medical or economic assistance that missionary groups promise to provide them with. To buttress this claim he refers to a number of converts who, after joining one denomination and reaping material benefits of some sort, then choose to join another, rival Christian denomination if they are promised further material gain. For some Kashmiri converts as well as other Indian Christians employment in missionary organisations based in Kashmir also provides a good source of income, far beyond what they could otherwise expect. Such, for instance, is the case of a Manipuri missionary associated with the American-funded Operation Agape, who lives in a posh locality in Srinagar. Qasmi quotes this missionary as saying that for him his work is simply a job, and that he took it up because he could find no alternate employment in his home-state. A similar case that Qasmi cites is of a Kashmiri Muslim convert who works with the US-based German Town Baptist Church in Pulwama. An unemployed graduate, he now receives a regular salary and his missionary employers have promised to send him abroad for higher studies. At the same time, Qasmi also admits that not all converts to Christianity choose to adopt the faith simply out of economic motives. He refers to some converts whose change of faith was motivated by genuine spiritual concern, or as a result of being impressed with the dedication and sincerity of the Christian workers that they came in touch with. Such, for instance, is the case of a certain Sarwan Khan, a resident of Poonch, whom Qasmi describes as the convenor of all Protestant groups active in Jammu and Kashmir. Qasmi writes that Khan chose to become a convert principally out of disgust at what he saw as the local Muslims� neglect of the plight of their needy co-religionists. Qasmi refers to some other converts, mainly poor people as well as victims of the ongoing violence in Kashmir, who chose to accept Christianity because their fellow Muslims were indifferent to their misery, while the Christian workers whom they came into contact with willingly helped them. Qasmi refers to the case of an old widow, whose only son was killed, leaving her alone to fend for her three daughters. No Muslims offered to help her, and so she was forced to take the assistance of a Christian missionary. Impressed by the missionary�s generosity and dedication, she decided to convert to Christianity. She explains her conversion as a protest against Kashmiri Muslim leaders who, she claims, keep talking about piety and religion, but do nothing to help the poor. Qasmi argues that in order to meet the missionary challenge, Muslim organisations need to get their act together and engage in constructive social work among the poor instead of simply fighting polemical battles. He outlines a broad programme for Muslim religious organisations and leaders to adopt, most importantly being promoting education, not simply Islamic but modern as well, among poor Muslims in the state who are the most vulnerable to the blandishments of the missionaries. Qasmi�s other suggestions include starting medical centres, employment generation projects, orphanages and vocational training centres to help the poor and the needy. He stresses that the Jammu and Kashmir Awqaf Board, which controls most Muslim endowments in the state, should play a leading role in this regard, given the vast resources at its command which have not been put to proper use all these years. Qasmi also recognises that in many cases the conversions reflect a growing disillusionment among many Kashmiris with the ongoing violence in the state, as well as a yearning for peace. Unfortunately, he chooses not to elaborate on this vital point. However, it is clear that for at least some converts the continued violence in Kashmir, in which certain radical Islamist groups are deeply implicated, must certainly have been a cause of disillusionment leading them to choose to convert to Christianity, a fact that Qasmi himself admits in passing. As probably the only available book on the subject, this book provides useful insights into the dynamics of Christian missionary work in a politically very sensitive part of the world, although it lacks sufficient ethnographic depth. Given the fact that the American establishment now sees right-wing Christian missionary groups as a major ally in its military involvement in the Muslim world, as exemplified most clearly in Iraq today where missionaries are working in tandem with the American occupation forces, the book points to the urgent need for more in-depth and detailed studies of the political economy of Christian missionary groups, many of them American-funded, working among Muslims today, including in Kashmir. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From soumava at vsnl.com Fri Jul 2 00:12:23 2004 From: soumava at vsnl.com (Soumava Das) Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2004 00:12:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Fourth posting] Implementation of a peer-to-peer news distribution network Message-ID: <40E4A867.30386.4D47DF@localhost> Hi, This is the third part of our survey on peer-to-peer networks. This part focuses on the different routing techniques used by some of the important p2p networks. Soumava Das ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Study of different routing techniques ............................................................. 1. An introduction to Peer-to-Peer networks ------------------------------------------- 1.1 General characteristics - The term peer stems from the Latin for equal. It thus characterizes individuals, who may be regarded as with respect to some function or some situation. This describes one major feature of Peer-to-Peer networking, namely that all participants have the same rights and duties, at least in the pure Peer-to-Peer architecture. In such a network peers, i.e entities with the same networking functionalities, interact directly with each other to perform a service or exchange data directly, without the need for a central management. If central entity is used in a Peer-to-Peer network, then we call it a hybrid Peer-to-Peer network. The central entity is in most cases only used as a central index which is managed and maintained only by the connected peers of such a network. Peer-to-Peer networking gives us the concept of an entity acting as a Servent. Servent is an artificial word which is derived from the first syllable of the term server ("Serv-") and second syllable of the term client ("-ent"). Thus this term Servent shall represent the capability of the nodes of a peer-to-peer network of acting at the same time as a server as well as a client. As a result a participant of a Peer-to-Peer network is on the one hand able to direct requests to other nodes, and on the other hand is able to work on and answer incoming requests from other nodes of this Peer-to-Peer network. A Peer-to-Peer network is mostly located on top of the IP-protocol stack (UDP, TCP, FTP) and establishes virtual paths between all peers. These paths are used for signalling, as well as for data transfer. Further on, this virtual network is managed and controlled by the peers, which therefore provide the networking functionalities. The content and services offered by the network are offered by the peers. Therefore the peers contribute parts of their resources (storage capacity, network link capacity, computing power) to the network. Hence in these kind of networks, peers share their storage capacity to bring in the content, their processing power for routing issues and their network link capacity to forward incoming search requests, as well as to upload the requested content. Hence a general definition of Peer-to-Peer networks can be given as follows: A distributed network architecture may be called a Peer-to-Peer network, if the participants share a part of their own hardware resources (processing power, storage capacity, network link capacity, printers, ...). These shared resources are necessary to provide the service and content offered by the network. They are accessible by other peers directly, without passing intermediary entities. The participants of such a network are thus resource providers as well as resource requestors. 1.2 "Pure" Peer-to-Peer networks - A "Pure" Peer-to Peer network is characterized by the fact that in a "Pure" Peer-to-Peer network all participating nodes are peers. That means all participants have the same rights and same duties, although they may rely on a different hardware basis. Thus no central institution to manage, control, co-ordinate or to provide content/services for the Peer-to-Peer network exists in this network. Thus any single point of failure is avoided by this network, which makes Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks difficult, as all tasks are distributed throughout the network. As the peers of a "Pure" Peer-to-Peer network equally interact with each other via the virtual paths described before, a very symmetric networking structure arises. The requests of the clients are not directed to one central entity, but rather evenly distributed over the whole network. Thus this network is a self organizing network without any central management instance. As there is no central index or database exists, routing is done via a distributed search, which is based on direct messaging between the peers, until the requested peer is found. To prevent the network from being flooded by the search requests, Time-to-Live counter is attached to each message in this protocol This Time-to-Live counter counts the number of hops as the message is forwarded from peer to peer, during the lifetime of the search message. As soon as the counter reaches a predefined value, the message is killed and not forwarded any further. 1.3 "Hybrid" Peer-to-Peer networks - The key distinction of "Hybrid" Peer-to-Peer compared to "Pure" Peer-to-Peer is the fact, that the former always includes a central entity. The central entity is not a commonly known general purpose server from which content or services can be requested and downloaded. It resembles more to a central peer group database or catalogue of addresses, from which the location of a service or content can be retrieved. The actual service is then executed between the peers, without any further support by the central entity. Just the search, where the content/service can be retrieved from, is performed with the help of the central entity. The most prominent representative of "Hybrid" Peer-to-Peer networking is Napster, which is widely known because of the lawsuit filed against it by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The Napster protocol is used for the exchange of files, mainly audio files. To retrieve a file, a peer first has to request the location of the demanded file at the central entity, in this case the Napster server. The server provides a central index, in which the IP address of peers and the characteristics of their shared certain files are stored. If the demanded file matches the characteristics of a file listed in the index, the Napster server returns the IP address, where the file can be retrieved from, to the requestor. Any further handling and management regarding the file transfer, is now done between the two peers. The server is not involved any further. 2. Peer-to-Peer networks and their routing techniques ----------------------------------------------------- Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks provide the capability to establish virtual overlay networks. "Pure" P2P networks are completely self organizing and therefore do not need central instances to manage the network. >From the discussions in section 1.2 it can be said that, an important characteristic of these networks is that the terminals of these networks communicate in a bidirectional and symmetric way with each other, therefore a virtual overlay network is established above the IP-Layer. Such a network consists in most cases only of the servents and the TCP/IP connections between the different servents. -> Three system models of Peer-to-Peer networks :- i) Centralized model: In this model there is a global index held by some centralized authority, but there is direct contact between requestors and providers. Naturally, the threat of a central point of failure is prevalent in this model. This type of networks falls under "Hybrid" Peer-to-Peer networks, as discussed in section 1.3. Example - Napster. ii) Decentralized model: This model speaks of no global index and no central co-ordination. The contact between requestors and providers can be direct or mediated by a chain of intermediaries. This type of networks can be called "Pure" Peer-to-Peer networks as discussed in section 1.2. Example - Gnutella and Freenet. iii) Hierarchical model: This model is basically a mix of centralized and de-centralized models. In this model, a few peers with better processing power, storage capacity and network link capacity, are termed as "Super-peers" or "Ultra-peers". This model also falls roughly under "Hybrid" Peer-to-Peer networks. Example - FastTrack. -> Main Peer-to-Peer design requirements :- i) Resource discovery and routing ii) Managing updates iii) Scalability iv) Robustness and fault tolerance v) Trust assessment and management 2.1 Gnutella - The Gnutella protocol is an open, decentralized group membership and search protocol, mainly used for file sharing. The term Gnutella also designates the virtual network Internet accessible hosts running Gnutella-speaking applications and a number of smaller and often private, disconnected networks. As most P2P file sharing applications, Gnutella protocol was designed to meet the following goals: Ability to operate in a dynamic environment - P2P applications operate in dynamic environments, where hosts may join or leave the network frequently. They must achieve flexibility in order to keep operating transparently despite a constantly changing set of resources. Performance and scalability - P2P paradigm shows its full potential only on large-scale deployments where the limits of the traditional client/server paradigm become obvious. Moreover scalability is important as P2P applications exhibit what economists call the "network effect" : the value of a network to an individual user increases with the total number of users participating in the network. Ideally when increasing the number of nodes, aggregate storage space and file availability should grow linearly, response time should remain constant, while search throughput should remain high. Reliability - External attacks should not cause significant data or performance loss. Anonymity - Anonymity is valued as a means to protect privacy of people seeking or providing information that may not be popular. 2.1.1 How Gnutella works? Gnutella servents provide client side interfaces through which user's can issue queries and view search results, accept queries from other servents, check for matches against their local data set and respond with corresponding results. These nodes are also responsible for managing the background traffic that spreads the information used to maintain network integrity. Every servent is connected dynamically to an average of 7 servents, depending on the bandwidth of the servent's network connection. The messages, routed via these connections can be divided into two categories. One type are the query messages, and the second type are the respond messages. The query messages are used to explore the structure of a terminals neighbourhood, by sending out PING messages. Secondly query messages are used to search for certain content, e.g. mp3 compressed audio files in the network, by sending out QUERY messages. The Gnutella network employs a routing concept, known as 'Viral propagation" for the query messages. This means that a servent searching for content or exploring the network, sends out a query message, i.e. a QUERY or a PING message, to all the neighbouring servents it is currently directly connected to via TCP/IP connections in the virtual overlay network. Thus every servent is able to explore in a completely decentralized manner without the need for a central entity, by more or less simply flooding the network. The second type of messages, which are used in the Gnutella network, are the respond messages, which are used to answer received query messages. The answer is QUERY_HIT message, if a QUERY was received, and the peer hosts the demanded content. A PONG-message is used to answer a PING message, and thus to make the querying client aware of its presence. These respond message are of no interest to the rest of the network, and they therefore have to be routed only to the querying servent. To avoid flooding, respond messages are routed back to the querying terminal on the same way that the original query message traveled to the receiving servent. Beside the application routed signalling messages, the respond and query messages, the content a servent is querying for must also be distributed through the virtual overlay network. However, to minimize the load on the existing overlay network and especially of its servents/routers, the demanded data is transmitted "out-band". "Out-band" in this context means that with the address provided in the QUERY_HIT message, a direct - only IP routed - connection between the querying and the responding servent is established. This connection is used to transmit the content directly between the peers. If the responding servent is behind a firewall a PUSH message is sent by the querying servent requesting file download. The following table summarizes these messages: Type Description Contained information -------------------------------------------------------------------- PING Announce availability None and probe for other servents. PONG Response to a PING IP address and port# of responding servent; number and total kb of files shared. QUERY Search request Minimum network bandwidth of responding servent; search criteria. QUERY HIT Returned by servents IP address,port number and that have the requested network bandwidth of file. responding servent; number of results and result set. PUSH File download requests Servent ID; index of requested for servents behind a file; IP address and port to firewall. send file to. The major problem of the Gnutella protocol v0.4 is that parts of the virtual overlay network are flooded with ping and query messages, which causes a high signalling load. To reduce this load, a time-to-live value (TTL) is attached to each query message in the Gnutella protocol v0.4. This means that a query message is only forwarded by a servent, if the TTL-value, which is decreased with every hop, is not equal to zero. Thus a certain transmission range for these messages is defined, which prevents the network from being flooded by query messages, which could eventually lead to scalability problems, especially for servents connected to the network with only a low bandwidth connection. 2.1.2 Query Routing We can reduce the number of flooded query messages, by routing these queries based on the search keywords. The basic idea of query routing in the virtual overlay network is, that servents exchange their query routing tables with their neighbours periodically. The query routing tables contain metadata of hosted content, i.e. keywords, and the corresponding IP-address, of the servent from which the metadata was received. Any incoming query is then analyzed for its search keywords, and then compared to the local query-routing table. If one of the search keywords matches to one or more entries in the routing table, the query is forwarded in the direction, given by the routing table, instead of being flooded to all neighbours of the servent. If no match with the routing table can be found, the query is forwarded to all neighbours of the servent, as long as the TTL-value of the query message has not expired. To minimize the amount of bandwidth necessary to propagate the routing tables, a variant of Bloom Filters are used. This means, that each keyword is hashed, and then all keywords of the content of one servent are compressed in a bitmap. Thus a whole set of keywords and IP-addresses need not have to be exchanged periodically, but only a comparatively small bitmap. Further, incremental updates could also be used, if only small changes have taken place since the last routing table has been propagated to its neighbours. However, the major problem with the implementation of query-routing tables is again, how to keep them up to date, if the network is very dynamic. The problem is, that routing information for a certain file A which is hosted by the servent X, may still propagate through the network, although the servent X is not a member of the network. Thus queries may be directed in a wrong direction, which leads to useless traffic, and to unsatisfied users, as the content they search for cannot be found any more. A solution to this problem could be to set a timer for every routing table entry. After the expiration, this routing table entry is deleted to prevent any misleading routings. Further more the propagation reach of each routing table must be limited, to prevent the routing table from propagating through the whole network. This could be done with a hop-counter, which avoids routing tables from being spread any further, as soon as a certain value for the hop-count has been reached. 2.1.3 Summary We can now summarize the properties of Gnutella network: o Completely decentralized o Hit rates are high o High fault tolerance o Adopts well and dynamically to changing peer populations o Simple, robust and scalable o Protocol causes high network traffic o No estimates on the durations of queries can be given o No probability for successful queries can be given o Topology is unknown o Reputation of peers is not addressed 2.2 Freenet - Freenet is a distributed information storage and retrieval system which addresses the concerns such as - privacy and availability. The system operates as a location independent distributed file system across many servents, that allow files to be inserted, stored and requested anonymously. There are five main design goals: # Anonymity for both producers and consumers of information # Deniability for storers of information # Resistance to attempts by third parties to deny access to information # Efficient dynamic storage and routing of information # Decentralization of all network functions The system is designed to respond adaptively to usage patterns, transparently moving replicating and deleting files as necessary to provide efficient service without resorting to broadcast searches and centralized indexes. It is not intended to guarantee permanent file storage, although it is hoped that a sufficient number of nodes will join with enough storage capacity that most files will be able to remain indefinitely. In addition, the system operates in the application layer and assumes the existence of a secure transport layer, although it is transport layer independent. It does not seek to provide anonymity for general network usage, only for Freenet file transactions. Maintaining privacy for creating and retrieving files means little without also protecting the files themselves in particular, keeping their holders hidden from attack. Freenet thus makes it hard to discover exactly which computers store which files. Together with redundant replication of data, holder privacy makes it extremely difficult for censors to block or destroy files on the network. 2.2.1 Architecture Freenet is implemented as an adaptive Peer-to-Peer network of nodes that query one another to store and retrieve data files, which are named by location independent keys. Each node maintains its own local data- store which it makes available to the network for reading and writing, as well as a dynamic routing table containing addresses of other nodes and the keys that they are thought to hold. It is intended that most users of the system will run nodes, both to provide security guarantees against inadvertently using a hostile foreign node and to increase the storage capacity available to the network as a whole. 2.2.1.1 Keys Freenet participants each run a node that provides the network some storage space. To add a new file, a user sends the network an insert message containing the file and its assigned location-independent globally unique identifier (GUID), which causes the file to be stored on some set of nodes. During a file's lifetime, it might migrate to or be replicated on other nodes. To retrieve a file, a user sends out a request message containing the GUID key. When the request reaches one of the nodes where the file is stored, that node passes the data back to the request's originator. Freenet GUID keys are calculated using SHA-1 secure hashes. The network employs two main types of keys: content-hash keys, used for primary data storage, and signed-subspace keys, intended for higher- level human use. The two are analogous to "inodes" and filenames in a conventional file system. 2.2.1.2 Messaging and Privacy Freenet was designed from the beginning under the assumption of hostile attack from both inside and out. Therefore, it intentionally makes it difficult for nodes to direct data toward themselves and keeps its routing topology dynamic and concealed. Unfortunately, these considerations have had the side effect of hampering changes that might improve Freenet's routing characteristics. Privacy in Freenet is maintained using a variation of Chaum's mix-net scheme for anonymous communication. Rather than move directly from sender to recipient, messages travel through node-to-node chains, in which each link is individually encrypted, until the message finally reaches its recipient. Because each node in the chain knows only about its immediate neighbours, the end points could be anywhere among the network's hundreds of thousands of nodes, which are continually exchanging indecipherable messages. Not even the node immediately after the sender can tell whether its predecessor was the message's originator or was merely forwarding a message from another node. Similarly, the node immediately before the receiver can't tell whether its successor is the true recipient or will continue to forward it. This arrangement is intended to protect not only information producers and consumers (at the beginning of chains), but also information holders (at the end of chains). By protecting the latter, it can prevent an adversary from destroying a file by attacking all of its holders. Of course, ensuring privacy is not enough; queries must be able to locate data as well. 2.2.1.3 Routing Routing queries is the most important element of the Freenet system. The simplest routing method, used by services like Napster, is to maintain a central index of files, so that users can send requests directly to information holders. Unfortunately, centralization creates a single point of failure that is easy to attack. For example, if someone is trying to phone Sachin Tendulkar, the simplest way to get his number would ordinarily be to call directory assistance. However, because directory assistance is centralized, his access can be easily blocked if Sachin or someone else decides to remove his directory entry, or if the service goes down. Systems like Gnutella broadcast queries to every connected node within some radius. Using this method, someone would ask all of his friends if any of them knew Sachin's number, get them to ask their friends, and so on. Within a few steps, thousands of people could be looking for his number. Although this process would eventually find the answer, it is clearly wasteful and unscalable. Freenet avoids both problems by using a steepest-ascent hill-climbing search: Each node forwards queries to the node that it thinks is closest to the target. A person might start searching for Sachin by asking a friend who once played college cricket, for example, who might pass his request on to a former coach, who could pass it to someone else, who might pass it to Sachin's agent, who could put him in touch with the man himself. Requesting files: Every node maintains a routing table that lists the addresses of other nodes and the GUID keys it thinks they hold. When a node receives a query, it first checks its own store, and if it finds the file, returns it with a tag identifying itself as the data holder. Otherwise, the node forwards the request to the node in its table with the closest key to the one requested. That node then checks its store, and so on. If the request is successful, each node in the chain passes the file back upstream and creates a new entry in its routing table associating the data holder with the requested key. Depending on its distance from the holder, each node might also cache a copy locally. To conceal the identity of the data holder, nodes will occasionally alter reply messages, setting the holder tags to point to themselves before passing them back up the chain. Later requests will still locate the data because the node retains the true data holder's identity in its own routing table and forwards queries to the correct holder. Routing tables are never revealed to other nodes. To limit resource usage, the requester gives each query a time-to-live limit that is decremented at each node. If the TTL expires, the query fails, although the user can try again with a higher TTL (up to some maximum). Because the TTL can give clues about where in the chain the requester is, Freenet offers the option of enhancing security by adding an initial mix-net route before normal routing. This effectively re-positions the start of the chain away from the requester. If a node sends a query to a recipient that is already in the chain, the message is bounced back and the node tries to use the next-closest key instead. If a node runs out of candidates to try, it reports failure back to its predecessor in the chain, which then tries its second choice, and so on. With this approach, the request homes in closer with each hop until the key is found. A subsequent query for this key will tend to approach the first request's path, and a locally cached copy can satisfy the query after the two paths converge. Subsequent queries for similar keys will also jump over intermediate nodes to one that has previously supplied similar data. Nodes that reliably answer queries will be added to more routing tables, and hence, will be contacted more often than nodes that do not. Inserting files: An insert message follows the same path that a request for the same key would take, sets the routing table entries in the same way, and stores the file on the same nodes. Thus, new files are placed where queries would look for them. To insert a file, a user assigns it a GUID key and sends an insert message to the user's own node containing the new key. Upon receiving an insert, a node checks its data store to see if the key already exists. If so, the insert fails - either because the file is already in the network (for CHKs) or the user has already inserted another file with the same description (for SSKs). In the latter case, the user should choose a different description or perform an update rather than an insert. If the key does not already exist in the node's data store, the node looks up the closest key and forwards the message to the corresponding node as it would for a query. If the TTL expires without collision, the final node returns an "all clear" message. The user then sends the data down the path established by the initial insert message. Each node along the path verifies the data against its GUID, stores it, and creates a routing table entry that lists the data holder as the final node in this chain. As with requests, if the insert encounters a loop or a dead end, it backtracks to the second-nearest key, then the third-nearest, and so on, until it succeeds. 2.2.2 Network Evolution The network evolves over time as new nodes join and existing nodes create new connections after handling queries. As more requests are handled, local knowledge about other nodes in the network improves, and routes adapt to become more accurate without requiring global directories. 2.2.2.1 Adding Nodes To join the network, a new node first generates a public-private key pair for itself. This pair serves to logically identify the node and is used to sign a physical address reference. Note that public keys are not certified. We don't need to link them to real-world identities because the node's public key is its identity, even if it changes physical addresses. Certification might be useful in the future for deciding whether to trust a new node, but for now Freenet uses no trust mechanism. Next, the node sends an announcement message including the public key and physical address to an existing node, located through some out-of-band means such as personal communication or lists of nodes posted on the Web, with a user-specified TTL. The receiving node notes the new node's identifying information and forwards the announcement to another node chosen randomly from its routing table. The announcement continues to propagate until its TTL runs out. At that point, the nodes in the chain collectively assign the new node a random GUID in the key-space using a cryptographic protocol for shared random number generation that prevents any participant from biasing the result. This procedure assigns the new node responsibility for a region of key-space that all participants agree on while guaranteeing that a malicious node cannot influence the assignment for a specific key that it might want to attack. 2.2.2.2 Training Routes As more requests are processed, the network's routing should become better trained. Nodes' routing tables should specialize in handling clusters of similar keys because each node will mostly receive requests for keys that are similar to the keys it is associated with in other nodes' routing tables. When those requests succeed, the node learns about previously unknown nodes that can supply such keys and creates new routing entries for them. As the node gains more experience in handling queries for those keys, it will successfully answer them more often and, in a positive feedback loop, get asked about them more often. Nodes' data stores should also specialize in storing clusters of files with similar keys. Because inserts follow the same paths as requests, similar keys tend to cluster in the nodes along those paths. Nodes should similarly cluster files cached after requests because most requests will be for similar keys. Taken together, the twin effects of clustering in routing tables and data stores should improve the effectiveness of future queries in a self-reinforcing cycle. 2.2.3 Summary This discussion on Freenet can be summarized with the following points: o Completely decentralized o High fault tolerance o Robust and scalable o Automatic replication of content o Adopts well and dynamically to changing peer populations o Spam content less of a problem o Adaptive routing preserves network bandwidth o Supports anonymity of publishers and readers o No estimates on the duration of queries can be given o No probability for successful queries can be given o Topology is unknown o Reputation of peers is not addressed 3. Some structured routing techniques ------------------------------------- Structured peer-to-peer (p2p) overlays like CAN, Chord, Pastry and Tapestry provide a self-organizing substrate for large-scale peer-to- peer applications. These systems provide a powerful platform for the construction of a variety of decentralized services, including network storage, content distribution, and application-level multicast. Structured overlays allow applications to locate any object in a probabilistically bounded, small number of network hops, while requiring per-node routing tables with only a small number of entries. Moreover, the systems are scalable, fault tolerant and provide effective load balancing. However, to fully realize the potential of the p2p paradigm, such overlay networks must be able to support an open environment where mutually distrusting parties with conflicting interests are allowed to join. Even in a closed system of sufficiently large scale, it may be unrealistic to assume that none of the participating nodes have been compromised by attackers. Thus, structured overlays must be robust to a variety of security attacks, including the case where a fraction of the participating nodes act maliciously. Such nodes may mis-route, corrupt, or drop messages and routing information. Additionally, they may attempt to assume the identity of other nodes and corrupt or delete objects they are supposed to store on behalf of the system. We can think of an abstract model of a structured p2p routing overlay, designed to capture the key concepts common to overlays like CAN, Chord, Tapestry and Pastry. In this model, participating nodes ate assigned uniform random identifiers, nodelDs, from a large ID space (e.g., the set of 128-bit unsigned integers). Application specific objects are assigned unique identifiers, called keys, selected from the same ID space. Each key is mapped by the overlay to a unique live node, called the key's root. The protocol routes messages with a given key to its associated root. To route messages efficiently, each node maintains a routing table with nodelDs of other nodes and their associated IP addresses. Moreover, each node maintains a neighbour set, consisting of some number of nodes with nodelDs close to the that of the current node. Since nodelD assignment is random, any neighbour set represents a random sample of all participating nodes. For fault tolerance, application objects are stored at more than one node in the overlay. A replica function maps an object's key to a set of replica keys, such that the set of replica roots associated with the replica keys represents a random sample of participating nodes in the overlay. Each replica root stores a copy of the object. The following is a discussion on different existing structured p2p overlay protocols and how they relate to our abstract model. 3.1 Pastry - Pastry nodelDs are assigned randomly with uniform distribution from a circular 128-bit id space. Given a 128-bit key, Pastry routes an associated message toward the live node whose nodelD is numerically closest to the key. Each Pastry node keeps track of its neighbour set. Node state: For the purpose of routing, nodelDs and keys are thought of as a sequence of digits in base 2b (b is a configuration parameter with typical value 4). A node's routing table is organized into 128/2b rows and 20 columns. The 2b entries in row r of the routing table contain the IP addresses of nodes whose nodelDs share the first r digits with the present node's nodelD; the r+1 th nodelD digit of the node in column c of row r equals c. The column in row r that corresponds to the value of the r +1 th digit of the local node's nodelD remains empty. A routing table entry is left empty if no node with the appropriate nodelD prefix is known. Message routing: At each routing step, a node seeks to forward the message to a node in the routing table whose nodelD shares with the key a prefix that is at least one digit (or b bits) longer than the prefix that the key shares with the present node's id. If no such node can be found, a `die' message is forwarded to a node whose nodelD shares a prefix with the key as long as the current node, but is numerically closer to the key than the present node's ID. If no appropriate node exists either in the routing table or neighbour set, then the current node or its immediate neighbour is the message's final destination. To achieve self-organization, Pastry nodes must dynamically maintain their node state, i.e., the routing table and neighbour set, in the presence of node arrivals and node failures. A newly arriving node with the new nodelD X can initialize its state by asking any existing Pastry node A to route a special message using X as the key. The message is routed to the existing node Z with nodeld numerically closest to X. X then obtains the neighbour set from Z and constructs its routing table by copying rows from the routing tables of the nodes it encountered on the original route from A to Z. Finally, X announces its presence to the initial members of its neighbour set, which in turn update their own neighbour sets and routing tables. Similarly, the overlay can adapt to abrupt node failure by exchanging a small number of messages (O(log2b N) among a small number of nodes. 3.2 CAN, Chord, Tapestry - Tapestry is very similar to Pastry but differs in its approach to mapping keys to nodes and in how it manages replication. In Tapestry, neighbouring nodes in the namespace are not aware of each other. When a node's routing table does not have an entry for a node that matches a key's nth digit, the message is forwarded to the node with the next higher value in the nth digit, modulo 2^b, found in the routing table. This procedure, called surrogate routing, maps keys to a unique live node if the node routing tables are consistent. Tapestry does not have a direct analog to a neighbour set, although one can think of the lowest populated level of the Tapestry routing table as a neighbour set. For fault tolerance, Tapestry's replica function produces a set of random keys, yielding a set of replica roots at random points in the ID space. The expected number of routing hops in Tapestry is log(2^b)N. Chord uses a 160-bit circular ID space. Unlike Pastry, Chord forwards messages only in clockwise direction in the circular ID space. Instead of the prefix-based routing table in Pastry, Chord nodes maintain a routing table consisting of up to 160 pointers to other live nodes (called a "finger table"). The i entry in the finger table of node n refers to the live node with the smallest nodelD clockwise from n+2^(i-1). The first entry points to n's successor, and subsequent entries refer to nodes at repeatedly doubling distances from n. Each node in Chord also maintains pointers to its predecessor and to its n successors in the nodelD space. The expected number of routing hops in Chord is 5*log(e)N. CAN routes messages in a d-dimensional space, where each node maintains a routing table with O(d) entries and any node can be reached in (d/4)*(N^(1/d)) routing hops on average. The entries in a node's routing table refer to its neighbours in the d-dimensional space. Unlike Pastry, Tapestry and Chord, CAN's routing table does not grow with the network size, but the number of routing hops grows faster than logN in in this case. From eye at ranadasgupta.com Fri Jul 2 13:24:21 2004 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2004 13:24:21 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Planet of slums Message-ID: Stunning overview of the vast and fast-growing global population of informal workers living in large illegal settlements and the religious systems they have chosen as their personal and political ideologies. R Rana Dasgupta www.ranadasgupta.com Planet of Slums from Harper's Magazine, June 2004 Keywords: slums, cities, religion, poverty, inequality (Adapted from an essay by Mike Davis, in the March/April issue of New Left Review. Davis is currently writing a book about slums that will be published by Verso next year.) Sometime in the next year, a woman will give birth in the Lagos slum of Ajegunle, a young man will flee his village in west Java for the bright lights of Jakarta, or a farmer will move his impoverished family into one of Lima's innumerable pueblos jovenes. The exact event is unimportant and will pass entirely unnoticed. Nonetheless it will constitute a watershed in human history. For the first time, the urban population of the earth will outnumber the rural. In 1950 there were 86 cities in the world with populations over one million; today there are 386, and by 2015 there will be at least 550. The present urban population (3 billion) is larger than the total population of the world in 1960. The global countryside, meanwhile, will reach its maximum population (3.3 billion) in 2020 and thereafter will begin to decline. As a result, cities will account for all future world population growth, which is expected to peak at about 9 billion in 2050. Ninety-five percent of this final build out of humanity will occur in the urban areas of developing countries, whose populations will double to nearly 4 billion over the next generation. The most celebrated result will be the burgeoning of new megacities with populations in excess of 8 million and, even more spectacularly, hypercities with more than 20 million inhabitants. By 2025, Asia alone could have ten or eleven conurbations that large, including Jakarta, Dhaka, and Karachi. Shanghai could have as many as 27 million residents in its huge estuarial metro-region. Bombay meanwhile is projected to attain a population of 33 million, though no one knows whether such gigantic concentrations of poverty are biologically or ecologically sustainable. But if megacities are the brightest stars in the urban firmament, three quarters of the burden of population growth will be borne by faintly visible second-tier cities: places where, as U.N. researchers emphasize, "there is little or no planning to accommodate these people or provide them with services." In China the number of official cities has soared from 193 to 640 since 1978. In Africa, likewise, the supernova-like growth of a few giant cities such as Lagos (from 300,000 in 1950 to 10 million today) has been matched by the transformation of several dozen small towns and oases such as Ouagadougou, Nouakchott, Douala, and Antananarivo into cities larger than San Francisco or Manchester. The dynamics of Third World urbanization both recapitulate and confound the precedents of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe and North America. In China the greatest industrial revolution in history is shifting a population the size of Europe's from rural villages to smog-choked, sky-climbing cities. In sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, however, urbanization has been radically decoupled from industrialization, and even from development per se. This "perverse" urban boom contradicts orthodox economic models that predict that the negative feedback of urban recession should slow or even reverse migration from the countryside. The global forces pushing people from the countryside-mechanization in Java and India; food imports in Mexico, Haiti, and Kenya; civil war and drought throughout Africa; and everywhere the consolidation of small into large holdings-seem to sustain urbanization even when the pull of the city is drastically weakened by debt and depression. At the same time, rapid urban growth in the context of structural adjustment, currency devaluation, and state retrenchment has been a recipe for the inevitable mass production of slums. Much of the urban world, as a result, is rushing backward to the age of Dickens. The astonishing prevalence of slums is the chief theme of the historic and somber report published last October by the United Nations' Human Settlements Programme. "The Challenge of Slums" (henceforth "Slums") is the first truly global audit of urban poverty. It is unusual in that it breaks with traditional U.N. circumspection and self-censorship to squarely indict neoliberalism, especially the I.M.F.'s Structural Adjustment Programs: "The primary direction of both national and international interventions during the last 20 years has actually increased urban poverty and slums, increased exclusion and inequality, and weakened urban elites in their efforts to use cities as engines of growth." The report uses a very conservative definition of "slum": many readers will be surprised by the U.N.'s finding that only 19.6 percent of urban Mexicans live in slums. Nonetheless, "Slums" estimates that there were about 924 million slum dwellers in 2001: nearly equal to the population of the world when the young Engels first ventured onto the mean streets of Manchester. Indeed, residents of slums constitute a staggering 78.2 percent of the urban population of the least developed countries and fully a third of the global urban population. Extrapolating from the age structures of most Third World cities, at least half of the slum population is under the age of twenty-five. The world's highest percentages of slum dwellers are in Ethiopia (an astonishing 99.4 percent of the urban populations), Chad (99.1 percent), Afghanistan (98.5 percent), and Nepal (92.4 percent). The poorest urban populations, however, are probably in Kinshasa and Maputo, where two thirds of residents earn less than the cost of their minimum required daily nutrition. In Delhi planners complain bitterly about "slums within slums" as squatters take over the small open spaces of the peripheral resettlement colonies to which the old urban poor were brutally removed in the mid-1970s. In Cairo and Phnom Penh, recent arrivals squat or rent space on rooftops, creating slum cities in the air. Whereas the classic slum was a decaying inner city, the new slums are more typically located on the edges of urban centers. The governor of Lagos State told reporters last year that "about two thirds of the state's total landmass of 3,577 square kilometers could be classified as shanties or slums." Indeed, writes a U.N. correspondent, "Unlit highways run past canyons of smouldering garbage before giving way to dirt streets weaving through 200 slums, their sewers running with raw waste. So much of the city is a mystery. No one even knows for sure the size of the population – officially it is 6 million, but most experts estimate it at 10 million – let alone the number of murders each year [or] the rate of HIV infection." Lagos, moreover, is simply the biggest node in the shantytown corridor of 70 million people that stretches from Abidjan to Ibadan, probably the biggest continuous footprint of urban poverty on earth. Slum ecology, of course, revolves around the supply of settlement space, and indeed more than half of the residents of cities in the developing world occupy property illegally. National and local political machines usually acquiesce in informal settlement as long as they can control the political complexion of the slums and extract a regular flow of bribes or rents. Without formal land titles or home ownership, slum dwellers are forced into quasi-feudal dependencies, where disloyalty can mean eviction or even the razing of an entire district. Infrastructure development, meanwhile, lags far behind the pace of urbanization, and peri-urban slum areas often have no formal utilities or sanitation whatsoever. As in early Victorian London, the contamination of water by human and animal waste remains the cause of the chronic diarrheal diseases that kill at least 2 million children each year. An estimated 57 percent of urban Africans lack access to basic sanitation, and in cities such as Nairobi the poor must rely on "flying toilets" (defecation into a plastic bag). In Bombay, meanwhile, the sanitation problem is defined by ratios of one toilet seat per 500 inhabitants in the poorer districts. Only 11 percent of poor neighborhoods in Manila and 18 percent in Dhaka have formal means to dispose of sewage. Quite apart from the incidence of the HIVjAIDS plague, the U.N. considers that two out of five African slum dwellers live in a poverty that is literally life-threatening. The urban poor, furthermore, are everywhere forced to settle on hazardous and otherwise unbuildable terrains – steep hill slopes, riverbanks, and floodplains. Likewise, they squat in the deadly shadows of refineries, chemical factories, toxic dumps, or in the margins of railroads and highways. Poverty, as a result, has "constructed" an urban disaster problem of unprecedented frequency and scope, as typified by chronic flooding in Manila, Dhaka, and Rio, pipeline conflagrations in Mexico City and Cubatao, the Bhopal catastrophe in India, and deadly mudslides in Caracas, La Paz, and Tegucigalpa. The disenfranchised communities of urban poor, in addition, are vulnerable to sudden outbursts of state violence such as the infamous 1990 bulldozing of the Maroko beach slum in Lagos (an eyesore for the wealthy neighboring community of Victoria Island) or the 1995 demolition in freezing weather of the huge squatter town of Zhejiangcun on the edge of Beijing. As "Slums" emphasizes, the I.M.F.-mandated Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the 1980s displaced or immiserated millions of traditional urbanites and were, in fact, "deliberately anti-urban in nature," designed to reverse any "urban bias" in welfare policies, fiscal structure, or government investment. The I.M.F.acting as bailiff for the big banks and backed by the Reagan and Bush administrations-offered poor countries everywhere the same poisoned chalice of devaluation, privatization, removal of import controls and food subsidies, enforced cost-recovery in health and education, and ruthless downsizing of the public sector. At the same time, SAPs devastated rural smallholders by eliminating subsidies and pushing them out, "sink or swim," into global commodity markets dominated by First World agribusiness. In theory, of course, the 1990s should have righted the wrongs of the 1980s and allowed Third World cities to regain lost ground and bridge the chasms of inequality created by SAPs. The pain of adjustment should have been followed by the analgesic of globalization. Indeed, the 1990s, as "Slums" notes, were the first decade in which global urban development took place within almost utopian parameters of neoliberal market freedom: "During the 1990s, trade continued to expand at an almost unprecedented rate. . . . All the basic inputs to production became cheaper, as interest rates fell rapidly, along with the price of basic commodities. Capital flows were increasingly unfettered by national controls and could move rapidly to the most productive areas. Under what were almost perfect economic conditions according to the dominant neo-liberal economic doctrine, one might have imagined that the decade would have been one of unrivalled prosperity and social justice." In the event, however, urban poverty continued its relentless accumulation, and the gap between poor and rich countries widened, just as it had done for the previous twenty years. By the end of the century, global inequality had reached an incredible Gini coefficient level of 0.66, the mathematical equivalent to a situation in which the poorest two thirds of the world receive zero income and the top third, everything. The brutal tectonics of neoliberal globalization since 1978 are analogous to the catastrophic processes that shaped a "third world" in the first place, during the era of late Victorian imperialism. In the latter case, the forcible incorporation into the world market of the great subsistence peasan tries of Asia and Africa entailed the famine deaths of millions and the uprooting of tens of millions more from traditional tenures. The end result, in Latin America as well, was rural "semi-proletarianization": the creation of a huge global class of impoverished semi-peasants and farm laborers. Structural adjustment, it would appear, has recently worked an equally fundamental reshaping of human futures. As the authors of Slums conclude: "instead of being a focus for growth and prosperity, the cities have become a dumping ground for a surplus population working in unskilled, unprotected and low-wage informal service industries and trade." "The rise of [this] informal sector," they declare bluntly, "is... a direct function of liberalization." Overall, informal workers constitute about two fifths of the economically active population of the developing world. "Slums" estimates, moreover, that fully 90 percent of urban Africa's new jobs over the next decade will somehow come from the informal sector. Indeed, the global informal working class (overlapping but not identical with the slum population) is almost one billion strong, making it the fastest growing, and most unprecedented, social class on earth. The pundits of bootstrap capitalism may see this enormous population of marginalized laborers, redundant civil servants, and ex-peasants as a frenzied beehive of ambitious entrepreneurs yearning for formal property rights and unregulated competitive space, but it makes more obvious sense to consider most informal workers as the "active" unemployed, who have no choice but to subsist by some means or starve. With even formal-sector urban wages in Africa so low that economists can't figure out how workers survive (the so-called low-wage puzzle), the informal tertiary sector has become an arena of extreme Darwinian competition among the poor. Slums originate in the countryside, where unequal competition with large-scale agroindustry is tearing traditional rural societies apart. As rural areas lose their "storage capacity," slums take their place as a sink for surplus labor, which can only keep pace with subsistence by ever more heroic feats of self-exploitation and the further competitive subdivision of already densely filled survival niches. Tendencies toward urban involution, of course, existed during the nineteenth century. The European industrial revolutions were incapable of absorbing the entire supply of displaced rural labor, especially after the 1870s, when Europe's agriculture was exposed to the devastating competition of the North American prairies. But mass immigration to the settler societies of the Americas and Oceania provided a safety valve that prevented the rise of mega- Dublins as well as the spread of the kind of underclass anarchism that had taken root in the poorest parts of southern Europe. Today, surplus labor, by contrast, faces unprecedented barriers to large-scale migration to the wealthier countries-a literal "great wall" of high-tech border enforcement. Likewise, controversial population-resettlement programs in "frontier" regions such as Amazonia, Tibet, Kalimantan, and Irian Jaya produce environmental devastation and ethnic conflict without substantially reducing urban poverty in Brazil, China, and Indonesia. Thus only the slum remains as a fully franchised solution to the problem of warehousing the twenty-first century's surplus humanity. But aren't the great slums, as a terrified Victorian bourgeoisie once imagined, volcanoes waiting to erupt? Or does ruthless competition, as increasing numbers of poor people compete for the same scraps, ensure self-consuming communal violence as the highest form of urban involution? To what extent does an informal proletariat possess that most potent of Marxist talismans, "historical agency"? Can disincorporated labor be reincorporated into a global emancipatory project? Or is the sociology of protest in the immiserated megacity a regression to the pre-industrial urban mob, episodically explosive during consumption crises but otherwise easily managed by clientelism, populist spectacle, and appeals to ethnic unity? Or is some new, unexpected historical subject slouching toward the supercity? For the moment at least, Marx has yielded the historical stage to Mohammed and the Holy Ghost. If God died in the cities of the industrial revolution, he has risen again in the postindustrial cities of the developing world. Today, populist Islam and Pentecostal Christianity (and, in Bombay, the cult of Shivaji) occupy a social space analogous to that of early twentieth-century socialism and anarchism. In Morocco, for instance, where according to some estimates half a million rural migrants are absorbed into the teeming cities every year, Islamist movements like Justice and Welfare, founded by Sheikh Abdessalam Yassin, have become the real governments of the slums: organizing night schools, providing legal aid to victims of state abuse, buying medicine for the sick, subsidizing pilgrimages, and paying for funerals. As Moroccan prime minister Abderrahmane Youssoufi, the Socialist leader who was once exiled by the monarchy, recently admitted, "We [the left] have cut ourselves off from the people. We need to reconquer the popular quarters. The Islamists have seduced our natural electorate. They promise them heaven on earth." And indeed, a Justice and Welfare activist recognized that "confronted with the neglect of the state, and faced with the brutality of daily life, people discover, thanks to us, solidarity, self-help, fraternity. They understand that Islam is humanism." The counterpart of populist Islam in the slums of Latin America and much of sub-Saharan Africa is Pentecostalism. Christianity, of course, is now in its majority a non-Western religion, and Pentecostalism is its most dynamic missionary in cities of poverty. Indeed, Pentecostalism is the first major world religion to have grown up almost entirely in the soil of the modem urban slum. Unified around spirit baptism, miracle healing, charismata, and a premillennial belief in a coming world war of capital and labor, early American Pentecostalism originated as a "prophetic democracy" whose rural and urban constituencies overlapped, respectively, with those of Populism and the Industrial Workers of the World. Its early missionaries yielded nothing to the I.W.W. in their vehement denunciations of the injustices of industrial capitalism and its inevitable destruction. Since 1970, largely because of its appeal to slum women and its reputation for being colorblind, Pentecostalism has been growing into what is arguably the largest self-organized movement of urban poor people on the planet. Recent claims of "over 533 million Pentecostal/charismatics in the world in 2002" are probably hyperbolic, but there may well be half that number. In contrast to populist Islam, which emphasizes civilizational continuity and the transclass solidarity of faith, Pentecostalism, in the tradition of its African-American origins, retains a fundamentally exilic identity. Although, like Islam in the slums, it efficiently correlates itself to the survival needs of the informal working class (organizing self-help networks for poor women, offering faith healing as para-medicine, providing recovery from alcoholism and addiction, insulating children from the temptations of the street), its ultimate premise is that the urban world is corrupt, unjust, and unreformable. With the left still largely missing from the slums, the eschatology of Pentecostalism admirably refuses the inhuman destiny of the Third World city that Slums warns about. It also sanctifies those who, in every structural and existential sense, truly live in exile. The new urban poor, indeed, are the ghosts at the table of world politics. Every debate about the war on terrorism, the future of the Middle East, the AIDS crisis in Africa, and the international narcotics trade is haunted by their presence and growing desperation. The helicopter gunships that hover over the megaslums of Gaza and Sadr City, the nightly gun battles in the shantytowns of Bogota and Karachi, the bulldozers in Nairobi, Delhi, and Manila-is this not already an incipient world war between rich and poor? From abshi at vsnl.com Fri Jul 2 16:39:28 2004 From: abshi at vsnl.com (abshi at vsnl.com) Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2004 16:09:28 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Job Vacancies: Research Assistance (Mumbai) Message-ID: <20758d92075bb7.2075bb720758d9@vsnl.net> Job Vacancies: Research Assistance PUKAR Gender and Space Project. PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research) is a cross-sectoral and inter-disciplinary collective of young researchers and practitioners concerned with understanding the urban experience in Mumbai. As part of a project funded by IDPAD (Indo-Dutch Programme on Alternative Development), the Gender and Space Project, is researching 'Safety in Public Spaces: Women in Mumbai'. The Gender and Space Project focuses on gender as a category to examine the ordering and experience of the city and its varied spaces, particularly public space. Public space in the context of the study refers to public places, ranging from streets, public toilets and market places (across class contexts) to recreational areas and modes of public transport. The project is located in and focuses on the city of Mumbai. Research on this project combines traditional social science research such as ethnography, interviews and group discussions along with methodology drawn from the areas of film, photography, architecture. The project also has a strong pedagogic component involving elective courses in architecture and liberal arts colleges and short workshops. The project aims to understand the hierarchies and boundaries that determine access to public space along a variety of axes (class, caste, religion, geographic location and gender). It hopes to unsettle the gendered binaries regulating women’s presence in public space, raising questions about the ways in which ideas of private-public, respectability-unrespectability, safety-violence, rational-risky are reflected the discourses of public space and citizenship. Gender & Space Project, PUKAR has the following vacancies for the above project: Full-time Research Assistants The Candidate should be a post-graduate (preferably in the social sciences or humanities but other interested candidates may also apply) with an interest in gender and urban issues. Post-Graduate Student Interns We are also looking for post-graduate students for short assignments related to data collection and ethnography. We are looking for people who are motivated and able to work on their own and who enjoy engaging with ideas and are able to think individually but also work as a part of a team. To apply, please send a resume and a brief note on why you are interested in the project by email to: genderspace at pukar.org.in Telephone Number: 2207-7779 Please Apply before 15 July 2004. From ysaeed7 at yahoo.com Fri Jul 2 23:36:54 2004 From: ysaeed7 at yahoo.com (Yousuf) Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2004 11:06:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Letter to Lanka shri Message-ID: <20040702180654.59551.qmail@web51409.mail.yahoo.com> Few months ago somebody posted a message in one of the Sarai lists about a letter that was sent from India to UK, addressed entirely in Hindi. It managed to reach its destination in London without any hitch � of course the British postal department had to take help from someone who knew Hindi to transcribe the address in English, as was evident from the envelope. While this incident made one feel proud of the recognition of our rashtra bhasha in vilayat, I would like to describe here (in continuation or in contrast to this pride) what I witnessed yesterday afternoon in a post office in Delhi: In the main post office of Connaught Place (New Delhi) a person ahead of me in the queue handed an envelope to the officer at the counter for speed post. The officer asked him, in the usual rude manner, �kaun si country ka hai?� (which country to send to?). Before the person could answer, I noticed on the envelope a zip code unique only to UK addresses (MQ3 78L, or something like that). Above that it said �Lancashire� but no UK. To my horror, the person bringing the envelope said, �Shree Lanka ka hai.� (its meant for Sri Lanka). The post officer got ruder than before, �Abay to Shree lanka kahan likha hai?� (where does it say Sri Lanka), throwing the envelope back at him. The bearer of the letter, probably an office peon, pointed to the �Lancashire� and said, �yeh galti se ulta likh diya hai�Shree Lanka hi hai� (they have mistakenly written it in reverse, it should be Shree Lanca and not Lanca Shire). This is where I intervened. I told them it is certainly not Shree Lanka � this is Lancashire which is in UK. But the bearer of the letter didn�t pay any attention to me. The post officer also didn�t seem to care, even though he probably knew I was right. To my further horror, he asked the bearer to delete the confusing name and change it to Shri Lanca in his handwriting, which the fellow happily did � obviously amused that his boss (who sent him) was so dumb to have spelt Shri Lanka in reverse. Despite my protest, the officer entered Sri Lanka in his computer and gave a receipt to the fellow, printed with Sri Lanka! During the conversation, however, the officer had told the peon �be sure of what you are doing � its 4:30 pm and this letter will be gone in half an hour, so don�t come back to me afterwards�, which proved that he knew what he was doing, and yet he made the guy do what he did. I was too horrified to protest any further and came back. Though I did try to imagine how the boss would react when he sees a receipt with Sri Lanka on it. Yousuf Saeed __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From marnoldm at du.edu Fri Jul 2 23:16:42 2004 From: marnoldm at du.edu (Michael Arnold Mages) Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2004 11:46:42 -0600 (MDT) Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Play with a Purpose: Politics and Art in Computer Games -- July on -empyre- Message-ID: subscribe to the discussion at http://www.subtle.net/empyre/ The violence of the computer game world is thrown sharply into relief when characters do not represent the cultural hegemony typically seen in a First-Person Shooter. "Play" does not necessarily equal "amusement" or "humour" in these games; the opportunity to put on an identity that sees a formerly friendly (?) world as oppositional can be shocking. Developers from four recent games discuss their works on -empyre-. Based on the struggles of a Palestinian youth during the Intifadah, UnderAsh [ http://www.underash.net/edownload.htm ] and Under Siege [ http://www.underash.net/n_download.htm ] were created by AFKARMEDIA under the direction of Syrian cofounder, programmer Radwan Kasmiya. Kasmiya also acts as media advisor for the Middle-Eastern publisher DAR AL-FIKR. Depicting the plight of a foreign asylum-seeker in Australia, Escape from Woomera [ http://www.escapefromwoomera.org/ ] asks a player to attempt to break out of four refugee detention centers. Melbourne-based Kipper is the Creative Director from the development team. Rafael Fajardo explores the complexity of the real-world US/Mexico border situation through the paired games Crosser and La Migra [ http://www.du.edu/~rfajardo/juego/index.html ]. The games depict border crossings from the point of view of the illegal immigrant, and as a border patrol agent who attempts to prevent the crossing. Collaborative group C-level has produced Waco Resurrection [ http://waco.c-level.org/ ]. Several of the artist/developers, including Brody Condon, Eddo Stern, and Peter Brinson will join us, examining issues of colonialism, violence, and documentary versus fictive presentation. -- -empyre- facilitates critical perspectives on contemporary cross-disciplinary issues, practices and events in networked media by inviting guests -- key new media artists, curators, theorists, producers and others to participate in thematic discussions. To participate, subscribe to -empyre- at: http://www.subtle.net/empyre/ -- -- Michael Arnold Mages mailto:marnoldm at du.edu -- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From project at werkleitz.de Fri Jul 2 15:24:08 2004 From: project at werkleitz.de (Christian Schult) Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2004 11:54:08 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Call for Participation/ Halle School of Common Property Message-ID: <40E530C0.8050404@werkleitz.de> Halle School of Common Property, Halle (Saale), Germany, August 2004 ::::::CALL FOR PARTICIPATION:::::: Within the context of the 6th Werkleitz Biennale's debates on knowledge as common property, the Werkleitz Gesellschaft will organise a 5-day series of workshops and seminars under the title Halle School of Common Property from 27 to 31 August 2004, directly preceding the festival. (6th Werkleitz Biennale Common Property/ Allgemeingut, 1 to 5 September 2004) In a number of workshops international cultural producers and artist groups working within the frame of informal (that is deliberately alternative, self-organised, non-institutional) knowledge production will invite participants to develop new forms of artistic and cultural production within and outside academic structures. The following artists, producers and groups have been invited: AGENCY (Belgium) Craig Baldwin (US) Critical Studies (Sweden) Dennis Kaspori (The Netherlands) Mute Magazine (International) School of Missing Studies/SMS (International) Université Tangente (France) The Halle School of Common Property addresses a national and international audience. Some first results of the workshops will be presented at the 6th Werkleitz Biennale. In addition, the event is intended to serve as a condensation point for a continuing exchange between the individual groups and participants. All workshops will be held in English. We recommend you to register early as the number of participants is restricted - the deadline for registrations is 15 July 2004. Participation in the workshops depends on the date of arrival of the filled application form at the office of Werkleitz Gesellschaft. Application forms and more detailed information on the several workshops can be found on our website at http://www.werkleitz.de/common_property. For all inquiries please contact Christian Schult. Please forward this to people who might be interested in participating. ::: The 6th Werkleitz Biennale is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Stiftung Kulturfonds, Lotto-Toto GmbH of Saxony-Anhalt, the City of Halle (Saale), Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung GmbH and Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle Werkleitz Gesellschaft e.V. Zentrum für kuenstlerische Bildmedien Sachsen-Anhalt Christian Schult Coordinator Halle School of Common Property T: +49 345 68246 15 F: +49 345 68246 29 project at werkleitz.de http://www.werkleitz.de :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: From lalitbatra77 at yahoo.co.in Sat Jul 3 16:54:57 2004 From: lalitbatra77 at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?lalit=20batra?=) Date: Sat, 3 Jul 2004 12:24:57 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Posting # 3 Message-ID: <20040703112457.51948.qmail@web8203.mail.in.yahoo.com> Water on the Banks of Yamuna The banks of river Yamuna in Delhi were home to one of the largest slum sprawls in the country just about five months ago. But now most of it resembles a bombed out zone marked by a deafening silence emanating from the rubble lying all around. Still there are a few patches of jhuggie jhopries left, especially on the eastern side of the river, which have been spared, at least for now, the fruits of ‘development’. A few weeks back I just thought of visiting one of these remaining bastis and talk to people regarding their experience with water in Pushta as well as their native place. The basti I went to is called Yamuna Pushta Renny well no. 8 basti and inhabited mostly by kabaris and waste pickers. I interviewed three Muslim families all of whom were from Arariya and Kishanganj districts of Northeastern Bihar. I asked each one of them separately about the sources of water and the social framework in which access to water used to happen in their native villages. The response of all the three families was fairly similar to each other. What I gathered from them was that earthen well or Inara was the main source of water in their villages till about 15-20 years ago. There were mainly four communities in their villages- Upper castes, Lower castes, Muslims and Dalits. Each of these communities had their separate Inaras and sharing Inaras was non-existent especially between Upper castes and other castes and Dalits and other castes. Social segregation and casteism were quite rampant in other walks of life as well. While Inaras had a caste based exclusivity attached to them, river and pokhars (ponds) were theoretically open to use by all, though in practice powerful people, almost all of whom belonged to the upper castes, exercised greater right over these as well. Shambula of Jokihaat village in Arariya district recounts how their village was subject to heavy rainfalls resulting in floods every year. Also, the river used to change its course frequently causing massive damage to lives and livelihoods of people. She says that sometimes it used to rain continuously for 3-4 days due to which poor people were unable to access firewood and thus had to go hungry. But bathing, swimming and washing at the river was fun. Handpumps, according to Shambula, started making appearance about 20 years back. She is not sure why and how it happened but considers HPs much more convenient than wells. Also less dangerous. This is a sentiment shared by both Riyazuddeen of Kishanganj and Md. Alam of Arariya as well. Shambula and her husband Fakir Md. came to live in Pushta around 16-17 years back. Other than lack of opportunities available in the village, the crippling rainfalls and frequent mood swings of the river in their area also played a role in pushing them out of the village. Used to easy availability of water, Shambula was shocked to find that in Delhi getting water was a Herculean task. There were just two handpumps in the basti and the quality of water was very bad. But there was no option other than using this water for all purposes. What she found particularly annoying was that she had to fight with other people every time she used to go to the HP. And then all those diseases associated with water. “Gaon ka paani to bhaiya sehat banata hai, shehar ka paani khaali bimari lagata hai”. Tired of waiting for tapped water supply, some people in the basti broke a water pipe line going through the basti to the trans Yamuna area. This water was “very good” and solved, to a large extent, the problem of drinking water. When I asked her whether this water is better than the one they used to drink in the village, her reply was unambiguous “shehar ka doodh, gaon ka paani barabar hai”. Slowly, over the years, the basti got a few ‘sarkari” water taps as well but all of them are in the Hindu dominated area. Also, even these taps do not supply as good water as they get from the tap they fixed after breaking the main pipeline. Living on the bank of Yamuna had its own perils. Twice in 15 years they had to face the fury of the river when their basti got flooded. But still it was better than what they had to face in the village where flooding was annual phenomenon. I asked her how Yamuna was when she came to live on its bank 17 years back. Her answer was that it was a little less filthy and stinking than it is now. Does Yamuna remind her of the river in her native village? Yes, but only when it rains! lalit batra ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Careers: Over 50,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/ From shivamvij at gmail.com Sat Jul 3 18:15:34 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Sat, 3 Jul 2004 18:15:34 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Letter to Lanka shri In-Reply-To: <20040702180654.59551.qmail@web51409.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040702180654.59551.qmail@web51409.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: this was so hilarious. ads to the thinking about English in India that I have been doing in my mind, without any conclusive result. it's painful, the language divide. it makes the non-English-speaking seem dumb when he is not dumb. And by the way, incidents like these should not prejudice us against Indian Post. They have done much better than many government services. They have their faults, their delays, their customer unfriendliness, but they have their wonders. Indian postmen in villages often read out letters to the illiterate without any fee, and a letter addressed to 'Amitabh Bachchan' with no address does reach Mr Bachchan. On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 11:06:54 -0700 (PDT), Yousuf wrote: > > Few months ago somebody posted a message in one of the > Sarai lists about a letter that was sent from India to > UK, addressed entirely in Hindi. It managed to reach > its destination in London without any hitch � of > course the British postal department had to take help > from someone who knew Hindi to transcribe the address > in English, as was evident from the envelope. While > this incident made one feel proud of the recognition > of our rashtra bhasha in vilayat, I would like to > describe here (in continuation or in contrast to this > pride) what I witnessed yesterday afternoon in a post > office in Delhi: > > In the main post office of Connaught Place (New Delhi) > a person ahead of me in the queue handed an envelope > to the officer at the counter for speed post. The > officer asked him, in the usual rude manner, �kaun si > country ka hai?� (which country to send to?). Before > the person could answer, I noticed on the envelope a > zip code unique only to UK addresses (MQ3 78L, or > something like that). Above that it said �Lancashire� > but no UK. To my horror, the person bringing the > envelope said, �Shree Lanka ka hai.� (its meant for > Sri Lanka). The post officer got ruder than before, > �Abay to Shree lanka kahan likha hai?� (where does it > say Sri Lanka), throwing the envelope back at him. > > The bearer of the letter, probably an office peon, > pointed to the �Lancashire� and said, �yeh galti se > ulta likh diya hai�Shree Lanka hi hai� (they have > mistakenly written it in reverse, it should be Shree > Lanca and not Lanca Shire). This is where I > intervened. I told them it is certainly not Shree > Lanka � this is Lancashire which is in UK. But the > bearer of the letter didn�t pay any attention to me. > The post officer also didn�t seem to care, even though > he probably knew I was right. To my further horror, he > asked the bearer to delete the confusing name and > change it to Shri Lanca in his handwriting, which the > fellow happily did � obviously amused that his boss > (who sent him) was so dumb to have spelt Shri Lanka in > reverse. Despite my protest, the officer entered Sri > Lanka in his computer and gave a receipt to the > fellow, printed with Sri Lanka! During the > conversation, however, the officer had told the peon > �be sure of what you are doing � its 4:30 pm and this > letter will be gone in half an hour, so don�t come > back to me afterwards�, which proved that he knew what > he was doing, and yet he made the guy do what he did. > I was too horrified to protest any further and came > back. Though I did try to imagine how the boss would > react when he sees a receipt with Sri Lanka on it. > > Yousuf Saeed > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. > http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > -- shivamvij at gmail.com ZEST: Low volume mailing lists ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-india ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-economics ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zestpoets PACE Stop Ragging Campaign: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging THE HOOT: Watching media in the subcontinent: http://www.thehoot.org From shivamvij at gmail.com Sun Jul 4 19:16:25 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Sun, 4 Jul 2004 19:16:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] How I Was Ragged in IIT Delhi, and Why It Was No Joke Message-ID: How I Was Ragged in IIT Delhi, and Why It Was No Joke Author: Sujit Saraf Institution: IIT Delhi Years: 1989- Written on 1 July 2004 I went to IIT Delhi in the fall of nineteen eighty seven. I had been living in Delhi for two years but I was still a small-town boy from Bihar, intimidated by tall buildings and a steady stream of traffic. Even now, after television and the internet and all that, I meet people in my town who, when told about my college and career, respond - ITI? ek hamaare yahaan bhii hai. When I arrived at my hostel inside the IIT campus, I found a notice posted in the lobby, saying 'Ragging is banned in the Institute.' I had come with horrible stories of ragging in mind, told by friends, relatives and well-wishers. My father, whose knowledge of college life was thirty years out of date, wrote me in a letter that I was to 'take care to avoid rigging in IIT'. I remember he mis-spelt the word, and he seemed to think my participation was voluntary. I entered the hostel, was given my room, and transferred my luggage into it. I was on my knees ten minutes later with a leash around my neck, announcing my name at the top of my voice and reciting the hostel pledge, which granted every senior the right to fuck me in the arse, then bust it into eight thousand pieces, mash some pieces into a bharta, and feed the rest to the dogs of the hostel warden. It sounds funny now, even to me. We did many things in that one month that now appear harmless and amusing. We stood on benches in the dining hall and recited the national anthem, we crawled on all fours and barked like dogs, we marched backwards in unison, we wore our clothes inside out, we ran errands for our seniors, we brought them cigarettes and Campa Cola, we cleaned their rooms and made their beds, we did push-ups in the street, we barked and shouted and whispered and lived our lives according to the prescriptions of boys barely a year older than us. Finally, we dropped our trousers so they could look at our penises. We held one another's penises and estimated their lengths, we formed long human trains – each train car holding the penis of the car in front – and whistled our way through hostel corridors at top speed, turning left and right in response to semaphores controlled by our seniors. We formed human pyramids, simulated orgies, stripped naked, then wore our underpants over our pants, turning ourselves into 'The Phantom' of comic books. After so many years, I can list these 'forms of ragging' dispassionately, but no one should be misled. When an eighteen year old boy stands naked to be inspected by ten leering animals, he shudders in the bottom of his heart. Brutality and oppression remain just that, no matter the name chosen for them, no matter the circumstances in which they are exercised. Who were these seniors, and why did they humiliate us so? They seemed powerful then, but they were boys like us, older by a year or two or three. They had endured similar humiliation in their time. Their seniority in the hostel gave them, for the first time in their lives, power over other human beings – power to command fear, subjugate and humiliate. They exercised this power with abandon, and they had developed countless theories – from the facetious to the philosophical - to support their sadism. Ragging forces you to stay up late, they said, and this is useful when you must prepare for difficult examinations. Ragging breaks the ice between seniors and juniors. Ragging brings the freshman – or the 'fachchaa' - into intimate contact with peers and seniors, and this turns the hostel into a home. Ragging helps the freshman break out of his shell and lose his inhibitions. And finally, said our seniors sententiously, ragging teaches you humility. It prepares you for the 'real' world. Presumably, if you have been insulted a sufficient number of times in college, you will have acquired the virtue of patience when your boss insults you in the real world. Like a well trained dog, you will not bark and lose your job. Instead, you will wag your tail, look the other way, and pretend the abuse was meant for someone else. Our seniors proclaimed - and some actually believed - that they had acquired this wisdom through age and experience, and they were now anxious to pass it down to us. Many were genuinely surprised that we were not grateful for this favour. These arguments did not wash with us, of course. I was supposed to come closer to my peers after our mutual penis-measuring ceremony. Shared humiliation was supposed to draw us close together. Instead it boxed us into shells. It destroyed our first foray into adulthood. It robbed us of valuable moments in our lives. It turned our first month in college into a nightmare. As our first year passed, so did memories of our humiliation. Life in the hostel became pleasant once we realized we could walk about with our pants on, and did not need to spring to attention whenever a senior passed us. Six months later, ragging was an amusing episode in our past. Twelve months later, most of us firmly believed it was our duty to pass on the wisdom we had acquired through age and experience. We ragged the next class of freshmen ferociously and methodically, and were genuinely surprised that they were not grateful for this favour. Some people in my batch forced a freshman to sit on a corn-cob and had him smoke a cigarette with the lit end inside his mouth. That incident became a ragging 'case', drew much attention, lead to the expulsion of the raggers, and incited a short-lived signature campaign to defend the raggers as boys having fun. I began a 'stop ragging' campaign that died quickly when neither my batch-mates, nor the freshmen I was trying to save, appeared enthusiastic. For my batch-mates, the logic of ragging was irrefutable. They now had happy memories of their own initiation into hostel life, and could not remember ever having disliked it. For freshmen, getting ragged for a month was a rite of passage that would ensure them free books and the patronage of someone powerful. It was easier to 'get it over with' than be ostracized (so they were told) for the rest of their stay in the hostel. When they were led on leashes, some had ingratiating smiles on their faces My seniors were wrong. I never managed to strike a friendship with any of them, unable to forget the moments of humiliation. When I left IIT, everyone I counted as a friend was someone I had met after the ragging period. After travelling the entire world, working at many jobs in many capacities and passing through many stages in life, I have never found any use for the education my seniors so generously imparted to me. I was never called upon to suffer humiliation in silence, bark like a dog to break the ice with my peers, managers or sub-ordinates, or insult my co-workers to gain their confidence. But of course, my seniors had no inkling of the real world themselves. They were newly pubescent boys who fancied themselves to be men. After all the pretentious talk of their responsibility to make men out of us, their entire exercise of power came down to the scrutiny of a shrivelled-up penis, of a modest teenager brought up by conservative parents standing naked amidst ten soulless boys, trembling in horror, his pants wrapped about his ankles. Ragging is a case study for Sigmund Freud, nothing more. I have often wondered why ragging never comes to an end, in spite of all the noise made about it among professors, politicians and the parents of boys who suffer it. IIT had, in my time, a disciplinary committee of professors whose job was to police ragging by making surprise visits to hostels. They drove in a tell-tale white Maruti van, whose arrival was announced by a freshman posted at the entrance long before the professors had time to open the doors, get out of the van and lumber into the hostel. The wise professors would find a group of seniors giving an intense tutorial to freshmen on academic life in IIT, and go home to sleep in peace. The disciplinary committee – whose very name made it ridiculous, because we called it 'disco' – spent its time discussing cases of ragging, fixing proportionate punishment, deciding what was 'mental ragging' and what was 'physical ragging' over endless cups of chai in somnolent meetings. Like all other committees, its function was to manage ragging - not stop it - and to prevent incidents of ragging from ballooning into 'cases'. Like all other committees, it was also inept at its job, so we had one or two 'cases' every year which made their way into newspapers, caused much heartburn, and resulted in the expulsion of those who had 'overstepped the bounds', after which everyone was satisfied that something had been done. I do not want to over-simplify the situation. Even if the faculty at colleges were sincere about stopping ragging, and even if they had the support of student representatives, it is unlikely that ragging will completely stop. Educational seminars, sensitization classes and information dissemination may help but, as the all-forgiving cliche insists, boys will be boys. I remember how we sniggered at such lectures, how little respect we had for all attempts to discipline us, and with what ridicule we regarded the notice saying 'Ragging is banned in the Institute'. Years later, when I went back to teach in IIT, I asked my students – all freshmen – whether they were being ragged in their hostels, and if I could do anything to help them. We have no such thing nowadays, I was told. Your time is now gone, they said, as are the problems of your time. I knew they were lying, and there was little I could do about it. Ragging is not an exclusively Indian phenomenon. We have no monopoly on brutality. Hazing rituals are common in the 'Greek societies' on American campuses. My room-mate at Berkeley nearly died at an initiation ritual in his fraternity, where he was made to drink many glasses of vodka in a short period of time. There is a very important difference between hazing in Greek societies and ragging in Indian college hostels. Membership to a Greek society is voluntary. Those who study at a university do not have to become members, and most do not. Those who study in IIT must become members of hostels - this may have changed since my days - and suffer the humiliation that comes with it. Aside from the Greek societies, however, there is little or no ragging in the dormitories on American campuses. At my dormitory in Berkeley, we went on an overnight retreat and had coffee-socials to break the ice between newcomers and old-timers. We ate together, chatted, played racquetball and squash, watched football games, and these brought us closer. The very concept of ragging was unknown. I cannot say this with certainty, but this may be because American college students are much closer to adulthood. Many are already in their twenties, most have to earn their way through college or take loans to pay for their education, and almost all are on their own. Their attitude to college is very different from that of Indian boys, who have been dispatched to the campus by loving parents, borne on a cushion of money and support that they did not earn. A college campus cannot exist completely outside the system that enfolds it. The prevention of ragging through draconian rules may be impossible. You cannot imprison freshmen into a hostel of their own, forbid contact between freshmen and seniors, or electrocute seniors who humiliate a freshman. Many of the frustrations that a student expresses through ragging are really brought by him from the world outside the campus. Given a chance to release those feelings, he will. The reason there is little or no ragging on American campuses may just be that college students are adults, and are treated as such. They do not spring up with a 'Sir' when professors walk in, they are encouraged to argue and protest, they live in relatively free environments where the only restricted activity is that which harms others. If Indian students were shown the same respect, they may begin to find ragging juvenile. There remains no reason, in the twenty first century, to segregate voting-age adults into unisex dormitories. Boys and girls should live in the same hostel. They should come to their hostels and leave them as they please, with no curfew hours. They should be allowed to mix freely, speak freely, and enjoy every privilege an adult is entitled to. They are eighteen, they can take care of themselves. Should they violate rules or break the law, they should receive proportionate punishment. These ideas may create conditions that make ragging redundant and allow it to wither away. (Sujit Saraf is a film-maker and playwright who lives in California. He has been associated with IIT Delhi both as a student and an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He is a member of the PACE Anti-Ragging Cell.) -- shivamvij at gmail.com ZEST: Low volume mailing lists ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-india ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-economics ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zestpoets PACE Stop Ragging Campaign: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging THE HOOT: Watching media in the subcontinent: http://www.thehoot.org From shekhar at crit.org.in Sun Jul 4 21:04:36 2004 From: shekhar at crit.org.in (Shekhar Krishnan) Date: Sun, 4 Jul 2004 21:04:36 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Moore: Pirate my film, no problem! Message-ID: http://www.sundayherald.com/43167 Moore: pirate my film, no problem Fury as Fahrenheit 9/11 director backs illegal not-for-profit downloads By Iain S Bruce, Online Editor Controversial film-maker Michael Moore has welcomed the appearance on the internet of pirated copies of his anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 and claimed he is happy for anybody to download it free of charge. The activist, author and director told the Sunday Herald that, as long as pirated copies of his film were not being sold, he had no problem with it being downloaded. “I don’t agree with the copyright laws and I don’t have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people as long as they’re not trying to make a profit off my labour. I would oppose that,” he said. “I do well enough already and I made this film because I want the world, to change. The more people who see it the better, so I’m happy this is happening.” Moore’s views have not been well received by Hollywood’s establishment, which is fighting a war against the online pirates it claims cost the industry £1.6 billion a year in lost sales. Jack Valenti, the outgoing president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), said: “We are proud that American films continue to enjoy immense popularity around the world but the need for copyright protection in the digital age is crucial to the preservation of our most prized trade asset. “Piracy is having a dramatic impact on the creators and copyright owners of this nation, and its defeat depends largely on the commit ment and resolve of the entire industry. “File sharing causes tremendous financial loss to the movie business, untold hardship to support workers, and costs thousands of jobs.” Distributed via websites such as suprnova.org, which lays claim to having served more than 17 million downloads, Moore’s documentary critique of the Bush administration’s red, white and blue rush into war with Iraq is among the web’s hottest properties. Thousands of copies of Fahrenheit 9/11 have already been downloaded, each taking about 3.5 hours over a broadband connection. Ironically, the burgeoning underground market for Moore’s much-debated documentary has been championed by both sides of the political divide. While left-wing sites promote the film’s message, opponents of the high-profile polemicist are urging people to “steal” their copy, thus denying its director his cut of the profits. Last month the website of producers Lions Gate Films was subjected to a barrage of attacks by hackers, with one creating a link to a download destination on the site’s front page. Despite up to 150 people simultaneously bagging free copies of its most valuable property at any given time 24 hours a day, Lions Gate says it has no plans to oppose the practice. While unwilling to make any official statement likely to further provoke Hollywood’s heavy hitters, the film company appears to have fallen into line with its director’s laissez-faire approach. Moore said: “Is it wrong for someone who’s bought a film on DVD to let a friend watch it for free? Of course it’s not. It never has been and never will be. I think information, art and ideas should be shared.” Defenders of Moore’s position include Pulp Fiction director Quentin Tarantino, who earlier this year encouraged audiences in countries where his films are not legally available to obtain counterfeit copies. The furore engulfing Moore is just the latest in a series of controversies surrounding the film. Almost smothered by original production company Miramax’s refusal to distribute the final cut, he also this year launched an unsuccessful legal attempt to overturn the MPAA’s decision to give the documentary an “R” rating, which barred under-16s from seeing the movie without an adult. Opposed by Move America Forward, a conservative group set up to dissuade cinemas from showing the film, Fahrenheit 9/11 has become one of the most controversial productions in Hollywood history. Last month Australian distributors Hopscotch Films claimed to have received e-mails warning that if the company went ahead with its planned release of the movie, it would do so “at our own peril”. The hubbub is unlikely to subside any time soon. With Lions Gate reporting that DVD rights are likely to be won by Disney-owned Buena Vista Home Entertainment, many commentators believe the digital distribution network may yet face serious opposition. Valenti said: “Nobody can allow their rights to be stolen because, if you can’t retrieve your investment, you’re out of the movie business, “I don’t think there’s really a single actor or director in the world who does not believe that if you don’t combat piracy, it will devour you in the future.” 04 July 2004 _____ Shekhar Krishnan 9, Supriya, 2nd Floor Plot 709, Parsee Colony Road no.4 Dadar, Bombay 400014 India From shivamvij at gmail.com Sun Jul 4 21:49:59 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Sun, 4 Jul 2004 21:49:59 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Moore: Pirate my film, no problem! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: "I do well enough already and I made this film because I want the world, to change. The more people who see it the better, so I'm happy this is happening." What about someone who's not doing well, and needs the money he deserves? Can the copyleft movement do with such subjectivity? On Sun, 4 Jul 2004 21:04:36 +0530, Shekhar Krishnan wrote: > http://www.sundayherald.com/43167 > > Moore: pirate my film, no problem > > Fury as Fahrenheit 9/11 director backs illegal not-for-profit downloads > By Iain S Bruce, Online Editor > > Controversial film-maker Michael Moore has welcomed the appearance on -- shivamvij at gmail.com ZEST: Low volume mailing lists ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-india ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-economics ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zestpoets PACE Stop Ragging Campaign: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging THE HOOT: Watching media in the subcontinent: http://www.thehoot.org From menso at r4k.net Sun Jul 4 22:40:48 2004 From: menso at r4k.net (Menso Heus) Date: Sun, 4 Jul 2004 19:10:48 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Moore: Pirate my film, no problem! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040704171047.GN45893@r4k.net> On Sun, Jul 04, 2004 at 09:49:59PM +0530, Shivam Vij wrote: > "I do well enough already and I made this film because I want the > world, to change. The more people who see it the better, so I'm happy > this is happening." He of course means now, after he has found a publisher for his movie. I would have appreciated it if he would have started distributing it online himself as soon as the trouble with Disney started. > What about someone who's not doing well, and needs the money he > deserves? Can the copyleft movement do with such subjectivity? Saying something like this now, after getting a deal with Lion's Gate, is basically just acknowledging that he can't do anything about piracy, in a bit more creative way. It has little to do with Copyleft. Menso > On Sun, 4 Jul 2004 21:04:36 +0530, Shekhar Krishnan wrote: > > http://www.sundayherald.com/43167 > > > > Moore: pirate my film, no problem > > > > Fury as Fahrenheit 9/11 director backs illegal not-for-profit downloads > > By Iain S Bruce, Online Editor > > > > Controversial film-maker Michael Moore has welcomed the appearance on > > -- > shivamvij at gmail.com > > ZEST: Low volume mailing lists > ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-india > ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-economics > ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zestpoets > > PACE Stop Ragging Campaign: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging > THE HOOT: Watching media in the subcontinent: http://www.thehoot.org > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys" - William Blake -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From nc-agricowi at netcologne.de Mon Jul 5 13:13:40 2004 From: nc-agricowi at netcologne.de ({e-art}) Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2004 09:43:40 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] JavaMuseum://updates Message-ID: <20040705094340.18D99494.F984BAE9@127.0.0.1> July 2004 JavaMuseum://updates---> ---------------------------------> JavaMuseum - Forum for Internet Technologies in Contemporary Art www.javamuseum.org information updates----------------------------------> 1. the last show in the framework of 3rd of Java series (2003-2004), will be launched and as a contribution to [R][R][F] 2004--->XP on occasion of Biennale of Electronic Art Perth/Australia 7 September - 17 November 2004 and will include these artists ---> Susan Collins (UK), Nanette Wylde (USA) Yvonne Martinsson (Sweden) Laurie Halsey Brown (Netherlands) Luigia Cardarelli (Italy) . Updated shows: 2. I - Corrida - Netart from Spain launched on occasion of Basics Festival 2004 Salzburg/Austria www.javamuseum.org or directly www.javamuseum.org/2004/spanishfeature/index.html . 3. Current Positions of French Netart includes now 55 French netartists---> latest additions -->KROK, Les 2 Douaniers www.javamuseum.org/2002/2nd/frenchfeature/index.html . 4. I - Ocean - Netart from all Asia and Pacific area launched on occasion of New Media Art Festival 2004 Bangkok/Thailand www.javamuseum.org/2004/asiafeature/index.html . -----------------------------------> Further shows-----> . 5. "I-Fjords" - the show of Netart from Norther Europe launched on occasion of Electronic Art Meeting 2004 Pescara/Italy www.javamuseum.org or directly www.javamuseum.org/2004/nordicfeature/index.html . 6. I-Islands - Netart from Great Britain and Ireland www.javamuseum.org/2003/englishfeature/index.html . 7. Online since 14 October 2003 "Perspectives'03" - competition and show 2003 and the winners of JavaArtist of the Year Award 2003 on occasion and within the framework of Computer Space Festival 2003 Sofia/Bulgaria www.javamuseum.org/2003/perspectives03/index.html . 8. "I-Highway - Netart from Canada" on www.javamuseum.org/2003/canadafeature/index.html . 9. "I-rivers" - Netart form German speaking countries launched on occasion of Computer Space Festival 2003 Sofia/Bulgaria on www.javamuseum.org/2003/germanfeature/index.html . 10. "Current Positions of Italian Netart" on www.javamuseum.org/2002/2nd/italyfeature/index.html . 11. "LatinoNetarte.net" - Netart from Latin American countries on www.javamuseum.org/2003/latinofeature/index.html . and much more on www.javamuseum.org . All shows on JavaMuseum are open for new artists' submissions. The respective entry forms are included in each show. . ************************ JavaMuseum - Forum for Internet Technologies in Contemporary Art (Java=Joint Advanced Virtual Affairs) www.javamuseum.org info at javamuseum.org . is corporate member of [NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]:||cologne - the experimental platform for netbased art - operating from Cologne/Germany. From shivamvij at gmail.com Mon Jul 5 13:58:21 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 13:58:21 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] copyright for fonts? Message-ID: Can "Fonts" be Copyrighted? Of late there has been a discussion on the web on copyright of the fonts of "Kannada" which is a language used by over 50 million persons in India and officially recognized by the constitution of India. While thinking on this issue, it is necessary for the community to consider if at all it is correct for copyright to be recognized for "Fonts". "Font" is a written expression of a language or the alphabets of a language. ...Any copyright claim on the "Font" indirectly claims the "Copyright" on the language itself. I wish that Netizen right activists take up this issue in the appropriate forum and fight for the "Free Licensing" of Fonts...Alternatively, the Government .. should legislate that "Fonts" should be subject matter of "Compulsory Free Licensing". (Detailed article is available here: http://www.naavi.org/cl_editorial_04/edit_03_july_05_01.htm I invite the views of the members to reproduce them at www.naavi.org Naavi -- ZEST: Low volume mailing lists ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-india ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-economics ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zestpoets PACE Stop Ragging Campaign: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging THE HOOT: Watching media in the subcontinent: http://www.thehoot.org From M.Baas2 at uva.nl Mon Jul 5 15:08:14 2004 From: M.Baas2 at uva.nl (Michiel Baas) Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 11:38:14 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] ragging Message-ID: <7428F0B8646AF84891E2B755DA9C3579327935@rea04.fmg.uva.nl> Dear Shivam, Sorry for my late reply. I think many of your questions have already been answered by Pauline. "On the net i read similarly about hazing in the US, so is this practice in the Netherlands called ragging or hazing, or is some other term employed?" In Dutch it would be "ontgroenen" which would broadly translate as "de-greening"- as in the juniors are green (as grass) and the seniors will try to do something about this. Of course you can extract my part about ragging in the Netherlands for your Dossier. A friend of mine is doing research on ragging in the Russian army at the moment. I wish I could update you on what he has found so far but he is hard to reach and at the moment right in the middle of his fieldwork. But when he returns I will ask him to mail you about his experiences there. Kind regards, Michiel Baas From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Mon Jul 5 15:32:33 2004 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 03:02:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] copyright for fonts? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040705100233.61267.qmail@web52703.mail.yahoo.com> Hi all sending some notes which outlines the existing law on IP and fonts that i had made, the matter has now fallen more under the relam of patent law than copyright. I wold be happy to explain any of the technical points if anyone finds it too cryptic Lawrence Fonts as intellectual Property Fonts- For purpose of law can be divided into Typefaces; Fonts; and Font Formats 1. TYPE FACES and COPYRIGHT � Although technically an artistic work, type faces have been denied copyright protection for number of reasons � Eltra v. Ringer � 1972- appellant sought to register his fonts as works of art under ther copyright act-: The office refused registration stating that there �no elements, either alone or in combination which can separately be identified as a work of art� � He appealed the decision A typeface haad been defined by the Copyright act as �a set of letters, numbers, or other symbolic characters, whose forms are related by repeating design elements consistently applied in a notational system and are intended to be embodied � The court went into the utility question and argued that in the case of type faces the design and the utility were so integrated that once could not argue for it being an artistic work outside of its utility. under s 5(g) to conform, (s 202.10(c), 37 C.F.R.): "(c) If the sole intrinsic function of an article is its utility, the fact that the article is unique and attractively shaped will not qualify it as a work of art. However, if the shape of a utilitarian article incorporates features, such as artistic sculpture, carving, or pictorial representation, which can be identified separately and are capable of existing independently as a work of art, such features will be eligible for registration." 2. TYPEFACES AND PATENT Adobe v. southern software-1998 � Adobe sued SS for copyright infringement; they claimed that the defendant had used a font editor to modify Adobe�s fonts Adobe contends that King loaded Adobe font software programs into his computer then created his own 1555 font software program by using FontMonger. FontMonger extracted reference points, or on-curve points, and stored this information. FontMonger stores both existing on-curve points and off-curve points. FontMonger does not copy any of the glyph instructions; it inserts new glyph instructions. However, the glyph instructions are implicit in the sequence and nature of the glyph coordinates. Thus, unless the on-curve points and off-curve points are moved by the user, the glyph instructions written by FontMonger will be functionally identical to those of the original font software program. Adobe contends that after extracting all of the glyph coordinates from the Adobe programs, King merely scaled the coordinates 101% on the vertical axis in order to change the font slightly. Adobe contends that the only difference between the 1555 product and the 2002 product is that the value of each x coordinate has been increased by a uniform amount and the advance widths have been changed Argument 1 � Defendant contended that a copyright infringement existed only when there was a valid copyright that subsisted in a work, and since there is no type faces are not copyrightable subject matter there cannot be any infringement � Adobe argued that a computer program produces unprotectable typefaces does not make the computer program itself unprotectable 1988 Copyright Office Policy Decision, the Copyright Office determined that digitized typefaces were not copyrightable because they were not computer programs and required little selection or arrangement beyond that dictated by the uncopyrightable typeface design. ��Policy Decision on the Copyrightability of Digitized Typefaces, �� 53 Fed. Reg. 38 1 lo-381 13 (September 29, 1988). However, in 1992 the Copyright Office issued a final regulation regarding the registrability of ��computer programs that generate typefaces�� which appears to back off the 1988 policy decision: The 1992 Regulation states: bitmapped fonts are merely the computerised representation of a typeface and not copyrightable. Scalable fonts are different; After a careful review of the testimony and the written comments, the Copyright Office is persuaded that creating scalable typefonts using already digitized typeface represents a significant change in the industry since our previous Policy Decision. We are also persuaded that computer programs designed for generating typeface in conjunction with low resolution and other printing devices may involve original computer instructions entitled to protection under the Copyright Act. For example, the creation of scalable font output programs to produce harmonious fonts consisting of hundreds of characters typically involves many decisions in drafting the instructions that drive the printer. The expression of these decisions is neither limited by the unprotectible shape of the letters nor functionally mandated. This expression, assuming it meets the usual standard of authorship, is thus registrable as a computer program. � Coincidence of course that the 1992 regulations came into place after intense lobbying by Adobe systems with congress Argument 2: Lack of originality or creativity � Defendants argue that after one has filtered out the unprotectabie elements of plaintiffs software in order to compare what remains, one finds that minimal, if any, protectable expression remains. � Defendants argued that ��merely manipulating an unprotectable font image to create another, slightly different (but still unprotectable) font image cannot possibly give rise to protectable expression....�� Defendants argued that no matter what points are selected by the Adobe editor performing the process, they correspond directly to, and hence are determined by, the unprotectable font shape. Therefore, because the output is not protected and there cannot be any creativity in what the editor does to obtain the output, nothing is protectable � Adobe argued that originality for the purpose of copyright does not pertain to creative originality but to the point of origin and the threshold required for proving a work to be original is very low � Adobe argued that �while the shape of the glyph necessarily dictates some of the points to be chosen to create the glyph, it does not determine all the points to be chosen. Thus, each rendering of a specific glyph requires choices by the editor as to what points to select and where to place those points. Accordingly, Adobe asserts that the selection of points and the placement of those points are expression which is copyrightable in an original font output program. The actual code is dictated by the selected points�. � Court agreed thnd stated that �The evidence presented shows that there is some creativity in designing the font software programs. While the glyph dictates to a certain extent what points the editor must choose, it does not dictate every point that must be chosen. Adobe has shown that font editors make creative choices as to what points to select based on the image in front of them on the computer screen. The code is determined directly from the selection of the points. Thus, any copying of the points is copying of literal expression, that is, in essence, copying of the computer code itself Argument 3: Patent claims Adobe is the owner of six design patents. Adobe�s design patents are presumed valid; however, that presumption may be overcome by clear and convincing evidence to the contrary. Adobe asserts that defendants have infringed the design patents. 1. Defendants assert that the patents are invalid and unenforceable as a matter of law, Defendants claim that the patents are invalid because the font designs are non-statutory subject matter in violation of 35 U.S.C. section 171 (requiring ��original and ornamental design for an article of manufacture��) in that none of the design patents discloses an article of manufacture. 2. Defendants further assert that the patents are invalid because the designs each lack the requisite novelty and nonobviousness for patentability. Defendants also claim that, in any event, the design patents are unenforceable because Adobe willfully failed to disclose prior art when applying for the patents. Adobe contends, however, that the requisite article of manufacture in this case is the program which allows the typeface to be rendered. The court in ex parte Tavama, 24 U.S.P.Q.2d 1614, 1616 (Bd. Pat. App. & Int. 1992), after rejecting a claim for the ornamental design of an icon, observed Moreover, appellant asserted that affirmance of the rejection will bring into question the validity of numerous design patents directed to type fonts. We disagree. The phrase ��type font�� may be properly interpreted as referring to letter blocks or pieces used in a conventional printing press. The blocks or pieces constitute an article or articles of manufacture. Unlike the designs here, which are stated to be surface ornamentation, type font designs are reasonably interpreted to be the shape or configuration of the letter blocks. The fact that the meaning of ��type font�� may have expanded in usage to include letters or numbers appearing on paper or on a computer screen does not invalidate the long-standing interpretation of type font designs as configuration-type designs or pieces or blocks of type. 24 U.S.P.Q. 2d at 1618. Based upon the reasoning of Tayama, type fonts are patentable subject matter and the program which creates the type fonts is the article of manufacture.12 Accordingly, the court finds that the typeface designs are statutory subject matter entitled to patent protection. � On the issue of whether or not there was disclosure and prior art, the court found that there issues of facts which were triable and had to be reconsidered. � The decision of the court is now on appeal. Impact of Adobe v. southern software � While traditionally type faces were held to be uncopyrightable , the impact of the adobe case by granting patent protection to the type face it is in effect a protection of the type face and more Jonathan Mezrich: � In light of Adobe, the extension of copyright law to fonts will have a profound impact on the software industry. Adobe has a history of aggressively setting software standards: initially in the realm of desktop publishing and recently in the area of web publishing and web page design. Moreover, Adobe has entered licensing agreements with IBM, Apple, and Microsoft that likely will lead to implementation of Adobe technology and standards in these companies� future products. Because these new products will utilize Adobe-generated fonts and will require related programs and peripherals to mimic the same standards, Adobe will reap enormous benefits either for as long as the standard persists or until their copyrights expire. In light of the Adobe holding, Adobe apparently will be able to charge a licensing fee for its web design and publishing software as well as for the underlying fonts. Companies wishing to create software for platforms utilizing the Adobe standard will have to pay a licensing fee to Adobe or forego satisfying customers utilizing these major platforms such as IBM, Apple, and Microsoft). 3. FONT FORMAT AND PATENT/ COPYRIGHT - What is the impact of the Adobe case for font formats? - Can font formats either be copyrighted, patented or protected under any form of IP? 3.1 Copyright and the idea/ expression dichotomy � Baker v. selden � and the double entry ledger system- utility argument 3.2 Software Patents � Initial position of the patent office was to outright reject applications for software patents � Early instance of whether an invention consisting of mathematical algorithm is patentable subject matter arose in Gottschalk v. Benson (1972) � �We conclude that one may not patent an idea. The mathematical formula involved here has no substantial practical application except in connection with a digital computer which means that if the judgement below is affirmed, the patent would wholly pre empt the mathematical formula and in effect would be a patent o the algorithm itself� � �it is conceded that one may not patent an idea. But that would be the result if the formula were to be allowed to be patented in this case�. � This did not stop people from attempting to patent software and the 70�s saw a number of applications for special purpose computers. In Flook (1978), the court held that a patent on a method of calculating am alarm limit controlling the temperature was unpatentable because the only novel part of the invention was a mathematical formula. � In Diamond v. Diehr (1981), the court however held that the patent was framed not as a method of calculating a number but of curing rubber. The fact that the method used a formula to compute temperature and that the use of that formula in a computer was the only novel part of the invention did not render the process as a while unpatentable. � The US court of appeals created a two part test known as the Freeman-Walter-Abele test: o First determine whether a patent claim recites an algorithm directly or indirectly o If it does, then is the claimed invention as a whole no more than ther algorithm itself? � After the establishment of this test, patent claims started describing themselves as part of a process rather than as a algorithm itself. � In Re Allapat- The invention will read on a general purpose computer programmed to carry out the claimed invention, but the claim is patentable nonetheless because �such programming creates a new machine, because a general purpose computer in effect becomes a special purpose computer once it is programmed to perform specific functions pursuant to instruction form programmed software� � Is this not true of any program? � There was still confusion however after the Allapat decision , for instance in In re Lowry, abstract claims to a type of software adapt structure where objects a arranged complex manner was held to be patentable , while in In Re Warmerdam, a process claim was rejected since trhe mathematical algorithm is implicit in the claim that is made. � The US PTO then issued the 1996 guidelines Although most software related inventions are now statutory under these guidelines, it is important to remember that "software" as a class is not patentable. What is patentable are "processes" and "machines". Thus the guidelines are framed so as to assist in determining when computer related inventions are patentable processes or machines. According to the new guidelines, computer programs that have traditionally been held to be statutory will continue to be statutory without further analysis. These "safe harbor" inventions include two types of inventions: Those having "significant post solution activity", meaning that the software program is used to control something external to the software routine (such as curing rubber), and those having "pre-computer process activity", meaning software programs that manipulate numbers representing concrete, real world values (such as electrocardiograph signals and seismic measurements. In addition to these safe harbor inventions, a computer related invention will be statutory if it is claimed in connection with a specific machine or product. This can be accomplished by defining specific code segments or routines in the patent application, or by claiming the invention in connection with a specific type of computer or memory structure. What is not important is the type of computer program involved. Thus, while it is clear that a program designed to improve communication speed over a modem is statutory subject matter, it is equally clear that a graphics program, a spreadsheet, and a word processing program are statutory when properly claimed. The disjuncture between the reality and the law: With over 40,000 software patents in force and several thousands being issued every year, the law seems to be left far behind. The �cognitive dissonance� that results between what the law is and the actual practice has been suggests that the law can be expected to change or that a large number of issued patents will have to be held to be invalid. � State Street v. Signature- business process patent- a mathematical algorithm may be an integral part of a patentable subject matter such as a machine oro a process if the claimed invention as a whiolke is applied in any useful manner Even after establishing that it is patentable subject matter you will still have to pass the test of whether or not it satisfies the other requirements of as valid patent namely: 1. Novelty 2. Non Obviousness 3. Prior Art Fair Use defence Sec. 52[(aa) [(ab) the doing of any act necessary to obtain information essential for operating inter-operability of an independently created computer programme with other programmes by a lawful possessor of a computer programme, provided that such information is not otherwise readily available; (ac) the observation, study or test of functioning of the computer programme in order to determine the ideas and principles which underline any elements of the programme while performing such acts necessary for the functions for which the computer programme was supplied; Conclusion 1. idea/ expression dichotomy v. reality of software patents 2. The movement towards meta copyright _ DMCA and anti circumvention technology 3. The movement away from copyright to contractual modes of protection __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From zest_india at yahoo.co.in Sat Jul 3 18:23:26 2004 From: zest_india at yahoo.co.in (Shivam) Date: Sat, 3 Jul 2004 05:53:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Beyond the Borders of English Message-ID: <20040703125326.88218.qmail@web8201.mail.in.yahoo.com> BEYOND THE BORDERS OF ENGLISH Despite its spread around the globe, the English language has yet to dominate Britain and Ireland. The past thirty years have seen a resurgence in indigenous languages such as Scots, Welsh, Gaelic, Romani, Cornish, Shetlandic, and Ullans�especially in poetry. Iwan Llwyd pays homage to Welsh, Peter Constantine gives us a brief history of Scots, and Gaelic reveals its glories in the poetry of Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill and Louis de Paor. We've included two poems from the Romany and a poem by Ray Edwards, who contemplates the fascinating history of "The Calendar" in Cornish. A sampling of poetry from the Scots includes work by Janet Paisley, Christopher Whyte, and Liz Niven. Christine de Luca serenades one of the world's most unforgiving climes in Shetlandic, and Charlie Gillen supplies a farmer's love song in Ullans, both descendants of the Scots language. Welsh Book of the Year finalist Owen Martell provides a preview of his short-listed novel, and Robin Llywelyn transports us to�and weirdly beyond�a Welsh prison. See http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/ Chosen as one of the world's 50 best websites by Time magazine, Words Without Borders describes itself as The Online Magazine for International Literature. Words Without Borders undertakes to promote international communication through translation of the world's best writing--selected and translated by a distinguished group of writers, translators, and publishing professionals--and publishing and promoting these works (or excerpts) on the web. We also serve as an advocacy organization for literature in translation, producing events that feature the work of foreign writers and connecting these writers to universities and to print and broadcast media. ZEST Reading Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-india/ ZEST Economics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-economics/ ZEST Poets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-poets/ --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040703/285bcd68/attachment.html From shivamvij at gmail.com Mon Jul 5 18:18:51 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 18:18:51 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Take off your clothes, fachch Message-ID: Dear friends, Why does ragging have sexual overtones? Is there a single answer to this question or are there several possible answers? Why does my senior want to see my body, my genitals? Shouldn't he himself be embarrassed even to say, "Take off your clothes, fachch?" One answer I got was that this is because of repressed sexuality. This is understandable, specially amongst students who come from small towns or even not-so-small towns like Lucknow, where the best 'public' schools are all-male or all-female, and a boy calling up a girl or vice-versa often demands explanations at home. So 'repressed sexuality' is a convenient explanation for sexual ragging. But is it repressed homo- or heterosexuality? If my senior didn't get to flirt with girls, why does he want to see my private parts and comment on them and ask me to masturbate and so on? Someone who is a ragger, tells me that sexual ragging has nothing to do with sexuality, and thaat they do it just to "psyche you out". One response was: "Ragging seems like a devious psychological ploy in which the victim is degraded in such a way, that a) he tends to think that something is wrong with himself b) tries to cut out that memory with from his mind, and this can have enormous psychological consequences.Cutting away sexual ragging from your mind, will result in shying away from exploring ones sexuality and gender identity.This may result in fear of the unknown which results in bigotry against homosexuals and male chauvinism." Another reasoning I got was that one's clothes are important aspects of one's privacy, and it's merely a power game in which the senior wants his power to affect all aspects of the fresher's privacy. Yet another explanation seems to contribute to the ragging-makes-you-a-man theory. This thought says that the idea is that by showing each other their private parts, we are trying to say that we have nothing to hide, and therefore this is a 'rite of passage' for the adolescent into the heterosexual, adult world. This is the line of thought adopted by one of the two articles I am appending here, written by a student who is a declared homosexual, and is writing about ragging from the point of view of a homosexual. I think, however, that his arguments are facetious, and are certainly problematic for me as they tend to justify ragging at least for the heterosexual world that is against giving homosexual individuals their sexual freedom. In ragging people don't show each other their bodies; the fresher shows his body as a matter of humiliation to the senior, whose clothes remain intact. Which makes me think (and the second appended article is evidence) that when a senior is asking a fresher to take off his clothes, the senior may be experimenting with his own sexuality. He - or she, because there have been cases of girls indulging in sexual ragging - is testing if he is attracted to my body. Which is also a result of repression of sexuality, but the first article here tends to suggest that 'stripping' would traumatise only a homosexual, not a heterosexual. Do we then absolve 'heterosexual ragging', if it can be called that? I hope people on this list will respond to this. I hope also, that this will feed into the debate on homosexuality and CSA we had, and show how gay rights activists see homosexuality as a black-and-white issue, whereas it may play itself out in far more complex ways. I would be extremely grateful to anyone who agrees to write an essay exploring and dissecting this theme of sexuality in ragging - preferably someone who is aware of academic research on sexuality, and works in the area of post-Freudian research. Please feel free to forward this mail to anyone who you think is equipped to deliberate on these questions. As you may have realised by now, our campaign is not just about activism but also research: the idea is to understand ragging and then find ways to eliminate it. Also, I hope very few people are taking my posts on ragging to be 'spam' or 'propaganda', and that the issues I am raising are well within the purview of the objectives of this list. Please read the two articles here if they interest you, and comment upon them. Thanks//Shivam o o o o o ARTICLE 1: Being Gay in a Pseudo-Liberal World By Aniruddha In my first day in this college, after being duly lodged in my room in Allnutt (North), I was summoned to interact with a certain senior student of my block. He informed me that I would have to become acquainted with the customs and 'traditions' of the hostel. Apparently, it was exclusively meant for men who liked others of the same sex — and the rite of initiation was something called 'lifting' — for those not into residence parlance, the process entails stripping followed by squirting soap, cream etc. on the genitals, all in public. For someone who had become sure of his sexuality only recently, this was unexpected behaviour. Here was what seemed to be an overt celebration of something in myself which at one point I had had problems speaking about, yet it didn't seem that sought-for place where I could fit in with those both like and unlike myself. What I soon discovered was that this was actually a very *heterosexual* behaviour, a simultaneous celebration of homosocial solidarity (through a forbidden activity), with the purging of any actual homosexual instincts. In showing each other their bodies they persuaded themselves that they really had nothing to hide — ensuring uniformity of sexual identity in preparation for the heterosexual adult world they were to enter shortly. Obviously, for anybody who *is* homosexual, the violation of his/her privacy and the expected conformity would be traumatic. (I managed to avoid it in the two months leading to the A.T.P.) [ATP is a final, somewhat violent event wherein juniors and seniors exchange rotten tomatoes; this event marks the end of two months of ragging.] Since then I have sensed that not only in this college but in D.U. as a whole, homosexuality is very exciting as an issue, a subterranean current of interest which surfaces in academic, forbiddingly civilised seminars and discussions. There was even an article in some daily which quoted students speaking of gay and lesbian friends almost as a social credential — cool and radical. While this shows a trend sparked off by increasingly in-your-face (though mostly highbrow) gay and lesbian activism, it still does mean that homosexuals are perceived as 'others' in *our* society — conceptions of difference that excite both superficial interest and crass homophobia. How far all this translates into true acceptance is shown in popular attitudes that persist — gays look like blah, speak like blah, have a fetish for shoes. (Ever heard someone say, "that guy is so gay!") Films like Kal Ho Na Ho, a smash hit with the college-going, English-speaking crowd, appear to deal explicitly with homosexuality but end up preserving stereotypes of gay men who will ogle at 'normal' guys beyond all limits of decency and self-respect. Unfortunately, the comparative ease with which the subject is discussed today is very far from acceptance — moreover, in the manner of socio-cultural formations in general, it may serve to adapt the old to only a slightly different context. Recognition often encompasses the sense of a separate, often mysteriously-defined group. This makes any flexible, more composite identity difficult. And for a young person waiting to make his or her way unfettered by definitions, it is soon apparent that heterosexuality is still "normal chhe". And the only space which remains is an article like this. [Published in the 2004 annual number of "Vox Populi", the journal of the Gandhi Study Circle, St. Stephen's College, Delhi.] o o o o ARTICLE 2: [This is an excerpt from a short story (I don't know how much of it is fact and how much is fiction) from the website of 'Gay Delhi'. I found it while Googling for ragging, and it is indeed very useful for anyone who wants to think about why ragging has sexual overtones. Only the portion of the story that is relevant to our study is being appended here, you may read the rest of it by following the link.] LOVE, THY ART BEAUTIFUL! By Coverboy From: Gay Delhi Stories http://members.tripod.com/gaydelhi/Page51.htm It was the first day after the summer break and all of us were dying to get to college cause now we weren't 'freshers' anymore and had made it to the second year. And we were definitely going to get our pound's worth in terms of ragging the new batch which was going to be exciting. I rubbed my hands in glee at the thought and joined my friends at the bus stop, waiting to catch the morning U-Special. It was a warm sultry day, with overcast clouds and the promise of rain. But we were oblivious to it all and were instead awaiting the arrival of the new 'recruits' to college. The bus arrived and we boarded, the ragging beginning in earnest in the bus itself. There were at least a dozen newbies in there and they were already being meted out the initiation rituals by the seniors in the bus. We soon joined in and started to joke around, laughing when the freshers were made to propose to each other and dance on a 25 paise coin or don the dupatta of another and play pretend drag. One of them caught my eye. He was around 18 years of age, freshly out of school with the clean scrubbed look of a preppy boy, wearing faded denims, which clung to his long muscular legs, highlighting the strongly developed quadriceps, and a black T-shirt which showed off his well developed arms. Tall, at 6 feet, with a slim, athletic body and long slicked back hair, he looked like he belonged between the pages of GQ rather than amongst a bunch of unruly immature seniors who were bent upon getting him to drape a dupatta around his waist and dance the ek, do, teen, Madhuri Dixit number. I watched him from the corner of my eye, quickly averting my gaze when he too looked towards me. But I couldn't help myself and before I knew it, my eyes were on him again. We exchanged a few glances but each time I looked away. You see, though I had known for a while that I was attracted to men, I had never done anything about it. Technically, both mentally and physically, I was the vestal virgin. Not due to lack of opportunities, but out of choice. Suddenly I felt the bus lurch and stop in front of The Sri Ram College of Commerce or as us students fondly refer to it, SRCC. I was amongst the first to get down since I was near the exit and imagine my surprise when 'he' also disembarked. I beckoned him over and demanded, 'hey fresher, which college are you in?'. SRCC, sir, he replied. This was great, he was in my college! I was destined to meet him. However, before I could talk any further, we were whipped up in a melee of friends greeting each other after the holidays, freshers being ragged to do the Bharatnatayam or sing songs from Amitabh Bachhan movies. I soon lost sight of him and wandered from one group of mates to another, laughing, joking, exchanging news and gossip. After a few hours of this, we retired to the canteen to replenish our expended energies and ordered a few plates of samosas and cold glasses of nimbu paani. We were all on a high and were behaving like typical teenagers, celebrating our youth and boundless energy. Whilst speaking to one of my friends, I noticed that the boy from the bus was being led out by a group of 7 or 8 seniors who weren't day scholars but hostelers. This puzzled and perturbed me cause if they took him to the hostel, God alone knows what they may do to him. One has heard of horror stories of stripping and molestation in these places and therefore I was worried. I decided to go along since I knew the boys who were taking him. I went upto them and laughingly said, 'hey let's get this fresher, guys'. They laughed and asked me to come along to their room at the hostel which was behind the main college building. I tagged along and managed to catch the fresher's eye and gave him a reassuring wink since by now, he had started to look a little worried. Soon we were seated in one room, in a semi circle with the boy (whose name I learnt subsequently, was Vinay) in the centre standing and gyrating to some house music which was blaring out of the two-in-one in a corner. Vinay was definitely not enjoying this and I could sense his embarrassment but, of course, I couldn't say or do anything at this point since the rest of them were my seniors. At this point, one of them asked Vinay to take off his shirt. He looked as if he was going to protest when another one of them got up and made a threatening move towards him. Reluctantly, Vinay removed his shirt and I nearly gasped out loud. He was perfectly shaped starting from that beautiful face and adorable dimples, down to his long lovely neck, his perfect pectorals with taut dark nipples, rippling muscles, his six-pack, well defined and his laterals flaring out in a perfect V. He was a sight to behold and many of the others started whistling and making cat calls. I couldn't take my eyes off that perfect hairless torso, it's proportions so much in harmony that even a sculptor couldn't have done any better. Of course, the inevitable followed. One of the seniors asked him to take his trousers off too. Vinay was, by now, in acute discomfort and I could see that he was having a tough time but I was powerless to do anything then. And to confess, a part of me wanted to see him without his trousers on. Slowly and extremely reluctantly, he took them off and stood there like Adonis, perfect in all his glory. His legs were long and tapered, beautifully muscled and perfectly shaped. His calves were bulging with muscular striations and his feet were most beautifully formed. He was wearing a pair of Y-front Calving Klein's which fit most snugly around his perfect butt and could barely hide the distinctive bulge of his ample manhood. I was transfixed and kept closing my eyes so that I could record this moment for posterity. The seniors were laughing and making obscene gestures to Vinay and then one of them suggested that he take his underwear off too. I could sense that Vinay was about ready to break down at this humiliation and I finally got up and took a stand stating that this was no way to rag someone and that making him take his underwear off would be stretching things too far. Don't know why but they listened to me and agreed that fine, they wouldn't make him strip completely. I could see the gratitude in Vinay's eyes and I gave him a reassuring smile back in return. [ The narrator eventually has a homosexual relationship with the character of Vinay. Read the full story at http://members.tripod.com/gaydelhi/Page51.htm ] -- shivamvij at gmail.com ZEST: Low volume mailing lists ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-india ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-economics ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zestpoets PACE Stop Ragging Campaign: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging THE HOOT: Watching media in the subcontinent: http://www.thehoot.org From shekhar at crit.org.in Mon Jul 5 18:32:26 2004 From: shekhar at crit.org.in (Shekhar Krishnan) Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 18:32:26 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fahrenheit 911 Download Message-ID: <90526CF1-CE83-11D8-BA93-000A95A05D12@crit.org.in> http://hubproject.org/news/2004/06/794.php _____ Shekhar Krishnan 9, Supriya, 2nd Floor Plot 709, Parsee Colony Road no.4 Dadar, Bombay 400014 India From shivamvij at gmail.com Mon Jul 5 18:43:06 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 18:43:06 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] IHT in India Message-ID: Re: the article below I don't understand what the fuss is all about. The government of India and the anti-FDI-in-print-media lobby, both are rather dumb to assume that I cannot go to the website of the International Herald Tribune, read anti-national articles there and be instigated by foreigners into indulging in subervise activities such as treason. Or are they planning to block the websites of foreign papers, allowing 26% of their content this year, 50% next year if they feel there is no threat to national security, 75% the year after for those foreign paper websites who agree to have an Indian bureaucrat as a resident editor, 90% by 2020 in line with the government's Vision 2020 of a prosperous, developed India in which Indians will have grown up enough to not be instigated by IHT. Shivam India's newspaper loophole exposed By Indrajit Basu in Kolkata Asia Times, Hong Kong http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FF19Df02.html Despite half-hearted liberalization measures over the past two years, India's print-media policies remain archaic, with loopholes regarding the publication and distribution of foreign newspapers in the country still in existence. But while many have deplored these policies as restrictive, unclear and out of tune with the present times, no one has ever really challenged them. Last week, however, the government's politically sensitive print-media policies were ridiculed for the first time in five decades when M J Akbar, one of the country's most influential editors, blatantly defied a government order directing him to halt publication of the Indian edition of the International Herald Tribune (IHT), a newspaper from the New York Times stable. Since May 26, Akbar's publishing company, Midram Publications - which had won permission from the New York Times to publish IHT in the country - has been reproducing the Hong Kong edition of the IHT out of Hyderabad verbatim, going against, as says the government, the law of the land. "The publication of International Herald Tribune, which has the same masthead, layout and ... content as those of its Hong Kong edition, is a complete violation of policy guidelines," says the country's Information and Broadcasting Ministry. But Akbar insists that government polices are just that - policies, acting as guidelines and not law. "There is no law, there is only a resolution. Article 19 of the Indian constitution permits me to publish this," he claims. Indeed, India's print-media regulations and policies are perhaps among the most ambiguous that the country has. And, as Akbar says, there is no law barring entry of foreign newspapers but just a resolution passed by the cabinet of ministers in 1955 not allowing republication of foreign news content without prior approval of the government and the owner of the foreign copyright holder. Over the past two years these rules were changed twice but restrictions on the republication of foreign content have not been reversed. For instance, in 2002 a new policy allowed 26% foreign direct investment (FDI) in news media but mandated that the editor must be Indian and must have full editorial control, and in 2003 the foreign-content restriction was slightly relaxed to allow a mere 7.5% of foreign news content to be republished without the government's permission. However, the 2003 policy also added that the masthead, editorial content and front page couldn't be entirely reproduced. Allowing foreign news content to be reproduced in the IHT without restrictions, contends the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, violates that policy. Akbar says he has taken care of that too. "Those policies do not apply to the Indian version of IHT because the paper is not foreign and therefore not subject to rules applicable to the publication of foreign newspapers in India," he says, adding that IHT is an Indian title because it is registered in India. According to Akbar, by defying the government order, IHT has exposed the fact that, hiding behind polices, the Indian government has been deceitfully denying, for five decades, a fundamental right allowed by the Indian constitution. "In our view the government does not have a legal case. We are absolutely correct, both in terms of law as well as policy. I am not in defiance of the law. I am merely saying that every decision made by the government is not law. And we also feel that the government directive to stop publication is absolutely mala fide of my fundamental right to freedom of the press as guaranteed by Article 19 of the Indian constitution," he says. He adds that "the rules have not been challenged so far because no one has, so far, thought it fit so to challenge them under the constitutional right". But not all agree, and some feel that Akbar is interpreting the policies incorrectly. "The position is clear. The constitution of India guarantees every citizen of India fundamental rights. Freedom of speech is one such right," says Ramji Srinivasan, a corporate lawyer. "However, it is subject to reasonable restriction, and that the Supreme Court has clarified many times. The government frames polices from time to time to regulate economic and other activities of the country. Reasonable restriction can be imposed in the form of policy guidelines. Thus, if a cabinet frames a policy it must treated as a legislation and be followed." Detractors of Akbar and factions opposed to the opening-up of the country's print media to foreign publications also fear that the IHT may have opened the door for entry of foreign newspapers to be rampantly published in India, even threatening the country's security. "This is why we had always said to the government not to open doors - referring to 26% FDI that was allowed last year - to foreign newspapers," says N Ram, editor-in-chief of one of India's largest newspaper-publishing houses, The Hindu. "Once it is opened even a little, one can't control the flow. This is the first challenge to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry of the new government; it means that anyone, including a Pakistani paper, can publish in India if they find the right party here." Nevertheless, the fact remains that logically Akbar may be on the right track, and unless all policies and regulations, including those passed in 1955, are turned into laws, nothing can stop him from going ahead with distributing the Indian IHT in its current form. "It is just like any other manufacturing activities," says Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of the Mumbai-based newspaper group The Indian Express. "If foreign companies can manufacture trucks, clothes and software in India, so can a newspaper. I think it is silly trying to stop it. "I am all for opening the print media to foreign publishers," adds Gupta, not forgetting to take a pot shot at liberalization detractors, "but the problem is, once it is opened up, other publishing houses that have been opposing opening up the foreign media to foreigners would be first to go out and attract them." -- shivamvij at gmail.com ZEST: Low volume mailing lists ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-india ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-economics ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zestpoets PACE Stop Ragging Campaign: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging THE HOOT: Watching media in the subcontinent: http://www.thehoot.org From sunil at mahiti.org Tue Jul 6 15:23:47 2004 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2004 09:53:47 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] IOSN Releases Primer on Free/Open Source Software and Government Message-ID: <1089107626.586.13.camel@box> IOSN has produced a primer on Free/Open Source Software and Government and a pre-publication copy of the primer is now available for download for review and feedback. The end date for public feedback is 14th July. Please send feedback to sunil at apdip.net This primer is meant to serve as a resource for nations in the process of formulating their FOSS policies. This particular primer surveys the motivations of other countries in implementing FOSS, summarizes the steps involved in formulating a policy, lists some possible strategies to use in implementing the policy and finally touches on cross-sectoral issues unique to FOSS policies. Its target audience are the policy-makers who set national policies and their advisers. Download in OpenOffice format http://www.iosn.net/downloads/foss_gov_primer_v0_2.sxw Download in PDF format http://www.iosn.net/downloads/foss_gov_primer_v0_2.pdf Download in MS Word format http://www.iosn.net/downloads/foss_gov_primer_v0_2.doc Thanks, ಸುನೀಲ್ Thanks, ಸುನೀಲ್ -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 51150580. Mobile: +91 80 36701931 Currently on sabbatical with APDIP/UNDP As FOSS Consultant - International Open Source Network Wisma UN, Block C Komplex Pejabat Damansara. Jalan Dungun, Damansara Heights. 50490 Kuala Lumpur. P. O. Box 12544, 50782, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Tel: (60) 3-2091-5167, Fax: (60) 3-2095-2087 sunil at apdip.net http://www.iosn.net http://www.apdip.net From avinash at csdsdelhi.org Tue Jul 6 10:51:09 2004 From: avinash at csdsdelhi.org (Avinash Jha) Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2004 10:51:09 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Artificial Intelligence Message-ID: <002301c46317$2d80cd30$a500a8c0@library> An essay on the philosophical assumptions and cognitive habits of AI people: Toward a Critical Technical Practice: Lessons Learned in Trying to Reform AI Philip E. Agre http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/critical.html excerpt: In order to find words for my newfound intuitions, I began studying several nontechnical fields. Most importantly, I sought out those people who claimed to be able to explain what is wrong with AI, including Hubert Dreyfus and Lucy Suchman. They, in turn, got me started reading Heidegger's Being and Time (1961 [1927]) and Garfinkel's Studies in Ethnomethodology (1984 [1967]). At first I found these texts impenetrable, not only because of their irreducible difficulty but also because I was still tacitly attempting to read everything as a specification for a technical mechanism. That was the only protocol of reading that I knew, and it was hard even to conceptualize the possibility of alternatives. (Many technical people have observed that phenomenological texts, when read as specifications for technical mechanisms, sound like mysticism. This is because Western mysticism, since the great spiritual forgetting of the later Renaissance, is precisely a variety of mechanism that posits impossible mechanisms.) My first intellectual breakthrough came when, for reasons I do not recall, it finally occurred to me to stop translating these strange disciplinary languages into technical schemata, and instead simply to learn them on their own terms. This was very difficult because my technical training had instilled in me two polar-opposite orientations to language -- as precisely formalized and as impossibly vague -- and a single clear mission for all discursive work -- transforming vagueness into precision through formalization (Agre 1992). The correct orientation to the language of these texts, as descriptions of the lived experience of ordinary everyday life, or in other words an account of what ordinary activity is like, is unfortunately alien to AI or any other technical field. I still remember the vertigo I felt during this period; I was speaking these strange disciplinary languages, in a wobbly fashion at first, without knowing what they meant -- without knowing what sort of meaning they had. Formal reason has an unforgiving binary quality -- one gap in the logic and the whole thing collapses -- but this phenomenological language was more a matter of degree; I understood intellectually that the language was "precise" in a wholly different sense from the precision of technical language, but for a long time I could not convincingly experience this precision for myself, or identify it when I saw it. Still, in retrospect this was the period during which I began to "wake up", breaking out of a technical cognitive style that I now regard as extremely constricting. I believe that a technical field such as AI can contribute a great deal to our understanding of human existence, but only once it develops a much more flexible and reflexive relationship to its own language, and to the experience of research and life that this language organizes. My second intellectual breakthrough occurred during my initial attempt to read Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge (1972). Foucault suggested that when two schools of thought are fighting, rather than try to adjudicate the dispute, one should explore whether the opposed schools are internally related components of a single intellectual formation. Having done so, it becomes possible to ask how that whole formation arose historically. I came across this idea at an opportune moment. Although the structuralism of The Archaeology of Knowledge has often been condemned by Foucault's critics, this very structuralism nonetheless ensured that I could grasp Foucault's ideas within my habitual patterns of technical thought, and that I could then employ his ideas to objectify and defamiliarize those very patterns of thought. It became possible, for example, to inquire into the nature and workings of the discursive formation that consisted of behaviorism plus cognitivism. This was an extraordinary revelation. It may be objected that The Archaeology of Knowledge is only one possible theory of the history of ideas, and that dozens of preferable theories are available. My point, however, is that my technical training did not include any of those other theories. I later became a zealous consumer of those theories, but it was Foucault's theory that first pierced the darkness -- precisely because of its commensurability with the order of technical thought. Having found a means of objectifying ideas, I could then proceed systematically to extricate myself from the whole tacit system of intellectual procedures in which I had become enmeshed during my years as a student of computer science. For this reason, I have never experienced poststructuralism or literary theory as strange or threatening, nor have I ever perceived them as varieties of relativism or idealism. Quite the contrary, they were the utterly practical instruments by which I first became able to think clearly and to comprehend ideas that had not been hollowed through the false precision of formalism. __________________________________________________ Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040706/d7bb1f1a/attachment.html From iyer_renu at rediffmail.com Tue Jul 6 11:27:21 2004 From: iyer_renu at rediffmail.com (renu swaminathan iyer) Date: 6 Jul 2004 05:57:21 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Fahrenheit 911 Download Message-ID: <20040706055721.15483.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040706/3bd33ad9/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- In case you missed this most-pertinent-of-the-hour piece on Fahr 9 11 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=21&ItemID=5811 saludos, Renu Iyer, On Mon, 05 Jul 2004 Shekhar Krishnan wrote : >http://hubproject.org/news/2004/06/794.php >_____ > >Shekhar Krishnan >9, Supriya, 2nd Floor >Plot 709, Parsee Colony Road no.4 >Dadar, Bombay 400014 >India > >_________________________________________ >reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. >Critiques & Collaborations >To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. >List archive: From rohinipatkar123 at rediffmail.com Mon Jul 5 18:18:19 2004 From: rohinipatkar123 at rediffmail.com (rohini patkar) Date: 5 Jul 2004 12:48:19 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] interview with migrant domestic worker Message-ID: <20040705124819.21906.qmail@webmail8.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040705/3e5e0902/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- Beervati, 40 years Where have you come to Delhi from? Muradabad Move to the city: 1. Why did you leave your village? We left the village in distress bhaiya 2. What distress? There was nothing to earn, no work, no zameen- jayzaad. If there were no problems in the village, why would we ever come here to Delhi? I had children to take care of. Socha ki kama- kha lenge, bacchon ko paal lenge. We thought that we would get some work here, some labour work by which we could feed our children. That is why I came here to Delhi. 3. Do you have land No, we work on others 4. When you were leaving your village, what were you thinking? The only thing that I had in my mind is that ‘hum kama- kha lenge’ 5. Do you remember anything about the first journey that brought you here? What to remember, we had taken loan and come to here ..nothing else 6. How did you pay for the ticket? >From the loan that I had taken from some one in the village 7. How much loan did you take? When I came here, I had taken a loan of 5000 Rs. I had thought since we I am coming here in a new city, what would I feed the children if I have no money. So I took the loan. 8. How many people are there in your family? I have four sons, four daughters. 9. How old are they? My daughter is 18 years old .. 10. Is she the eldest? Yes, and the other two daughters are also old enough. 11. How many years ago did you come to Delhi? 6 yrs 12. What all did you bring with you when you came here? I did not bring anything with me. We bought everything, even the utensils that we are using, after we came here. We did not even bring clothes; we did not have any clothes back in the village. So we did not bring anything. What could we bring? 13. From your village, there did you come straight to Delhi, or you went to some place near Delhi in the beginning? No we came to Delhi straight. 14. Why did you choose to come to Delhi? They say that one can earn more in Delhi, that is why we came here. 15. Who told you that you could earn here? People say, people in our village say that if you go to Delhi, you cam earn there, we also have people from our village whom we know who were staying in Delhi. That is why we decided to come here to Delhi. 16. How old were you when you came here/ After how many years of your marriage did you come here? 20 years 17. Who all are there in the village from your family now? saas, sasur, devar, devrani 18. They are all staying there and what do they do? They are all working there, earning on their own, doing labour work and surviving. 19. Do you talk to them sometimes? When some one goes, we send the message through that person 20. Do you call sometimes? No we never have the money, so how can we call in the village? 21. Had you come to Delhi before, No I had never come here before 22. Were you feeling scared about how would it be like when you reach here? Pata nahi kaisa hoga? That is what I used to think. I had never seen the roads. I had never gone anywhere. I used to listen to anyone who used to tell me that I would get work there, used to go there. Once I got lost badly. My friend left me at a place near Batra where I worked, and I had to come alone from that place. I lost my way and repeatedly was reaching another lane every time I tried to find my way. Finally when I reached home that day, I cried a lot. I kept thinking that I have daughters and I have to marry them off, and that is why we have come to Delhi. If I keep loosing my way, how will I manage? 23. Did you use to loose your way in the nearby areas also? No not in the nearby areas. That was a far away place- near Batra. 24. How long before was this incident? This, was nearly three years back Settling down in the city 1. Who helped you to settle down and live in this city? No one helped us. We had taken loan from the village in the beginning and we used that money for the rent 2. But you had your relatives here, did they help you? Yes, I have my chachia sasur here, who helped us a lot. 3. Where did you stay when you came here in the beginning? We stayed at Munshiram Dairy in the beginning. Where did you live then? Did you rent a place of your own? No, in the first three months, we stayed with our chachia sasur. What did you do during those three months? I started selling stuff on a rehdi (a little shop on a push cart) Was that immediately after you came here? Yes, dilli aate hi. What rehdi did you set up? I used to sell golgappas Did you know how to make them? I got to learn. I the beginning they used to make some and I helped. Gradually I learned Who made in the beginning? My chachia saas, she used to make, she knew, she taught me how to make golgappas You used to make the golgappas at home, and what about your husband? He used to take them for selling on the rehdi Did you have any other relatives here besides your chachia sasur? No but these are my real relatives When you came here in the beginning what did you know about the city? Everyone used to tell me that you can put up your rehdi there, sell vegetables etc, you can work in homes as domestic workers etc, then you can earn some money and marry off your daughters, that is why we came here What was your first impression of the city? I did not like it at all. Why was that? I did not like it because the water is not good, the food here is not good. We are staying here because of our need You prefer your village, when you left you must have felt bad? Yes, I was very sad when I left What about your children? When their parents will leave, what will they do here alone? The environment here is different than the village The place that you were mentioning, you stayed in the very beginning, what kind of a place is that? It is slum kind of area How many people used to stay in one room there They have four children, husband wife one daughter in law. I used to stay upstairs with my children in one room 9 of us and 6-7 of them, about fifteen people in two rooms, that means? Yes Who helped you in finding a house, when you decided to live separately? No one helped us, we found the house ourselves. No one helps anyone in Delhi these days. Is it easy to find a house? No we had many problems Like? Where all did you have to go to look for a room I had to go to various places many times, it is not easy to look for a house How many times did you have to change your room? Three times Every time time, you looked for it yourself Yes, every time Did you have to take loan from anyone for the house? Yes, I had to How much? 10 000 Why did you need so much money? I had to repair my rehdi, I had to work or them and pay the debt off. Next time we had gone for a wedding, so we had to take loan. The loan from the village is still remaining and that is why we are not going to the village, that people are asking for their money back. Did you have to take money from some one in delhi, were you able to pay it of and how Yes, I had to take loan, and I returned it back also. I had to work, domestic workers, I had to work it off. Kothi 10000 rupees I had off within 6 years. Do you remember any particular thing during the journey- police harassment or were you scared or any of your kid irritating you? Do you remember any of those things? No one Do you go to the village Yes How often We go in an interval of one to two years What did you do in the village? Work on others fields What did you do with the money that you earned? We used to buy food with that money. What else? Buy grains, vegetables How many of you in the family earn? 5 of us in the family do labour work Work Did you think that you will have to work when you cam to Delhi? Yes, I had already thought of it What did you think about the work? I had thought I would work in homes. But if I could survive buy putting up a rehdi, then may be I need not work in the homes. But I worked in the kothi because the earning from the rehdi was not enough for me Have you thought of working in the factory ever? No I have not Why only kothi work? You could have done something else? No I did start a rehdi as I told you, but that was not enough to sustain us. That is why .I did not get work in the factory You started working immediately after coming here? 6 months rehdi and then work in the homes Did you like working in the homes? No I did not like it much I was doing it because of my ‘pet’ (stomach) How many homes did you get to work in? Three homes. Who helped you in getting work? I have a bua (aunt) from village who helped me sometimes, we used to tell each other about work. Are there people who take commissions and then tell you where work is available? None. I am not aware of any The people you work for, how do they behave with you? They are the ones who trouble us most. When we are late because of illness or something else, then they scream at us Do they take extra work from you? Yes, even if they give us tea, we will have to pay for it through extra work, if they give me water, we have to pay for it Do you get leave? Not at all Any thing else, clothes etc? Waste clothes only, nothing else Do they have a something like a testing period? Yes, they say “do char din hum dekhenge” we need to see what kind of work you do, then we will decide. If they like they keep us Do they threaten you of finding some one else? Yes, if you do not come on time Any other reason? No, that is the only thing What makes you late? I have to do everythng at home- cook, take care of children, they have to eat, take bath etc, sometime when ill, it is cold, they do not get up early . How difficult is it to find work in the homes? God forbid if you loose one of the homes, then how long will it take for you to find another place of work? It is very difficult. Sometimes it may even take a month How much do you get from one house? 300- 450 etc. that much you will loose Do you keep well? No I do not. The whole body keeps paining and I keep having frequent fevers because of the work Is money short for medicines? There is no money Will you describe your daily schedule for me? 6 o’ clock in the morning I get up, then I go out to work at around 9 in the morning. Just have tea in the morning, sometimes I get something to eat in the factory, come back only around 2 in the afternoon. I am at home till 5, and leave for work, come back at around 6. Then I have to wash clothes. I sleep normally by 9. Who takes care of your home and children? There is no one to take care of them. I prepare the food when I leave, they keep eating it throughout the day Do you finish all the household chores when you leave? Some of it I do and if I am not able to finish everything, then I finish it when I come back in the afternoon or evening Does your daughter help? She helps in cooking sometimes, taking care of the house etc Is the payment regular? They pay on time. No one has ever not paid me. Any other issues at work? No one generally fights with me. No one misbehaves with me. When I am late, they misbehave and threaten I keep feeling that I want to go back to my village How much do you earn as a family? Five people are earning in my family. I get 1000, my son also 1000, daughter around 1500, another one at 600 Are you able to save anything? We want to, but it is very difficult to save What is the reaction of your family to your working? My husband feels very bad that I have to work in the kothis, he tried to help his best. He set up a rehdi, then also a shop. But he was not able to do well in that. He feels bad that his wife has to go out in other people’s homes and work Any other issues? I keep thinking of my daughter’s marriage Do you feel scared when they go out to work; they are young and they are all girls? Yes, I take one of them with me and bring her back. She is young Dreams and aspirations What are your dreams I am thinking that I will earn and marry off my daughters, buy some land for my sons What is your idea of growth, what are your aspirations from life? When god wants me to improve my situation, he will help. I want to save. When I earn four rupees, I try to save one out of that. What do you want to do with that money? What will I do, want to marry my children, educate them, take care of them Do you want to do some business? If I get the opportunity I will definitely do that. If I am able to earn well in the business then I will earn some money and go back to my village and then we will not have to suffer anymore. Do you want to educate your children? Yes, of course. Four of my children are studying now in schools. Do you want to say something more What else? Do you want to go back now? Yes, I want to go back to the village. We are staying here for our children Has anyone tried to harass you in the homes? They are otherwise nice people. It is only when I am late to work, that they scream at me. Do you think they are better off, or you are living in better conditions than them? They are also eating daal roti, we are also eating the same thing. We are living in similar conditions My dream is that my children should get education, they should get married, live well and I also want to buy a house. But where to buy a big house from when I have no money. Well, I wish that you achieve all your dreams From shivamvij at gmail.com Wed Jul 7 15:47:33 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2004 15:47:33 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] What's the hubbub, bub? Message-ID: The Next Big Draw for India The computer-savvy subcontinent is moving into a new field: digital animation By Arvind Adiga in Bombay Time / 12 July 2004 http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501040712-660982,00.html Sachin Garud, a 28-year-old computer animator, spends a good part of his day staring at a screen while trying to get a cartoon bull named Ferny to talk. Although the operation is entirely digital, the work is nonetheless laborious. Garud, who is employed by a Bombay studio called Crest Communication, has to manipulate Ferny's lip movements to match the words the character speaks in Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks, an Emmy Award-nominated cartoon serial on America's PBS network. While Garud handles Ferny's lip-synching, a colleague is in charge of the movements of other taurine body parts; another is making one of Ferny's friends, a sheep named Wiley, come to life. The work might be time consuming and repetitive, but Garud insists that it has its little pleasures. "It's a lot of fun getting Ferny to sing," he says. Animators like Garud typically earn salaries ranging from $3,500 to $30,000 a year, much less than the $40,000 to $100,000 they'd pocket if they worked in the U.S. But no one at Crest is complaining. India's animators have never had it so good. In what could be the country's next outsourcing boom, a growing number of American companies are looking to India as a place where they can get high-quality computer-generated animation done on the cheap. Orders for cartoon serials, computer games, direct-to-home DVDs and demonstration videos are pouring into India; at least nine cartoon serials aimed at the American and European markets are in production. "The amount of work coming into India is phenomenal," says Rajiv Sangari, director of the animation unit at Padmalaya Telefilms, which recently signed a $14 million deal with Mondo TV, an Italian company, to produce more than a hundred episodes of an animated TV series. Although India's tech companies and call centers could sell $12 billion worth of software and services to foreigners this year, insiders estimate that the animation industry makes only about $150 million in annual revenues. But executives expect sales to at least double this year and to keep growing exponentially. Animation studios are sprouting throughout India—there are at least 70 already in operation—and companies are on a hiring spree. Sangari, for example, says Padmalaya Telefilms currently has 160 animators but aims to increase staff to 400 within a month. Even that won't be enough, so he's planning to fly in 25 animators from the Philippines to help out. American TV and film companies have been outsourcing animation work to South Korea and the Philippines for more than a decade, but India has managed to muscle into the business, thanks to technological advances and shifting American tastes. Although many animated films and TV programs still use traditional animation, which begins with hand-sketched images on paper, the success of movies such as Shrek and Toy Story has meant that films and TV serials are increasingly being digitally animated, produced entirely on computers using 3-D graphics. That's a boon for India, with its expertise in software and computer skills. While creative control is retained in the U.S.—a team of American master animators comes up with the look of each character, and scriptwriters determine the plots and dialogue—the task of creating each episode is outsourced to Indian animators, allowing the American company to lower its costs by up to 50%. A typical half-hour 3-D cartoon episode can cost $70,000 to $100,000 to produce in India compared with $170,000 to $250,000 in the U.S. The economics are compelling, but it's still been difficult for India's animators to gain the acceptance of clients who don't think of India as an animation center. A.K. Madhavan, Crest's CEO, recalls fruitless sales trips he made to the U.S. in 1999 and 2000. "Had we known how tough it would be to get a breakthrough," Madhavan admits in retrospect, "we might not have kept going." Persistence and a little good fortune helped Madhavan get his big break. While in Texas in 2001, he met with an independent animation producer named Mike Young, who happens to share Madhavan's passion for cricket. The two bonded and Young agreed to watch a test animation clip done by Crest. He liked what he saw—and gave Crest the order for the Jakers! show. Currently, the studio has contracts to animate three serials destined for American TV. It helps that the stigma once associated with "made-in-India" goods and services is evaporating, thanks to the success of software outsourcing giants such as Infosys and Wipro. "Earlier, you had to spend most of your time selling India and a little time selling your company," says Biren Ghose, CEO of Bombay-based Animation Bridge. "Now, I don't have to sell India. I can start selling my company straight away." Because of globalization, cultural differences that affect production values—the look and feel of programs—are rapidly disappearing, too. "Ten years ago, when Bugs Bunny said, 'What's the hubbub, bub?,' most Indians would not have got it," says Nilesh Sardesai, creative director at Crest. "But today, they do," because Indian society has opened to foreign influences. The animation boom is cascading throughout India's entertainment industry. One offshoot has been the rise of computer-game outsourcing. In the Bangalore offices of Dhruva Interactive, a group of twentysomethings sit with comic books and programming manuals while their computer screens flash with images of G.I.s carrying machine guns, teenagers shooting pool in smoky halls, ogres and medieval labyrinths. They're developing games that will be sold to Dhruva clients such as Microsoft. While some Indian animation companies are looking to expand into computer games, others, emboldened by the success of Crest, are dreaming of the big money: digitally animated films. Rajesh Turakhia, CEO of Maya Entertainment, a Bombay-based studio, says that Indian companies will next target smaller Hollywood 3-D animation films with budgets of $10 million to $20 million. India's ambitions could be thwarted by a shortage of skilled animators. Experts estimate that India has only about 4,000 animators who can handle complex projects—which is woefully inadequate for all the work coming in. "We need at least another 2,000 to 3,000 animators this year, but I'm not seeing that many new people in this business," says Animation Bridge's Ghose. One problem, complains Rajesh Rao, the CEO of Dhruva Interactive, is that few of India's art schools and engineering colleges offer computer animation courses. Another barrier facing the industry is cultural. "The Indian mentality is that if I have to put my child into a science or engineering school, I am happy. But we don't want our children to go into art or culture as a profession," says Padmalaya's Sangari. The shortage of talent has raised concern that some clients could grow disillusioned with the quality of work they receive from Indian animators. "Many in the industry do not know how they will execute all these orders," says Sangari. India may not have much time to adapt. China, Russia and the Ukraine are rapidly emerging as rivals. One Indian executive laments that he just lost out on a contract unexpectedly after offering to do the job at the standard Indian rate of $4,000 per month for each animator; a Russian competitor undercut him, agreeing to do it for just $1,800 per person. India's schools will have to start churning out thousands of qualified animators each year—before a new generation of Russian and Chinese animators figures out the fine art of making cartoon bulls talk. -- I poured reason in two wine glasses Raised one above my head And poured it into my life From karim at sarai.net Thu Jul 8 15:25:17 2004 From: karim at sarai.net (Aniruddha Shankar) Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 15:25:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Moore: Pirate my film, no problem! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <40ED1A05.3060500@sarai.net> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Shivam Vij wrote: | What about someone who's not doing well, and needs the money he | deserves? Can the copyleft movement do with such subjectivity? copyleft has nothing to do with compensation. When something is given to you under a particular copyleft license, it means that when you relicense or redistribute it, you are required to do so under the terms under which you got it. but i think that that's not what you were asking. Can you clarify, please ? cheers, - -- Aniruddha 'Karim' Shankar The Sarai Programme Key ID: 0xA037AD2B Public Key Fingerprint: 9167 C0E7 A679 0906 7E47 83C0 8499 2B77 A037 AD2B To get my public key, search http://pgp.mit.edu for my email id. To directly import my key into your keyring, run gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys A037AD2B . -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFA7RoDhJkrd6A3rSsRAhEdAJ98rT3aiL7XCXqLJNx3uT7cBNUjiQCgo+33 ao1SHmMobWGsnUq+oXNmIWE= =a63D -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From karim at sarai.net Thu Jul 8 16:05:26 2004 From: karim at sarai.net (Aniruddha Shankar) Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 16:05:26 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] IHT in India In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <40ED236E.9020808@sarai.net> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Shivam Vij wrote: | Re: the article below | | I don't understand what the fuss is all about. The government of India | and the anti-FDI-in-print-media lobby, both are rather dumb to assume | that I cannot go to the website of the International Herald Tribune, I don't actually think the government is dumb. The Indian government's treatment of the Internet and the pakistan government's treatment of the Internet and English medium newspapers amounts to the same thing. Both governments believe that these media reach only the elite in their countries. Assuming they could censor the Internet, it makes far more political sense to avoid the negative publicity that censorship of the Internet would cause. In Pakistan's case, they can also point out it's largely unfettered English media to international audiences as an example of press freedom, regardless of how irrelevant it is in the Pakistani mass media context. I don't know if they still are but the Government of India used to jam the brodcasts of Radio Pakistan. the GOI still has a huge amount of control over the content broadcasted by satellite into India as they can just deny uplink access to any channel they please and because of the mass market that is India, no multinational wants to take that risk. Dont' expect a Tehelka type channel in India anytime soon. They could consider IHT the thin edge of the wedge... let one in and soon a host will follow, with content that would be far more objectionable than the IHT. Alternatively, they could be of the mind that the English-paper-reading public in India is large enough and sufficiently influential enough that they want to prevent them from being exposed to "improper" content. Wouldn't do, would it, to have, say, a historical account of the assurances autonomy / plebiscite that Prime Ministers from Nehru to Rao have given landing on doorsteps from Diu to Digboi, would it ? cheers, - -- Aniruddha 'Karim' Shankar The Sarai Programme Key ID: 0xA037AD2B Public Key Fingerprint: 9167 C0E7 A679 0906 7E47 83C0 8499 2B77 A037 AD2B To get my public key, search http://pgp.mit.edu for my email id. To directly import my key into your keyring, run gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys A037AD2B . -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFA7SNshJkrd6A3rSsRAvQmAJ0eT6yEl2VuSnSPH2zSBo/9BPHrhwCfVFpC Kf6bxDDZvb2RRfka9UPrxas= =IlFS -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From nilanjanb at 123india.com Thu Jul 8 23:00:24 2004 From: nilanjanb at 123india.com (nilanjanb at 123india.com) Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 10:30:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] from nilanjan about repeted same posting about khetro broadsheet01 Message-ID: <20040708103025.26977.h016.c009.wm@mail.123india.com.criticalpath.net> Dear list administrator, I am so sorry and helpless as one of my old posting about khetro broadsheet 01 is constantly being reposted again and again from different e mail accounts. I don't have any clue about how is this happening! please don't allow any posting regarding khetro apart from this particular account of mine(nilanjanb at 123india.com. I am really emberassed about this. Thanking you, Nilanjan Bhattacharya From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Jul 9 13:24:00 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 13:24:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] IHT in India In-Reply-To: <20040708110850.3734.qmail@webmail28.rediffmail.com> References: <20040708110850.3734.qmail@webmail28.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: Dear Sanjay, Let's take the IHT example, I'll later come to the foreign media as a whole. What's wrong with the IHT being published from India? I already have access to its site; those who don't will be able to read the paper. Shouldn't there be greater democratisation of the media? I firmly believe that all media are not mutually exclusive but intrinsic parts of our urban experience. With increasing net density in India, all of the foreign media will be accessible to millions of Indians; the reach will be far greater than print can ever have. This is the future we are looking at. Yes, as of now print dominates public opinion in India. Or does TV dominate public opinion in India? Or do the media affect 'public opinion'? If they did, Vajpayee wouldn't have lost his job. As for the Iraq war, I think it is a shame that the Indian media was biased against the war and never gave space to arguments in favour of the war. My personal view about the Iraq 'war' is that all of the Bush administration's sins notwithstanding, the invasion will have been worth it ten ears from now *if* the average Iraqi is happier than he was under Saddam. Now that's my view, but the Indian media never gave space to such a view. All the leftists, the impassionate anti-Americanists dominated. It is sad that we don't believe in objectivity anymore. My paper should have told me both sides of the argument about Iraq. It just told me how bad the war was, and then why it was bad. If I had access to one of Murdoch's papers on the newsstand near my house, if I could pick up and read the foreign papers, perhaps I could have been able to arrive at a more sober, crtical assesment of the Iraq 'war'. But the Government of India never gave me that choice. As for the Italian PM's control of the Italian media, I wish I was more aware of the intricacies of the Italian situation. But I wonder if you noticed an article in the Hindu when Sonia Gandhi almost became our PM. The article wrote how a cartoon in an Italian paper owned by the Italian PM, showed an Italian saying to an Indian: "Now you also an Italian PM and I have an Italian PM. Only that yours is better than ours!" Now I know why 90% Italians pay heed to media owned by their PM. In other words, in all your arguments, you are neglecting the role of public opinion. A media enterprise can be commercially successful obly when people buy it. And people will buy it only if it makes sense to them. The obscene Times of India is India's largest selling English daily because people buy it. If we were to go by your arguments, then the logical conclusion would be to support Internet censorship, because as PC density increases... And if we can survive the Indian media with all its biases, we can also survive biases of the foreign press. We can still understand that the Iraq 'war' is really about oil or whatever damage Americans did to Iraq. Because we have Al Jazeera, which was some time ago denied permission b the Indian government to open a bureau in India! The leftist mobilisation of opinion against the Iraq war all over the world - Arundhati Roy's essays included - was an example of how alternative media is so mainstream now. And remember it was the same American media that exposed Abu Ghraib. Remember also that the IHT in India is being published by MJ Akbar, whose name also appears as the editor responsible for the contents of the paper under the PRB Act. That should make us less paranoid about the IHT? In a free market of words, ideas and pictures, what are we afraid of? If we extend your arguments to their logical conclusions - blocking all media that is held by monopolies - then we will also have to ban Dainik Jagran and Amar Ujala, two Hindi papers of north India which sell more than Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Hindu and the Indian Express put together! Ujala and Jagran are papers whose role in the rise of Hindutva is well known, and continues till today: IHT is less objectionable to me. Thanks, Shivam -- I poured reason in two wine glasses Raised one above my head And poured it into my life From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Jul 9 13:24:44 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 13:24:44 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] IHT in India In-Reply-To: <40ED236E.9020808@sarai.net> References: <40ED236E.9020808@sarai.net> Message-ID: Dear Aniruddha, I agree with all of what you say. When I said the government was being dumb, I didn't mean it, I was just being sarcastic. But perhaps free speech activists in India re being dumb by not speaking out against the Union of India's paranoid decision to block publication of the IHT. I didn't quite understand whether you are against the publication of IHT from India or for it, and by implication your views on foreign 'investment' in the Indian media. You wrote: "They could consider IHT the thin edge of the wedge... let one in and soon a host will follow, with content that would be far more objectionable than the IHT." IHT is objectionable content? What really amounts to being 'objectionable'? Hypothetically, if the government allows foreign papers, and a Pakistani paper publishes from India, and instigates communal violence here, surely the government can ban it? If a paper prints 'propaganda' against India, public opinion will make the paper mend its ways. But to ban al foreign papers by presuming that they will publish what is detrimental to the Indian state, is downright silly, paranoid and archaic. Thanks Shivam On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 16:05:26 +0530, Aniruddha Shankar wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Shivam Vij wrote: > | Re: the article below > | > | I don't understand what the fuss is all about. The government of India > | and the anti-FDI-in-print-media lobby, both are rather dumb to assume > | that I cannot go to the website of the International Herald Tribune, > > I don't actually think the government is dumb. The Indian government's > treatment of the Internet and the pakistan government's treatment of the > Internet and English medium newspapers amounts to the same thing. Both > governments believe that these media reach only the elite in their > countries. > > Assuming they could censor the Internet, it makes far more political > sense to avoid the negative publicity that censorship of the Internet > would cause. In Pakistan's case, they can also point out it's largely > unfettered English media to international audiences as an example of > press freedom, regardless of how irrelevant it is in the Pakistani mass > media context. > > I don't know if they still are but the Government of India used to jam > the brodcasts of Radio Pakistan. the GOI still has a huge amount of > control over the content broadcasted by satellite into India as they can > just deny uplink access to any channel they please and because of the > mass market that is India, no multinational wants to take that risk. > Dont' expect a Tehelka type channel in India anytime soon. > > They could consider IHT the thin edge of the wedge... let one in and > soon a host will follow, with content that would be far more > objectionable than the IHT. Alternatively, they could be of the mind > that the English-paper-reading public in India is large enough and > sufficiently influential enough that they want to prevent them from > being exposed to "improper" content. Wouldn't do, would it, to have, > say, a historical account of the assurances autonomy / plebiscite that > Prime Ministers from Nehru to Rao have given landing on doorsteps from > Diu to Digboi, would it ? > > cheers, > - -- > Aniruddha 'Karim' Shankar > The Sarai Programme > > Key ID: 0xA037AD2B > Public Key Fingerprint: > 9167 C0E7 A679 0906 7E47 83C0 8499 2B77 A037 AD2B > To get my public key, search http://pgp.mit.edu for my email id. > To directly import my key into your keyring, run > gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys A037AD2B . > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org > > iD8DBQFA7SNshJkrd6A3rSsRAvQmAJ0eT6yEl2VuSnSPH2zSBo/9BPHrhwCfVFpC > Kf6bxDDZvb2RRfka9UPrxas= > =IlFS > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > -- I poured reason in two wine glasses Raised one above my head And poured it into my life From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Jul 9 13:27:31 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 13:27:31 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] FIRST HAND: Of ragging and women Message-ID: 'My first day in the hostel was the worst day of my life.' Author: requests anonymity Institution: a girls' hostel in Delhi Years: 2003-04 Written in July 2004 Not being a resident of Delhi was already a disadvantage for me as a fresher at Delhi University, and my seniors at the girls' hostel made things worse. The unfriendly seniors would snap at you on making the tiniest of mistake; making eye contact with them was a heinous crime. I had never lived in a hostel and was unaware of any such thing as ragging. And so my first day in the hostel turned out to be the worst day of my life. We had to wish our seniors whenever we encountered them. This was mandatory. After leaving my luggage in the room, I came down to attend my mother's phone call. This perhaps was the biggest mistake I made. I was stopped by a group of six girls and was asked to keep down the phone and instead attend to them. In a rather shocked state, I told them I was speaking to my mother but to my surprise, one of them snatched the phone and put it down. The others looked at me piercingly. What followed was a bunch of abusive words, which hit me every time I think of that incident. "You have the audacity to speak up, you bl… fuccha!" (Fuccha = 'first year' + baccha.) "You have a big attitude problem, babe, we'll sort you out, just you wait," they shouted to their hearts' content and then asked me my name and whether I knew their names, courses and their respective colleges. I said I did not, which made matters worse. I was ordered to find out their names by dinnertime, otherwise I could forget about my food. I stood bewildered for a few seconds after the cyclone disappeared, and then ran for my life from the scene of the crime. Surprisingly, after things got better (post-freshers' party), we became good friends. The session in the hostel began in July, coinciding with the beginning of the new session at Delhi University. For the fear of being ragged, a majority of the freshers did not go to the dining hall for meals and even if some of them did manage to muster up enough courage to go, they would come back crying. It was an unforgivable crime for a fuccha to even think of entering the TV or the table-tennis room. Sleeve-less shirts, short skirts and shorts were banned for the first years not by the management, but by our seniors. The incident about my first day in the hostel had earned me a bad name among the seniors. I could hear them hiss if I passed them by, "Yes! She's the one, thinks she's very smart, you know she spoke back, and uuuuooooo!". This would instigate the other seniors and I would receive the pleasure of being personally invited to their rooms and be ragged. Being unpopular with my seniors, even the first years started blaming me for their ragging. I realised that it was useless to cry in my room throughout the day, and so I decided to go down, eat my meals and get ragged. I was also one of the bold lot who dared to go and report ragging to the warden and the manager. But nothing happened, some girls were mildly scolded. They found out who had complained and issued a warrant on my name. After the warden and manager left, my name was announced on the microphone (used mainly to announce for the girls to come and attend to their calls). When I came down there was a group seniors ready to pounce on me. I was scolded severely to be the one who had the courage to complain. Each one of them asked me their NCC (name, course, college), and to make matters worse they asked me absurd questions, like the spellings of their names, the names of their dogs, their boyfriends' names, their boyfriends' cellphone numbers — too foolish and too many to list. Any answer I would not know, they would start shouting at me. Finally, after grilling me for two hours, they let go of me. I went back to my room and broke down, cried for hours, my roommates did sympathise but nothing seemed to work. When I told my parents about this incident, my mother seemed upset, but my father told me to face it. He said, "What you've gone through, never let your juniors go through the same thing, because you know exactly how they would feel." Having taken all possible but futile measures in order to stop myself from being ragged, I decided to give in. My friends and family told me to just go with it, and so plunged into a group of first years that would be called daily by the seniors and be ragged. Believe it or not, ragging is in a way 'legal' in this hostel; the administration was very much a part of it by doing nothing about it. They instead justified ragging with the 'healthy interaction' theory. Ragging was to be done until the time the third years got their farewell and the first years their freshers' party. And to aid our ill luck this party took place in January 2004! So, from the beginning of the session in July, till our winter break two months before the exams, none of the first years could concentrate on their studies. The ragging fever subsided by December as the seniors were bored of ragging us, and some of them also became normal with us, and a few even decided to try their hands at friendship. It was the coming of the New Year that spoilt it all .The third years wanted a farewell party desperately before the final exams, but they did not want to give the first years a freshers' party, because they didn't consider us worth a freshers' party. But thankfully, the management interfered and made it clear: no freshers' meant no farewell. So, our beloved seniors decided to oblige us with a freshers' party, but there were certain conditions that followed. All the first years were summoned to the dinning hall, one day, and one of the third years stepped forward and delivered a speech on a bond. I had heard about the concept of signing a bond in this hostel, which has certain conditions set by the seniors for the fucchas .The bond in a way 'legalized' ragging; it was meant to be an agreement for the last 'interaction' between the seniors and the first years. For a period of a week, from 10:00 p.m. till the choice of the seniors, the first year batch would daily report to the television room, where there would be a healthy "interaction" session. This seemed pretty simple, but along came the specialty of the terms penned down on that piece of paper, which even I had signed. All the first years had to wear tri-coloured suits (the dupatta, shalwar and the kurta, each of a different, contrasting colour), apply thick coats of kajal, oil our hair, and make as many possible plaits in our hair. We were given five minutes to discuss the matter, and so the first years came up with this absurd theory of going with the decision of the majority. The majority was in favour of signing the bond. When asked how many would be not signing the bond, only one person got up and had argued with the seniors; she was abused and asked to leave. The third years announced that this girl was not to be spoken to by any one in the hostel, she would not be a part of the freshers' party; she was to be excommunicated. All signed the bond. We were told to report the next day to entertain ours seniors in comical attires and. In order to have sound sleep, all first years managed to borrow and arrange their next day's outfits. The next day, at 9:45 p.m. all first years stood in a straight line, clad in their ludicrous outfits, with full eye makeup and the required hairstyle, outside the TV room. We entered the TV room when ordered to do so, and were asked to be seated before the seniors. We were laughed at, but could not laugh, because we were objects of amusement and entertainment exclusively for our seniors, during the "happy hours" (the time during which we would be ragged every night). We all had made lists of the NCC's of our seniors, and learnt them by heart. We were asked to first to narrate the NCC's of all the girls present in the room, and after that, they started ordering us to do ridiculous, senseless and disgusting things. Being accustomed to the abusive language, most of the things were not so much of a shock but at this stage. But I found this sadistic idea of taking revenge and eventually satisfying your ego, very dumb. If you have such feelings then you should be actually getting back at your seniors rather than make a batch of people younger than you in age suffer. During this week, our seniors made us do hideous and absurd things. They would pick any one at random, or in a group, and make them do silly things which gave them immense pleasure. Some of the things which we were asked to perform were: have bath in front of them, mercifully with clothes; act as if you are constipated; act out scenes from movies; present the pole dance from the movie Kaante wherein a girl would be made a pole and the other would be the pole dancer; and the 'mujra' from "Devdas" was a favourite. We were made to swim on the floor, and sometimes even act as lifeguards saving lives. The worst situations given to be acted out were: act as if you are delivering a child, and after the delivery the husband's and your reaction when he discovers it's not his child; enact scenes of a honey-moon couple spending a night in a special suite. Imparting the best of their knowledge, our seniors gave us lectures on 'hitching', being a tradition of this hostel. How to stand while taking a hitch, what to say, how to sit in the car, these were some essential points that were touched upon. Then there were 'competitions'. In one competition, we were to hurl the worst known expletives at each other, and the one whose count of abuses exceeded the other, would win. I still remember this situation they gave us: imagine you are a pimp who has to convince the customer that his particular whore is better, and therefore fight with the other pimp, put him down and win his customer. Now all this seems so ridiculous and juvenile. Such senseless activities carried on for a week and then the freshers/farewell party ended this ragging drama forever, for our batch. Drinking, smoking, doping and some dancing were the main features of this party. After the party the third years called some of the first years to their room and now acted pretty friendly, saying they were always there for us, the shocking part came out when they specified the areas of help: "Drugs, cigarettes, liquor, clothes or boys, whatever you need just let us know." I had completely forgotten my unpleasant experience of ragging even though it ended only a few months ago. I had forgotten my pain, and I thought I would rag my juniors mildly, but won't make them go through what I have been. But when I heard of this Stop Ragging campaign, I tried to reflect back at the one year that have I spent in this hostel. I realise that this entire episode, termed 'ragging', was the worst time of my life. But it seems that now I've grown over it, I don't have that venomous and sadistic feeling each senior has in this hostel. I know I've had a bad experience, I know exactly how it feels to be ragged, and I will make sure my juniors do not go through any ragging at all. (This first hand account is part of a database of articles on ragging that you are requested to contribute to. The Dossier on Ragging in India will be put up as a website and distributed as a CD. Our mailing list is at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging , where you can respond to this article. You can also write to us directly at pace4change at yahoo.com ) From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Jul 9 13:29:22 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 13:29:22 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] 'Foreign Publishers Move Into India' Message-ID: This report mistakenly refers to Ms Sevanti Ninan as Mr Ninan. Thanks Shivam Foreign Publishers Move Into India By Anjana Pasricha New Delhi 20 Jun 2004, 11:39 UTC Voice of America Radio For the first time, The International Herald Tribune is being printed in India. But the project is embroiled in controversy. For Indian readers, it is a first-time experience, picking up a foreign newspaper in India on the same day it is published overseas. It became possible two weeks ago, when The International Herald Tribune began printing in the southern city of Hyderabad. For decades, India banned foreign ownership of domestic publications. But the publishers of the Paris-based International Herald Tribune took advantage of the fact that there is no law barring foreign newspapers from being printed in the country. Authorities were caught off guard when the newspaper hit Indian newsstands, and have asked it to stop publication. The newspaper's Indian editors have refused, saying they are breaking no law. The government is now contemplating enacting legislation that would require foreign newspapers to get permission before being printed locally. Media analyst Sevanti Ninan says the government is unlikely to take a hard stand on the issue. "If you have international channels, if you have world space radio, and India is part of a globalized media market, then why should you keep out foreign newspapers?" he said. Other foreign newspapers are also eying the Indian market, taking advantage of the fact that in 2002 the government allowed foreigners to take stakes of up to 26 percent in print media companies. As a result, Dow Jones, a U.S. company, has allied with a local media group, and plans to launch an Indian version of its flagship publication, The Wall Street Journal, this year. The publisher of Britain's Financial Times has also entered into a partnership with an Indian daily. The projects to print Indian editions will have to be approved by the government. India is the world's second largest newspaper market. More than 70 million newspapers were sold in India daily in 2003, next only to China. Foreign newspapers in India will target high-end readers. The International Herald Tribune sells for 65 cents, more than 10 times the cost of most Indian newspapers. Sevanti Ninan says these journals want to grab a slice of a potentially huge market in a country of a billion-plus people. "You may not find it lucrative in the short term," said Mr. Ninan. "But it will be worth it in the long-term, because it is an English-speaking, future market. Nowhere else in Asia are you going to get such an enormous English-speaking market." Newspapers focused on business and financial news are expected to do well, as India's economy expands and integrates with the global economy. -- I poured reason in two wine glasses Raised one above my head And poured it into my life From definetime at rediffmail.com Thu Jul 8 16:38:50 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 8 Jul 2004 11:08:50 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] IHT in India Message-ID: <20040708110850.3734.qmail@webmail28.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040708/8e1541e7/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Dear Shivam, There are a few cold facts to be considered before condemning 'our' government's print media policy. The monopolistic ownership pattern in the western news media - is scary. Silvio Berlesconi controls six terrestrial TV channel totalling more than 90% of the television audience. Take into account that 82% of Italians depend only on television for news, the highest percentage in Europe (data quoted in Pippa Norris, A virtuous circle, Cambridge University Press, 2000) and you have an alarming situation. Newspapers are still formidable 'opinion makers' for the general public. Newspaper reportage, probably by the virtue of a few centuries of existence as news media, have a natural gravity. Websites don't have a comparative reach as yet. In the west, there has been an alarming trend of media coercion on the polity . The most blatant one being Rupert Murdoch bullying political parties in UK*. Add to it this Murdoch's very vocal support for the Iraq war. He quite bluntly put it - "the greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy...would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country." ** When his 175 papers hammer his agenda into the reader's heads on a daily basis, the consequence is an utterly illegal aggression and occupation. Consider too the media role in mobilising public opinion for the Iraq war in the US, where six corporations own 90% of all media (including newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies)****. Even though New York Times has tendered a sort of apology for it's own flawed reportage, it doesn't do anything for the thousands of Iraqis who lost their lives or the hundreds of dead coalition soldiers. The deaths being only a part of the total damage done. One does agree that 'indian newspapers' by the virtue of their ownership patterns, have a bias of their own. Chidambaram's 'dream budget' had the indian media salivating because he cut corporate taxes. Also you can't discount the fact that there's some amount of media role in keeping the Indo-Pak conflict alive. After all between them these two poor countries spend a few billion dollars on arms every year at the cost of essential development activities. The profits usually go to first world corporate giants (not to mention the powers that be in this country) and the victims are mostly foot soldiers who usually hail from the weaker sections of the society. I believe by blocking foreign media we chose the lesser evil. regards, Sanjay Ghosh *http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3272693.stm **Their master's voice http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,897015,00.html ***The New York Times has burned its reputation on a pyre of lies about Iraq http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1227399,00.html ****http://www.corporations.org/media/ On Mon, 05 Jul 2004 Shivam Vij wrote : >Re: the article below > >I don't understand what the fuss is all about. The government of India >and the anti-FDI-in-print-media lobby, both are rather dumb to assume >that I cannot go to the website of the International Herald Tribune, >read anti-national articles there and be instigated by foreigners into >indulging in subervise activities such as treason. > >Or are they planning to block the websites of foreign papers, allowing >26% of their content this year, 50% next year if they feel there is no >threat to national security, 75% the year after for those foreign >paper websites who agree to have an Indian bureaucrat as a resident >editor, 90% by 2020 in line with the government's Vision 2020 of a >prosperous, developed India in which Indians will have grown up enough >to not be instigated by IHT. > >Shivam > > > > India's newspaper loophole exposed > > By Indrajit Basu in Kolkata > Asia Times, Hong Kong > http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FF19Df02.html > > >Despite half-hearted liberalization measures over the past two years, >India's print-media policies remain archaic, with loopholes regarding >the publication and distribution of foreign newspapers in the country >still in existence. But while many have deplored these policies as >restrictive, unclear and out of tune with the present times, no one >has ever really challenged them. > >Last week, however, the government's politically sensitive print-media >policies were ridiculed for the first time in five decades when M J >Akbar, one of the country's most influential editors, blatantly defied >a government order directing him to halt publication of the Indian >edition of the International Herald Tribune (IHT), a newspaper from >the New York Times stable. Since May 26, Akbar's publishing company, >Midram Publications - which had won permission from the New York Times >to publish IHT in the country - has been reproducing the Hong Kong >edition of the IHT out of Hyderabad verbatim, going against, as says >the government, the law of the land. > >"The publication of International Herald Tribune, which has the same >masthead, layout and ... content as those of its Hong Kong edition, is >a complete violation of policy guidelines," says the country's >Information and Broadcasting Ministry. But Akbar insists that >government polices are just that - policies, acting as guidelines and >not law. "There is no law, there is only a resolution. Article 19 of >the Indian constitution permits me to publish this," he claims. > >Indeed, India's print-media regulations and policies are perhaps among >the most ambiguous that the country has. And, as Akbar says, there is >no law barring entry of foreign newspapers but just a resolution >passed by the cabinet of ministers in 1955 not allowing republication >of foreign news content without prior approval of the government and >the owner of the foreign copyright holder. > >Over the past two years these rules were changed twice but >restrictions on the republication of foreign content have not been >reversed. For instance, in 2002 a new policy allowed 26% foreign >direct investment (FDI) in news media but mandated that the editor >must be Indian and must have full editorial control, and in 2003 the >foreign-content restriction was slightly relaxed to allow a mere 7.5% >of foreign news content to be republished without the government's >permission. However, the 2003 policy also added that the masthead, >editorial content and front page couldn't be entirely reproduced. > >Allowing foreign news content to be reproduced in the IHT without >restrictions, contends the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, >violates that policy. > >Akbar says he has taken care of that too. "Those policies do not apply >to the Indian version of IHT because the paper is not foreign and >therefore not subject to rules applicable to the publication of >foreign newspapers in India," he says, adding that IHT is an Indian >title because it is registered in India. > >According to Akbar, by defying the government order, IHT has exposed >the fact that, hiding behind polices, the Indian government has been >deceitfully denying, for five decades, a fundamental right allowed by >the Indian constitution. "In our view the government does not have a >legal case. We are absolutely correct, both in terms of law as well as >policy. I am not in defiance of the law. I am merely saying that every >decision made by the government is not law. And we also feel that the >government directive to stop publication is absolutely mala fide of my >fundamental right to freedom of the press as guaranteed by Article 19 >of the Indian constitution," he says. > >He adds that "the rules have not been challenged so far because no one >has, so far, thought it fit so to challenge them under the >constitutional right". > >But not all agree, and some feel that Akbar is interpreting the >policies incorrectly. "The position is clear. The constitution of >India guarantees every citizen of India fundamental rights. Freedom of >speech is one such right," says Ramji Srinivasan, a corporate lawyer. >"However, it is subject to reasonable restriction, and that the >Supreme Court has clarified many times. The government frames polices > from time to time to regulate economic and other activities of the >country. Reasonable restriction can be imposed in the form of policy >guidelines. Thus, if a cabinet frames a policy it must treated as a >legislation and be followed." > >Detractors of Akbar and factions opposed to the opening-up of the >country's print media to foreign publications also fear that the IHT >may have opened the door for entry of foreign newspapers to be >rampantly published in India, even threatening the country's security. >"This is why we had always said to the government not to open doors - >referring to 26% FDI that was allowed last year - to foreign >newspapers," says N Ram, editor-in-chief of one of India's largest >newspaper-publishing houses, The Hindu. "Once it is opened even a >little, one can't control the flow. This is the first challenge to the >Information and Broadcasting Ministry of the new government; it means >that anyone, including a Pakistani paper, can publish in India if they >find the right party here." > >Nevertheless, the fact remains that logically Akbar may be on the >right track, and unless all policies and regulations, including those >passed in 1955, are turned into laws, nothing can stop him from going >ahead with distributing the Indian IHT in its current form. "It is >just like any other manufacturing activities," says Shekhar Gupta, >editor-in-chief of the Mumbai-based newspaper group The Indian >Express. "If foreign companies can manufacture trucks, clothes and >software in India, so can a newspaper. I think it is silly trying to >stop it. > >"I am all for opening the print media to foreign publishers," adds >Gupta, not forgetting to take a pot shot at liberalization detractors, >"but the problem is, once it is opened up, other publishing houses >that have been opposing opening up the foreign media to foreigners >would be first to go out and attract them." > > >-- >shivamvij at gmail.com > >ZEST: Low volume mailing lists >ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-india >ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-economics >ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zestpoets > >PACE Stop Ragging Campaign: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging >THE HOOT: Watching media in the subcontinent: http://www.thehoot.org >_________________________________________ >reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. >Critiques & Collaborations >To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. >List archive: From joy at sarai.net Thu Jul 8 05:49:00 2004 From: joy at sarai.net (Joy) Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 05:49:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Labour reforms Message-ID: <40EC92F4.4000904@sarai.net> *Some US firms prefer cons to Indians* USA Today Ontario, July 8 [http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5922_873417,0015002200000000.htm] Call centre employees in India, say hello to competition -- from convicts in US prisons. About a dozen US states -- Oregon, Arizona, California and Iowa, among others -- have call centres in state and federal prisons, underscoring a push to employ inmates in telemarketing jobs that might otherwise go to low-wage countries such as India and the Philippines. At least 2,000 inmates in the US work in call centres, and that number is rising as companies seek cheap labour without incurring the wrath of politicians and unions. David Day is one of 85 inmates who arrange business meetings from a call centre at the Snake River Correctional Institution, a state penitentiary. "I'm grateful for the opportunity," says the 43-year-old. He and his cellmates wouldn't be making $200 a monthe from behind bars if not for consulting firm Perry Johnson's aversion to moving jobs offshore. "Prisons are prime candidates for low-skill jobs," says Sasha Costanza-Chock, a University of Pennsylvania graduate who last year completed a thesis on call centres at US prisons. Market conditions seem to favour prisons. After declining for years, call-centre jobs in the US increased several hundred, to about 360,000, last year. At the same time, more white-collar jobs are going offshore than researchers originally thought. About 830,000 US service-sector jobs, from telemarketers to software engineers, will move abroad by the end of 2005, up 41per cent from previous predictions, says Forrester Research. But the convicted workforce elicits as much dread as interest. Companies flinch at the prospect of a public-relations backlash should news leak out that they employ hardened criminals. Union representatives, meanwhile, call the hiring of prisoners a flagrant violation of minimum-wage laws and unfair competition to free workers. Ironically, market conditions overseas could return call-centre jobs that drifted offshore to the US, says Naren Patni, CEO of Patni Computer Systems, India's sixth-largest software company and a pioneer in outsourcing. "Costs and turnover for low-skill jobs will increase in India," Patni says. "Who wants to be stuck in a telemarketing job, working odd hours to fit the US time zones, if higher-paying jobs in product development come over? That may force US companies to move call centres, maybe to jails." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040708/f1132850/attachment.html From mklayman at leonardo.info Wed Jul 7 04:46:42 2004 From: mklayman at leonardo.info (Melinda Klayman) Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2004 16:16:42 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Leonardo collaboration: IRIS Essence and Senses of Colours Message-ID: Leonardo/OLATS Collaboration: IRIS Conference on Essence and Senses of Colours CALL FOR PAPERS DEADLINE SEPT 15 2004 Leonardo/OLATS is pleased to announce it is collaborating with the IRIS Conference: On Essence and Senses of Colours to be held in Nancy, France on 10 and 11 March 2005. Further information on the conference can be found at: http://www.ensaia.inpl-nancy.fr/iris A call for papers has been issued with a deadline of 15 September 2004. Abstracts of proposed papers must be submitted electronically to: Joel.Hardy at ensaia.inpl-nancy.fr Topics include: Colour and the Neurosciences Colour: Art History, Form and Technological Mutations Colour, Language and Expression Colour, Luxury and Marketing Colour, Technology and Applications: Food Design Colour and Behaviour of Living Beings Leonardo particularly solicits submissions on inter-sensoriality and synaesthesia, scientific visualisation and sonification and other translation of databases into sensory outputs. Papers by artists, scientists and scholars as well as interdisciplinary teams are solicited. A selection of the conference papers will be published in the journal Leonardo. -- NEW ADDRESS! Please note our new contact information as of May 1, 2004: Leonardo/ISAST 211 Sutter Street, Suite 800 San Francisco, CA 94108 phone: (415) 391-1110 fax: (415) 391-2385 Email: mklayman at leonardo.info Web: http://www.leonardo.info Promote your programs or exhibitions to your peers in art, science, and technology with Leonardo and Leonardo Music Journal. To place a classified ad, contact the Leonardo Advertising Department at isast at leonardo.info. _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Jul 9 21:03:27 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 21:03:27 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Ragging and sexuality: Three responses Message-ID: Here are some thoughts prompted by the post which asks about the relationship between ragging and sexuality, and specifically whether same-sex ragging is a manifestation of repressed homosexual desire. My thoughts below are based primarily on prior work as a peer counselor with victims/survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, including but not limited to situations where the perpetrator and victim are of the same-sex. I treat it as a given that a pro-equal_rights stance – with respect to both gender and sexual orientation - is integral to any human-rights work including work against ragging and all forms of sexual assault. (i) My first point would be that descriptors such as 'heterosexual ragging' and 'homosexual ragging' are misleading and preferably avoided for the same reason that anti-rape activists are moving away from terms such as homosexual rape and heterosexual rape, [opting for the terms 'same-sex rape' and 'other-sex rape' instead]. The problem with 'homosexual rape' and 'heterosexual rape' (and their equivalents for ragging) is that they suggest that the perpetrators are homosexual and heterosexual, respectively. More often than not these adjectives only serve to further stigmatize an already-beleaguered community, i.e. the homosexual community. Interestingly, man-on-woman rape rarely stigmatises male heterosexuality in the public imagination - one wonders why! Very often sexual orientation of the perpetrator is irrelevant or only marginally relevant to the abuse. Heterosexual men rape women _and_ men in situations of war. Here, as in most other cases, rape is an assertion of power and control/dominance, rather than a manifestation of sexual desire. (ii) If we consider ragging to be a violation of bodily integrity and thereby a human's right just as we would rape, then how does it matter that the perpetrator and victim are of the same sex or different sexes, or of the same or different sexual orientations? Abuse is abuse, regardless of the sexual orientation and sex/gender of the perpetrator or victim. That the perpetrator may be homosexual or bisexual or heterosexual should not cause one to be any more or any less condemnatory of the act. (iii) Any attempt to understand homosexual orientation or the psychology of homosexuals (repressed or otherwise) viewed through the lens of same-sex ragging would be as objective and unbiased as attempting to understand the psychology of heterosexuality by studying acts of rape. (iv) Sexual orientation is germane to an analysis of ragging to the extent that often individual ragging (as opposed to ragging of an entire bunch of people) is sometimes directed more acutely at males perceived-to-be-weak, perceived-to-be-effeminate or perceived-to-be-homosexual. In this context, what may pass off as an attempt to "make a man" out of the slender/young/effeminate boy by ragging him is really a vicious attempt to assert the perpetrator's socially superior masculinity and humiliate the victim by highlighting his 'failed' masculinity. Of course all of this makes (warped) sense because we live in a sexist world where questioning a male's masculinity is humiliating precisely because of the power differential between men and women. Male-on-male ragging reflects the large sexist power structures, only treating appearance and (younger) age as surrogates for a supposedly inferior masculinity. (v) Why is ragging sexualized to begin with? What more powerful way to exert dominance over another person than by violating their body? What more overt form of humiliation can you force on someone - in a homophobic society - than by making them perform sexual acts with someone of the same sex? Abu Ghrayb anyone? If sexuality were to be implicated in same-sex ragging, I'll suspect that homophobia and sexism, rather than homosexuality, is what we're really looking at. in solidarity and support, L Ramakrishnan SAATHII: Solidarity and Action Against the HIV Infection in India www.saathii.org o o o o o Dear Mr Ramakrishnan, First of all many thanks for responding to my mail, and sorry for the delay in replying. Thanks also to Nitin Karani of the Sarai reader List for forwarding my post to several mailing lists working on issues of sexuality, because of which I have three good responses, including yours. You wrote: "My thoughts below are based primarily on prior work as a peer counselor with victims/survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, including but not limited to situations where the perpetrator and victim are of the same-sex." I have a request. Would you mind being a counselor for ragging victims who approach us? You wrote: "Very often sexual orientation of the perpetrator is irrelevant or only marginally relevant to the abuse. Heterosexual men rape women _and_ men in situations of war. Here, as in most other cases, rape is an assertion of power and control/dominance, rather than a manifestation of sexual desire." The difference between rape and ragging is, well, the latter is mental rape. While the rapist commits the act, rarely does the ragger commit sexual abuse that amounts to physical contact between the ragger and the fresher. The ragger forces two freshers or more into homosexual acts, or the ragger asks the fresher to "strip" and masturbate. The extremes hereafter begin with holding each other's private parts and may go up to forcing two freshers (men) to have sex, mostly anal sex. So the comparison with rape is somewhat inaccurate. The ragger himself claims to be heterosexual all along, goes about wooing girls, sometimes accuses freshers of being 'homo'. Are you saying that sexual ragging of a man by a man has nothing to do with sexuality, and all to do with power? As the second article appended by me showed, this may not be true. The narrator makes his sexual desire for the fresher, Vinay, clear from the very beginning. But the narrator's friends who asked Vinay to strip, we don't know about their sexual orientation. My point was that a ragger could be doing this just to experiment with his own sexuality - though not necessarily, not always. Let's say it's a fifty-fifty chance. Do you deny that? You wrote: "If we consider ragging to be a violation of bodily integrity and thereby a human's right just as we would rape, then how does it matter that the perpetrator and victim are of the same sex or different sexes, or of the same or different sexual orientations? Abuse is abuse, regardless of the sexual orientation and sex/gender of the perpetrator or victim. That the perpetrator may be homosexual or bisexual or heterosexual should not cause one to be any more or any less condemnatory of the act." Sure, but what I meant was that ragging takes place in an avowedly heterosexual world - where raggers and freshers alike woo girls, their limericks are all about heterosexual sex. In such a world, a senior of one sex abusing the fresher of another sex is understandable. It's like a man raping a woman, and I'm not understating the gravity of such a situation. Just that in ragging this is not the situation. It is boys who make boys strip, masturbate, have sex with their batchmates, and then everyone goes back to their 'normal' heterosexual world. Why then did homosexual ragging take place? (iii) Any attempt to understand homosexual orientation or the psychology of homosexuals (repressed or otherwise)viewed through the lens of same-sex ragging would be as objective and unbiased as attempting to understand the psychology of heterosexuality by studying acts of rape. "(iv) Sexual orientation is germane to an analysis of ragging to the extent that often individual ragging (as opposed to ragging of an entire bunch of people) is sometimes directed more acutely at males perceived-to-be-weak, perceived-to-be-effeminate or erceived-to-be-homosexual. In this context, what may pass off as an attempt to "make a man" out of the slender/young/effeminate boy by ragging him is really a vicious attempt to assert the perpetrator's socially superior masculinity and humiliate the victim by highlighting his 'failed' masculinity." You are right, though there is a risk of generalisation here. I know a ragger who looked thin as a rod, but not 'unmanly', and he made a giant-like sportsperson fresher strip. The power game here may be that the ragger was assured of his own 'manliness' precisely by sexually humiliationg a stronger 'man'. "(v) Why is ragging sexualized to begin with? What more powerful way to exert dominance over another person than by violating their body? What more overt form of humiliation can you force on someone - in a homophobic society - than by making them performsexual acts with someone of the same sex? Abu Ghrayb anyone? If sexuality were to be implicated in same-sex ragging, I'll suspect that homophobia and sexism, rather than homosexuality, is what we're really looking at." Maybe yes, but perhaps only partly? What if in a bunch of abusers, there are some who have a conscious or unconscious 'same-sex' orientation? They're doing what they've always wanted to do, but didnt have social sanction? Or are just experimenting? I know i'm being repititive with this point, but I would like you to reconsider it. Thanks a lot, Team PACE o o o o o o oo From: "Greg Pratt" Dear All on the Reader List, Some days ago, the list has had postings on the harrasmment of Critical Art Ensemble members. Although the charges of 'bioterrorism' against Steve Kurtz and his colleagues proved to be unsustainable, the harassment continues. Here is an update, posted by the Legal Defence Fund of the CAE. regards Shuddha -------- Original Message -------- Subject: FBI HARRASSMENT CONTINUES--ARTIST FACES 20-YEAR CHARGES Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 23:40:35 -0400 (EDT) From: CAE Legal Defense Fund To: shuddha-sarai.net July 8, 2004 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: mailto:media at caedefensefund.org FBI HARRASSMENT OF ARTIST AND SCIENTIST CONTINUES Kurtz and Ferrell face 20-year charges of mail and wire fraud in federal court arraignment Dr. Steven Kurtz, Associate Professor of Art at the University of Buffalo, was arraigned and charged in Federal District Court in Buffalo today on four counts of mail and wire fraud (United States Criminal Code, Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1341 and 1343), which each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The arraignment of Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, who was indicted along with Kurtz, has been postponed for a week for health reasons. The defendants were charged not with bioterrorism, as listed on the Joint Terrorism Task Force's original search warrant and subpoenas, but with a glorified version of "petty larceny," in the words of Kurtz attorney Paul Cambria. The laws under which the indictments were obtained are normally used against those defrauding others of money or property, as in telemarketing schemes. Historically, these laws have been used when the government could not prove other criminal charges. (See http://www.caedefensefund.org/ for background and full text of indictment. Under the arraignment conditions, Kurtz is subject to travel restrictions, random and scheduled visits from a probation officer, and periodic drug tests. EMINENT SCIENTISTS CONFUSED AND ALARMED A great number of people are wondering why this seemingly absurd case is still being pursued. "I am absolutely astonished," said Donald A. Henderson, Dean Emeritus of the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health and resident scholar at the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Henderson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush for his work in heading up the World Health Organization smallpox eradication program and was appointed by the Bush administration to chair the National Advisory Council on Public Preparedness. "Based on what I have read and understand, Professor Kurtz has been working with totally innocuous organisms... to discuss something of the risks and threats of biological weapons--more power to him, as those of us in this field are likewise concerned about their potential use and the threat of bio-terrorism." Henderson noted that the organisms involved in this case--Serratia marcescens and Bacillus atrophaeus--do not appear on lists of substances that could be used in biological terrorism (http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=646). University of California at San Diego Professor of Design Engineering Natalie Jeremijenko noted that scientists ship materials to each other all the time. "I do it, my lab students do it. It's a basis of academic collaboration.... They're going to have to indict the entire scientific community." Perhaps with such an outcome in mind, preeminent science magazine Nature has called on scientists to support Kurtz. "As with the prosecution of some scientists in recent years, it seems that government lawyers are singling Kurtz out as a warning to the broader artistic community.... Art and science are forms of human enquiry that can be illuminating and controversial, and the freedom of both must be preserved as part of a healthy democracy--as must a sense of proportion" (http://www.caedefensefund.org/press/CAEed.pdf). FACE-SAVING MEASURE OR WARNING TO ARTISTS? Some believe that the entire case is merely a face-saving tactic by the FBI: "Recently, federal agents arrested University at Buffalo art professor Steven Kurtz, implying he was a bioterrorist. Now, officials have downgraded that to a mail fraud charge.... The FBI always gets its man, even if it has to change its charge. Jaywalkers, beware" (http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20040707/3028537.asp). Others, like the editors of Nature quoted above, see the intent as much more insidious. "It's really going to have a chilling impact on the type of work people are going to do in this arena, and other arenas as well," noted Stephen Halpern, a SUNY Buffalo law professor who specializes in Constitutional law (http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=646). Professors and staff from the University of California system express similar fears. "We are both extremely concerned and disturbed that the prosecution of the CAE members and research colleagues is continuing.... We see here a pattern of behavior that leads to the curtailing of academic freedom, freedom of artistic expression, freedom of interdisciplinary investigation, freedom of information exchange, freedom of knowledge accumulation and reflection, and freedom of bona fide and peaceful research. All of which are fundamental rights and cornerstones of a modern academic environment." "Kurtz's materials are politically, not physically, dangerous," said Mary-Claire King, the University of Washington geneticist who first proved the existence of a gene for hereditary breast cancer. "They [Steve Kurtz and the Critical Art Ensemble] re-create [scientific] ideas using their own way of imaging, and then say, 'Maybe you'd like to look at it this way.' To me, that's teaching. It does not seem to me to threaten homeland security. In fact, I would be threatened to live in a homeland in which that was perceived to be a threat" (http://www.tribnet.com/entertainment/story/5238040p-5173016c.html). CAE had intended to use the bacteria concerned in a project critiquing the history of US involvement in germ warfare experiments, including the Bush administration's earmarking of hundreds of millions of dollars to erect high-security laboratories around the country. Many eminent scientists likewise view these plans as a recipe for catastrophe. "I'm concerned about them from the standpoint of science, safety, security, public health and economics," writes Dr. Richard Ebright, lab director at Rutgers University's Waksman Institute of Microbiology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. "They lose on all counts" (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/29/science/29cont.html). In a letter to the FBI, the PEN American Freedom to Write committee writes that "PEN supports strong, targeted laws to apprehend terrorists and those who would carry out terrorist attacks. In seeking to meet the terrorist threat, however, we must not give in to the impulse to censor or ban whole bodies of basic knowledge. The tools of terrorists are the tools of modern life, and many of these tools, including biotechnology, have wide-ranging, non-criminal applications. They also pose challenging ethical and policy questions, which it is both the right and responsibility of a free society to consider. Arts such as literature and performance are indispensable tools that often serve to stimulate and advance public awareness and understanding of otherwise arcane bodies of knowledge.... Actions [of the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force] could exert a chilling effect on kinds of speech that clearly enjoy full First Amendment protection. You have pledged to carry out antiterrorism efforts without compromising civil liberties and constitutional protections." Innumerable other scientists, artists, institutions, and others have written letters of support for Kurtz and Ferrell. A number of these can be viewed at http://www.caedefensefund.org/letters.html. INVESTIGATION CONTINUES Even after today's arraignment, the FBI's investigation of Kurtz and Ferrell is not over. The grand jury is still hearing testimony of subpoenaed witnesses including Autonomedia, an independent publisher who has published five CAE books (http://www.autonomedia.org/). Autonomedia, summoned to appear in court on July 13 and to submit all records and editorial correspondence pertaining to their dealings with CAE, is represented by the New York Civil Liberties Union with an amicus curiae brief from the American Booksellers Committee for Free Expression. Organizers and supporters of the defense committee have pledged to continue their information, education, and protest activities. Several campuses have already organized teach-ins on the case in the fall, and fund-raisers and speak-outs are scheduled in Chicago, London, New York, and other cities throughout July and August. To donate to the defense fund, please visit http://caedefensefund.org/donate.html. Updates on the case will be posted at http://www.caedefensefund.org/. To receive more frequent updates by email, please join http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CAE_Defense/. -- (MAKE SURE TO CUT BELOW LINES OFF WHEN FORWARDING, or your personal profile will become known to everyone.) To edit your profile or unsubscribe from mailings, please visit http://rtmark.com/caedefense/dblist/prof.php?e=shuddha at sarai.net&x=796902518 From coolzanny at hotmail.com Sun Jul 11 18:07:47 2004 From: coolzanny at hotmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 18:07:47 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Segregation of Spaces in Terms of Gender Message-ID: The day when two women fooled five and a half men (But did they mean to?) 30th June 2004 Byculla to Kurla This afternoon, I had to visit campus urgently. I stood on platform No. 1, at the place where the ladies compartment would halt when the train would arrive. It turned out that instead of the usual 12-coach train, a 9-coach train arrived and the ladies compartment halted much further than the anticipated place. The train was empty since it was afternoon time. A burkha (veil)-clad woman with a little baby in her hand came to me and asked, �Kurla jayegi? (Will this train go to Kurla?)� I replied in the affirmative. Women on the platform panicked and ran ahead to board the ladies compartment. I decided to get inside the empty general compartment. The burkha-clad woman obediently followed me as I climbed into the compartment. Three other hefty women looked at me and said, �Is this the ladies compartment?� �No,� I replied, �but let�s just get inside otherwise we will miss this train.� The burkha-clad woman was a bit nervous. She asked me, �Isn�t this ladies?� I said, �No, it�s not. But you are going to Kurla and so am I. We will travel together.� The three hefty women stood precariously at the door. They were intending to get off from the compartment at a station where the train would halt for a bit longer and subsequently rush to get inside the ladies compartment ahead. At each station after Byculla, they kept dissuading other ladies from entering the compartment saying, �Ladies nahi hai. Gents log chadhenge. (This is not ladies compartment. Gents will climb in later).� The burkha-clad woman and me continued to sit comfortably. She was assured by my presence and I was enjoying the commanding position. I asked her if the baby in her lap was a girl or boy. She said it was a boy. Later, through conversation, I discovered that the woman was traveling alone by train for the first time. She had said to me, �I usually travel with my ammi (mother) or with his abba (the baby�s father i.e. husband). This time, I had to urgently come to Byculla for his pediatrician. His abba taught me how to travel. He explained the route and the stations on the way.� �So, do you usually travel by the ladies compartment?� I asked her. �Yes,� she replied. �It�s better to travel by ladies. You can ask other women for directions and help to reach the destination. It�s difficult to make inquiries with men.� She also mentioned that after reaching Kurla, she would have to change another train to reach Mankhurd, which is where she lived. At each station, she would name the next station and verify with me whether she was right. The three hefty women who by now were getting on my nerves for their over-precautious attitudes finally got down at Dadar station. From there on, the burkha-clad woman and me were all alone in the compartment. When the train halted at Matunga station, men were waiting outside the compartment to board. Seeing us two women, six men (of which one was half-hearted in his attempts) immediately began checking signs on the outside to verify whether this was a ladies compartment. Some men did not even bother to check; they simply drifted towards another general compartment. The five and the one half-hearted men decided to enter when they were satisfied that this was in fact a general compartment. The half-hearted man got off seconds before the train departed. Perhaps he was unsure still. Perhaps, he wanted to play safe. Perhaps, both of us fooled him, but did we really mean to? I meant to fool the men. Seriously. I deliberately created this act, though co-incidence played its role. Sure enough, compartments are turning out to be laboratories for me where experiments happen and I watch how men and women interact in a space which is segregated on the basis of gender. _________________________________________________________________ Looking for a soulmate? http://www.shaadi.com/ptnr.php?ptnr=hmltag Log onto shaadi.com From definetime at rediffmail.com Sat Jul 10 13:20:25 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 10 Jul 2004 07:50:25 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] IHT in India Message-ID: <20040710075025.15712.qmail@webmail17.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040710/ce64c577/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Dear Shivam, We obviously differ in our views. Let's consider the facts again. Murdoch's rationale for supporting the Iraq war is not Saddam's abusive dictatorship, it's $20 barrel of oil. When media magnates campaign for daylight robbery, it is alarming. Besides, Saddam's worst atrocities - using chemical weapons on Kurds and Iranians, were undertaken with funding and technology from the west. In fact if you study the entire western government/media campaign drumming up support prior to the war, Saddam's cruelty was highlighted only when the WMD angle was slighted by Hans Blix. This was the last resort, to justify an already premeditated move.* Had abusive dictatorships been the real problem, the US wouldn't have propped up General Pinochet after overthrowing the elected Chilean government; killing President Allende and unleashing a genocide. 20th century history is littered with White House supported dictators - Baby Doc, Trujillo, Hernandez Martinez, Suharto, Rios Mont, Reza Pahlevi, Noriega, Karimov ... even Saddam was the apple of their eyes while he was at war with Iran. Half a dozen brutal 'sheikhdoms' in the middle-east are aided and abetted by the US. Don't the Abu Ghraib pictures prove that Saddam's abuses had nothing to do with this invasion ? And mind you, those pictures didn't see the light of the day without a fight. There are thousands of more pictures which were viewed by US senators behind closed doors but deemed unfit for 'public consumption'**. So much for the 'free market of words, ideas and pictures' in the west. The net differs a lot from the print media . Apart from journalists and media observers, people tend to read just one newspaper regularly. When you're fed a bunch of lies on a regular basis, the results are as Dr Joseph Goebbels prescribed in the 1930s. Wide internet penetration is still a projection. The net also has a certain fluidity which lends itself to appreciation of diversity. The google news page for instance would often put NYT's interpretation next to Xinhua's. I find it difficult to compare this with a regular newspaper's impact. Only a small fraction of the newspaper reading public goes to the news-stand to 'chose' a paper. Had the indian media been dominated by 'all the leftists' - the 'india shining' nonsense wouldn't have been forced down our throats. Vajpayee's party did win 138 seats, just 7 less than the Congress tally. Sadly (for you) the left performed better than expected. In my view indian newspapers opposed the Iraq war not because of 'all the leftists' but because unlike first world countries - we identify ourselves as possible future victims of such unilateral aggression. Iraq war was bad because it had no UN approval and therefore illegal. There was no unique provocation for launching an attack on a sovereign country. As far as your personal views on this matter are concerned - ten years is a long time, right now more than 11 thousand Iraqis are already dead. You have quite correctly pointed out that popularity is no guarantee for quality (as with Times of India). And I'm not questioning the popularity of publications. I'm questioning the concentration of ownership and it's 'dictatorial' shadow on the media culture. I hate censorship and that's the very reason I favour blocking foreign media in India. It (foreign media) comes with a baggage of lopsided ownership pattern, with serious implications on whatever little independence of opinion there is in our media. Blocking newspapers can't be equated with censorship because Indian newspapers already carry sizable chunks of foreign news and editorial material. If you check sources of international news (whether here or abroad) they lead you back to the same pool of a dozen odd news agencies. One is not advocating blocking news per say but the propaganda potential of a big bad corporate owned newspaper. I'm not saying indian newspapers are great; I acknowledge the courage and insight of the indian public in fending itself from the media. My point is - why give the public two snakes to fend itself from, isn't one enough. Leaving aside a handful of publications, western media's influence on their 'liberal democracies' has been less than edifying. One watergate can't wash away every sin. For years together western media sat on it's fat ass while western governments propped up abusive dictatorships, apartheid - and aided genocides. In recent times media role in inciting racial hatred in the UK has often been highlighted. Hari Kunzru declined the John Llewellyn Rhys award on precisely this issue. I'd love to see a 'free market' myself but I'm afraid it's just another neo-con illusion fed to us by the western media mafia. While western countries advocate opening up of third world markets, their own markets remain tight shut through a complex web of preferential tariffs. Thanks to your 'free western media' the whole issue of G8's $300 billion agriculture subsidy or the enormous tariff barriers for third world exports, rarely get any coverage. In the world we live in, ideas and practice don't always coincide. regards, Sanjay *http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/11/1073769455567.html *http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/comment/0,12956,1036687,00.html **http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21551-2004May12.html PS - In case you miss 'Murdoch papers' in India, The Statesman carries sizable chunks from the Times, London. Besides you might enjoy the venomous anti-left tirade carried by The Statesman. On Fri, 09 Jul 2004 Shivam Vij wrote : >Dear Sanjay, > >Let's take the IHT example, I'll later come to the foreign media as a >whole. What's wrong with the IHT being published from India? I already >have access to its site; those who don't will be able to read the >paper. Shouldn't there be greater democratisation of the media? I >firmly believe that all media are not mutually exclusive but intrinsic >parts of our urban experience. With increasing net density in India, >all of the foreign media will be accessible to millions of Indians; >the reach will be far greater than print can ever have. This is the >future we are looking at. > >Yes, as of now print dominates public opinion in India. Or does TV >dominate public opinion in India? Or do the media affect 'public >opinion'? If they did, Vajpayee wouldn't have lost his job. > >As for the Iraq war, I think it is a shame that the Indian media was >biased against the war and never gave space to arguments in favour of >the war. My personal view about the Iraq 'war' is that all of the Bush >administration's sins notwithstanding, the invasion will have been >worth it ten ears from now *if* the average Iraqi is happier than he >was under Saddam. > >Now that's my view, but the Indian media never gave space to such a >view. All the leftists, the impassionate anti-Americanists dominated. > >It is sad that we don't believe in objectivity anymore. My paper >should have told me both sides of the argument about Iraq. It just >told me how bad the war was, and then why it was bad. > >If I had access to one of Murdoch's papers on the newsstand near my >house, if I could pick up and read the foreign papers, perhaps I could >have been able to arrive at a more sober, crtical assesment of the >Iraq 'war'. > >But the Government of India never gave me that choice. > >As for the Italian PM's control of the Italian media, I wish I was >more aware of the intricacies of the Italian situation. But I wonder >if you noticed an article in the Hindu when Sonia Gandhi almost became >our PM. The article wrote how a cartoon in an Italian paper owned by >the Italian PM, showed an Italian saying to an Indian: "Now you also >an Italian PM and I have an Italian PM. Only that yours is better than >ours!" > >Now I know why 90% Italians pay heed to media owned by their PM. > >In other words, in all your arguments, you are neglecting the role of >public opinion. A media enterprise can be commercially successful obly >when people buy it. And people will buy it only if it makes sense to >them. The obscene Times of India is India's largest selling English >daily because people buy it. > >If we were to go by your arguments, then the logical conclusion would >be to support Internet censorship, because as PC density increases... > >And if we can survive the Indian media with all its biases, we can >also survive biases of the foreign press. We can still understand that >the Iraq 'war' is really about oil or whatever damage Americans did to >Iraq. Because we have Al Jazeera, which was some time ago denied >permission b the Indian government to open a bureau in India! > >The leftist mobilisation of opinion against the Iraq war all over the >world - Arundhati Roy's essays included - was an example of how >alternative media is so mainstream now. > >And remember it was the same American media that exposed Abu Ghraib. > >Remember also that the IHT in India is being published by MJ Akbar, >whose name also appears as the editor responsible for the contents of >the paper under the PRB Act. That should make us less paranoid about >the IHT? > >In a free market of words, ideas and pictures, what are we afraid of? > >If we extend your arguments to their logical conclusions - blocking >all media that is held by monopolies - then we will also have to ban >Dainik Jagran and Amar Ujala, two Hindi papers of north India which >sell more than Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Hindu and the >Indian Express put together! Ujala and Jagran are papers whose role in >the rise of Hindutva is well known, and continues till today: > >IHT is less objectionable to me. > >Thanks, >Shivam > > > >-- >I poured reason in two wine glasses >Raised one above my head >And poured it into my life From kalpagam25 at rediffmail.com Mon Jul 12 10:52:35 2004 From: kalpagam25 at rediffmail.com (kalpagam - umamaheswaran) Date: 12 Jul 2004 05:22:35 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] June Posting-Roadside Temples Message-ID: <20040712052235.20181.qmail@webmail7.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040712/eaf121a8/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------  June Posting- Roadside Temples in Chennai I have garnered some new insights on the motivations for building temples in an interview I had with S.Chakrapani who had himself constructed a roadside temple, the Sri Sundara Vinayakar Temple on 23 Mandaiveli street, near the Mandaveli market. As Chakrapani's house was facing, what he called as a "three way path", that is the door was facing a street that was perpendicular to the street on which his house was located, he was advised by elders that it was inauspicious for the prosperity and welfare of his family. This may in fact be the reason as to why I see a number of roadside shrines, especially of Ganesha at these three way junctions. Chakrapani told me that he had initially placed an idol on the outer wall of the house. As his house was constructed on a plot of land that belonged to the Sri Kapaleeswar temple in Mylapore, there has been attempts to evict him for the last 40 years. According to him, his next door neighbour on the right side, one Shanmugadurai Nadar, a firewood depot owner, his neighbour on the left side, the owners of Thandu Maiamman Temple and an employee of the Kapaleeswar temple have been acting in concert with the help of a CID official and some rowdies in the area to evict him, so as to appropriate his plot of land. Chakrapani then put up a small temple of Ganesh in the land in front of the house which actually belonged to the Chennai Corporation, perhaps to stall eviction attempts. It is remarkable that he remembered the exact date when he put up the temple in 1968 and claimed to have built the Mantap for the temple in 1971. Being a resident in the area I contested his date saying that I thought the temple was a new structure at which he showed me the engraved plaque on the wall. Either the stone plaque was there in an earlier smaller mantap that got refixed in the new mantap or there must be some advantage in faking the date in his struggle with his evictors. Chakrapani says he built the temple for people's worship and claims that in a day there are on an average 40-50 visitors to the temple. While he himself performs the Abhishek in the morning and acts as the pujari when the doors are kept open, on the day of Shankata Chathurthi, the fourth day during the waning lunar cylce, he calls a Gurukul purohit, a brahmin, to perform the pujas. Chakrapani's involvement with temple work is wholehearted as he was narrating of how the flower seller took money for a week and gave flowers only for four days or the silversmith who took Rs 45,000 to make a silver Kavacham for the idol and used poor quality metal. His struggle with the silversmith still goes on as he showed me a photocopy of a letter he had written with a courtfee stamp of one rupee pasted on it to the silversmith. Now who is Chakrapani? He is about 68-70 years of age and was formerely selling potatoes and onions in the Mandaveli vegetable market. Now he gets a little money by renting out bamboos ladders and rudimentary construction materials like a tin bowl and spade. He also takes the temple hundi collection, using some for the temple purpose and the rest for himself. His home is nothing but a small plot of land on which he has a half done construction of one room in brick and cement with a ceiling. He has managed to fix one tubelight, a fan and his attempt to fix a handpump only cost him money but no water comes out of it. He is othewise absolutely poor with a few utensils and plastic pots and no bed but one plastic chair. Although Chakrapani built the temple to ward off the evil to his family, his detractors according to him, poisoned in his wife's mind, that she nows lives separately in a village Anakaaputhur, on the suburbs of Chennai where her daughter also lives separately. He also claimed that his detractors managed to kill two of his infant children. In spite of all odds he carries himself in a very dignified way. I was amazed at all the letters he has safely kept in a basket written to police commissioners, temple etc and the manner in which he produced them to me as evidence of his struggle. He only requested me to write to the Police Commissioner highlighting his plight. From anti-ragging-owner at yahoogroups.com Sun Jul 11 20:42:20 2004 From: anti-ragging-owner at yahoogroups.com (anti-ragging moderator) Date: 11 Jul 2004 15:12:20 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Invitation to join the anti-ragging group Message-ID: <1089558740.1672.35196.w30@yahoogroups.com> Hello announcements at sarai.net, tellsachin at yahoo.com has invited to join the anti-ragging group hosted by Yahoo! Groups, a free, easy-to-use community service. By joining anti-ragging, you will be able to exchange messages with other group members, store photos and files, coordinate events and more. This invitation will expire in 7 days. Here's an introductory message from tellsachin at yahoo.com: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Countless suicides, a couple of murders, and dozens of laws later the practice of ragging continues in educational institutions in every corner of India. Before another potential engineer hangs himself to the ceiling fan, let's do something about it. This group is meant to debate, discuss and disemminate ideas about ragging. Join us even if you are pro-ragging, or neutral towards ragging, or whatever your views on ragging are. Let's talk. This group is also a platform for members of the Anti-Ragging Cell of the People's Action for Change and Enforcement (PACE) to co-ordinate their activities throughout India. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JOIN NOW, IT'S EASY: 1) Go to the Yahoo! Groups site by clicking on this link: http://groups.yahoo.com/i?i=3--CO6vM1n-y8_qAswt2khmGx5E&e=announcements%40sarai%2Enet (If clicking doesn't work, "Cut" and "Paste" the line above into your Web browser's address bar.) -OR- 2) REPLY to this email by clicking "Reply" and then "Send" in your email program If you do not wish to join the anti-ragging group, please ignore this invitation. Report abuse: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups is a free service that allows you to stay in touch with friends and family or meet new people who share your interests. Yahoo! Groups values your privacy. It is a violation of our service rules for Groups members to abuse this invitation feature. If you feel this has happened, please notify us: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/abuse/index.html You may also change your email preferences to stop receiving group invitations in the future. To do so, please go here: http://groups.yahoo.com/s?tag=_gMadotrrxOgznOQV56rrweyeRuqMzPtECzB6R9ct9eSK7lOQvv97oLfCFyx78LKmxxxm-zOZLzrs6y4udpPC5Pp Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040711/c0384a95/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From mklayman at leonardo.info Mon Jul 12 05:42:48 2004 From: mklayman at leonardo.info (Melinda Klayman) Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 17:12:48 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] LEA cfp: New Media Poetry and Poetics Message-ID: ** Sincere apologies for cross-posting ** ** Worldwide Call for Submissions ** LEA Special Issue: New Media Poetry and Poetics Guest Editor: Tim Peterson (newmedia at astn.net) The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (ISSN No: 1071-4391) is inviting papers and artworks that deal with New Media Poetry and Poetics. This category includes multimedia digital works (image/text/sound) as examined through the lens of "writing," specifically any of those concerns central to avant-garde poetry rather than narrative or prose: reader as active participant in the "ergodic" sense, the use of chance or automatism inherited from movements such as Oulipo (highlighting the literalized metaphor which automatism becomes here), and the complex relations between the author, reader, and computer-as-writer/reader which evolve from that interaction. Any work that foregrounds the medium as such (for example, web poetry that incorporates code) is also welcome. We would particularly like to emphasize the "poetics" of new media writing as well, that is, the point where aesthetics intersects with politics to create dynamic attempts at social change. LEA encourages international artists / academics / researchers / students to submit their proposals for consideration. We particularly encourage authors outside North America and Europe to send proposals for articles/gallery/artists statements. Proposals should include: - 300 word abstract / synopsis - A brief author biography - Any related URLs - Contact details Deadline for proposals: 15 Aug 2004 Please send proposals or queries to: Tim Peterson newmedia at astn.net and Nisar Keshvani LEA Editor-in-Chief lea at mitpress.mit.edu http://lea.mit.edu **************************************************************************** **** LEA Information and URLs ------------------------------------------- Receive your FREE subscription to the Leonardo Electronic Almanac e-mail digest at http://mitpress.mit.edu/lea/e-mail -- just provide your email address, name, and password, and check off that you'd like to be added to the Leonardo Electronic Almanac monthly e-mail list to keep on top of the latest news in the Leonardo community. How to advertise in LEA? http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/placeads.html#LEAads For a paid subscription (to become an ISAST member and access archives dating back to 1993): http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=4&tid=27&mode=p What is LEA? ------------- Established in 1993, the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (ISSN No: 1071-4391) is the electronic arm of the pioneer art journal, Leonardo - Journal of Art, Science & Technology. The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA), jointly produced by Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST) and published under the auspices of MIT Press is an electronic journal dedicated to providing a forum for those who are interested in the realm where art, science and technology converge. Content ------- This peer reviewed e-journal includes profiles of media arts facilities and projects, profiles of artists using new media, feature articles comprised of theoretical and technical perspectives; the LEA Gallery exhibiting new media artwork by international artists; detailed information about new publications in various media; and reviews of publications, events and exhibitions. Material is contributed by artists, scientists, educators and developers of new technological resources in the media arts. Mission ------- Since 2002, LEA formed a strategic alliance with fineArt forum - the Internet's longest running arts magazine. Through this partnership, LEA concentrates on adding new scholarship and critical commentary to the art, science and technology field, with LEA subscribers benefiting from the latest news, announcements, events, and job/educational opportunities through fAf's online news service. LEA's mission is to maintain and consolidate its position as a leading online news and trusted information filter while critically examining arts/science & technological works catering to the international CAST (Community of Artists, Scientist and Technologists) ******************************** NEW ADDRESS! Please note our new contact information as of May 1, 2004: Leonardo/ISAST 211 Sutter Street, Suite 800 San Francisco, CA 94108 phone: (415) 391-1110 fax: (415) 391-2385 Email: isast at leonardo.info Web: http://www.leonardo.info Did you know that whenever you buy anything through Amazon.com, you could help to support Leonardo? Always access Amazon through the Leonardo portal. That way, no matter what you purchase, Amazon will automatically credit a percentage of their profits to Leonardo/ISAST, at no additional charge to you. Access Amazon via Leonardo at: http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/leobooks.html _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From nexus at culturebase.org Sat Jul 10 14:15:01 2004 From: nexus at culturebase.org (francis wittenberger) Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 15:45:01 +0700 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] CALL FOR PARTICIPATION -- Digital Print Exhibition in Bangkok Message-ID: <20040710132130.C2B2.NEXUS@culturebase.org> CALL FOR PARTICIPATION Digital prints exhibition on the topic EMOTIONS as part of the InterFACES exhibition in Bangkok, Thailand. InterFACES - International New Media Arts Event Bangkok venue: Raffles LaSalle International Design School, Silom Center Bangkok Malaysia venues: National Art Gallery, Multimedia University, University Sains Malaysia; Opening July 27th 2004 Exhibition will be on view until July 31st. Internet: http://nexus.culturebase.org/interfaces http://nexus.culturebase.org -> projects -> interfaces Submission information: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - We welcome international proposals for a digital prints exhibition on the topic EMOTIONS. Deadline for submissions: 20 July 2004 Description: - - - - - - - - - -- Digital portraits communicating EMOTIONS and created using digital techniques will be subject to selection. Selected works are accepted as digital files and printed by the organizers (laser c-prints up to size A3) Selected artists will be notified via email on July 21st 2004. How to submit your work: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Please submit a REVIEW of your digital artwork as an image file (up to 500Kb / image as an email attachment) to the following email: Submission form: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Please include the following in the body of your mail: To: nexus at culturebase.org ---------------------------------------------------- Work Title: Artist name: Year: Country: [ ] Yes, I have attached preview images in jpg format. (each less then 1Mb) ---------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From karim at sarai.net Mon Jul 12 16:28:45 2004 From: karim at sarai.net (karim at sarai.net) Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 12:58:45 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [Reader-list] rhizome.org memberships available Message-ID: <49251.203.200.122.16.1089629925.squirrel@203.200.122.16> "A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organization of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles." Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, "A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia" "Rhizome was building the net.art community before net.art was cool." Mark Amerika — Writer & Artist, USA Rhizome's programs and services support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways. Host to a number of public mailing lists, including the prestigious "Net Art News" list, Rhizome also hosts the Rhizome ArtBase, a huge online archive of new media artwork and the TextBase, a collection of close to three thousand articles on new media art. While the Rhizome TextBase can be searched online, it can also be accessed through the experimental "Starry Nights" or "Spiral" interfaces, developed by Rhizome in their alt.interface initiative. While access to these resources normally requires a paid-for subscription, Rhizome and Sarai have inititated an outreach / growth / internetworking project that will provide subscriptions to 50 people free of cost. These subscriptions will be provided on a first-come-first-serve basis to all those who mail me (do not cc the list, please) for this purpose. cheers, Aniruddha "Karim" Shankar The Sarai Programme From shivamvij at gmail.com Tue Jul 13 22:28:01 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 22:28:01 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Death threat to Bangladeshi woman scholar Message-ID: -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Från: Kirfani at aol.com [mailto:Kirfani at aol.com] Skickat: den 13 juli 2004 16:30 Till: sazhar at nyc.rr.com; shaheryar.azhar at citigroup.com Ämne: Re. ... More death threat issued by a shadowy Bangla Islamist Group Sometime back, Farida Majid's well researced article about hijab, with Qur'anic reference titled "Fashioning Lies, Veiling the Truth" was circulated on this and some other forums. Also, subsequently, its abridged version was published in the Daily Times, Lahore. It was generally well received for the scholarly research and references that had gone into her work on this subject. She has forwarded to me the following note with an attached comment she has received from one "Jami". You can read and make up your mind for yourselves. -Kalim Subj: RE: [FutureOfBangladesh] Daily Star: More death threat issued by a shadowy Bangla Islamist Group Date: 7/11/2004 8:00:17 PM Eastern Standard Time From: farida_majid at hotmail.com To: FutureOfBangladesh at yahoogroups.com CC: banglarnari at yahoogroups.com Sent from the Internet (Details) What audacity! Guess who are laughing at the Islamic antics of the [Bangla] Deshi people? The Pakistani progressive journalists and intellectuals. I'm leaving tomorrow for [Bangla]Desh. Though I'm fearless in speaking the truth, in this lawless atmophere I must say that I'm a little fearful. Take a look at the mail I received: -Farida. ================= Comment from (prob) a Bangladeshi forum: It is unfortunate that women that have zero knowledge about Islam should talk about Islam. You are actually from the people of Jahiliya. Getting a Ph.D. doesn't give you the right to make comments about Islam. Why is it that Muslims from foreign lands have such a hatred for Islam and Muslims when they come to Kafir lands? Maybe their true faces are revealed. But since you have made comments against the Quran and Islam, your words are now a permanent part of your history. It is exactly people like you that Muslims must first censure. Neither should you be allowed to represent Muslims, nor should you claim to be a representative of Muslim women. You are the kind of person that is the greatest threat to Islam, since you obviously have a deadly hatred of Islam and Muslims. You are the greatest supporter of the non-Muslims since, like the Jews at the Prophet's (SAW) time, you are claiming to be a supporter of Islam but actually are trying to destroy Muslims from the inside. I hope you get divine guidance from Allah, but even if you do, in the next Khilafah, you will be censured. Jami [Nota Bene: read 'KILLED" wherever it says "censure"] --------------------------- From: farida_majid at hotmail.com To: Kirfani at aol.com Sent from the Internet (Details) People must make a note of the style of language used by the 'Jihadists'. It is the formulaic language of the ideology preached and horrendously practiced by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. It is what the Saudi funded Wahhabism is spreading worldwide. The victims of ethnic cleansing by the Wahhabi Arabs in Darfur, Sudan are Muslims. First kill the so-called Muslims, who are 'pretending' to be Muslims. Then kill the followers of other faiths. It would be a mistake to think that this language is generic to all types of Islamic fundamentalists. Let us learn to make some distinctions here. And we better learn fast! -- Farida From definetime at rediffmail.com Tue Jul 13 12:02:29 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 13 Jul 2004 06:32:29 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) Greasing up to power Message-ID: <20040713063229.28229.qmail@webmail27.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040713/7af1af83/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Greasing up to power A US comedian brings us closer to the truth than the BBC. Most of our journalists fail us George Monbiot Tuesday July 13, 2004 The Guardian When starving people find food, they don't worry too much about the ingredients. Michael Moore's film is crude and sometimes patronising. He puts words into people's mouths. He finishes their sentences for them. At times he is funny and moving, at others clumsy and incoherent. But I was shaken by it, and I applauded at the end. For Fahrenheit 9/11 asks the questions that should have been asked every day for the past four years. The success of his film testifies to the rest of the media's failure. Tomorrow the Butler report will reopen the debate about who was to blame for the lies with which we went to war - the government or the intelligence agencies. One thing the news networks will not be discussing is the culpability of the news networks. After this inquiry, we will need another one, whose purpose is to discover why journalists help governments to lie to the people. I don't need to discuss the failings of the US news networks. Fox and NBC have often boasted about their loyalty to Bush's government. Owned by rightwing businessmen, they could reasonably be described as components of the military-industrial complex. But the failures of the British media, in particular the BBC, require more explanation. Studies by the Cardiff School of Journalism and the Glasgow University Media Group suggest there is a serious and systematic bias among British broadcasters in favour of the government and its allies. The Cardiff study, for example, shows that 86% of the broadcast news reports that mentioned weapons of mass destruction during the invasion of Iraq "suggested Iraq had such weapons", while "only 14% raised doubts about their existence or possible use". The claim by British and US forces that Iraq had fired illegal Scud missiles into Kuwait was reported 27 times on British news programmes. It was questioned on just four occasions: once by Sky and three times by Channel 4 News. The BBC even managed to embellish the story: its correspondent Ben Brown suggested that the non-existent Scuds might have been loaded with chemical or biological warheads. Both the BBC (Ben Brown again) and ITN reported that British commanders had "confirmed" the phantom uprising in Basra on March 25. Though there was no evidence to support either position, there were twice as many reports claiming that the Iraqi people favoured the invasion as reports claiming that they opposed it. "Overall, considerably more time was given to the original [untrue] stories than to any subsequent retractions," the researchers found. The Glasgow study shows that BBC and ITN news reports are biased in favour of Israel and against the Palestinians. Almost three times as much coverage is given to each Israeli death as to each Palestinian death. Killings by Palestinians are routinely described as "atrocities" and "murders", while Palestinians deliberately shot by Israeli soldiers have been reported as "caught in the crossfire". In the period the researchers studied, Israeli spokespeople were given twice as much time to speak as Palestinians. Both BBC and ITN reports have described the West Bank as part of Israel. By failing to explain that the Palestinians are living under military occupation, following the illegal seizure of their land, correspondents routinely reduce the conflict to an inexplicable "cycle of violence". Even this cycle is presented as being driven by the Palestinians: the Israelis are reported as "responding" or "retaliating" to Palestinian attacks; violence by the Palestinians is seldom explained as a response to attacks by Israelis. Both networks regularly claim that the US government is seeking peace in the region (ITN has described it as "even-handed") while omitting to mention that it is supplying some $3bn a year of military aid to Israel. The BBC emerges very badly from these studies. The Cardiff report shows that it used US and British government sources more often than the other broadcasting networks, and used independent sources, such as the Red Cross, less often than the others. It gave the least coverage to Iraqi casualties, and was the least likely to report Iraqi unhappiness about the invasion. A separate study by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of news networks in five different countries showed that the BBC offered the least airtime of any broadcaster to opponents of the war: just 2% of its coverage. (Even ABC news in the United States gave them 7%). Channel 4 News, by contrast, does well: it seems to be the only British network that has sought to provide a balanced account of these conflicts. Of course, this problem is not confined to the broadcasters, or, for that matter, the rightwing press. On Sunday the Guardian's sister paper, the Observer, asked: "Why was the prime minister's foreword [to the dodgy dossier] so unequivocal about the threat Saddam Hussein posed? Why was inconclusive evidence presented as fact?" The same questions should be asked of the Observer, which took the government's part in the invasion, and published a number of incorrect reports - which it has yet to retract - about weapons of mass destruction and the links between Saddam and al-Qaida. So why does this happen? Why do broadcasters (and newspapers) that have a reputation for balance, impartiality and even liberal bias side with the powerful? There appear to be several reasons. One of them is that they assume - rightly or wrongly - that the audience doesn't want complexity. One BBC journalist told the Glasgow team that he had been instructed not to provide "explainers": what the editors wanted was "all bang-bang stuff". Analytical and investigative reporting has given way to breathless descriptions of troop movements and military technology. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this leaves the audience without the faintest idea of what's happening: in one of the groups of viewers the researchers interviewed, the people who said that the occupied territories had been occupied by the Israelis were outnumbered by those who believed they had been occupied by the Palestinians. Another is that, as in all professions, you are rewarded for greasing up to power. The people who are favoured with special information are those who have ingratiated themselves with the government. This leads to the paradoxical result that some of our most famous and successful journalists are also the profession's most credulous sycophants. While you are rewarded for flattery, you are punished for courage. The US, British and Israeli governments can make life very difficult for media organisations that upset them, as the BBC found during the Gilligan affair. The Palestinians and the people of Iraq have much less lobbying power. The media are terrified of upsetting the Israeli government, for fear of being branded anti-semitic. Powerful governments can call on the rightwing press for support. Rupert Murdoch, who has a commercial interest in the destruction of the BBC, is always happy to oblige. When most of our journalists fail us, it's hardly surprising that the few who are brave enough to expose the lies of the powerful become heroes, even if their work is pretty coarse. When a scruffy comedian from Michigan can bring us closer to the truth than the BBC, it's time for a serious examination of why news has become the propaganda of the victor. www.monbiot.com From rohinipatkar123 at rediffmail.com Tue Jul 13 13:17:24 2004 From: rohinipatkar123 at rediffmail.com (rohini patkar) Date: 13 Jul 2004 07:47:24 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] one more interview with migrant domestic worker Message-ID: <20040713074724.29862.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040713/e6e020fa/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------  Rekha, 35 Malda district Why did you leave your village? We left the village in distress, khane-peene ki takleef How did you come from the village? We came by train What did you find strange about Delhi in the beginning, had you travelled in train earlier? I had never seen train, I felt very good during the journey. I kept thinking pata nahi kaisa hoga, I am going, one has to think about these things . How did you pay for the ticket? I took 1000 rupees loan at the rate of 10 Rs per thousand interest, das taka byaaz Who was with you when you came from there? We were two women who came together from the village. That means along with me there was one more girl from the village who came with me What did you bring along with you? Hai baghwan (Oh God!) I did not bring anything with me, just one khana banane wala patila (a pot in which one can cook food), that’s it. Did you come straight to Delhi or you went to somewhere else before coming here? I did not go anywhere else, I came straight to Indra Vikas Why Delhi? Our programme was to come to Delhi, so where else could we have gone? Did you know anyone in Delhi? Yes Since how many years you have been staying here? 4 years, 22 yrs after marriage I came here Who all are there in the village? The whole kunba (clan) is there in the village, devar devarni What about your husband? He is also in the village- my devrani and my husband stay in the village How do you keep in touch with them- through phone calls, letters or you have to send money orders? (Laughs) We usually keep in touch through the phone How did you feel when you were leaving the village? I was feeling very bad while leaving the village- one always feels that way when one has to leave their place ‘takleef’. I was also very scared, that I was with a woman- I did not know how she is going to treat me. Aurat ko to dar rehta hi hai .. Who helped you when you came to the city initially? That didi (elder sister) who came with me, they have been staying here for a long time What is her name? I do not know .don’t know whether she is Bengali or Bihari They have also come to Delhi from the village Have they been staying here? Yes they have been here since the past four- five years When you acme here for the first time, where did you stay? As soon as I came, I rented a room for myself Do you know anyone else in Delhi? No one except her How did you spend your time when you came here in the beginning? What all questions are you asking me? (laughs)..For Rs700 I had to work throughout the day, I used to leave in the morning around 7 and I used to come back to my children at home only by 7 or 9 in the evening How many children do you have? 2 daughters – Mina Puja, and two sons What about their father? He was also here, he has left some years before What were your initial impressions of the city? I felt very nice, not scared, maje le rahe hain, (I am having fun) I am going around all over the town, and I have become more aware now about the entire Delhi Did you also feel lonely? Very, I used to think “How will I manage, there is no work” Describe the place where you stayed initially? Makaan?, I stayed in the room of a pandit, they were from our village. Although they are a different caste than us, In the village everyone is a brother or a sister . Then I took a room. What else about the room? Makan ko kaise bataein (laughs) Did you have toilets, how many? All of these were big rooms, I stayed there only for few days ..8-10 rooms, five people in about each room, there were two toilets Who helped you in finding that room? The father of the person with whom I was staying initially Did you have to pay anything to them? No bechara (poor fellow) did not take anything from me why should I tell lie about him? Do you still have some loan amount to return back? Of course I still have to return back about 3-4 thousand rupees money Why did you have to take that loan? Because there was no money Have you thought of returning the money? What else, I will have to do mazdoori (labour work) and have to return back that money I will work Do you remember any particular incident that reminds you of the initial years in Delhi? Nothing much happened Do you go to village? I have not gone yet .I want to go very much but I might loose work if I go What is the kind of schedule that you have these days? 5 am I get up in the morning go to toilet leave at around 6, come back at 2 in the afternoon take bath and eat have to go again at 4 in the afternoon for work 6 pm I come back . How many homes do you work in? (Will you kill us after knowing all these details!) Interviewer: if you want I will stop recording if you don’t want to answer I will leave. I am just joking If someone kills me it will be for the better what is the use of my life there is no fun no enjoyment no khana peena in my life? I work in 6 homes What did you do in village? Work on the farm I do not have land of our own if I had, why would I come to die in Delhi? What did you do with the money that you earned? That money used to get spent in proving food for my children. What else? That money was not enough for my children only that is the problem in villages. Even if you work throughout the day, one cannot earn more then 30-40 rupees Did you think that you would work in homes? No one thinks like that majboori .I used to think how will I feed my children .never thought that I would have to work in others homes I knew that I would work when I go to Delhi. What else .should I think that I will steal in Delhi? Why did you choose domestic work? I did not get work anywhere How did you feel initially when you started working? Very bad, it is not good work go to some one else’s house disturbing their privacy you know the husband and the wife may be alone at home ..but we have to we have never done this work and we have to do this after coming here bura to lagega hi (it is natural to feel bad) Did you start immediately working after coming here? 6-7 days after coming to Delhi. Now I don’t mind . I used to work in one house for 6 months and used to get only 600 rupees .I used to work throughout the day ..used to cook food or children (outstation work) Who helped you in getting work? The same Bengali girl, bechari she helped me a lot How much do you earn now? Now I earn upto rupees 2000-2500 How do your employers behave with you? They are very nice people, they never say anything bad never share their problems we work and come back home Do you have to do extra work ever? No, not usually. I get two holidays in a month ..not every Sunday is a holiday ..clothes they give sometimes ..but never money or medicines even the clothes are old Is there something like a testing period with the employers No, there was nothing like that Do they ever threaten that they will sack you off? No nothing like that .. How difficult is it to find this work? Not much difficult .we get work easily Do you face some problems at work? Problems with children ..who will take care of them ..sometimes I fall ill and still have to go to work Who takes care of work when you are away for work? I have to take care of them..one daughter stays at home she takes care of the home some of the things I do before I leave rest of the things she does Even if I have problems what will I do I still have to work .they deduct some money if I have missed some day How do your family and husband think about your working in the homes? Gareeb aadmi ka kya vichaar? We have to work and eat, even if we feel bad, it does not matter How do you spend the money that you earn? I pay rupees 1000 as rent for this room, rest of it is spent in food, clothes everything in same, cannot save anything for more Has anything in your status changed ever since you have started working? Yes, some thing have changed a lot ..(laughs) izzat ho gaye hai .now that I am working bought a house, I have been able to return some debt What are your dreams? My sapna is to stay here, but how will I stay here, you tell me? I want to make a home here . I wish you good luck..thank you very much Theek hai (it is all right) From shivamvij at gmail.com Wed Jul 14 14:05:36 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 14:05:36 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: [stopragging] EXPOSED: The truth about ISB&M - for immediate relese and circulation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Anti Ragging Cell Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 08:14:33 -0000 Subject: [stopragging] EXPOSED: The truth about ISB&M - for immediate relese and circulation To: stopragging at yahoogroups.com Cc: vvdeshmukh at expressindia.com, zubair at reachoutpr.com, pk.gupta at isbm.ac.in Dear friends, You would remember that after an article about our work appeared in the Pune edition of The Indian Express, someone called us to requested us to do something about ragging at the Interntional School of Business and Media, Pune. WE did not make some details of the complaint public to protect the caller's identity, but we are doing so now. The caller had identified himself as Mr Sunil Srivastava, and said that his son was being severely ragged at ISB&M. We asked what was happening? We were told that freshers are kept awake till as late as 2 am, and asked to enact how you will sell condoms and sanitary napkins. Mr Srivastava said tht on that night, 30 June 2004, there was going to be a very harsh ragging session. He said that classes were till 5pm, after which a ragging session continues till 8pm, followed by an interval for dinner, and then freshers are ragged again till late in the morning. We said: Complain to the Director. He said: 'We told the Director but he said this is training for the corporate world. There is no use approaching him again. Please do whatever you can to save my child... Please do something...' He even named a particular ragger: It is not clear whether the name he told us was Tushar Vaishnavi or Vishnoi, but Tushar it was. We told him that the law is on his side. He can approach the police. But he said all that would affect his child's placements as a matter of retribution from seniors and Institute authorities. We told him we'll do what we can. The next morning we called again on the number; it turned out to be a PCO "ten minutes away" from ISB&M. We strongly suspect it was a ragging victim himself pretending to be a parent to protect his identity. We wrote to the authorities at ISB&M Pune, who replied three days later denying that any ragging was taking place at his institute. In the few mails we exchanged with him, he repeatedly wanted to know the name of the complainant. In the last mail he said: " Dear Sachin We have always been and will remain very particular about our students' comfort and well-being. All students are unanimous in stating that they are very happy being at ISB&M, and that they have no complaints whatsoever. Regards PK Gupta " It now appears that Mr Gupta's assertions are white lies. There is no smoke without fire. Appended at the end of this mail is a news report from the Pune Express which will tell you what we mean. The Director did not reply our mail - and he can again claim that he did not recieve it - in which we asked him if ISB&M offers hostel facilities. Mr Pratap K. Gupta, the Director, had also said: "The hysterical, frenzied and frightened tone of the complainant makes me doubt if it was with a malicious intent." The Stop Ragging Campaign lists ISB&M Pune as one of the institutions in its ragging blacklist and appeals all students to think twice before taking admission there. We are writing to the Higher Education Minister and the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, and also trying to get in touch with members of the Board of Governors of ISB&M and appealing them that the Director be relieved of his duties immediately for not complying with the law. Yours sincerely, Sachin Agarwal Team Stop Ragging o o o o o o BJYM, Sena allege ragging, college orders probe The Indian Express / Pune, July 13 http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid='343# Was a girl of a private business school ragged by four of her seniors? The answer to this question seems lost in the din that was created by activists of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) and Shiv Sena student's wing who staged a protest in front of the institution, the International School of Business and Media (ISBM), on Tuesday. While the victim of the alleged ragging remains unidentified — the ISBM management says it has received no complaints — the protesters claim they know her identity but are unwilling to divulge her name. Neither party has lodged a police complaint yet. And to complicate matters further, a private television channel has reportedly gone on air showing footage of the ``victim'' (masked, so as not to reveal the face) speaking about her alleged humiliation. After Tuesday's protest, ISBM has ordered an internal probe, the findings of which will be out on July 16. But whatever the outcome, Tuesday's incident has brought back not-to-distant memories of last year when 26 students of ILS Law College were expelled for indiscipline, read ragging. Unlike ILS, however, the latest incident raises more questions than answers. The BJYM, which has launched an anti-ragging campaign in city colleges, claims the girl was ragged by four seniors (including a girl) early this month while the institute insists it has not received any complaint from any of its 230-odd students. ``We cannot tolerate such acts of indiscipline but somebody has to bring it to our notice,'' P K Gupta, director, ISBM, told Pune Newsline. And though the controversy has been brewing for sometime, it was only after a private TV channel showed the ``victim'' that matters came to a head. The BJYM has since identified four seniors as ``culprits'' and forwarded their names to the ISBM authorities which insists it is still in the dark about the identity of the victim. ``Neither the BJYM is identifying the girl, nor the TV channel is revealing details,'' an ISBM spokesman said. On the contrary, Gupta alleged that the BJYM-Sena protesters resorted to pressure tactics, unruly and abusive behaviour and even slapped one of the three boys during their demo. ``They forced the trio to sign on a note of confession,'' he said, adding that the seniors later gave a written submission to ISBM stating that they were forced to sign a confessional statement. ``We plan to lodge a complaint in this regard with the police,'' Gupta said. WHAT THE LAW SAYS The Maharashtra Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1999, defines ragging as display of disorderly conduct or an act which causes or is likely to cause physical or psychological harm or raise apprehension, fear, shame or embarrassment to a student within or outside an educational institution. This includes, teasing, abusing, threatening, playing practical jokes, causing hurt or asking a student to do any act or perform something, which the student will not, in the ordinary course, willingly do. On receipt of any complaint, the concerned institution has to probe the same within a week and suspend the offender in case of a prima facie establishment of guilt. Besides, it also has to lodge a complaint with the police. Punishment: Two years imprisonment and fine up to Rs 10,000 on conviction. Besides, dismissal from the educational institution for five years. o o o o o o Sign our petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/ragging/petition.html - ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Yahoo! Domains - Claim yours for only $14.70 http://us.click.yahoo.com/Z1wmxD/DREIAA/yQLSAA/1dTolB/TM - --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> The Stop Ragging Campaign: http://www.stopragging.org/ Join the stopragging mailing list by sending a blank mail to stopragging-subscribe at yahoogroups.com OR by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopragging/join Dossier on Ragging in India: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopragging/message/44 Take our survey on ragging: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopragging/message/31 Join the cause, be a volunteer: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopragging/message/45 ================================ Stop Ragging Campaign: http://www.stopragging.org Post Box No. 20, Ram Sagar Mishra Nagar, Lucknow - 16, India Phone: 0 94152 55042 Email: pace4change at yahoo.com ==================================== Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopragging/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: stopragging-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ - -- I poured reason in two wine glasses Raised one above my head And poured it into my life From kalakamra at vsnl.net Wed Jul 14 15:53:41 2004 From: kalakamra at vsnl.net (shaina) Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 15:53:41 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Journal of Aesthetics and Protest #3 Available Now!!! Message-ID: <001801c4698c$a5555f30$528e10ac@susheelanand> From: "jrnl of Aesth.& Protest" > Available Now! > * > #3 issue of The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest > * > www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org > > Available in paperback, > 215 pages of radicality. > Contact us at contact(at)journalofaestheticsandprotest.org to buy a copy ($8.00). > > Also available at: > 331/3 in LA and soon at others stores including Quimby's in Chicago, Bluestockings in New York, ProQM in Berlin and Appeniks in Copenhagan. Or you can order a copy through AK Press. > > The whole issue is also available online for free (with special web-only > content) at www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org. .................................... > > Join us at 33 1/3 bookstore Saturday July 17, 4:30PM (1200 North Alvarado Street in Echo Park) to celebrate the release of the issue before we tumble next door to Machine Project for "Untitled War~. > .................................... > > > A journal for critical culture and active creativity. > > Marginalization (at times still an interesting tactic) is a concept > left-over from a less integrated society. When we call ourselves > activists, artists, cultural workers, journalists; wherever and however > we place ourselves in the culture spectrum- we announce an intention > to change the world. We need to act in ways that meet this challenge by > seriously relating to one another as teammates, not as competitors > standing for our own unique métier, practice, tactic, subculture or > issue. We need to internalize a human resource manager within our > head and deal with teammates as equal yet distinct collaborators. > From the person who scrawls an anti-corporate graffiti slogan on his > school's coca-cola vending machine, to the curator of the Venice > Biennale. When we act otherwise, we cease being relevant or effective. > -From the forward for issue #3 > .................................... > > > Table of Contents > > >Financial Manifesto- Colleen Hennesey > >Dark Matter: Activist Art and the Counter-Public Sphere- Gregory Sholette > >The Pink Bloque-Rachel Caidor and Dara Greenwald > >United Net-Works- Sofie Sweger > >The Manufacture of Dissent- Andrew Boyd and Stephen Duncombe > >Deescalating SUV,s that Run Into Demonstrators- Jene Despain > >Seance in the Dark Theater: Further Notes on the Death of Camp- Malik Gaines > and Alex Segade > >Playin, It Straight: Fighting to Turn NYC into a Patriot Act Free Zone- > Benjamin Shepard > >Office Ops in Williamsburg, NY is innovating its role as property managers- > Kevin Lindamood > >180 Days- Aimee Chang > >Emiliano Zapata: la memoria de la rebeldia- Victor Hugo Sanchez Resendez > >Metaphysics, Protest and the Politics of Spectacular Failure- Colin Dickey > >Uberlinda, The Cardboard and the Fire- Graciala Monteagudo > >May Day- Felicia Luna Lemus > >I Broadcast Therefore I Am: Radio Adventures in Indymedia Cancun- Kate Coyer > >New Languages for New Practices in Argentina- Marina Sitrin and Emilio > Sparato > >Community Centering- Damon Rich > >Contributions to a Resistant Visual Culture Glossary- Nato Thompson > >Deserting the Culture Bunker- John Jordan > >Hamburg Actions: A field Guide- Ava Bromberg and Brett Bloom > >Deluding Language- Delusional Art: Crypto Political Aesthetics with Katie > >Grinnan- Robby Herbst > >Flash! Like Gossip!- Marc Herbst > > > > Art Project contributions by; > > >Jane Tsong, Robert Powers > >Matias Viegener, David Burns, Austin Young, > >Pocho Research Society, > >Jennifer Murphy, Stream Spirit Rising > > > Web only Content; > > >General Introduction to Collectivity in Modern Art- Alan Moore > >Aesthetic and Political Avant-Gardes- George Katsiaficas > >CIRCA: The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army- Larry M Bogad > > .................................... > > > > The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest is a Los Angeles (USA) based magazine. > The Los Angeles Editorial Collective includes: > > -Cara Baldwin, Marc Herbst, Robby Herbst, Lize Mogel, Christina Ulke, Kimberly > Varella. > > Corresponding editors are Pod (SF), Trevor Paglen (SF), Daniel Tucker (Chicago), Emily Forman(Chicago), Greg Berger (Cuernavaca), Sara Lewison (Nomadic), Redmond Entwistle (London). > > > > -- > To unsubscribe from: jrnl of Aesth.& Protest, just follow this link: > > http://www.c-level.cc/dada/mail.cgi?f=u&l=jap&e=kalakamra at vsnl.net&p=7778686 > > Click this link, or copy and paste the address into your browser. From ravikant at sarai.net Wed Jul 14 08:48:40 2004 From: ravikant at sarai.net (Ravikant) Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 08:48:40 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Iraqi academics targeted Message-ID: <200407140848.40183.ravikant@sarai.net> This is a forward from avinash at sarai dot net Ravikant Any guess who is doing this? http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=540648 Iraqi academics targeted in murder spree By Robert Fisk in Baghdad 14 July 2004 The Mongols stained the Tigris black with the ink of the Iraqi books they destroyed. Today's Mongols prefer to destroy the Iraqi teachers of books. Since the Anglo-American invasion, they have murdered at least 13 academics at the University of Baghdad alone and countless others across Iraq. History professors, deans of college and Arabic tutors have all fallen victim to the war on learning. Only six weeks ago - virtually unreported, of course - the female dean of the college of law in Mosul was beheaded in her bed, along with her husband. Just who the modern-day Mongols are remains a painful mystery of our story. Disgruntled students they are not. Baathist-hunters some of them might be - all heads of academic departments were forced to join Saddam's party - but none of the murdered Baghdad university staff were believed to be anything more than card-carriers. Even the former president of the university, Dr Mohamed Arawi - a surgeon shot at his clinic a year ago - was regarded as a liberal, humane man. But professors now watch the doors of their lecture theatres as carefully as they do their students. And who can blame them? After all, Dr Sabri al-Bayatiy of the department of geography was shot dead only a month ago, just outside the arts department, in front of many of his students. "He was gunned down just over there by the wall," one of his colleagues told me yesterday. "Many students saw his killer but they could do nothing. Two bullets. That's all." Talk to the academics at Baghdad University, and the names roll out. Dr Nafa Aboud of the department of Arabic was murdered just two months ago. Dr Hissam Sharif of the department of history was sitting at the door of his Baghdad home when the killers came, shooting him and two friends. Dr Falah al-Dulaimi, assistant dean of college at Mustansariya University in Baghdad, was shot in his college office last year. "What can we do?" Saad Hassani of Baghdad University's English department asked me. "Just a month ago, my son Ali - a student in our biology department - was kidnapped. He walked outside the campus on a hot day, took a taxi and the driver offered him a drink of cold water. Then he lost consciousness. When he came to he was in a dark room, blindfolded, and they beat him and tortured him with electricity. "Then he heard two groups of men arguing, one lot saying, 'You've got the wrong one'. They threw him out of a car beside a road. But at least they didn't kill him. He will not leave his home now. He flunked his exams. What am I to think?" Other university staff suspect that there is a campaign to strip Iraq of its academics, to complete the destruction of Iraq's cultural identity which began with the destruction of the Baghdad Koranic library, the national archives and the looting of the archaeological museum when the American army entered Baghdad. "Maybe the Kuwaitis want to take their revenge for what we did to them in 1991," a lecturer said. "Maybe the Israelis are trying to make sure that we can never have an intellectual infrastructure here. "Yes, you suggest it could be the 'resistance'. But what is the 'resistance'? We don't know who it is. Is it nationalist? Why should they want to get rid of us? Is it religious? The arts department has become a pulpit for Islamism. But these people are part of the university." In the southern city of Nasiriyah, many departmental heads have received threatening letters, ordering them to leave Iraq. At least one professor in the university has been murdered. The dean of the college of law in Mosul, murdered last month, was the most gruesome killing. "She was in bed with her husband when they came for her," a Baghdad colleague told me yesterday. "They coolly shot both of them in their bed. Then they cut off both their heads with knives." Both arts and science faculty members have been victims. Dr Abdul-Latif al-Maya was working in urban planning in the Baghdad University geography department when he was killed at his home. Professor Wajih Mahjoub was murdered in the College of Physical Education in April last year as US troops were entering Baghdad. "Dr Arawi told me only two days before he was murdered that he had nothing to fear," a friend of his recalled yesterday. "He said, 'I never hurt anyone. Everyone respects me.' On the day of his death, the killers came claiming to be patients. They shot him in his surgery." In the early weeks of his occupation proconsulship, Paul Bremer fired all senior academics who were members of the Baath party. "They went home and tried to leave the country," another Baghdad arts professor complained. "But those who stayed are now mostly too frightened to return because they have been named - and they fear for their lives." Yesterday morning, I visited one arts department at the university to find it entirely empty of staff. Each teacher's room was closed with a large padlock.    14 July 2004 11:52 From definetime at rediffmail.com Wed Jul 14 20:11:59 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 14 Jul 2004 14:41:59 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) Biased coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict Message-ID: <20040714144159.6388.qmail@webmail27.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040714/94c0e740/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   What you get in 20 seconds Television coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict tends to reflect Israeli perspectives, while leaving most viewers alarmingly ill-informed Greg Philo Wednesday July 14, 2004 The Guardian Television news is the main source of information on the Israel-Palestine conflict for about 80% of the population. Yet the quality of what they see and hear is so confused and partial that it is impossible to have a sensible public debate about the reasons for the conflict or how it might be resolved. This is the conclusion of exhaustive research by the Glasgow University Media Group, which brought journalists, academics and ordinary viewers together to study the influence of news on public understanding. More than 800 people were interviewed and researchers examined around 200 news programmes. Senior journalists told researchers that they were instructed not to give explanations - the focus was to be on live action. As Paul Adams, the BBC defence correspondent, put it: "It's covered as if it's a very large blood feud and, unless there's a large amount of blood, it's not covered." George Alagiah stressed a belief in the BBC that the attention span of viewers is about 20 seconds. The result of this approach is that there is almost nothing on the news about the history or origins of the conflict and viewers are extraordinarily confused. Many believed that the Palestinians were occupying the occupied territories or that it was basically a border dispute between two countries who were trying to grab a piece of land which separated them. The great bulk of those we interviewed had no idea where the Palestinian refugees had come from - some suggested Afghanistan, Iraq or Kosovo. Without history or context, news reports tend to focus on day to day events and, in reporting these, there is a strong emphasis on Israeli perspectives. The research found that Israelis were interviewed or reported more than twice as much as Palestinians. There were also a large number of statements from US politicians who tend to support Israel. They were interviewed twice as much as politicians from Britain. The language of the "war on terror" is frequently featured and journalists sometimes endorse it in their own speech, as in this example: "That attack [by a Palestinian] only reinforced Israeli determination to drive further into the towns and camps where Palestinians live - ripping up roads around Bethlehem as part of the ongoing fight against terror". (ITV, early evening news in March 2002). This report also illustrates a familiar theme in news coverage whereby the Palestinians are seen to initiate trouble and the Israelis are then presented as "responding". There are very distinct and different perspectives on this conflict which should be represented on the news. The Israeli authorities and much of the Israeli population see the issue in terms of their security and the survival of the state in the face of threats from terrorists and hostile neighbours. They present their own actions as a retaliation to attacks. The Palestinians see themselves as resisting a brutal military occupation by people who have taken their land, water and homes and who are denying them the possibility of their own state. The analysis of news content suggests that the first of these perspectives tends to dominate news reporting. Between October and December 2001, for example, on BBC1 and ITV news, Israelis were said to be responding to what had been done to them about six times as often as the Palestinians. This pattern of reporting clearly influenced how some viewers understood the conflict. As one young woman put it: "You always think of the Palestinians as being really aggressive because of the stories you hear on the news ... I always think the Israelis are fighting back." There were also differences in the language used for the casualties of both sides. Words such as "mass murder", "atrocity", and "brutal murder", were used to describe the deaths of Israelis, but not Palestinians. The emphasis on the deaths of Israelis was very marked in the coverage. In March 2002, when the BBC noted that the Palestinians had suffered the highest number of casualties in any single week since the beginning of the intifada, there was actually more coverage on the news of Israeli deaths. This again apparently had a strong influence on the understanding of viewers and only a minority questioned knew that Palestinians had substantially higher casualties. The gaps in public knowledge closely parallel those in the news. The Palestinian perspective, that they have lost their land and are living under occupation, was effectively absent. It is perhaps not surprising that some viewers believed that they were simply being aggressive and trying to take land from the Israelis. Claims by Andrew Neil in a recent criticism of our work that people "naturally" sympathise with the Palestinians because they use stones against tanks is not borne out by the research. One of the difficulties in giving historical background is simply that the area is contested and controversial. Journalists spoke to us of the pressures they were under and of the hate mail they received, particularly if their reports were deemed to be critical of Israel. Lindsey Hilsum commented: "With a conflict like this nearly every single fact is disputed ... I have to say what both sides think, and sometimes I think that stops us from giving the background." TV journalists are caught in a maelstrom of competing accounts, but they cannot turn away from their duty to inform and explain. There are serious issues raised by a news service which leaves so many people confused and ill-informed. · Bad News From Israel by Greg Philo and Mike Berry is published by Pluto www.gla.ac.uk/Acad/Sociology/media.html From definetime at rediffmail.com Thu Jul 15 12:37:29 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 15 Jul 2004 07:07:29 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd)The envoy who said too much Message-ID: <20040715070729.28097.qmail@webmail27.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040715/eb2687be/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   The envoy who said too much One minute he was Our Man in Tashkent, the next he was a major embarrassment for the Foreign Office. Craig Murray, ambassador to Uzbekistan, talks to Nick Paton Walsh about his turbulent year Thursday July 15, 2004 The Guardian Six hours after Jamal Mirsaidov met with the British ambassador, the limp and mutilated corpse of his grandson was dumped on his doorstep. The body was battered and one arm appeared to have been immersed in boiling fluid until the skin had begun to peel off. Mirsaidov is a literature professor in the ancient city of Samarkand. His mistake had been to write a letter to Tony Blair and George Bush alerting them to the daily torture meted out to dissidents in Uzbekistan, their new ally in the war on terror. Mirsaidov and the ambassador, Craig Murray, doubt the letter was ever delivered but Murray ensured his message was. And though the local prosecutor concluded that the 18-year-old had died of a drug overdose, Murray is convinced he paid the ultimate price for his grandfather's dissent. "The professor has no doubt at all that his grandson was murdered in response to my visit. I wrestle with my conscience greatly over whether I caused that boy's horrible death." Murray has paid a more direct price for his decision to step out of the bubble of isolation and immunity in which most diplomats live and challenge such abuses. His distinctly undiplomatic assessment of Uzbekistan's human rights record propelled him into a lengthy battle with the Foreign Office. He was subjected to a humiliating disciplinary investigation, had his personal life publicly shredded and suffered a string of health problems. He became the rogue ambassador. Not so much Our Man in Tashkent as Our Uzbekistan Problem. Last weekend, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian and Channel 4 News, he spoke for the first time about his turbulent year. "I had a period under psychiatric care as an in-patient for depression last autumn. I've gone through the break-up of my marriage. In November, I suffered a pulmonary embolism and very nearly died. It is most unlikely that I will be an ambassador again after I leave [my post here], I think for the very reason you are interviewing me now. An aura of controversy is not one that is useful to the diplomatic corps." Twelve months ago Murray was a British ambassador in a place few people had heard of, with an eccentric collection of Wallace and Gromit and Dennis the Menace ties, and some unconventional views. He had arrived in Tashkent - at 43 one of Britain's youngest ambassadors - after a distinguished spell in Africa where he helped expose the Sandline affair and broker a peace deal in Sierra Leone. He had turned down three honours from the Queen for his work, considering letters after his name "not his thing". He liked a drink in some of the capital's vibrant - and sometimes lascivious - bars, but it was his attitude to the Uzbekistan regime's slim grasp of human rights that marked him out from fellow diplomats. Murray was determined not to let the regime's abuses be drowned out by the country's newfound strategic importance. Uzbekistan had allowed the Pentagon to hire a vital military base in the southern town of Kharshi to aid the hunt for Osama bin Laden in neighbouring Afghanistan. In return, Tashkent got about half a billion dollars in aid a year. Some of the aid itself highlighted American double standards. In 2002, $79 million went to the Uzbekistani security forces and law enforcement (in 2002, the US aid budget to Uzbekistan was $220 million in total) - the same people whom the State Department accused of "using torture as a routine investigation technique". Murray has plenty of first-hand evidence of the Uzbekistani's "routine methods". Sitting in the plush living room of his ambassadorial residence, he tells me: "People come to me very often after being tortured. Normally this includes homosexual and heterosexual rape of close relatives in front of the victim; rape with objects such as broken bottles; asphyxiation; pulling out of fingernails; smashing of limbs with blunt objects; and use of boiling liquids including complete immersion of the body. This is not uncommon. Thousands of people a year suffer from this torture at the hands of the authorities." As Murray saw apparently innocent Muslims being sentenced to death after confessions extracted by torture and show trials, he became furious at the "conspiracy of silence" practised by his fellow diplomats. "I tried to find out whether anyone had made a policy decision to [say nothing]", he says. "But certainly within the British government no minister had ever said such a thing. I was determined to blow the lid on [the conspiracy of silence]." In October 2002, Murray made a speech to his fellow diplomats and Uzbekistani officials at a human rights conference in Tashkent in which he became the first western official for four years to state publicly that "Uzbekistan is not a functioning democracy", and to highlight the "prevalence of torture in Uzbekistani prisons" in a system where "brutality is inherent". Highlighting a case in which two men were boiled to death, he added: "All of us know that this is not an isolated incident." The Foreign Office cleared the speech, but not without an acrimonious struggle over its content. During the dispute he panned one of his superiors in the FCO's eastern department, for questioning whether the number of political prisoners in Uzbekistan had increased. According to a British official familiar with the correspondence, he wrote: "I understand that you might find this fact politically inconvenient. If you wish me to omit it, then say so. But don't pretend it isn't true." He attacked his superior for his "sadly cautious and above all completely unimaginative" censures, and attacked the "classic public school and Oxbridge influenced FCO house style", as "ponderous, self-important and ineffective". The speech began to take on a life of its own. Kofi Annan raised its contents during a meeting with Uzbekistani president Islam Karimov. It became a serious thorn in Tashkent's - and Washington's - side. Murray's confrontational style pressed it further into the flesh. In the build-up to the Iraq war, he could not contain his fury at the "double standards" being practised by Washington. He wrote to his superiors in London on the day in which he watched Bush talk of "dismantling the apparatus of terror" and "removing the torture and rape rooms" in Iraq, pointing out that "when it comes to the Karimov regime, systematic torture and rape appear to be treated as peccadilloes, not to effect the relationship and to be downplayed in the international fora ... I hope that once the present crisis is over we will make plain to the US, at senior level, our serious concern over their policy in Uzbekistan." The email got him called back to London for a carpeting on March 8. In that same tense month, his personal life became more complicated when he met Nadira Alieva, an attractive, 23-year-old English teacher with a passion for the dancefloor, in a Tashkent bar. They soon began an affair. Over the coming months, another, quite unrelated, drama unfolded in the embassy. Chris Hirst, the embassy's third secretary, was accused by the local authorities of attacking local Uzbekistanis on the capital's streets often accompanied by his baseball bat and rottweiler. The authorities had been pushed into making formal complaints against Hirst. While he was out of town, a complaint got through to Murray and he had him immediately sent back to London. Subsequently Hirst resigned. Life quietened down over the next few months until Murray was about to go on holiday in July. While the ambassador was in the FCO's King Charles Street headquarters, en route to Canada, one of his locally hired staff rang to say she and several others had been fired on orders from London. Murray stormed around the FCO, outraged, and they were reinstated before he flew out. Yet three weeks into his break, he received an email from London calling him back. On August 21, he sat in an office as the personnel department outlined 18 disciplinary charges. Most were not supported by any evidence and others were petty. He was accused of "hiring dolly birds for above the usual rate" to work in the visa department, which had, he insists, an all-male staff. Yet he was also accused of having sex in his office with local girls in exchange for visas to the UK. The FCO said he had a week in which to resign. He was not allowed to discuss the charges with anyone or he would face prosecution - and maybe jail - under the Official Secrets Act. Bemused by where these accusations had come from, he slowly began to unravel at the Kafka-esque ultimatum before him. On September 2 he had a breakdown, collapsing while having a medical check in Tashkent. He was flown back to London and put on suicide watch in St Thomas's hospital. He told friends he had lost the use of his muscles. He said he felt powerful people were concocting allegations against him and he was not even allowed to call witnesses to defend himself. Murray refused to resign, and the pressure continued. In September, the FCO sent out a senior official, Tony Crombie, who was instructed to interview only staff in the Tashkent embassy as part of an investigation into the charges. Some staff dismissed the charges as nonsense, while others provided meagre support for claims that Murray had at times appeared a little "worse for wear" in the mornings. Crombie returned to London saying there was no case to answer over 16 of the 18 charges. Crombie said there was information that might require two of the charges to be investigated - that he was "drunk at work" and had misused the embassy Range Rover. Murray was allowed to return to Tashkent after extensive health checks, and the Foreign Office continued to deny there was any investigation. Yet once he arrived home after his six-hour business-class flight, he began to feel severe back pains. Forty-eight hours later, he was air ambulanced out of Tashkent with a serious pulmonary embolism in his lung. Again he found himself in St Thomas's Hospital, having narrowly escaped death. In January, once his health was restored, Murray was officially exonerated by the Foreign Office. Yet was told he was guilty of telling other people about the case, and got a written warning. "It was basically a warning saying, 'Step out of line again and you will be sacked,'" says a source who saw it. But Murray's troubles were not over yet. In February, the Mail on Sunday revealed his relationship with Alieva. Fiona, his wife, who friends say was aware of the affair, could not stomach the public humiliation and left Tashkent. She is now separated from Murray, and has taken his 10-year-old daughter, Emily, with her back to London. Today, Murray lives alone, bar visits from Alieva, in a small but palatial residence in Tashkent. His many bedrooms are empty and his pool largely unused - Murray can't swim. The crackle of his guards' walkie-talkies occasionally interrupts the polite trickle of the garden's water feature. It is a lonely end to a once promising, if unexpected, career. "I had always wanted to be a whisky salesman," says Murray. Yet, in 1984, he sat the civil service entrance exams, which he passed with flying colours. In Africa, he befriended Kofi Annan, and the state-school educated, Dundee University graduate, rose rapidly in the Foreign Office. Twenty years later, his disillusionment is complete, the Foreign Office having refused his request to stay on another year, and asking him to leave Tashkent in November 2005 as scheduled. He believes a paper-shuffling job in the bowels of King Charles Street awaits. "I think obviously on a purely human level," he says, "if something like this happens to anyone inside an organisation that you've worked in for 20 years, you're never going to feel the same trust." Murray is in no doubt, friends say, that the FCO investigation was aimed at discrediting him because of the unwanted attention his public comments was bringing to Uzbekistani human-rights abuses. Recipients of US aid have to have their human-rights record vetted by the State Department before they can receive funding. Murray's comments were highlighting medieval abuses the US wanted to turn a blind eye to. Things have changed since Murray's first poked his head above the diplomatic parapet: on Tuesday the US State Department declared that Uzbekistan's human rights record meant it could no longer be certified as fit to receive aid. Murray says he has begun to fear for his own safety. He says he would like bullet-proof glass for his home's windows, but the FCO has yet to find the funds for this. At the same time, he receives regular security warnings from London about specific threats to his life. "I'm not thinking a sniper is going to get us at any minute," he says, "but in this part of the world there is nowhere you are safe from threats." Asked to respond to this article, the FCO declined to comment on the personal circumstances of its staff, or security matters. Nevertheless his work - a sort of diplomatic outreach service - goes on, driven by what Murray calls "a deep personal commitment". He has turned down a lucrative human rights job in New York because he does not want to desert people who he believes rely on his presence for protection. One of them is Alieva, who was rounded up by the police in the days after a series of bombings and shootings in March which were blamed on al-Qaida. Her alleged involvement in the blasts seems laughable, given she is a 23-year-old with a greater affinity to Beyoncé than Bin Laden. Yet she claims the police beat her and threatened to rape her, trying to extort money for her release. Alieva says she was spared only by a phonecall to Murray. "She was on crutches for a fortnight," Murray says. "I am just glad I managed to get there before anything worse could have happened. Her safety is one of my biggest worries." Murray describes the Uzbekistan regime as "kleptocratic". Tashkent has begun shutting down private businesses, ensuring all economic activity - from the cotton picked by child labour to the gold mines - lines the presidential elite's pockets. The borders have been closed. Import duty is at 70%. In a bid to suppress inflation and prevent businesses growing, the government has stopped printing money, made it illegal to buy things with dollars, and limited the amount of the local currency in circulation. British American Tobacco, the largest foreign employer in the country, cannot find enough sums to pay its staff and is apparently considering withdrawing from the country. The refuge for survivors of self-immolation in Samarkand testifies to the extremes of despair Uzbekistan's poverty inspires. It provides emergency burns treatments and a place to hide while the wounds heal. Most of its 130 clients last year were women subjected to domestic violence and rape, often at the hands of their new in-laws. Others were escapees or deportees from the slave trade to Russia, the Middle East and South East Asia. I accompany Murray as he hands the director $1,000 in British Embassy cash as an FCO donation to keep the shelter running. "It's very hard to imagine being so desperate to want to kill yourself in that way," he says. "For these women it's the end of the world, and there is nothing left for them." The FCO insists Murray represents its point of view, yet is remarkably nervous about this interview, contacting Murray and myself several times on the day before we meet. Its concern is understandable: Murray is not discreet. As he himself admits: "There is no point in having cocktail-party relationships with a fascist regime." He says he advocates a new style of ambassadorship, one that is more down to earth and less stuffy. "You don't have to be a pompous old fart to be an ambassador." Yet this lack of discretion also applies to his personal life. Murray's great sin, in the eyes of the FCO, may be that he chose to live the life of a typical expat in the former Soviet Union. He is an unashamed socialiser, almost keen to let me know that he cares little how much I see of his colourful personal life. On Friday night, he takes me to the Rande-vue bar beneath one of Samarkand's hotels. We begin in the Bohar restaurant, where a series of dancing girls in traditional costume, then in cowboy outfits, parade on stage, while Murray drinks a couple of neat whiskies. Then we move on to the Jazz Bar in the Meridian hotel, where workers for Halliburton, servicing the US base at Kharshi come to unwind in the company of local girls. "I joined the Foreign Office, not a monastery," Murray explains. "I have no intention of living like a monk - not that I have anything against monks. It has been put to me that this is perhaps not what ambassadors do..." At the Foreign Office there are some who feel Murray should have drawn a line under his battle with London, quietly returning to work, stiff upper lip intact. One FCO official suggested in his correspondence with Murray, that the ambassador should have just called the abuses "horrid", sat down, and then towed the line. Murray replied: "As you may know I have a slight speech impediment and cannot call anything 'howwid'." From sappho1999 at rediffmail.com Thu Jul 15 11:59:57 2004 From: sappho1999 at rediffmail.com (Sappho for Equality) Date: 15 Jul 2004 06:29:57 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Sappho, the poetess of Lesbos to Sappho, Kolkata (Calcutta)- 5th Posting Message-ID: <20040715062957.18362.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040715/3992b569/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   ACTIVITIES & ORGANIZATIONAL GROWTH Deriving its name from the legendary character of ancient Greek literature, Sappho is a support group for lesbian, bisexual and transgender women. With its base in Kolkata, West Bengal, it is the only group of its kind in the whole of eastern India. Founded on 20th June 1999 on the initiative of just one lesbian couple wanting to find a space for social interaction without needing to conceal their sexual preference and their real relationship, today Sappho has more than 50 regular members. and provides safe space for many more through its helpline, email service and website information. The primary goal of the organization was to provide safe space for women with same sex preference but gradually it moved into a rights oriented movement to fight discrimination and hatred against marginalized women with same sex preference so that free, fair and fearless life does not remain a utopia. SAPPHO IS COMITTED TO: 1.Creating a safe space for women with same-sex preference, irrespective of their economic background, caste, class, religion and language differences. 2.Reaching out to more community sisters. 3.Providing legal and health care services to the members as and when required. 4.Highlighting issues of sexual preference and autonomy within the broad spectrum of Human Rights. 5.Providing information services to the larger society to create public awareness in India on lesbianism. 6.Providing library and information services to community sisters and the larger society for increasing understanding about homosexuality. 7.Networking amongst LGBT groups in India & abroad. 8.Building up referral network with other NGOs working on women issues. 9.Publicizing our issues through the media and publication. WHAT WE HAVE ACHIEVED SO FAR: 1.Participation in a five day Human Rights Film and Cartoon Festival in March 2000, organized by the British Council, Kolkata, it had one day devoted to Gay and Lesbian Rights. 2.Conducted a two-day workshop in collaboration with Sangini, New Delhi, on Counseling in June 2000. 3.Organized a Seminar and Film Festival entitled "Breaking the Silence" in collaboration with the British Council, Kolkata in June, 2000. 4.Became member of Maitree, a network of West Bengal-based women’s organizations, NGOs and activists, in July 2000, to make our presence felt in the social development world. 5.Participated in the National Conference on Human Rights at Panchgani in December 2000, organized by the India Centre for Human Rights and Law, Mumbai, India. 6.Introduced the Sappho Helpline (033 2281 3462, Mondays, 1-3 pm) in January 2001, with the support of Sappho’s referral network. 7.Organized a Seminar entitled "Creating Ripples" in collaboration with the British Council, Kolkata in March, 2001. 8.Became the first organization in India to participate with its own banner and declared stance in the International Women’s Day programme, organized by Maitree in March 2001. 9.Conducted a two-day workshop in collaboration with Sangini, New Delhi, on Safer Sex in May 2002. 10.Independently organized a Seminar entitled "Lesbianism : Facts & Fictions" in December 2002. 11.Organized a joint program with Diksha and Pratyay, which consisted of cultural performances, poster exhibition and a panel discussion titled as "Any Movement for Rights to Sexual Preferences is Unnecessary" in June 2003. 12.Started its counseling service in December 2003 with the voluntary help of an eminent psychiatrist. At present it is mainly targeted for the group members who face a lot of adverse and depressing situations for their sexual orientation, Sappho strongly believes that in near future this service can be extended to interested parents, and other family members too. 13.Formed an extended support group Sappho For Equality, where anyone who supports our cause can join irrespective of gender and sexual orientation in December 2003. 14.Brought out its first issue of biannual newsletter "Swakanthey, In Her Own Voice" in January 2004 on the event of Kolkata Book Fair. 15.Presented "Beyond Whispers", a public programme on 15th February 2004 with the screening of "Ushna Tar Janya", a film raising questions on sexual identities followed by a panel discussion on issues related to sexual identities, marginalization and social inacceptance. The panelists included Pramada Menon (Director, Programme , CREA, New Delhi), Kaushik Ganguly, the director of the telefilm and the two lead performers - Rupa Ganguly, an eminent film actress and Chapal Bhaduri, a well-known stage performer in women roles. Dr. Amit Ranjan Basu, an independent researcher on sexuality and mental health, moderated the discussion. At the question answer session a deluge of interesting questions poured in from the audience. The questions came from a varied cross section of the society. From nc-agricowi at netcologne.de Thu Jul 15 12:39:31 2004 From: nc-agricowi at netcologne.de (Cinematheque at MediaCentre) Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 09:09:31 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] VideoChannel:// call for entries Message-ID: <003c01c46a3a$ad761160$0300a8c0@NewMediaArtNet> VideoChannel a common project environment of --> Cinematheque at MediaCentre www.le-musee-divisioniste.org and [R][R][F]2004--->XP www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/ . invites video artists for participating and submitting proposals of video works . Subject: "Memory & identity" and/or "Violence" Running time: minimum 1 minute - maximum 10 minutes Dimensions: 320x240 pixels extended deadline: 30 October 2004. . Following digital formats are accepted--> URL, in case the work is posted online or for download--> mpeg, Quicktime (.mov) with DiVX compression (.avi), Real Video (rm) Windows Media (.wmf), Flash video (.swf). . Due to the optionally large size of the videos, please do not attache any video work to the submission, but make the media file available for download from your server. . Only works combining an excellent artistic expression with an excellent image quality will be selected. . Please use this form for submitting: ******************* 1.name of artist, email address, URL 2. short biography/CV (not more than 300 words) 3. 1 work only -->title, year of production, running time a) URL of the posted work online or b) URL from where the media file can be downloaded 4. short work description (not more than 300 words each) . The artists or owners of the video works will keep all rights on their submitted works . Confirmation/authorization: The submitter declares and confirms that he/she is holding all author's rights and gives permission to include the submitted work in "VideoChannel" online environment until revoke. Signed by (submitter) Please send the complete submission to mediacentre at le-musee-divisioniste.org subject: Video Channel . deadline 30 October . The video submissions to this call will be launched on occasion of the physical installation during 404 New Media Art Festival Rosario/Argentina which will take place in December 2004. . ********************************** As part of the global networking project [R][R][F]2004--->XP www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/ . VideoChannel will collect during the coming months a) curatorial contributions of video works from many countries on the globe b) video works of individual artists which are based on the subjects "memory & and identity" and "violence" . VideoChannel is that "Memory Channel" within [R][R][F]2004--->XP, which is always installed sepearately in all physical installations, all accepted videos will be screened in physical space . [R][R][F]2004--->XP will be developing and operating through 2006. . ***************************** Cinematheque at Media Centre www.le-musee-divisioniste.org/mediacentre/ and [R][R][F] 2004--->XP www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004 the progressive project environment in the framework of A Virtual Memorial www.a-virtual-memorial.org . are corporate members of [NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]:||cologne the experimental platform for netbased art -->founded, directed and curated by Agricola de Cologne. . Copyright 2000-2004. All rights reserved. ******************************* _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From definetime at rediffmail.com Thu Jul 15 22:08:46 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 15 Jul 2004 16:38:46 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) A cloud over civilisation Message-ID: <20040715163846.6094.qmail@webmail32.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040715/02e84672/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   A cloud over civilisation Corporate power is the driving force behind US foreign policy - and the slaughter in Iraq JK Galbraith Thursday July 15, 2004 The Guardian At the end of the second world war, I was the director for overall effects of the United States strategic bombing survey - Usbus, as it was known. I led a large professional economic staff in assessment of the industrial and military effects of the bombing of Germany. The strategic bombing of German industry, transportation and cities, was gravely disappointing. Attacks on factories that made such seemingly crucial components as ball bearings, and even attacks on aircraft plants, were sadly useless. With plant and machinery relocation and more determined management, fighter aircraft production actually increased in early 1944 after major bombing. In the cities, the random cruelty and death inflicted from the sky had no appreciable effect on war production or the war. These findings were vigorously resisted by the Allied armed services - especially, needless to say, the air command, even though they were the work of the most capable scholars and were supported by German industry officials and impeccable German statistics, as well as by the director of German arms production, Albert Speer. All our conclusions were cast aside. The air command's public and academic allies united to arrest my appointment to a Harvard professorship and succeeded in doing so for a year. Nor is this all. The greatest military misadventure in American history until Iraq was the war in Vietnam. When I was sent there on a fact-finding mission in the early 60s, I had a full view of the military dominance of foreign policy, a dominance that has now extended to the replacement of the presumed civilian authority. In India, where I was ambassador, in Washington, where I had access to President Kennedy, and in Saigon, I developed a strongly negative view of the conflict. Later, I encouraged the anti-war campaign of Eugene McCarthy in 1968. His candidacy was first announced in our house in Cambridge. Advertiser links Travel Internationally by Volunteering Experience a country from a whole new perspective by signing... crossculturalsolutions.org Volunteer at Armycadets.com One of the largest youth organisations in the UK supported... armycadets.com The Queen's Award for Voluntary Service To celebrate her Golden Jubilee, the Queen announced an... queensawardvoluntary.gov.uk At this time the military establishment in Washington was in support of the war. Indeed, it was taken for granted that both the armed services and the weapons industries should accept and endorse hostilities - Dwight Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex". In 2003, close to half the total US government discretionary expenditure was used for military purposes. A large part was for weapons procurement or development. Nuclear-powered submarines run to billions of dollars, individual planes to tens of millions each. Such expenditure is not the result of detached analysis. From the relevant industrial firms come proposed designs for new weapons, and to them are awarded production and profit. In an impressive flow of influence and command, the weapons industry accords valued employment, management pay and profit in its political constituency, and indirectly it is a treasured source of political funds. The gratitude and the promise of political help go to Washington and to the defence budget. And to foreign policy or, as in Vietnam and Iraq, to war. That the private sector moves to a dominant public-sector role is apparent. None will doubt that the modern corporation is a dominant force in the present-day economy. Once in the US there were capitalists. Steel by Carnegie, oil by Rockefeller, tobacco by Duke, railroads variously and often incompetently controlled by the moneyed few. In its market position and political influence, modern corporate management, unlike the capitalist, has public acceptance. A dominant role in the military establishment, in public finance and the environment is assumed. Other public authority is also taken for granted. Adverse social flaws and their effect do, however, require attention. One, as just observed, is the way the corporate power has shaped the public purpose to its own needs. It ordains that social success is more automobiles, more television sets, a greater volume of all other consumer goods - and more lethal weaponry. Negative social effects - pollution, destruction of the landscape, the unprotected health of the citizenry, the threat of military action and death - do not count as such. The corporate appropriation of public initiative and authority is unpleasantly visible in its effect on the environment, and dangerous as regards military and foreign policy. Wars are a major threat to civilised existence, and a corporate commitment to weapons procurement and use nurtures this threat. It accords legitimacy, and even heroic virtue, to devastation and death. Power in the modern great corporation belongs to the management. The board of directors is an amiable entity, meeting with self-approval but fully subordinate to the real power of the managers. The relationship resembles that of an honorary degree recipient to a member of a university faculty. The myths of investor authority, the ritual meetings of directors and the annual stockholder meeting persist, but no mentally viable observer of the modern corporation can escape the reality. Corporate power lies with management - a bureaucracy in control of its task and its compensation. Rewards can verge on larceny. On frequent recent occasions, it has been referred to as the corporate scandal. As the corporate interest moves to power in what was the public sector, it serves the corporate interest. It is most clearly evident in the largest such movement, that of nominally private firms into the defence establishment. From this comes a primary influence on the military budget, on foreign policy, military commitment and, ultimately, military action. War. Although this is a normal and expected use of money and its power, the full effect is disguised by almost all conventional expression. Given its authority in the modern corporation it was natural that management would extend its role to politics and to government. Once there was the public reach of capitalism; now it is that of corporate management. In the US, corporate managers are in close alliance with the president, the vice-president and the secretary of defence. Major corporate figures are also in senior positions elsewhere in the federal government; one came from the bankrupt and thieving Enron to preside over the army. Defence and weapons development are motivating forces in foreign policy. For some years, there has also been recognised corporate control of the Treasury. And of environmental policy. We cherish the progress in civilisation since biblical times and long before. But there is a needed and, indeed, accepted qualification. The US and Britain are in the bitter aftermath of a war in Iraq. We are accepting programmed death for the young and random slaughter for men and women of all ages. So it was in the first and second world wars, and is still so in Iraq. Civilised life, as it is called, is a great white tower celebrating human achievements, but at the top there is permanently a large black cloud. Human progress dominated by unimaginable cruelty and death. Civilisation has made great strides over the centuries in science, healthcare, the arts and most, if not all, economic well-being. But it has also given a privileged position to the development of weapons and the threat and reality of war. Mass slaughter has become the ultimate civilised achievement. The facts of war are inescapable - death and random cruelty, suspension of civilised values, a disordered aftermath. Thus the human condition and prospect as now supremely evident. The economic and social problems here described can, with thought and action, be addressed. So they have already been. War remains the decisive human failure. · This is an edited extract from The Economics of Innocent Fraud: Truth for Our Time, by JK Galbraith, published by Allen From dak at sarai.net Fri Jul 16 12:39:46 2004 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 12:39:46 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Discussion on Knowledge and Democracy Message-ID: <200407161239.46896.dak@sarai.net> Dear friends, Some of us have felt the necessity of developing an understanding of the contemporary transformations in creation, organisation and communication of knowledge. We think that a productive way of developing this understanding is through dialogues with the diverse way of living, thinking and working with knowledge/s. We are planning to organise a discussion group which meets once every month and to relay further these discussions in other forums, both offline and online. We invite you to this engagement and think that your participation will bring in fresh experience, insights and provocations to this process of understanding. A brief note is enclosed to facilitate the discussions in its initial stages. The venue of the discussions will be CSDS Library. The first in this series of discussions will take place on Tuesday, the 3rd of August at 4:30 in the afternoon at the Library, CSDS, Warm regards Avinash Jha avinash at csdsdelhi.org Discussion coordinator Discussion Initiators: Avinash Jha (the Library, CSDS) Vijay Pratap (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam) Shuddabrata Sengupta (Sarai-CSDS) Jeebesh Bagchi(Sarai-CSDS) --------------------------------------------------------------- Note for a discussion on Knowledge and Democracy In the academy, we are witnessing a situation of conflict between two knowledge formations, which go under the rubric of `theory', and 'science'. 'Theory' can be replaced by 'postmodernism', or relativism, or 'social constructivism'. 'Science' can similarly be exchanged for 'objectivism', or 'scientism'. We are left with essentially the same conflict even when the terms are changed. Conceptions of experience and language and their implications for criteria of right knowledge are central to this debate. Do we need to take sides in this conflict? What is the meaning and social significance of this 'war of ideas'? In the activist world, we see another struggle between two formations of knowledge and values, which often takes place within the same individuals, or in the same organizational and social context. On the one hand, we have the 'modern' or 'scientific' or 'theoretical and abstract' knowledge and, on the other, we have 'ecological', 'experiential', 'traditional or tribal', or even 'social'. The meaning of 'science' here is much broader. It is not primarily the research activity being carried out in the academy, but a complex of knowledge, power and technology embodying values of dominant class, gender, civilization, or human species itself. Science employs millions of scientists and technical workers in war machines or profit machines. On the opposite side is the reality of egalitarian movements for emancipation of workers, women, children, and citizens which are coextensive with modernity in some sense. This debate is often embroiled in the academic debate between postmodernism and science and the political conflict of liberalism and fundamentalism. These conflicts, dilemmas and arguments are overshadowed by Globalisation and the emergence of new information technologies. 'Knowledge-society' can in some sense resolve the conflicts of knowledge by accommodating both sides through a model of 'knowledge management'. Both modern and traditional knowledge can be managed and used productively in this system where knowledge is commodity or property. Hardware mirrors the realm of nature and necessity while the software mirrors the realm of freedom and desire, or culture. The body is a battlefield of nature and culture and the location of fulfillment. Knowledge institutions and activities are often torn between the interests of the private sector and civil society. Sponsored research make many results doubtful. Global media thrives. Activists increasingly use internet for communication and organization. What we have tried to do is to create the context for a discussion on the question of knowledge and democracy. When we want to discuss the issue of knowledge in a democratic society, we encounter at least two dimensions. What should be the philosophical, institutional and social basis for creation, organization and communication of knowledge in a democratic society? In other words, how should knowledge activities and knowledge become a part of life in a democratic society? The second dimension is the question of democratization of knowledge itself. Can something be voted by majority to be truth? Does truth belong to the oppressed? Comments, responses are welcome. ------------------------------------------------------ From eye at ranadasgupta.com Fri Jul 16 13:19:27 2004 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 13:19:27 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Use of internet as extension of parliamentary democracy Message-ID: <40F78887.9030802@ranadasgupta.com> Interesting site that delivers full information about history, opinions, voting patters, personal financial interests etc of individual MPs as well as full searchable database of all parliamentary debates in UK. http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ R From ektenel at hotmail.com Fri Jul 16 20:29:13 2004 From: ektenel at hotmail.com (Ah_Ek Ferrera_Balanquet) Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:59:13 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Digital Poetics Message-ID: Digital Poetics and Politics: The work of the local in the age of globalization This unique interdisciplinary event aims at bringing media researchers from the humanities and social sciences together with digital media artists and practitioners to explore the effects of globalization policies and technological developments on the politics and poetics of new media uses. Through a series of presentations, demonstrations, exhibitions and lectures, the institute will address topics such as alternative radio practices, sound environments, digital democracy, geographic digital landscapes, web information, and copyright. Panel discussions and participant lectures will be open to the public on Aug 4th through 6th, starting at 9:30am in Chernoff Hall rm.117. Participants will present their work in an open forum (a full list of participants can be found at http://www.film.queensu.ca/dpp/). The Keynote Lecture, also open to the public, will take place on Friday August 6th at 7:00 pm in Chernoff Hall rm.117, Susan Buck-Morss, Director of Visual Studies at Cornell University and acclaimed author of several books including Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West (MIT Press, 2000); The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (MIT Press, 1989) and, most recently, Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left (2003). Her lecture is entitled "Visual Studies and the Global Imagination." On Saturday August 7th, starting at 12:30 pm, The Agnes Etherington Art Centre will host an afternoon of sound and image works by institute participants Max Haiven, Matt Rogalsky and Jacky Sawatzky. Sawatzky's RGB-project involves an interactive, digital mapping of the city of Kingston; Rogalsky, an adjunct instructor in the Queen's School of Music, presents Ellipsis, a filtering of live broadcast noise and amplification of silences; Haiven's Front is a digital audio and visual performance. The summer institute is generously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, The Canada Council for the Arts. Cosponsors are The Departments of Film and Music at Queen's, The Agnes Etherington Art Centre and Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre. For more information please see the website: http://www.film.queensu.ca/dpp or call Paul Hanlon at 613-533-6000 x77018. --Paul T Hanlon Digital Poetics and Politics Summer Institute Assistant Director 0ph2 at qlink.queensu.ca PHONE:(613) 533-6000 ext.77018 FAX: (613) 533-2063 Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet,MFA Artist/Writer/Curator krosrods at cartodigital.org ektenel at hotmail.com http://www.cartodigital.org/krosrods _________________________________________________________________ Check out the latest news, polls and tools in the MSN 2004 Election Guide! http://special.msn.com/msn/election2004.armx From sastry at cs.wisc.edu Sat Jul 17 00:26:28 2004 From: sastry at cs.wisc.edu (Subramanya Sastry) Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 13:56:28 -0500 (CDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Fellowship posting #4 Message-ID: Since I am going to be out of town for 2 weeks, I am posting my report well in advance. -Subbu. ############################################################################## News Rack: Automating News Gathering and Classification ------------------------------------------------------- Abstract: --------- Several organizations in the social development sector monitor news that is relevant to their work. This is a time-consuming and laborious process for some groups, especially when the news is monitored, marked, cut, and filed using hard copies of newspapers and magazines. Prior experience with the press clippings page on www.narmada.org indicates that some of this work can be automated. This simplifies the task of news monitoring and also saves time. This project attempts to automate news monitoring, and aims to provide tools for classifying, filing, and long-term archiving of news. The project will deliver a tool that can be installed, and will also provide all the same services on a website for those who do not want to (or cannot) install the tool. Current status of News Rack --------------------------- Since the last report, I have been working on getting up the web-based user interface. In doing this, I have realized that this is an involved process since the user interface has a number of screens (corresponding to sign in, registration, user space, searching, browsing, editing, etc.). I started this development using Servlets and Webmacro. Nevertheless, the complexities of developing forms, validating them, processing requests, interfacing with the underlying database, requires a fair amount of development. The problems I have faced in developing the web-based interface for News Rack seem to be common to many web application developments with any amount of complexity. Developing user-interface screens, screen navigation, flow of control between pages, the forms and their validation, processing of user requests, interfacing with a database, etc. seem to be some of the common tasks in these web applications. Many web applications are developed using the "model-controller-view" (MVC) design pattern. In the MVC design pattern, the application is organized into three separate modules: (1) the application model with its data representation and business logic, (2) the view that provide data presentation and user input, and (3) a controller to dispatch requests and control flow. I have been advised to consider using the Struts web application development framework developed by the Apache Jakarta project. I also have looked at the Turbine web application development framework a bit. It appears that Struts or Turbine will both work well. However, I have received advice to go with Struts since it is not as bulky as Turbine. The Struts web application framework supports the MVC design pattern and provides a controller component -- the web application developer is freed from having to develop this. It also provides facilities to use various third-party components for the model and the view. Struts provides strong support for a JSP-absed view component. However, JSP has its share of problems in terms of mixing Java code and HTML-based JSP presentation tags. This defeats the original purpose of keeping the logic (Java) separate from presentation (HTML). Based on reading I have done, it appears that View components like Velocity/Webmacro might be better choices. At this time, I am investigating the Struts framework and getting familiar with it. I am planning to use the Velocity scripting tool for the view component (presentation). For the model, I will either develop a custom interface for using an underlying flat-file news archival system, or else I will use the JDBC interface for using the MYSQL database for news archival. I do not have much else to report since most of the work has been revolving with taming the development of the web-based user interface for NewsRack. Once I get familiarized with the Struts framework, I expect this work to proceed more rapidly. From pbkasturi at usermail.com Sat Jul 17 22:05:09 2004 From: pbkasturi at usermail.com (Poonam Bir Kasturi) Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 22:05:09 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] 5th Posting of Eco-Source Srishti project Message-ID: What is waste? Is the word junk, garbage, waste all the same? Why do housewives feel that segregation is of no use? We had done a round of questionnaires and we felt that the process was not rigorous enough. So our MR consultant advised a focus group. So we took our questions and many more and conducted the group discussion. The focus group allowed housewives to share all and it was anchored by a professional Market Research person who is helping our project - Rasika Batra. Our product idea of the Eco-source was given a boost when they all said that they would use such a source if it had area specific information and mapped services and also had information on waste and sustainable choices. Our composting unit for the home got willing testers. They all agreed to test the prototypes in their homes after they saw the initial prototypes. Their suggestions and comments were again very pertinent. They liked the idea of terracotta - but had a problem with breakage. Many options for different kinds of users was discussed and details like lid without having to use hands and weight of the unit was deliberated on. We had rigged up a camera to a TV in another room so all the students heard the focus group discussion and we now have a job to do before our presentation at Sarai in August. We are transcribing the proceedings and we will then analyse the trasnscripts. I know we all are quite enthused by the discussion today and look forward to the next phase of design. Poonam Srishti Team on Eco-Source From eye at ranadasgupta.com Mon Jul 19 13:25:32 2004 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 13:25:32 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Leopold Godowsky Message-ID: <40FB7E74.1080706@ranadasgupta.com> Leopold Godowsky was a child prodigy pianist from Lithuania, born in 1870 into poverty but patronised by a number of wealthy sponsors who made him into a star and a wealthy man. After some time moving among the aristocracy and cultural elite of Paris, he moved to New York in 1891 where he became one of the country's leading performers and teachers. Returning to Europe in 1900 he toured the entire continent as a musical superstar, becoming the director of piano at the Imperial Academy of Music in Vienna - the first time a Jew held the post. When the first world war broke out, Godowsky quickly escaped from Vienna, making his way eventually to New York. Once again he was able to establish himself as a performer, teacher and social focal point. His hospitality was extravagant and legendary. His friends included Igor Stravinsky, George Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Rubinstein, Jascha Heifetz, Pablo Casals, Charlie Chaplin, as well as, in Europe, Serge Diaghilev, Vaslav Nijinsky, André Gide, Henri Matisse, Enrico Caruso and Maurice Ravel. In late 1916, the Godowskys moved from New York to Los Angeles. Godowsky divided his time, as before, between giving concerts, composing, and teaching. His high fees, some shrewd investing, and $80,000 a year from endorsements and various publishing and recording contracts meant that the family could live very comfortably. His hands were insured for $1,000,000. Leopold Junior developed an interest in photography, a hobby that would lead him - with his friend Leopold Mannes - to the invention of the color photography process that became Kodachrome. Daughter Dagmar pursued a career in films and had some success as a vamp of the silent screen. >From 1921, Godowsky began to tour other parts of the world. He played 35 concerts in Mexico that year; in 1922 there was a two-month tour of South America; he had hardly arrived back in New York when he set off once more for Vancouver, Yokohama, and the Far East: China, and Java, where he became interested in gamelan music and wrote piano pieces inspired by it. The Wall St Crash ruined Godowsky for good and a year later he suffered a stroke that ended his piano career. He wrestled with ill health for the last years of his life, dying of cancer in 1938. One of Godowsky's close friends was Albert Einstein. His daughter, Dagmar, tells this story about Einstein's reaction to Godowsky's death: "Father had had a barber named Caruso, who worshipped Einstein, and when he discovered that Pa and he were close friends, he begged to meet him. Pa told Einstein, who promised him that someday he would visit the man. But absent-minded as he was - he never got around to it. Every so often when Father was getting a haircut, Caruso would ask, 'Is Einstein ever really going to keep his promise?' And Popsy would say, 'Don't worry, some day he will come!' When news of Pa's death reached Einstein at Princeton, he didn't say a word. He picked up his hat and muffler and caught the first train to New York. He went to visit Pa's barber. This is eloquence." [Summarised from: http://www.godowsky.com/Biography/bio.html] From definetime at rediffmail.com Sat Jul 17 17:07:17 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 17 Jul 2004 11:37:17 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Independent Research Posting Message-ID: <20040717113717.7403.qmail@webmail17.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040717/d602849a/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Digital Archiving Hindustani Classical Music for wider dissemination Excerpts from an interview with one of the leading Hindustani Classical Music collectors/archivists in the country, Shri Suresh Chandvankar (SC), secretary of Society of Indian Record Collectors (SIRC). Q : You are yourself one of the largest collectors of 78rpms in India, Do you think new technology can help archiving ? SC :Yes, of course but with the compromise of the original sound that emanates from the grooves of the old gramophone records. In fact, ever increasing storage capacity will be a bliss for archiving. Q : In the context of some horrendous fires in the recent past especially like the one at the Pune Film Institute and last month in London - Do suppose a different method of archiving maybe resisitent to freak accidents ? An archival system which is decentralised ? SC :Accidents will occur due to man or machine or both. It is always necessary to take back up and keep updating the back ups. When multiple copies of a given archival material is available, it is best to have a copy at number of places, not only in India but also all over the world. Q : I've heard that your father owned a 'kabadi' shop in Pune. Did this fact have some significant effect on your progress as a record collector ? (because there is a legendary french collector called Henri Langlois, who acknowledged his debt to the Paris flea market for inspiration and material) SC :Yes, certainly. We had a waste paper shop in Pune. My parents were teachers in secondary school. We, all the family members used to work in our own shop during our spare time, on holidays and in vacations and we all brothers have followed 'Earn and Learn' since our school days. With the constant exposure to several books magazines and periodicals, we used to read much beyond our prescribed text books and on variety of subjects. My father realized my liking to gramophones and records when I was very young [in 3rd or 4th class in primary school]. So, he encouraged me by buying gramophone for me. He used to buy old records for me @ 4 annas per Kg. in our shop. I have learnt much more from the grooves of these faithful gramophone records. I used to visit flea markets in Pune, later in Bombay and other cities in India whenever I attended conferences. I have also visited flea markets in Italy, Russia, London and in Paris and have learnt immensely from the heaps of records and by talking and interacting with the record dealers and collectors at these places. Q : You have a wide exposure to recorded classical music. Do you think there were artists who were not recorded in their prime and therefore have diminished in the critical esteem of the present generation ? There is a popular tendency to talk of old masters as Pt Ravi Shankar, Ustad Bismillah Khan, at most Bade Gulam Ali Khan Saheb. A host of important musicians active in the early part of 20th century seem to be missing from popular discourse. Most music history discources seem to start from Amir Khusrau and Tansen, suddenly ending up in the late 50s (sometimes namechecking Karim khan and Faiyaz khan) artists. One rarely hears anything in the mass media about people like Alladiya khan or even Alauddin khan saheb ? SC :Tansen and Amir Khusrau did not enjoy recording facilities but their name is carried further by their disciples. Although Baba Allauddin khan did record, Alladiya Khan refused. Also Vishnu Digambar Paluskar and Bhaskar Bua Bakhale did not record and hence their music is not available. But these were great gurus and their disciples have recorded prolifically. It is also but natural that with time, these great names will become part of the history but will never be forgotten. Seceral music festivals named after them shall keep the memories alive [e.g.sawai gandharva Festival, Gunidas sammelan, tansen samaroha and so on] Q : Do you suppose media (newspaper/magazine) exposure of artists / artistry is manipulated to maximise record sales of contempor,,ary recording artists, instead of giving a balanced view of music history ? Do you think it has something to do with the fact that compared to the old masters, the recent generation has poorer music skills ? (and that such comparison would show new artists in poor light) SC :Certainly glamour associated with celebrities is being exploited for business purpose, but so ws also tru in early periods of Gauhar Jan of Calcutta and Jankibai of Allahabad. Before 1950's due to technological limitations recordings beyond 3/5 minutes was not possible and hence we get only trailer of the art of the great masters and they have skillfully recorded maximum in available time. Recent generation has longer durations available and hence they play leisurely and sometimes it becomes quite monotonus and boring. Of course there are exceptions and those albums do sell very well. In no way, present day musicians are inferior to the senior srtalwarts who had only 3 minutes at their disposal. Only thing is that they should learn the power of the recording medium and mould the presentations suitably. Q : A host of muslim artists have a tendency to trace back their family tree to some hindu musician of (Alladiya to Haridas Swami and Faiyaz Khan Saheb to Nayak Gopal) the medieval age. Do you think there were social restriction which forced them to change religion ? SC :Not only social restrictions but sometimes circumstances too. May be it was sort of mandatory for learning 'Vidya' from Muslim guru and also mass conversions. Also there were large number of muslim invasions in North compared to south in last so many centuries. Besides there are personal and family and religious reasons too. Classic example of modern times is A.R.Rahman who was Hindu but the whole family adopted Muslim religion for personal reasons and belief. [This is mentioned on his web sites] Q : In the context of religion, Alladiya khan, Faiyaz khan and his grandfather Ghagge Khudabaksh were all supposed to be masters of the drupad form which usually has an overt religious (hindu) text / bol. Do you think therefore that the change of religion had more to do with social revolt against the repressive hindu society rather than acceptance of the muslim doctrine ? Do you think the caste equation at that time was unfavourable to musicians ? SC :Dhrupad is I believe our own and ancient music [from Hindu temples] and we should be proud of its tradition. So even during the extreme muslim regimes from Akbar to Auranjzeb, the basic musical tradition was not forgotten and in fact nurtured throughout the good and bad times and even in modern times with Dagar brothers and beyond. Change of religion had not completely taken over in music. Many sociologist and philosophers do believe that in any society a change is said to be complete when members of a society at large accept the music of other cultures totally. So, I do not believe that it was a revolt but real musicians tried to imbibe everything that was good both in Hindu and Islamic [particularly sufi] music. I am not aware about casticism or caste equations among musicians of that era. Q : You do your weekly programme on AIR to promote Hindustani Classical music. Do you think there is a danger of Classical music dying out ? SC :Frankly, I do AIR programs and listening sessions rarely and not weekly. I do not see any sign of classical music dying out or in danger. This is because those who feel have forgotten that this kind of music is/was/and will always be for a very small section of society. In other words, it is and will be for classes and not for masses. So, with this constraint, there is nothing to worry about. -Sanjay Ghosh/ 16.06.2004 From kalpagam25 at rediffmail.com Mon Jul 19 11:42:31 2004 From: kalpagam25 at rediffmail.com (kalpagam - umamaheswaran) Date: 19 Jul 2004 06:12:31 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] July Posting-Roadside Temples in Chennai Message-ID: <20040719061231.7647.qmail@webmail6.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040719/797f451d/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------  Hi Friends, Here is my posting for July. A few more will soon follow. U.Kalpagam July Posting-Roadside Temples in Chennai I have been on the field almost everday and have been visiting many temples and interviewing various people. Here I will give narrative accounts of five temples and it is getting clear that each shrine has its own unique history. If the bigger temples of Tamilnadu have written accounts of what is called "Sthala Puranas", roadside temples have only popular histories that need to be pieced together from often contested and oral accounts. Here is the narrative account of one temple. The other four will follow soon. Sri Nagakanniamman Temple opposite Mandaveli Bus Terminus On a Wednesday afternoon I visited the temple, I found the area round the temple freshly cemented with red CITU flags strung together tied round all four sides to prevent people from stepping onto the fresh cement. The temple is a mini comples of three small shrines- one of Nagakanniamman facing east, a shrine for Hanuman and brass idols of Ram and Sita facing west and almost back to back with the Nagakanniamman shrine. In between the two was a fairly midsized Arasam tree. On the north side of the tree, they had put up a stone idol of Ganesha. On the south side and facing the east they had a shrine for Lord Ayyappan. This whole mini complex of small shrines are all put up on the sidewalk of Venkatakrishna Road abutting a residential complex of newly built apartments called Subiksha Housing Private Limited. The temple complex was complete in all respects as it had a Shiva Lingam with Trishul in front of the Amman idol and the Amman idol kept in the sanctum though of stone was well decorated with a smaller brass idol with serpent carved on it, a small copper vessel, a hanging brass lamp, a stainless steel "Kudam" and a bell. The grill door facilated the idol to be kept locked when the temple was closed. The shrine was done like a small ornamental one with frehly painted figurines o gods and goddesses. A lighted plastic name board indicated that it was constructed with the help of one "R. Santhanakrishnan". A little adjacent to it was the small shrine of Ayappan which had its lighted board indicate that it was constructed with the help of one "V.S.Bhaskar", also with a grill door and lock. The Hanuman temple facing west was similarly a well decorated brass idol with a lighted plastic name plate that read " Sri Arasadi Bhakta Aanjaneya Temple" and the name of the person who had constructed it. Now who are these people who helped construct these small shrines. Well, all of them belong to a neighbourhood association called " Mylai Mandaveli Friends Association" that has been in existence for nearly two decades. It has office bearers like President, Vice President and Secretary. The present Secretary (M.G.Shankar) serves as the Dharmagartha of the temple, that is the one who overseers the temple activities. In my brief interview with M.G. Shankar I came to know that earlier he was owning a Wine Shop just close to the temple complex. As his business prospered he became quite rich. He appears to be the son of slumlord of a neighbourhood slum as told to me by one of a former well known slum rowdy and plumber, who is otherwise a long term neighbourhood friend of mine. Shankar was however a person who deeply believed in God and for nearly twenty five years, he and his friends had organized pilgrimage trips to the Ayappa shrine at Sabarimalai in Kerala. Once his business prospered he decided to build this roadside shrine which formerly was a small shrine. A nearby flower seller, one Kanniamma, told me that nearly 30 years ago, she had first put up a grinding stone there when the Arasam tree was small and then subsequently the temple was developed by M.G. Shankar the wine shop owner and others like Periasamy who runs a cool drinks shop just opposite to it. Now M.G.Shankar has given his wine shop on lease and lives off the rental income and engages himself with neighbourhood philanthropic activities. On the first Sunday of the Tamil month of Adi, the Nagakanniamman temple celebrated its three day Adi festival. The festival was organized by the "Mylai Mandaveli Friends Association" and the most significant part was the distribution of 2000 sarees to the poor women in the neighbourhood. I participated in the function myself and came to know from the organizers of the function that it was the 19th year that they were celebrating the festival and have on numerous occasions distributed sarees to the poor. The organizers told me that no public collection was made and that the activity was fully funded by the members of the Association, many of whom are traders, shopkeepers and so on living in the neighbourhood. They claimed that they engage in other such activities as on the day of the procession of the 63 Nayanmars of Sri Kapaleeswar temple they organize poor feeding for about 15,000 persons who come for the temple Thiruvizha, also serve cool drinks and butter milk on the occasion and put up a child rescue centre to retrieve lost children on the crowded days of the temple festival. They also distribute textbooks to poor school children and help them fund their education. It is remarkable that they started the saree distribution function first by observing a minute's silence to pay hmage to the lost children of the Kumbhakonam fire tragedy. The fact of the Association frequent public and neighbourhood activities was evident to me because they had their own name painted steel barricades to regulate the crowds. I was told that many prosperous roadside temples in Chennai are taken over by the Government under the Hindu Religious Endowments Department. Apparently the government officials comes on surprise checks to see the Hundi collection of the temple and if the money is above a certain limit they take over the temples. Earlier they had a Hundi but now this temple complex does not have a Hundi.The government had apparently issued a notice to this temple but the Mylai Mandaveli Friends Association under the leadership of M.G.Shankar have apparently gone to Court and the matter is now in the court. It is significant that a high ranking Police Official ( IGP-Admin) inaugurated the saree distribution function. From kalpagam25 at rediffmail.com Mon Jul 19 18:00:01 2004 From: kalpagam25 at rediffmail.com (kalpagam - umamaheswaran) Date: 19 Jul 2004 12:30:01 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] July Posting-Roadside Temples Additional Notes Message-ID: <20040719123001.22778.qmail@webmail7.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040719/c32e85c9/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- Hi friends, Here is some more on the temples I have visited. Kalpagam  July Posting- Roadside Temples in Chennai- Additional Notes 1 On Two Ganesh Temples I had earlier mentioned that there were numerous Ganesh temples and this probably has to do with the local Hindu belief that you pray to Ganesh for an auspicious start of any action. I say "local" because I don't think Ganesh is worshipped as an auspicious starter in parts of north India (Allahabad) that I am familiar with, to the same extent or fervour as here in Chennai. This local belief has become so widespread and so deep in the local psyche that many bungalows have kept an idol of Ganesh on the outer wall, some light lamps and some are caged in and locked up in a small cupboard like structure on the outer compound wall of the bungalow. Since the bungalow owners themselves keep such Ganesh idols, some of them do not resist or object to the sidewalk land abutting their compound to be appropriated for putting up a Ganesh shrine. Since nineties when apartment complexes have come up rapidly in Chennai, the number of Ganesh temples have also increased. Almost every apartment block would like to have a Ganesh temple just below for the easy worship by the apartment residents, so it seems. Rarely, they built a Ganesh temple within the precincts of the apartment complex, not open to the public but for the sole worship of the complex. residents. I saw one such yesterday, that looked like a well constructed small temple with Gopuram and all, called Sri Riddhi Siddhi Valampuri Vinayaka Aalayam, where the temple entrance opened into the garden of the complex and not accessible to the general public. Idols of Ganesh can have the elephant trunk either turned to the left or to the right and are appropriately called "Valampuri" or . All Ganesh temples have a name and so far that I have seen, the names don't get repeated. Here are the narrative accounts of two temples where I conducted interviews recently. Arulmiga Sri Rajaganapathy Aalayam This Ganesh temple is a small one with a stone idol that has a silver casing called Kavacham. The roof of the temple is thatched, otherwise it is built up with a grill door and lock that locks up the idol when the temple is not open. As it is looked after and the temple affairs managed by the autorickshaw drivers, many of whom park their autos in the stand nearby, they have named their autostand also as Sri Rajaganapathy Auto stand. However as the auto drivers belong to the Marxist trade union, CITU, they have their party logo as well on the stand name board. About 15 autorickshaws use that auto stand and each driver is expected to give Rs 100 per month towards the upkeep of the temple. This pays up for themilk for the daily Abhishekam, flowers, oil for the lamp and Rs 500 per month for abrahmin priest (Kurukul) who performs the puja twice daily in the morning and the evening. Both the auo drivers and the passers by worship at this small temple. Located at a major crossroad and with numerous office goers rushing to the bus terminus, the drivers have thoughtfully placed a big clock at the head of the idol that indicates to worshippers how early or late they are to work. But the number of pedestrians here is not many unlike in other placesand though an hundi is placed, the collections may not be much. The auto drivers whom I interviewed say that the temple idol had been there for the last twenty years or so, even before their auto stand had come up there, and was apparently placed by some earlier residents of the area. They have been looking after it only for the last ten years. The huge area of land behind the Ganesh temple, once the backwaters area has since been filled up with garbage dumps and is now housing a large slum settlement of mostly thatched huts. The land itself is now the property of the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC), formerly Pallavan Transport Corporation (PTC) that plans to build a huge bus terminus there. The auto drivers told me, that the they would like to build a concrete structure as a dome for the temple replacing the thatched roof and perform the Kumbhaabishekam, but since there are plans of building the bus stand, they are viewing it as a temporary structure. They told me that they have been shown the master plan of the bus terminus and that a small plot therein has already been alloted for this temple and so would be shifted there as the terminus gets constructed. While the temple would be taken care of in the new plan, the slum dwellers would have to relocate themselves elsewhere. This temple has fewer patrons than others located in convenient spots but the drivers assured me that on Shankata Chathurthi, an "Amma" in Raja street nearby takes care of all the puja needs and costs. When I asked them why they needed a Ganesh temple, the drivers answered that its just a belief; and that every auto stand will have a Ganesh temple. They claimed that their Ganesh has a lot of Shakti. The lighted name board of the temple was donated by a storekeeper and so carried an advertisement of his "Sri krishna Stores, No 1, Venkatesa Agraharam, Mylapore". Sri Sarva Shakti Vinayaga Aalayam This Ganesh temple is at the perpendicular junction of West Circular Road and Norton street in Mandaveli. I met the family that placed the idol of Ganesh there, where once there was an yellow flower tree that came down in a storm. A young man who took a lot of interest in the temple took me to his sister to give me the interview and I am indeed grateful for this, for the sister, Tirupurasundari, was indeed very smart and articulate in answering my questions. She told me that they first placed an idol there in 1990 and built up the temple first up to the basement. Now it is a small temple with grill door and lock, but no gopuram as they have not yet performed the Kumbhabishekam. They decided to put up a Ganesh temple there because that spot being a three way junction, people doing sorcery to ward of evil eyes, generally placed the sorcers materials like burning camphor etc at the three way junction spot, especially late Sunday nights. It is a popular belief that any passerby who comes in contact with those materials will themselves be afflicted with the evil that is sought to be warded off. Tirupurasundari, who belongs to the Vanniyakulakshatriya caste claimed that such beliefs are still quite common.So they thought that putting up the Ganesh temple there will ward off the evil and protect all the neighbouring families, although her own house is not located at the three way junction. This Ganesh is always elegantly dressed with dhoti and his favourite bunch of grass to this right side. When I asked them who does the pujas, she said a priest from the nearby Aiyappan temple comes daily in the morning to perform the pujas and also brings with him the food offering to the god. He also performs special pujas on Shakata Chathurthi late in the evening at 9 PM and also the pujas on Diwali, Pongal and Ganesh Chathurthi festivals. They pay the priest Rs 200 per month which is usually met from the hundi collection. Some residents nearby give money for Abhishekams regularly every month. In fact they claim that so far they have not made any public collection of funds but only what the worshippers have given voluntarily.Nor have they taken hundi collection for personal use, though on two occasions the hundi collections were stolen despite the grill door and lock. They claimed that one nearby worshipper gave silver upanayanan thread and vibhuti marking for the Ganesh idol because he granted them their boon, another gave the brass halo kind of decoration and a brahmin family donated a silver trunk forthe elephant faced god because their daughter in law was cured of a skin disease. A nearby shop keeper has given the temple electricity fromn his shop and does notcharge them for that. Although they want to perform the kumbabishekam, they say they are unable to do so as such an event would require a numberof responsible people to get together,which they are so far unable to mobilize. They claimed that attempts had been made by the Corporation to demolishthe temple. Once they came in alorry with 10 people and some policemen. But they claimed to know some political heavy weights in the DMK party and with the help of one late Kasisamy Nadar, an elected Councillor, they were able to stallthe demolition. There have been some complaints too by car owning residents of the locality who complained that worshippers often blocked the way but they were able to handle that as well. Now who is Tirupurasundari and her family? Tirupurasundari lives in a thatched hut put up on the terrace of her mother's house. Her husband works in a Wine Shop in Guindy. Her family, consisting of an aged mother and a brother in late twenties once owned a number of cows and did milk business. But now they have given away the cows and her brother makes a living by putting up a Tiffen shop in the mornings and evenings. The brother claimed that it was his Ganesh that saved him from TB when he was admitted in the hospital with TB in the early stages. From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Jul 16 21:47:15 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 09:17:15 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] Sign the petition: say no to human rights abuse in India's colleges Message-ID: I hope you all will consider taking of a minute to sign the Stop Ragging petition: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ragging/petition.html Please circulate this link widely. Thanks, Shivam Vij The Stop Ragging Campaign www.stopragging.org help at stopragging.org From karim at sarai.net Tue Jul 20 17:27:28 2004 From: karim at sarai.net (Aniruddha Shankar) Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 17:27:28 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Who are the Iraqi resistance ? Message-ID: <40FD08A8.2030603@sarai.net> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Read this excellent article by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad on Iraq - reminded me in a macabre way of the slightly hysterical chaos that sometimes erupts backstage in school plays... "Who exactly are the Iraqi resistance? In a remarkable essay, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad joins the front-line anti-American fighters in Kerbala, Falluja and Sadr City, and discovers that they are not always the well-trained, highly motivated fanatics we imagine 'This is the only fun the kids get - shooting at the US sitting ducks' Who exactly are the Iraqi resistance? In a remarkable essay, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad joins the front-line anti-American fighters in Kerbala, Falluja and Sadr City, and discovers that they are not always the well-trained, highly motivated fanatics we imagine Ghaith Abdul-Ahad Friday June 25, 2004 The Guardian By the time I arrive in Kerbala, in the last week in May, the clashes between Moqtada al-Sadr's Shia militia and the Americans have been going on for weeks. Apart from the scores of Shia militiamen running around the streets with RPGs on their shoulders, the streets are empty. The police have evaporated, leaving only their burned-out cars from previous skirmishes with rebel fighters. We park our car on the outskirts of the shrine area. Normally, thousands of devout Shia pilgrims from Iran, Afghanistan and central Asia would be bustling around on buses, taxis and donkey carts, but today there are no buses, no donkeys, and certainly no pilgrims. The main street leading to the shrine is terrifyingly empty, with shattered windows and piles of garbage everywhere. As we start along the street, a bunch of militiamen from the Badr brigade, one of the main Shia factions, demand our press passes. They are all dressed alike - in flip-flops, black T-shirts and pyjama pants - and all are carrying AK47s. "I'm sorry," says one ugly militiaman. "You are not allowed in. We have instructions not to allow journalists to take pictures of the shrine because this will compromise the safety of the shrine." As if the hundreds of Americans and militiamen shooting at each other just metres from the shrine are not compromising its safety. We ask him to check; after a few minutes of creaking noises from the radio, he comes back with a big grin: no journalists allowed. It takes us a little while to figure out the game that we will have to play for the next three days. The Shia factions, we work out, are very keen not to allow journalists to go into the centre of the city and report the activities of the other Shia factions - they are not yet fighting each other, but they don't like each other much. After all, it's a family issue, and we Iraqis don't like foreigners to mess with our affairs. So we do a big loop and sneak through the alleys, telling the guards at every checkpoint that we are not here for the fighting but have an appointment with Ayatollah X, Y or Z. We finally come out of one alley to find ourselves face to face with three gunmen, their heads wrapped in keffiyehs, Kalashnikovs and RPGs in their hands (this is now considered the new Iraqi dress code, or the "muj style"). They are the Mahdi army, a militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr, which, according to the US army, includes highly trained former Iraqi military officers. I manage to convince one of them to take us to their HQ. He puts his AK on his shoulder and points at the end of the street - "Snipers. Run very fast" - and we sprint across the street. He leads us through a maze of alleyways which make up part of the old covered souks of Kerbala, the shops heavily barricaded with steel bars, the streets piled with weeks' old rubbish, fighters sitting in groups of three to five, smoking. Every once in a while someone shouts, "Americans, Americans!", and one or two move into a sniping position, shout at each other, and then come and sit down again. They look tired, hungry and bored, fiddling with their RPGs and rifles. Finally, we arrive at the HQ, 50m from the shrine and a street corner where most of the fighting has taken place in the past few days. They take us to the "sheikh" for permission, a young guy in his early 30s with a big bushy beard who is the local Mahdi commander. I spend the next two days with these men on a clutch of street corners from where they take occasional pot shots at the Americans. This is the front-line elite, a bunch of badly equipped men with rusted AKs and decade-old RPG rockets. When we first arrive they are brewing tea, piles of RPG rockets stacked on the walls two feet away from the fire. "So how long you have been here?" I ask one of them. "Three weeks now." He says he is here because he wants to defend the shrine of Imam Ali. "I'm unemployed and have nothing else to do." He is 17. Others start to gather around us. "Don't talk to them." "No, do talk to them, they must know what's happening." "Are you Americans?" "Are you spies?" "Who sent you here?" "Take my picture." "No, take my picture with an RPG." "No, don't let them photograph the RPGs - they'll sell the pictures to the Americans." Suddenly, there are some explosions, and three of them run towards the corner. We hear heavy machine-gun fire and I see American APCs firing at a building in the street. "Where's the machine gun?" "I don't know! You had it yesterday!" "No, you had it!" "No, no, it's there with Ali." "Where's Ali?" "He went home." "So where is the machine gun?" "With Ali." So they decide to fire RPGs without machine-gun cover. They hop into the street, fire off a grenade, and hop back. All the while we are squeezed behind the corner. All I can think is that I have to stay alive otherwise my girlfriend will kill me. They can't see what they are shooting at but shout Allahu-Akbar all the same, and everyone starts giving numbers of how many Americans they have killed. Then another man shows up, shortish and in his 40s, and while everyone is ducking or hiding behind columns, he strolls about as if he is in the park. Another fighter loads an RPG for him and the guy turns with the thing on his shoulder as if looking for the direction he should shoot in. Someone shouts: "Push him into the street before he fires it at us!" Another fighter grabs him around his waist and pushes him to the corner where he stands, bullets whizzing around him, takes his time, and - boom! - fires his RPG. He stands there until someone grips his pants and pulls him in. His eyes are not even blinking at the sounds around him. They give him another one and he spins again and everyone hits the ground. Someone shouts: "He can't hear you, go and show him!" The deaf mute is getting support fire from a kid who shoots off a few rounds, then jumps back to fix his AK, which is falling apart. "If you take a picture of me fixing this, I will kill you." We wait for the fire to subside and run across the street to the other side, the same dark alleys in which the same bored fighters are sitting doing nothing but chewing over the same old conspiracy theories. The walls and the ground are varnished with fresh blood. In the market a couple of shops are on fire from earlier fighting. A man is hiding behind a pile of empty banana boxes with his eight-year-old son. That is when we catch sight of a small boy with a stunned look on his face. He says his name is Amjad and he is 11 years old. "How long you have been here?" "Ten days. Since my brother was killed. There, at the end of that street." "And why are you here?" "To become a martyr like my brother." I ask him why he wants to die. "We should all die for the sake of our leader!" shouts one of the militiamen who have gathered around us. On the last day, while I am trying to leave this crazy place, we are chased by an overheated young muj ("muj", from mujaheddin, means simply a religious fighter - since the Shia started fighting the Americans, they too have been happy to call themselves "muj"). He demands that we give him all our films. "You are foreigners working with the Americans!" We tell him it's not true. He click-clicks his AK, and points it at us. "I said, give me the films or I will shoot!" "No, leave them alone," someone calls out, "they have been with us for the last three days, the sheikh knows about them." Shaking, we leave, and head to the shrine to see if there are any pilgrims there. As we are sitting on the pavement, three men with AKs come over and tell us we are under arrest. I wish I had taped the previous conversation. They take us to the shrine of Imam Abbas, and into a marble-clad room filled with big, ugly guys with thick beards and an arsenal of automatic weapons. These men are from the Shrine Protection Force, a militia loyal to the grand Shia Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and so loosely allied with the Americans. "It is all because of journalists that all this is happening," says a guy dressed in black, sitting behind a big wooden table. He says that the Mahdi are manipulating the media. "They are thugs and assassins, they have paralysed the holy city of Kerbala, they have desecrated the shrines and shoot from behind them, trying to provoke a response. "But, alhamdulillah [thank God], the Americans are very wise and respect the shrines. Our brothers, the Americans, are taking very good care of this thing, but as far as the Shias around the world and in Iraq are concerned, they hear that the Americans are fighting 'close to the shrines', and that Shias are being killed. They see the smoke on your films so they come en masse to fight and they are immediately brainwashed by Moqtada and his thugs." If that's the case, I ask, why doesn't the Ayatollah come out publicly and denounce those people, and show his support for these "brothers"? "Are you crazy? It's haram [forbidden by Islamic law] to support an infidel, even when he is right, against a brother Muslim." "So what is your strategy?" "We will pray for Allah to stop this." I decide that Allah has a few other things to solve in Iraq first. In any case, once they discover that we are photographers and not video cameramen, the detention comes to an end pretty quickly. And I decide to stop chasing bullets and RPGs and find somewhere calm. So I resolve to head to Falluja - after all, the Americans have managed to install peace over there, haven't they? Falluja Falluja is very calm by the time I arrive. I have been to Falluja once before, in April during the "great battle", as they now call it up there. Back then it was like Apocalypse Now, with muj running in the streets and American marines firing at any house they suspected had "enemies" inside. Falluja is a peaceful town now; shops are open and cars are in the streets, and Iraqi security forces are every where: ICDC (the US-trained civil defence corps), policemen, traffic police, and the new Falluja brigade, known as the "brigade of the heroes" by the locals. You can even say that things are normal. After a devastating military campaign that left more than 800 Iraqis dead, the US liberators established the Falluja brigade out of the former military, some of whom had been fighting the Americans but are now on their payroll. Falluja is now like a deja vu from the good old times of Saddam; there are so many former Iraqi military in khaki uniforms, big moustaches and bellies that I am scared that someone will come up and ask me for my military ID card. But, as everything in the new Iraq, the picture is totally blurred, and no one in Falluja can figure out what the new arrangement actually means. For some Fallujans, it meant that their people would get paid again and they would be in charge of their own security without being seen as collaborators. For the Americans it meant the new force would work with them to enforce law and order in the city, helping to build a new Iraq. But for other Fallujans, he who works with Americans is seen as the enemy of God. Which means that we now have Falluja versus Falluja in the biggest stand-off of the year: who really controls Falluja? The city is now like a loose federation of Sunni mosques and mujaheddin-run fiefdoms. These have become the only successfully functioning "civil society" institutions, although the only form of civil society they are interested in is a 1,400-year-old model. So they raid houses where sinners are believed to be drinking alcohol, and insist on forcing their own version of the hijab. If you have a record shop in Falluja, it had better be selling the latest version of Koranic chanting; Britney Spearscould get you flogged. A bunch of Falluja kids, just finishing their exams, are hanging around their school when two muj trucks surround them and pick up all the kids who don't have a "decent" hair cut. They will be taken to get their heads shaved. (Bear in mind that we are talking about Falluja, which is already one of the most conservative towns in Iraq. There aren't too many funky haircuts here to begin with.) As I arrive at the main entrance to the city, two shaking Iraqi ICDC are handing flyers to Fallujans driving into the city. The leaflets are designed to advise how to file a complaint for compensation, and to reassure them about what the Americans are up to: "The marines came here originally to help the people of Falluja, and they will work together to defeat the enemies of the Iraqi people." I head towards one of the mosques where people are going to get aid and charity donations. A guy in his 40s approaches me with the famous welcoming smile of the Fallujans - a look of, "What the fuck are you doing here?" I tell him that I'm a journalist and would like to meet the Sheikh. "How did you manage to get in? Didn't they stop you at the checkpoint?" Thinking he is talking about the marines' checkpoint, I say, "No, everything was fine." "Did they see your camera?" I tell him I was hiding it. "This Abu Tahrir, I don't know what kind of mujaheddin cell he is running! I told him that every car should be thoroughly searched and all journalists should be brought here!" I am ushered inside where, surrounded by three muj fighters, the new mayor of Falluja gives me his geopolitical analysis of the American plot to control the world by occupying Falluja. "You know, we were all very happy when the Americans came, we thought our country would be better with their help, but Allah the Mighty wasn't pleased," he tells me. The Americans started making mistakes, he explains, and now, "It's all Allah's plot to stop the believers from dealing with infidel foreigners." He opens his drawer and pulls out two sheets of paper: the demands and the strategies of the resistance. One details an American-Shia plot to kill the Sunni clerics, technocrats and former army officers. "Be careful, oh brothers, because the Americans and their traitor allies, the Kurds and the Shias, are planning to come after your leaders." The other is a letter sent by the joint committee for the Iraqi resistance to Lakhdar Ibrahimi, the UN envoy working to form a new government. Its demands can be summarised as a request to hand Iraq to a bunch of wacko Sunni army generals. The meeting is interrupted many times, once when a small kid comes into the room and everyone stands to shake his hand. "He is our best sniper here. He has killed three Americans, he wants to call the Americans out for a sniping competition." One of the local muj cell leaders, Abu Tahrir ("father of liberation"), is complaining how part of the muj corps has deserted and joined the Americans. He is in his late 30s, overweight and a bit grim; a typical former mukhabarat officer who mixes bits of the Koran with chunks of nationalist and Ba'athist ranting. Ten minutes later, another muj comes into the room complaining that different muj groups haven't shown up to take their positions. The mayor makes a few phone calls using his mobile phone - "We have cellphones now, you know" - before returning to his thesis of where the American invasion went wrong. "The Iraqi army has been staging coups and counter-coups from 1958 to 1968; it was the army who managed to get everything under control, instead of those stooges on the governing council. The Americans should have counted on the real Iraqis" - and so on, until the muj who brought me in comes back and says: "You have to leave now. The commanders of the mujaheddin cells are going to have a big meeting in Falluja in 15 minutes, and soon there will be muj checkpoints everywhere. As we leave the mosque, he waves to a passing police car and orders them to follow, so that we drive out of Falluja escorted by both the muj and the police. Sadr City in eastern Baghdad Sadr City is an easy job for a journalist: all you have to do is cruise around looking for trouble. It is a Soweto kind of slum: rubbish-filled streets, ponds of sewage, and thousands of unemployed kids. It is Saturday, and we are driving through the streets for the second time in the day. It is late afternoon when we see a bunch of kids directing the traffic away. By now we are able to sniff trouble from miles away, but I tell my driver to head to that street. Makeshift barricades are laid in the middle of the road, made of stones, tyres and chunks of car metal. Someone's house has even been dismantled for the barricade. "Don't go, there are Americans down the street," shouts one of the kids, so we duck into a side road. The battlefield is an empty plot of land by a mosque, surrounded by alleyways. In one of them, a dozen teenagers, three or four of them wearing Arsenal T-shirts and flip-flops, are emptying a car boot of a mortar tube and a sackful of shells. I am allowed to stay and take pictures, but with the usual proviso: "If we discover that you are working for the Americans, we will kill you." The target is a police station and three Humvees parked in front. Masked like a western cowboy, the shooter, or the "expert" as they call him, takes measure of the angle and shouts to another fighter: "Give me one!" The other guy produces what looks like a rusted, 2-ft long shell. The fighters here are also Mahdi, and the fighting in Sadr City often feels like one big carnival. All the kids are by now doing their cheering chant: "Ali wiyak, Ali!" "Ali with you, Ali!" If I were an American soldier, I would be expecting a flying shell every time I hear kids cheering in Sadr City. After all, this is the only fun they get, shooting at the sitting ducks. The expert tosses the shell into the barrel, and a big explosion follows. "Right a bit!" shouts one of the kids at the end of the street. "It fell on a house!" The second one falls much too far to the left. "It fell on another house, move to the right a little bit!" The third one falls something like 10 metres away from us, but doesn't explode. The fourth lands by the Americans, and detonates. "Ten dead, I saw it with my own eyes!" shouts another kid. The fifth doesn't leave the tube, and he has to up-end the tube and shake it. In all, the firefight lasts for an hour, at which, after a few more rounds and a few more civilian houses destroyed,the fighters jump into their car and drive away. Then the RPG session starts, kids aiming at the Americans and hitting whatever target they fancy. As one prepares to fire his RPG, the rusted rocket doesn't launch. "Come, you can use mine," says a man who is standing by, watching. Helpfully, he goes to his nearby home and returns with his RPG, as if he were lending a neighbour his Hoover. Then, "They are coming, they are coming!" and everyone starts to run; the 50 or so kids who have gathered to watch the game, break into a sprint. We jump into the first open door, where a man pulls us inside and closes the door. The house is nothing but two rooms and an open courtyard; home to two families with countless tiny kids. "So they shoot and run, and soon the Americans will come and start breaking into the houses and firing at us," says the man. Within a few minutes we hear a Humvee pull up by the door, and - boom! boom! boom! - they start firing what sounds like a heavy machine gun. Everyone jumps to the ground, and Ali is asked once again to show his mercy upon us. "This has been our life for the past few weeks; we don't know when we will be killed and who will kill us," says the father. After a while the Humvees go, and we hear the sound of the kids in the streets again. Everything back to normal. That evening, after another session of shooting and counter-shooting, we are sitting with the fighters by the office of Moqtada al-Sadr. We are prepared for a long night waiting for American mortar shells. I think to myself, here we go, another dozen houses gone. A young muj extends his hand and says: "Do you want a beer?" I am stunned, and what remains of my religious belief rapidly evaporates. But the beer is good and I sit all night with the great religious fighters, drinking beer and waiting for the shells that never come. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 - -- Aniruddha 'Karim' Shankar The Sarai Programme Key ID: 0xA037AD2B Public Key Fingerprint: 9167 C0E7 A679 0906 7E47 83C0 8499 2B77 A037 AD2B To get my public key, search http://pgp.mit.edu for my email id. To directly import my key into your keyring, run gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys A037AD2B . -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFA/QimhJkrd6A3rSsRAr4BAJ9erVWulLPJPetwNbTjUUjqoZXXCgCfW3bh a4XSOWJsugxTy0AcL4j3H+Q= =06Hl -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From geert at desk.nl Wed Jul 21 17:35:30 2004 From: geert at desk.nl (geert) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 12:05:30 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Call for WSIS Research Message-ID: <1090411530.768.2.camel@koffertje> The Third World Institute (Instituto del Tercer Mundo, ITeM) is seeking scholars and activists to participate in a research project intended to contribute to the second phase of the World Summit on the Information (WSIS) decision-making process. Research will be focused on key issues of interest to developing countries and, based on it, position and briefing papers will be produced to advise Southern negotiators and working groups on the policy implications of the different proposals they will be considering during the Summit process. During the preparatory process for the Tunis WSIS phase events (workshops and/or roundtables) will be organized with the aim of publicizing the research concluded or in progress and involving the different stakeholders in discussions on the issues under study. Some of the document authors may be invited to present their contributions at these events. The project is open to receive research proposals focused on at least one of the following topics: I. Funding mechanisms for the development of communications in the South Examples of research issues that could be addressed under this topic include (but are not limited to): Institutional arrangements for ICTs provision in the South; Taxing ICTs as an equitable source of revenues; Sustaining social and technical networks after initial funding; ICT financing in the framework of a global partnership for development, Financing infrastructure development in places that lack basic telecommunications services. II. Internet governance and global ICTs policies Examples of research issues that could be addressed under this topic include (but are not limited to): Institutional arrangements for the democratization of the Internet; Southern civil society involvement in ICT policy definition; Social impacts and the definition of technological standards; Human rights protection and new ICTs. III. Issues left out of the WSIS agenda Examples of research issues that could be addressed under this topic include (but are not limited to): Linking WSIS Agenda to other multilateral processes; The impact of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in the development of global communications; A Southern civil society perspective of ICTs for Human Development; Effective mechanisms to bring down non-physical barriers to access (pricing, trade, patents and censorship policies); ICTs policies for poverty reduction, health promotion and environmental sustainability; ICTs policies for traditional knowledge protection; Education paradigms in ICTs from a multicultural perspective; etc. Scholars and activists with expertise on these topics should submit a CV, a relevant writing sample and a one-paragraph description of research interests via e-mail by July 30, 2004 to Pablo Accuosto at wsis2 at item.org.uy. Participants will receive an honorarium for their involvement. The project is particularly interested in participants from the developing world. For more information about the project, please visit http://wsispapers.choike.org/ For more information about ITeM, please visit http://www.item.org.uy/ ________________________________________________________________________ From karunakar at freedomink.org Wed Jul 21 17:38:25 2004 From: karunakar at freedomink.org (Guntupalli Karunakar) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 17:38:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Localization Newsletter Issue 5, 15th July 2004 Message-ID: <20040721173825.44213a18.karunakar@freedomink.org> Hi, Localization Newsletter Issue 5, 15th July 2004 is out. Newsbits: * Newsletter in Hindi - http://indlinux.org/wiki/index.php/HindiNewsletter1 * Discussions in Unicode Indic list - Bengali Khanda-Ta issue, Zero width joiner for indic * TSCII - unicode conversion specs TeamWatch featuring Malayalam localization team. Read full issue at http://www.indlinux.org/nl/issue5.html Any feedback on newsletter welcome at Regards, Karunakar -- They can, because they think they can - Anon -------------------------------------------- * Blog: http://blogs.randomink.org/blog/10 * * Work: http://www.indlinux.org * -------------------------------------------- From aruls at iijnm.org Wed Jul 21 21:37:52 2004 From: aruls at iijnm.org (Arul Selvan) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 21:37:52 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] New Book: India Untouched: The Forgotten Face of Rural Poverty Message-ID: <000901c46f3c$e22f7b60$3300050a@rrgn.net> Release of New Book India Untouched: The Forgotten Face of Rural Poverty By Dr. Abraham George EastWest Books (Madras) Pvt Ltd., Chennai For more details visit www.indiauntouched.com EastWest Books (Pvt) Ltd., Chennai, India, announces the release of India Untouched: The Forgotten Face of Rural Poverty by Dr. Abraham George, a businessman-turned-philanthropist in New York who also runs one of the largest private non-governmental organizations in India. The forward to the book is written by Mr. Ralph Nader, the legendary environmentalist and consumer advocate, and a presidential candidate for the 2004 U.S. elections. India Untouched is a work of major significance, dealing with the plight of over 600 million people living in rural India, mostly untouched by the economic revival currently taking place in major cities. It is also a compelling account of one man’s struggle against a well-entrenched system to overcome the hurdles faced by India’s poor. This is what some of the prominent Indians and Americans have to say about the book: “Dr. Abraham M. George has written an important and moving story about one of the world's most critical issues: the impact on poverty of globalization of markets. His thoughtful, personal focus on rural India has resonance for other similar situations throughout the developing world. If the scourge of poverty is to be remedied, it must first be understood and looked at frankly, with both compassion and sophistication. This book accomplishes that task.” Alex S. Jones, Director Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. “A moving story through self-discovery about bringing differences in the lives of millions residing in rural India through institutions built on the pillars of commitment, integrity, honesty and perseverance. Through his sensitivity and an eye for detailing, the Author reminds the reader about the “unfinished agenda” in the largest democracy even after more than five decades of independence and more than one decade of liberalization.” Verghese Kurien, Founder, National Dairy Development Board, and Father of the “White Revolution” in India Anand, Gujarat. An exceptional story, because it captures – lucidly and honestly – the life, travails and triumphs of an exceptional man. Combining the focus of a former artillery-man with the drive of an entrepreneur and the soul of a philanthropist, Abraham George takes us on a voyage that is as much self-discovery as it is a feast for the intellect. His prognosis is informed and dispassionate, his conclusions inescapable. This is a story that must be read both by those who love India, and by those who wish to understand the country. Ravindra Kumar, Editor and Managing Director The Statesman, Kolkata. "A wake up call that India cannot expect to be stable and peaceful if its huge rural population remains impoverished while its urban elite benefits from the economic reforms of the past decade. One can only hope that the powerful exposure and sensible prescriptions of this book will achieve the needed impact.” James F. Hoge, Jr., Editor, Foreign Affairs Council of Foreign Affairs, New York. “India Untouched is an expression of love and courage, illuminated with deeply moving examples and human micro details of rural life that give force and color to a stinging macro critique. George has put his money and his morals where his mouth is, offering tested solutions that are persuasive in their reasoning. A great book of conviction.” David Anable, President International Center for Journalists, Washington, D.C. “An astounding work of great practical significance. Hopefully it will stimulate a fresh dialogue among those who impact public policy in India.” H.S. Balram, Editor, The Times of India, Bangalore. About the Author Abraham George was a business entrepreneur in the United States of America for over 25 years before he embarked on a number of humanitarian projects in South India. A former artillery officer in the Indian army, he went on to receive a Ph.D. in business administration from New York University and authored three books in international finance. His business career included heading a software company he founded, serving as a managing director at a major global investment bank and as a vice-chairman of a New York Stock Exchange-traded firm, and consulting for over 100 of the Fortune 500 U.S. companies. Today, he shuttles between Bangalore and New Jersey several times in a year, and spends much of his time directing the activities of The George Foundation in India. For more information about his philanthropic work, visit www.tgfworld.org. For further information, please visit www.indiauntouched.com. India Untouched is available through major book stores and on-line book sellers in India. EastWest Books (Madras) Pvt Ltd Westland Books Pvt Ltd #571 Poonamallee High Road, Aminjikarai, Chennai 600 029 Tel: 2660 2003/1898; Fax: 2660 1974; email: ewb at touchtelindia.net From jhasadan at hotmail.com Thu Jul 22 19:24:07 2004 From: jhasadan at hotmail.com (jha sadan) Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:24:07 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: CFP: War in Film, Television, and History; Texas, United States Message-ID: >CFP: War(s) on Terror >Location:Texas, United States >Call for Papers Date:2004-07-30 (in 9 days) > >WAR IN FILM, TV, AND HISTORY >November 11-14, 2004 >War(s) on Terror - Proposal deadline July 30th, 2004 > >Proposals are invited for papers to be presented at the War in Film, >Television, and History Conference, Dallas, Texas, November 11-14, 2004, in >the area of "War(s) On Terror." > >Full conference details are available at http://www.filmandhistory.org . > >The events of September 11th, 2001 have focused attention on the dynamics >of >terrorism and counterterrorism, and cinematic and televisual >representations >of this form of intrastate, interstate, and transnational warfare. There is >also a large and historically deep body of film and television, documentary >and fictional works related to various "wars on terror." Proposals are >welcomed for either panels or individual papers that examine the dynamics >of >terrorism and counterterrorism as portrayed in film and/or video during the >20th and early 21st century. This also includes fictional representations >of >future forms of terrorism and counterterrorism. > >Proposals that represent the full range of methodological and ideological >discussions re: representations of war(s) on terror are explicitly >encouraged. Proposals are not restricted to US produced film and video, but >film and video related to the multiple "wars on terror" in many >nation-states. There are a number of possible subareas such as: >technologies >of surveillance and militarized counterterrorism; the civil liberties, >privacy and human rights effects of terrorism and counterterrorism; and, >the >use of investigative documentaries and news coverage to examine both >terrorist organizations and the excesses of state security agencies in >dealing with "terrorism." Given that there is a great deal of discussion >surrounding the definitional parameters of "terrorism" proposals that >examine cinematic and videographic representations of "state terrorism", >"narco-terrorism", and "cyber-terrorism" are also welcome. > >Examples of possible works of film and video that could be explored >include: >The Battle of Algiers, La Boca Del Lobo (Peru), Rojo Amanecer (Mexico); >news >coverage and fictional representations of the events of 9/11/2001 and the >aftermath; documentaries about the Weather Underground, the FBI's >COINTELPROs and their various targets, Waco, Ruby Ridge; the Moscow hostage >theater siege of October 2002; representations of terrorism and state >terrorism in science fiction from Metropolis to The Matrix Trilogy; and >representations of terrorism and state terrorism in television such as The >Agency, Alias, Threat Matrix, 24, the X-Files, Millennium, Dark Angel, >Harsh >Realm, Star Trek(s), etc.; and films such as The Siege, American History X, >Arlington Road, Collateral Damage, Die Hard, 12 Monkeys, The Chekist >(Russia), Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, Red Dawn, Michael >Collins, Mississippi Burning, Birth of a Nation, Fahrenheit 9/11, The Grid, >etc.. This list is by no means exhaustive. > >While proposals for individual papers are welcome, panel proposals >(three/four papers) are especially encouraged. Both electronic and hard >copy >submissions are acceptable. >Please send proposals, with a one or two paragraph abstract of each paper >and a brief c.v. for each presenter, no later than July 30, 2004, to the >address below. > >e-mail: cerickso at roosevelt.edu web: http://faculty.roosevelt.edu/erickson > >About the conference: The Film & History League, together with the >Literature/Film Association, will be holding its biannual conference on >"War >in Film, Television, and History" during November 11-14, 2004, near Dallas, >TX. Full details on the location, featured speakers, registration >procedures, and additional area topics can be found on the web site at >www.filmandhistory.org. > > >Christian Erickson >Area Chair, War(s) on Terror >Assistant Professor of Political Science >School of Policy Studies >Roosevelt University >430 S. Michigan Ave. >Chicago, IL 60605 >Email: cerickso at roosevelt.edu >Visit the website at http://www.filmandhistory.org > > > > _________________________________________________________________ Beat the summer heat. http://go.msnserver.com/IN/53030.asp Get the new International Gillette Series Range!! From abhitamhane at gmail.com Fri Jul 23 10:59:00 2004 From: abhitamhane at gmail.com (abhijeet tamhane) Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 10:59:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Call for voluntary interpreters, translators and technicians Message-ID: Call for voluntary interpreters, translators and technicians CALL "Another world is possible" World Social Forum 2005 Porto Alegre (Brazil) – January 26-31, 2005 Call for voluntary interpreters, translators and technicians Babels - Looking for volunteer (simultaneous) interpreters and translators. Nomad – Looking for volunteers for the interpreting equipment. MORE INFORMATION on the BABEls page : http://www.babels.org/spip/article.php3?id_article=39 If interested, please have a look. I was a part of the Babel's team at the WSF Mumbai 2004, and while volunteering, had a great experience in teamwork, commradery and democratic processes. -- abhijeet. -- http://www.geocities.com/abhitamhane http://abhitamhane.blogspot.com From coolzanny at hotmail.com Thu Jul 22 12:55:04 2004 From: coolzanny at hotmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 12:55:04 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] July Research Posting - The Everyday Message-ID: The Everyday Everyday, Movement, stories, sights and scenes Everyday, People � ordinary, unheard, unseen. Everyday, Life goes on, but who notices? Everyday, Life paints pictures, mundane and artistic! Everyday, Autumn, summer, winter and spring Everyday Seasons don�t any more surprises bring. (But that is what we have come to think � self-fulfilling prophecy!) Everyday, Sameness � dull, boring, routine, monotonous and mundane Everyday, Diversity � relationships, stories, people and arcane. Everyday, Blinkers on the eyes and everywhere yet, the world is perceived Everyday, Stories are born � orphan and stillbirth babies � stories no one cares to receive Orphan stories, legitimate and illegitimate stories, born everyday, but largely go unnoticed like Nobody�s Child. Everyday contains people and people contain The Everyday yet, we believe that both are separate, disparate and disconnected. Six months of the independent research fellowship period have revealed the importance of The Everyday to me, that Everyday whose diversity is blind to all those who wear the glasses of the presumed mundane. It is The Everyday which contains the ordinary and the extraordinary, the highs and the lows the joys and sorrows, the rumours and the news, the dynamic and the static, the revolutions, the change and the status quo. The Everyday is like a Web, made up of connected lives, people, activities, sites, structures, and objects, all of which interact every moment of the Everyday to create new relationships and patterns. And it is this impact which spins the world around, creates revolutions and new Everydays. A few days ago, Master, who is giving me driving lessons, and I had a chat between us. Here is how it went: Master: I was in muluk (mulk in Urdu, meaning home place, usually where a person is born or where the roots and origins of the family lie) for five months. There was problem with my residence. School used to phone often to call me back, but I had told everyone at home that when school people call, tell them that he has just left home and we don�t know his whereabouts. He should be back within half an hour. Me: Five months! (I exclaimed.) Did you have a paid leave? Master: What paid leave? Others in the school go to muluk for two and a half months every year, but I go there only once in five years. Obviously then, I will be there for five months. Me: So (posing a rhetorical question), what do you like more, this city or muluk? Master: What do you think a person likes more? (He said in a tone of authority, replying to a rhetorical question with rhetorical question.) Me: Muluk (I said, knowing what answer he expected from me � self-fulfilling prophecy.) Master: Aadmi muluk se sheher kyon aata hai? (Why does a man leave his home place and come to a city?) Roti kamane ke liye hi nah? (Only to earn bread and butter nah?) Warna kyon aayega muluk chod kar ke? (Else why should he leave his home place?) What struck me about this conversation is the notion and belief of several, like Master, that a city is after all only a place where livelihood can be earned; a city is not really a home place. And if this be the case, then I ask myself �What about the thousands of my generation and the next who were born and brought up purely in cities? Where is our muluk?� Watching women on trains, chatting with commuters, observing the interactions and relationships between technology, movement, speed, time and people has revealed characteristics about the city and its people to me. The process has brought to light the importance of everyday objects and the politics of everyday. With computers and television taking up time and space in the individual�s life, the everyday life has not come to a standstill. It is undergoing transformations. Women discuss TV serials ardently in their train groups because they like to guess what may happen next in the serial . I wonder whether it is the TV serial creators who are impacting the minds of the women or whether it is the women who are impacting the minds and motives of serial makers. News that is often discussed in trains is that which is close to home and life and which impacts the individual most , indicating the value of local news and raising the question of what kind of global news impacts local peoples? Listening to everyday conversations gives me a better understanding of the city. I have now come to know that the shop in the second lane outside Kurla station is excellent and reputed for fried foods. I discover that now when I have to reach Khargar while traveling on Central Railway, all I need to do is to get off at Thane Station and take a direct bus which will drop me to Khargar instead of switching trains between Central and Harbour Line. Listening to everyday conversations has made me knowledgeable about the stereotypes which exist for Western and Central Railway commuters. Watching people now enables me to discern the difference between a Western Railway and a Central Railway commuter because now I know that they �simply look DIFFERENT�. Yet, there are similarities which I am still gathering. I am now able to read the city carefully and simultaneously broaden and narrow the cognitive map that is set in my mind. I now know of the Many �Others� who this city and its people dislike and hate and what kinds of dislikes and hatreds these are. Local trains are an important meeting place for people in Mumbai, but it is not that everyone makes an effort to meet with humanity on the trains everyday. Some women never become part of train groups either because they don�t have a fixed time for work and therefore no fixed train, or simply because they prefer to journey alone. Women who do not want to interact with people during their journey create their own personal space bubble either by listening to the radio, talking on the cell phone, reading a book, snoozing or simply wearing a look on the face which says, �leave me alone, I am not interested�. Those in train groups laugh, chatter, doze off, read a newspaper, sing, share information, eat or hold hands with their maitreens (female friends) and make intimate conversations or play games (personal, political and musical). Train groups then become an important and valuable part of women�s lives. Perhaps the only friends that some women have are their co-commuters . The ladies compartment is valuable because it provides a private space for women to be themselves , to sing, to talk, to express their aspirations and desires through their gazes and narrow eye-glances and to express their frustration and anger through mild outbursts, tremors and angry volcanoes with solid lava. But what happens when the journey is over and women get off from the train and step on to the platform, rubbing shoulders with the very men with whom their share their lives, identity, work, home, relationships, personal space and public space? To answer this question requires getting deeper into the lives and minds of The Everyday People and understanding their perceptions, notions and concepts of life, politics, religion, region and relationships. It is critical to observe and understand everyday encounters and see what encounters are missed (deliberately and incidentally/accidentally) and therefore what opportunities have gone by. It is vital to look at the everyday relationships that exist between people and structures in order to gather lived experiences of authority, hierarchy, democracy, autocracy and aristocracy. This in turn may provide cues to people�s fears, worldviews, their aspirations and power equations. Physical public spaces are shrinking, undoubtedly, but new ones are emerging as well � in cyberspace and new forms of public spaces inside of private spaces. Meeting spaces are also being generated constantly � in art, in technology, in music, in language, but whether these contribute to the real meetings of real peoples is still unknown to me. Relationships between people are undergoing changes. And with the ladies compartment in the local trains and the Ladies Special train, women are coming out of their homes, stepping into the economy and in the public. They have still to carve a niche, and some have begun by exploring themselves during the time and space provided in the local trains. Whether capital and commerce are sabotaging this time and space or boosting it, I am not sure at this point. I have only begun scaling the iceberg and have not even reached its tip. But what the ladies compartment has definitely done is to help women tackle their financial fears and insecurities. It has helped women to dream of jobs � but mainly jobs and not really careers. While women are earning, I don�t know whether they are truly controlling and directing their finances. And if this authority is not in their hands, then the ladies compartment has helped women to find an alternative to their fears, but has still left them without control. The ladies compartment enables women to move around the city, yet most women travel largely from home to work and back, leaving the city devoid of its breed of explorers. Perhaps all that most women really know is the time of their train . A form of life exists in the dark tunnels through which the trains chug and a certain worldview is created. Issues of security arise . Moving on the roads has its own share of benefits, one of them being watching the world with the sky on top of your head and the comfort experienced by virtue of being in broader public gaze. Women claim that traveling in local trains makes them broadminded and perhaps this experience in itself is empowering. What such more empowering experiences and opportunities exist or can be created? Has the ladies compartment enabled women to face men and deal with them better? Or has it deepened the existing gender divide? I am still scaling the iceberg, that iceberg which is composed of the lives and stories of The Everyday People who make up this world. As I write this and understand the overall value of local trains (and of localness), two pieces of information concern me: one, introduction of 500 home guards on the platforms and in the ladies coaches to protect women from teasing and harassment, and two, introduction of qawalli groups in the general compartment so that qwallis and bhajans can both be sung on the trains which in turn will lead to national integration. I am wondering whether we are being too lenient by allowing the state and institutions to enter our local trains and sabotage our public space? Rules on the trains have been made by the very commuters who have been traveling and using the train space. These rules have evolved over a period of time � they were tried, tested, modified, re-modified, and are still evolving as people are applying them to use and interact in the train space. No government issued an ordinance stating that there should be a system of fourth seat in the second class compartments and no such system in the first class compartment. This then raises the question of public spaces which are being encroached upon by institutions of control. Is control always necessary? Does control dis-empower the local? Does the local value its own localness and explore the resources, opportunities and potential that exist within its realm? What forms of resistances can we subversively use to deal with control? This is the last of my postings on this list in terms of the fellowship, but the process and the journeys will continue. I started this study with several notions in my head, one of them being that there is a problem in city life with the burgeoning crowds and the shrinking physical spaces. I am now clear that more than the problem, there exist opportunities and spaces and this has been the greatest reward of the research process. Observation is an important faculty. Look at what is close at hand; far-sightedness (Think Global Act Local) is a delusion. This period has revealed strongly to me that what we need are Everyday Heroes who will challenge the status quo (either directly or subversively) and bring about changes. Both men and women need to be these Everyday Heroes, you and I � On the move, in search, Zainab A. Bawa _________________________________________________________________ Arrange your love marriage. http://www.shaadi.com/ptnr.php?ptnr=hmltag On Shaadi.com. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: The Everyday.doc Type: application/octet-stream Size: 39424 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040722/2f536ea5/attachment.obj From definetime at rediffmail.com Wed Jul 21 12:49:23 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 21 Jul 2004 07:19:23 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) Our lies led us into war Message-ID: <20040721071923.20044.qmail@webmail29.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040721/089f0f61/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Our lies led us into war The press must also be held to account for falsehoods we reproduced before the invasion George Monbiot Tuesday July 20, 2004 The Guardian So Andrew Gilligan, the BBC reporter who claimed that the government had sexed up the intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, was mostly right. Much of the rest of the media, which took the doctored intelligence at face value, was wrong. The reward for getting it right was public immolation and the sack. The punishment for getting it wrong was the usual annual bonus. No government commissions inquiries to discover why reporters reproduce the government's lies. All journalists make mistakes. When deadlines are short and subjects are complicated, we are bound to get some things wrong. But the falsehoods reproduced by the media before the invasion of Iraq were massive and consequential: it is hard to see how Britain could have gone to war if the press had done its job. If the newspapers have any interest in putting the record straight, they should surely each be commissioning an inquiry of their own. Unlike the government's, it should be independent, consisting perhaps of a lawyer, a media analyst and an intelligence analyst. Its task would be to assess the paper's coverage of Iraq, decide what it got right and what it got wrong, discover why the mistakes were made and what should be done to prevent their repetition. Its report should be published in full by the paper. No British newspaper is likely to emerge unharmed from such an inquiry. The Independent, the Independent on Sunday and the Guardian, which were the most sceptical about the claims made by the government and intelligence agencies, still got some important things wrong. Much of the problem here is that certain falsehoods have slipped into the political language. The Guardian, for example, has claimed on nine occasions that the weapons inspectors were expelled from Iraq in 1998. Embarrassingly, one of these claims was contained in an article called Iraq: the myth and the reality. Even John Pilger, who could scarcely be accused of dancing to the government's tune, made this mistake when writing for the paper in 2000. It's not that the Guardian believes this to be the case: it has published plenty of reports showing that the inspectors were withdrawn by the UN, after the US insisted that they should leave Iraq for their own safety. But the lie is repeated so often by the government that it seems almost impossible to kill. The Observer, I think, would do less well. It commissioned some brilliant investigative reporting, which exposed many of the falsehoods reproduced elsewhere in the media. But it also carried several reports that were simply wrong. It published five articles claiming that there were "direct Iraqi links with the US hijackers" who destroyed the World Trade Centre in 2001. One suggested that "Iraqi training, intelligence and logistics were hidden behind an Islamist facade". Iraq, it claimed, "ran a terrorist camp for foreign Islamists, where it taught them how to hijack planes with boxcutters". Three reports suggested that the anthrax attacks in the United States in October 2001 had "an ultimate Iraqi origin". Other articles maintained that "Iraq is developing a long-range ballistic missile system that could carry weapons of mass destruction up to 700 miles"; that it had developed "mobile factories of mass destruction"; and that it "has tried to buy thousands of ... aluminium tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium". All these stories turn out to have been based on false information supplied by the Iraqi National Congress and US or British intelligence agencies. Its editorials also appear to have been too willing to give George Bush and Tony Blair the benefit of the doubt. In November 2002, for example, the paper maintained that Saddam Hussein "expelled UN weapons inspectors in 1998; he subsequently built up an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction ... the real responsibility [for averting war] lies with Saddam himself". The paper consistently argued that we should not go to war without an international mandate, but supported the invasion when that mandate didn't materialise. The Observer published plenty of stories that contradicted these reports. But a balance between true and false still averages out as partly false, and its readers were left not knowing what to believe. In May this year, the paper published an article by David Rose retracting some of the incorrect material. I don't think I'm alone in believing that it provided insufficient redress. It failed to deal with the allegations of links between Iraq and al-Qaida, or of Iraq's responsibility for the anthrax attacks. And it seems wrong that one journalist should take responsibility for decisions that must have been approved elsewhere. This partial retraction contrasts uncomfortably with the comprehensive apology published by the New York Times four days before. "Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more scepticism were, perhaps, too intent on rushing scoops into the paper," the NYT confessed. "Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all." But the Observer's sins are minor compared with those of the Times, the Sunday Times and the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs. They all appear to have been willing accomplices in the Pentagon's campaign of disinformation. By far the worst of these offenders is the Sunday Telegraph. In September 2001, it claimed that "the Iraqi leader had been providing al-Qaida ... with funding, logistical back-up and advanced weapons training. His operations reached a 'frantic pace' in the past few months". In October 2001, it reported that "Saddam Hussein has relocated his chemical weapons factories after the first case of anthrax poisoning in America ... A senior western intelligence official said that ... 'The entire contents of their chemical weapons factories around Baghdad have been moving through the nights to specially built bunkers'." In September 2002, it reported that "Saddam Hussein is developing frightening new ways to deliver his arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, including smallpox and the deadly VX nerve agent". Another report on the same day claimed that "Saddam is on the verge of possessing crude nuclear devices that could be 'delivered' using 'unorthodox' means such as on lorries or ships ... Saddam has the capability to assemble all the components required to make nuclear weapons." In February 2003, it claimed that "Iraq's air force has advanced poison bombs". All of these stories - and many others - appear to be false. But far from retracting them, it keeps publishing new allegations which look as dodgy as its pre-war claims. Like the Observer, it appears to have been used by black propagandists in the intelligence services and Iraqi defectors seeking to boost their credentials. Unlike the Observer, it seems happy to be duped. So who will hold the newspapers to account? It seems that the only possible answer is you. You, the readers, must take us to task if we mislead you. Pressure groups should be bombarding us with calls and emails - you'd be amazed by the difference it makes. And if we don't respond with openness and honesty, you should cancel your subscriptions and look elsewhere for your news. www.monbiot.com From iram at sarai.net Wed Jul 21 14:48:00 2004 From: iram at sarai.net (iram) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 14:48:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People Message-ID: <40FE34C8.6090109@sarai.net> We the Media (hardback) Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People By Dan Gillmor We the Media (hardback) Full Description Grassroots journalists are dismantling Big Media's monopoly on the news, transforming it from a lecture to a conversation. Not content to accept the news as reported, these readers-turned-reporters are publishing in real time to a worldwide audience via the Internet. The impact of their work is just beginning to be felt by professional journalists and the newsmakers they cover. In We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, nationally known business and technology columnist Dan Gillmor tells the story of this emerging phenomenon, and sheds light on this deep shift in how we make and consume the news. We the Media is essential reading for all participants in the news cycle: * Consumers learn how they can become producers of the news. Gillmor lays out the tools of the grassroots journalist's trade, including personal Web journals (called weblogs or blogs), Internet chat groups, email, and cell phones. He also illustrates how, in this age of media consolidation and diminished reporting, to roll your own news, drawing from the array of sources available online and even over the phone. * Newsmakers politicians, business executives, celebrities get a wake-up call. The control that newsmakers enjoyed in the top-down world of Big Media is seriously undermined in the Internet Age. Gillmor shows newsmakers how to successfully play by the new rules and shift from control to engagement. * Journalists discover that the new grassroots journalism presents opportunity as well as challenge to their profession. One of the first mainstream journalists to have a blog, Gillmor says, "My readers know more than I do, and that's a good thing." In We the Media, he makes the case to his colleagues that, in the face of a plethora of Internet-fueled news vehicles, they must change or become irrelevant. At its core, We the Media is a book about people. People like Glenn Reynolds, a law professor whose blog postings on the intersection of technology and liberty garnered him enough readers and influence that he became a source for professional journalists. Or Ben Chandler, whose upset Congressional victory was fueled by contributions that came in response to ads on a handful of political blogs. Or Iraqi blogger Zayed, whose Healing Irag blog (healingiraq.blogspot.com) scooped Big Media. Or acridrabbit, who inspired an online community to become investigative reporters and discover that the dying Kaycee Nichols sad tale was a hoax. Give the people tools to make the news, We the Media asserts, and they will. Journalism in the 21st century will be fundamentally different from the Big Media that prevails today. We the Media casts light on the future of journalism, and invites us all to be part of it. Hardback Edition July 2004 ISBN: 0-596-00733-7 320 pages, $24.95 US, $36.95 CA, £17.50 UK From kalpagam25 at rediffmail.com Tue Jul 20 12:10:55 2004 From: kalpagam25 at rediffmail.com (kalpagam - umamaheswaran) Date: 20 Jul 2004 06:40:55 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] July Posting-Roadside Temples-Additional Notes 2 Message-ID: <20040720064055.20569.qmail@webmail8.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040720/09f5afe8/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Hi Friends, Here is some more on the Roadside Temples I interviewed, Kalpagam July Posting-Roadside Temples-Additional Notes 2 Roadside temples for Mariamman are like the Ganesh temples very numerous. It can be said that each slum locality in the city is likely to have a Maiamman temple. These temples also serve as the focal point for community activities for the slum households especially during the tamil month of Aadi, when every Aadi Sunday many individual households as well as collectively they worship the goddess and offer Kuzhu (a kind of porridge) to all in the neighbourhood. Worship of this diety is probably foremost for slum households, most of whom belong to non-brahmin and lower castes. Worship of mother goddess by all names is supposed to protect them from certain annual epidemic diseases like small pox (now non-existent), chicken pox and measles. In fact when any household is afflicted with these or other illnesses even today, also in middle class and upper caste households, they believe that they have failed to appease Goddess Mariamman and quickly make amends by arranging a Kuzhu or Pongal offering. These are generally prepared in the outer precints of the temple, and when an upper caste, say a Brahmin household decide to make such an offering, they usually ask a lower caste woman known to them, usually a domestic servant to make the offering and give her all the provisions and bear the puja expenses. The Kuzhu or Pongal thus prepared and offered is usually distributed to the slum members themselves. This being the month of Aadi all the Mariamman temples in the neighbourhood are buzzing with activity especially on Fridays and Sundays. I present below my narrative accounts of two such Mariamman temples where I conducted interviews recently. Arulmiga Sri Mundakanni Amman Aalayam This temple on the sidewalk of the road is located just at the entrance of Bharati Nagar slum in Mandaveli. A long time resident of the slum, one Sudha who claims she was born and brought up in that slum, claims that this temple was first started by placing a stone to represent the Amman idol way back in 1956. Later the temple, still with thatched roof but otherwise a stone structure with grill door was put up as the plaque says on 22-10-1971. Significant details of those involved in the construction and inaugural of this temple is given in the stone plaque details. The then Municipal Councillor T. Sarangan and ex-Municipal Councillor T.K.Kapali graced the inaugural function suggesting that the Municipal authorities had themselves approved it. But more importantly, the most renowned bootlegger and slum lord whose regime is still recalled with awe and fear in popular memory nearly a decade after his death, one M. Sundaram, also graced the inaugural function and the plaque says it was done under his leadership. Subsequently, the youth of the slum brought a Ganesha idol from somewhere, according to Sudha they stole it from somewhere, and installed that in the temple as well. Today all the teenaged youth of the slum are doing various tasks related to the temple. Most significantly every house owner in Bharati nagar slum as also some of the neighbouring bungalow owners give Rs 100 per month for temple upkeep, and all renters who live in rented houses in Bharati nagar slum have to give Rs 50 per month for temple upkeep. There exists a committee of five members from the slum itself who collect the money and maintain accounts paying for the temple expenses like flowers, oil for the lamp, sweeper charges and so on. They are apparently also saving a good chunk of the monthly collection to build a more pucca temple. But in return for their monthly contribuion, they celebrate the Aadi festival with gusto and apart from the Kuzhu that is distributed mid afternoon, all slum members are given a very big dinner once a year that comprises of all non-vegetarian dishes like chicken, meat and fish. According to Sudha all slum households whether Christian or Muslim have to compulsorily make the monthly temple contribution, and that if they don't they are denied water supply from the public hand pump. The pujas at the temple are done twice daily in the mornings and evenings as also on other festival days by a man of the slum named Raji. Raji has apparently been entrusted with the task because for the last two or three years during the Aadi festival he was the one who was possessed by the goddess. The one so possessed wears at the time of the festival a yellow sarees, bangles and bindi even if he were a man, and during the state of possession, he would answer questions that the members of the public ask him and these are believed by the people to be the answers of the goddess herself. Only the member of the slum who is possesssed by the goddess does the daily puja until the next festival when the goddess may possess somebody else as well. Recently, they have even installed an idol of Durgai Amman as late as 4-11-1999. As I was standing there and interviewing the people I observed three young mothers not residents of the slum on their way back from a school with their children stop by briefly at the temple and take the Vibhuti prasad kept there for themselve and the five school children althoug the temple doors at that time were locked. Such is the belief among the local people. Sri Nagakanni Amman Aalayam, Sri Muthumari, Karumari, Angaala Parameswari Amman Aalayam. This roadside temple at the intersection of Trust Link Road and Lazarus Church Road houses a number of Amman idols as its name indicates under a huge Arasam tree surrounding which a small kaccha type temple has been constructed. Just a few yards away on the street are three high rise very plush office buildings, one of which is occupied by Touchtel and another yet to be occupied. It is quite surprising that this temple ha survived demolition attempts that must have surely been there when these office buildings came up. The temple is looked after by a old man with the help of his 35 year old daughter who also functions as the priestess. In my interview with her, she called herself both as Nandini and Padmavathi, and told me that the temple has been there for 25 years and was put up by her devout mother Rajammal. Rajammal first obtained the stone idol of Nagakanni from the ground beneath in Mangkollai area near the Kapali temple. She kept the idol and worshipped it there putting up a small temple. But apparently too many jealous neighbours began to bother her mother and create trouble for her mother. Then one night the goddess appeared in her mother's dream and asked her to relocate the shrine at the present spot. Padmavathi's mother died in 1996 and for the last nine years she has been assisting her father in te tempe. As soon as I met Padmavathi, I knew I had met her before and as she told me her mother's story, it was clear to me that she strongly resembled her mother who used to come round homes collecting rice and money for Amman worship when I was a child. She used to visit my mother's house regularly for the collection. It is quite possible that during her daily rounds, she found this a good spot with an Arasam tree to relocate her idol. Padmavathi has a flair for metaphorical speech and when I asked her why the temple has so many Amman names she first gave me an account that was incomprehensible to me. The story as narrated went as follows. Angaala Parameswari Amman was already there in the vicinity and the goddess became angry when her younger sister came here. But her mother appealed and said the younger sister will be here. Then within a year, Angaala Parameswari herself moved to this spot, was relocated presumably by her mother in the present spot. Her mother got the Durga idol from the sea near Marina beach and the Bhavani Amman idol was retrieved from a well. There werenumerous other stone idols as well such as the seven Kannigal, Idumbar, Yogamuni, Swayambhu Lingeswar (also obtained from the ground). Padmavathi was married when she was young and has two children-a son 19 years old and a daughter 15 years old studying Plus Two. But 15 years ago she separated from her husband and now is fully devoted to the temple as priestess. She has also garnered the intution to say "kuri"-folk astrology. On Fridays and New Moon day she has about 30 to 40 customers who come to her. According to her, they are so poor that not even 10 of them are in a position to give her Rs 10 as Dakshinai. Many of her customers come to her with problems relating to husbands in the case of women, health related problems or problems related to children. Although Padmavathi and her father would like to celebrate th Adi festival for their temple they have been unable to do so because of many problems. First te temple is falling apart especially the cieling and Padmavathi has too many problems with her siblings. Thieves have also ransacked the temple on a few occasions. While the father lives in the temple, Padmavathi lives with her children elsewhere. From sappho1999 at rediffmail.com Wed Jul 21 11:00:51 2004 From: sappho1999 at rediffmail.com (Sappho for Equality) Date: 21 Jul 2004 05:30:51 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Kolkata, the City & Lesbians, a Marginal Discourse - 6th Posting Message-ID: <20040721053051.22121.qmail@webmail8.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040721/9aea320f/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- THE CITY AND A MARGINAL DISCOURSE Kolkata, the city of protest, the city of radical politics, the city of art and culture, of intelect and literature was almost an exile for persons, in particular, for women preferring same sex. The city did not care or bother for them and indulged indifference and ignorance about the issue to dominate minds and conscience. It seems that the silence around homosexuality and related issues were quite constructed and calculated, which in due course changed into homophobia. Thanks to colonialism, which brought this disciplinary gaze to push homosexuality into invisibility. Yet lesbians lurked through the work of fiction in the ambiguous representation of shoi, bakulful, shokhi, leaving only traces for our imagination. The public and private spaces were reinforced against everything that challenged the prevailing norms of heterosexual, monogamist, and patriarchal culture. The discourse of same-sex love between women remain marginal, more than other marginal discourses, as the city showed its hesitation to discover desirous women in the public domain. ‘Sappho’ as an organized effort to create a parallel space for women with same sex preference, was an initiative of late nineties but surely it seems unbelievable that the city lacked any lesbians before 1999. Not even a single reflection of the violence and immense societal pressure faced by women with same sex preference came up in any form or manner in the cityscape throughout the preceding years. The city did not lack radical feminists; human rights activists, intellects but lesbianism, never occupied a better place other than gossip or alien problem. When Kolkata’s public domain started to discuss (hetero)sexuality and ramp shows glamorizing women’s body became a regular event, lesbians only appeared in few popular clinical descriptions, as a passing phenomena. This was indeed a starking difference in comparison to other metropolises. Mumbai and Delhi had support systems for women with same sex preference much earlier than Kolkata. Though in hostels, shelter homes and other captivities incidents of same-sex relation was not unfamiliar but they were never addressed in a just way, treatment and punishment were the only remedy prescribed if anything or anyone was ever detected! And to worsen the situation most of the Mental Health Professionals treated homosexuality as a disease and even advised steroids to cure! The stigmatization and social ostracization was growing stronger and stronger but the city remained numb and indifferent. Thankfully this barricade did not sustain forever. The film ‘Fire’ and the related controversies actually paved the way for the visibility of same-sex preference between women and the city whether willingly or not had to accept the fact that lesbians do exist. It is interesting to note that a large member including the founders were from the suburban area and tend to perceive them as non-elite. While discussing this visibility and invisibility of same-sex relation between women, it would be useful to remember that heterogeneity; plurality and diversity were inseparable characteristics of Indian life and tradition. And not only the ancient and medieval age but also the modern era has instances of homosexual relation, or precisely homoerotic ones which is usually neglected or forgotten or interpreted in a non-homosexual manner. In slow but steady pace the city-scenario started changing with the advent of Sappho. It was significant enough that Sappho did find out groups and organizations that were liberal and homosocial even at the preliminary stage. We gratefully remember, Veena Lakhumalani, the head of social governance cell of British Council Kolkata, whose eagerness and endeavor helped Sappho to make their first public appearance in this city. One of the posters, displayed in the programme, bore the words “Support or Deny We Exist”. The message was clear enough and the city could not but accept it. The other incident was Sappho’s inclusion in “Maitree”, the city based largest network of women activists and NGOs. It was never an open armed embracing, but Sappho never gave up. The reason behind was simple; women’s movement cannot bypass the fact that lesbian rights are women rights and human rights as well. The last four years Kolkata witnessed Sappho in participating and celebrating International Women’s Day, and International Human Rights Day along with Maitree to propagate their rights and demands. Issues of same–sex relation with women, gradually started becoming visible within the city-life. Printed media had already given a good coverage, and then there were serials and telefilms in local TV channels where parallel sexuality was addressed in a decent manner. Though it did not come up in good numbers but the effect was more or less satisfactory. Academicians of different fields addressed the issue in their research work and the city intelligentsia was stirred up. But the most important and unique was the emergence of “Sappho for Equality” an activist forum with members from all the cross sections, irrespective of sexual orientation and gender, to voice against the marginalisation of sexual preference of women and upheld rights for women with same-sex preference. The city was late to start but actually proved to be a topper in this respect, at least till date. From sgadihok at vsnl.com Tue Jul 20 07:52:46 2004 From: sgadihok at vsnl.com (sabeena gadihok) Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 07:52:46 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Nooh Nizami Message-ID: <000001c46e00$ecfee680$72e141db@del2.vsnl.net.in> Dear Friends: It is with great shock and sadness that I would like to share with you the passing of Nooh Nizami from the batch of 99, MCRC. Nizami along with Saba Siddiqi of NDTV drowned while swimming off the coast of Raigad, Maharastra in the afternoon of July 18th. Nizami was an extremely visual and creative camera-person having worked with Muzzafar Ali and on several other documentaries and ad films. He was in Baghdad, sending dispatches to India through the Iraq war and co-directed "Passengers", a documentary on Gujarat with Akanksha Joshi. More than any of this, he was a wonderful person and friend. When I met him in March this year (when he conducted a very successful lighting workshop with the MCRC students despite the usual hurdles and bureaucracy), he was full of ideas about new films and work in Bombay. He said "Bombay mein apni kismat azmane ja raha hoon." I find it difficult to believe that I will not see him again in Coffee Café Day in the New Friends colony market or meet up with him to chat about the many things that we shared. I share in the grief of his family and loved ones. Sabeena Gadihoke -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040720/1b802f1c/attachment.html From anya at bgl.vsnl.net.in Sat Jul 24 04:07:59 2004 From: anya at bgl.vsnl.net.in (Ananya Vajpeyi) Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 00:37:59 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] speaking of a friend who left the room Message-ID: I write to Sarai list readers for the first time, to share with this virtual community the sad news of the passing of Dr. Murari Ballal, of Ambalpady, Udupi. Dr. Ballal was an economist, a philosopher and a man of letters, and also a cultural and environmental activist. Anyone with the slightest interest in Karnataka over the last 25 years would know of this unique figure, even though he lived in a region endowed with more than its share of public intellectuals. Dr. Ballal was deeply involved in the educational activities of Manipal's various institutions of higher learning, in the legacy of Jiddu Krishnamurthy, in the initiatives of the many 'matha-s' of Udupi, in the political struggles of the people of coastal Karnataka, in the literary, musical and artistic aspects of Kannadiga high culture, and in ecological and popular science movements across the country. At Dr. Ballal's invitation, people travelled from all parts of India to his house. Even though I came to know Murari only a few years ago, since then he hosted U R Ananthamurthy and the late D R Nagaraj, Ashis Nandy and Shiv Visvanathan from CSDS, Medha Patkar and Vandana Shiva, Samdhong Rimpoche and Sunil Sahasrabudhe, among other men and women of ideas and action. Murari could draw anyone he chose into the conversation that he spent his life conducting. To keep the dialogue going -- that was his special gift. I feel moved to bring word of Murari's passing to those on this list who may not already have known him, because it strikes me that Sarai too is an attempt to weave many voices into a conversation. Only some readers may have visited Ambalpady, or attended one of the many many gatherings that Dr. Ballal choreographed over the years. But his beautiful southern Karnataka home, as well as his local cultural organization in Udupi-- "Friends of Ratha Beedhi (= Car Street, which encircles the Krishna temple)" -- were emblems, nay, embodiments, of the elusive ideal of a civilizational dialogue. In as much as Sarai, too, seeks to create such a space, I felt that there would be a valuable example for us all in the life and work of Murari Ballal. Dr. Ballal died earlier this month after a road accident left him in a week-long coma. His death was untimely and his loss cannot in any way be made up, not only for his family and friends, but for Karnataka as a whole. Perhaps the best that we can hope to do is to keep on talking to one another. Ananya Vajpeyi. From shivamvij at gmail.com Sat Jul 24 21:50:19 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 09:20:19 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] 'we iranians don't hate america' Message-ID: >From a blog Liberals of Iran www.persianliberals.tk Tuesday, July 13, 2004 The most important problem for travellers to Iran! Iran is an ancient country with dosens of tourist attractions and monuments and buildings as old as thousands of years. But whay exactly iran is not as famous as it should be among western tourists? there are two major reasons: one is an unreasnable fear from iranian people common among westerners and specially americans. they think all iranians are terrorist and antiweserners. This sentiment is totally wrong! although iranian government is the most important sponsor of alqaeda and global terrorism and the biggest enemy state of USA, But this doesn't mean people are the same way. never foprget that Iran's government is a dictatorshiop and desires of a dictatorship government has nothing to do with the desires of it's people. In fact, as someone who live in Iran and have seen and talked to several muslems from other countries, i believe in no other muslem country people are more fond of america than iran. don't believe what you see on tv and people rallying and crying anti USA slogans! those are a very small minority. a charecteristic of iranian nation is that it always creates dictatorship regimes and then defies them. whatever the dictatorship government tells people as the truth, will be regarded by the majority(specially youngsters) as the ultimate lie! so if you are american and you travel to Iran, you are much more likely to be warmly wellcomed by the poeople, except the ones you meet are of rare fscist minorities like Basij and Ansaar. Don't believe? ask the american athletes who have travelled to iran in recent years as Wresteling and Basketball teems! but yet there is another aspect of Iran's tourism industry that really tends to deter all nonmuslems from travelling to this country and that is the rool of Hijab! according to this oldfashioned islamic rool(which is not obayed by many modern muslems) women should were wide dresses covering all their bodies, even in the hottest seasons of the year, and worst than that, they have to cover their hair with some stupid thing called the scarf! so if you are of the gentle sex and want to travel to the ancient country of iran, you have to tolerate the heat of wether and are not allowed to even oncover your hair! so much for legs and arms! even men are not totally free with their clothing. you are not allowed to walk around with shorts or shirts with sleeves that are sorter than a certain limit! so the big problem for a summer time trip to Iran is comfort of clothing which yet remains unsolved! posted by persianliberals @ 3:35 AM 1 comments o o o o o o PersianLiberals.tk What do you know about the worlds most controversial country, Iran? What is Iran in your mind? The biggest sponsor of terrorism? A nation of Islamic fundamentalism? A source of hatred of western values like liberalism and democracy? Honorable ancient history but nothing to be proud of at the present time? Country of belittled, hidden, miserable women? An anti-Semitic and especially anti-Jewish state? A member of the axis of evil and next target of the liberating US lead coalition? A dictatorship government threatening all the civilized world with it's WMD? Country of the sex-hating youth? None of the above is descriptive and accurate about Iran. Visit persianliberals.tk to learn the reality about the most controversial nation of the middle east. We bring you the most reliable news from inside of Iran! we have different writers from different parts of Iran providing you with information about political, cultural, economical, artistic, feministic, religious, sexual etc. aspects of Iran! you just need to submit your questions about Iran and their answer will be posted on the blog within 48 hours! You can as well write your own opinions to be visible for the world in the comments section! Unlike many other middle easterns, we are not Anti Americans! Visit us to find out why and also find out the answer of many other questions you might have about both Iran and Islam. We have started this weblog to show you the true face of Iran. In this blog, a few of Irtanian Youngsters who believe in some western values like liberalism and democracy, try to show the true face of Iran to the world, from inside of it and the way it really is. We wish to become Salam Cox of Iran, but we are not critic of American's invasion to Iraq and Afghanistan, but in favour of it! www.persianliberals.tk -- I poured reason in two wine glasses Raised one above my head And poured it into my life From ysaeed7 at yahoo.com Sun Jul 25 11:01:34 2004 From: ysaeed7 at yahoo.com (Yousuf) Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 22:31:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Muslim pop art - posting # 6 Message-ID: <20040725053134.42759.qmail@web51405.mail.yahoo.com> Sarai Fellowship, posting 6: Muslim Religious Posters >From Ravi Varma to Rajesh Khanna � The Printers of God Tracing the origins of the Muslim religious art in India, one cannot ignore Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906), the self-taught portraitist from the Travancore royal family, and arguably, the �father� of the industry that mass-produces devotional images and calendar art in India. Varma was one of the first Indians to have used western principles and techniques of painting, especially in perspective and figure-modeling, and adapt them to Indian subjects and idioms, resulting in a unique style of realistic portraits, which made him a much sought-after artist, especially with the Indian nobility and the Europeans in the country. His depiction of the Indian woman�s �perfect beauty� was so idealized that people often remarked about �beautiful� women in general, �Oh, she looks straight out of a Ravi Varma painting�. >From the portraits, Varma moved onto Indian mythology, painting the popular Hindu gods, deities, and other characters from the epics. Interestingly, he used human models to give shape to his vision of the gods. By depicting deities such as Lakshmi, Krishna, and Saraswati as sublimely beautiful humans in everyday attire, he made the gods seem divine yet approachable. These paintings became so popular that Hindus, ever since, have visualized their gods very much the way Ravi Varma presented them. Recognizing the need to popularize his art, Varma set up a lithographic colour press in 1894 (first in Bombay, and later shifting to Lonavla), to print thousands of copies of his oleographs that the ordinary people could buy. These prints, loved by the masses, were widely copied and re-copied by commercial artists and other publishers. Millions of Indians continue to adorn these cheap imitations in their houses without the knowledge of their original artist. Ravi Varma�s style must have also inspired the early painters of the billboards, cinema hoardings, and even film sets that became an integral part of the urban India�s popular culture. So, where do the Muslim themes come into this picture? And do they connect with Ravi Varma�s press in any way? It may be difficult to pinpoint an exact date when the popular Islamic themes started getting mass-produced in India. The renowned curator and cultural historian, Jyotindra Jain, saw in a private collection in Mumbai, Muslim posters printed as early as 1940s and 50s, �but that does not mean that they didn�t exist prior to that�, he says. Some of the images he saw consisted of shrines at Baitul Muqaddas (Jerusalem), the tomb of Haji Malang, the dargah at Ajmer, and at Nagpur Sharif, among others. Some of the printers of these posters that Dr.Jain noted at the bottom, were Hemchand Bhargava (Chandni Chowk, Delhi), G.I. Press (Bombay), H. Ghulam Muhammad & Sons (Lahore), Swastik Picture Publication (Fatehpuri, Delhi), Muhammadi Fine Frame Works (Bombay), and so on. �Hemchand Bhargava was in fact one of the largest producers of Muslim images in the 50s and 60s�. The posters available today on Indian streets, of course, carry none of these bylines. Coming back to Ravi Varma, a recent book �Popular Indian Art: Raja Ravi Varma and the Printed Gods of India� by Erwin Neumayer and Christine Schelberger (OUP, 2003), features about six images of Islamic themes printed at the Ravi Varma Press, in as early as 1920! It is not clear whether these Muslim themes were originally drawn by Varma himself (he died in 1904) or were produced by his successors after his death, as their market potential was realized. Of course, the typical Ravi Varma stamp is missing in them since very little figure modeling was required in Islamic themes. But most interesting is an image of the Burraq (a mythical beast that the Prophet rode to heaven), depicted here with the face of a European woman who could as well be Queen Victoria, donning what looks like the British crown! (We have earlier discussed other local variants of Burraq�s face � a Hindu goddess in the Tanjore style of painting, for instance). But somehow, these early Muslim images (from R.V. Press) are more European in style than the Hindu images produced there. The perfect blending of the European technique and the Indian ethos found in Ravi Varma�s sublime images of Hindu gods is somewhat missing in the Muslim posters. It is unlikely that the Muslim images from R.V. Press inspired the later Muslim posters, unlike the style of Hindu images that continues till date. Possibly, some other catalysts, such as the photographs imported from Arabia (as early as they were available), became the major inspiration for the Muslim images produced in the 1940s and henceforth. But going back even earlier in time, one wonders as to when and in what form did the images of Mecca and other sacred Islamic sites arrive in India/south Asia prior to the age of printing/mass production. There seem to be four different channels through which such images may have been imported here: (1) Miniature paintings and illuminated books from central Asia/Iran coming with the travelers/conquerors, (2) Lithographs of European origin brought by the British or the Portuguese, (3) miscellaneous items such as prayer mats, carpets, cloth hanging, and other objects with such images, brought by the Indian pilgrims returning from the Hajj, and more importantly, (4) non-visual accounts, either written or oral, about the shape and size of the sacred buildings and the material culture of Arabia told by travelers or pilgrims and passed down the generations to those who could not visit Mecca or had no access to its image. The central Asian miniature paintings are less likely to be the source of a popular imagination about Mecca since these were meant only for the royal consumption and were never made public. The European lithographs of Islamic shrines, drawn mostly for the travel books published in Europe in the 17-18th century, probably never made it to south Asia until the end of 19th century. But some Muslim posters published by the Ravi Varma press show an influence of the European lithograph style. A 1920 image depicting the battleground of Karbala (Iraq) shows a large empty courtyard surrounded by a few European looking buildings with domes! As discussed earlier, the influence of these early images did not last very long in the Muslim posters industry. Hence, major inspiration for Muslim images seem to be the objects and memories brought by Indian pilgrims returning from Mecca. But we need to make a distinction here, between the images of Arabian shrines and the local Indo-Muslim shrines and folklore. The more authentic images of Mecca may have arrived late (probably via the photographs), but the images of local Muslim saints, their mausoleums, and miracles, may have existed in south Asia from much earlier � along with the traditions of Hindu mythology. What is interesting to explore is the tradition of some folk artists such as storytellers, bards, and folk painters whose services were employed on special occasions to impart stories and religious epics. One particular community of such specialists, the Patuas or scroll painters of Kalighat, Bengal, �who know about Hindu mythology more than any one else, also know the Muslim themes equally well�, according to Dr.Jyotinder Jain. The Patuas, many of them with Hindu-Muslim combined names, follow everyday customs of both the religions freely � syncretism is a way of life, since their profession depends on it. They could be just a small surviving example of the pre-modern industry that preserved the oral narratives of our culture, unbiased towards any one religion. No wonder then that even today a Balkrishnan puts his heart and soul in painting the most evocative image of Mecca and Medina, and a Fakhruddin carves the most sublime copper idols for the Hindu temples. While the artists Balkrishnan and H.R. Raja have painted a large number of available Islamic posters, other signatures one may find on them are M.S.S., Swarup (Meerut), B.M. Kamal, Kishore, Bhatia, Mohideen Husain, R.C., and so on � a large number with missing signatures too. H.R. Raja of Meerut, who revealed his full name in Urdu on one of the Karbala posters as Hasan Raza Raja, is probably no more, since some posters now sign �Raja Studios� - run by his successors. Raja has also painted many secular calendar themes such as the nationalistic Jai Kisan Jai Jawan images of 1950s. Many new Islamic posters are recycled or redrawn versions of what H.R. Raja or others may have done in the 1950s. After the decline of Ravi Varma Press and Hemchand Bhargava and Co., we are probably witnessing today the third generation of printers of religious posters, represented by bylines such as Jothi, Brijbasi, J.B.Khanna & Co, and B.A.P (these four names constituting more than 90 percent of the posters available on the streets today). Even though Mumbai and Chennai remained for decades the most productive centres of religious art, presses in other towns such as Delhi, Meerut, Gorakhpur, Calcutta, Pune, Nagpur, and Mathura also churned out cheap posters in large numbers. In fact, the Brijbasi company is quite prolific in printing the themes of Muslim saints, their miracles and tombs, and has a well-established market base in north India. Chennai, the Mecca of street art with its larger than life billboards where politicians and film stars share space with gods and market goods, still rules the kingdom of pop devotion. Even the horns of the cattle and the walls around a temple here are given the symbolic paint jobs. The art style and symbolism used in many of our religious posters seem closer to south Indian costumes, jewelry, and facial features than north � probably because many artists and publishers are based in south India. Rajesh Khanna, the owner of the Chennai-based J.B. Khanna & Co., probably the largest and most widely networked publisher of religious and decorative posters in the country today, talks of his three generation old business: �this is a massive business with distributors and hawkers all over the country providing regular feedback for our requirements of unique images and styles preferred by each region and town�. Khannas� have recently acquired some of the latest state of the art equipment � the Creo Trendsetter 800 pre-press and the Mitsubishi Diamond 3000 LX 4-colour press - for the sole purpose of printing cheaper and better quality devotional posters more efficiently! The biggest threat to the J.B. Khanna poster business comes from the frequent piracy of their designs and images. Besides pirating full images, many unscrupulous printers even plagiarize Khannas� images or image parts by making slight changes in them and printing in large numbers. The Khannas are constantly creating and commissioning new designs, even though their existing posters continue to be reprinted - the successful ones merely in larger numbers and more frequently. Their most recent posters on the streets are eye-catching and much sharper prints � the new technology also allows them to print posters in some new dimensions and sizes never tried before. Rajesh's calculations showed that on the new press he could fully utilize a 28x40 inch sheet with as many as twenty small posters. The increased prepress cost using the new plates was less than 3 paise per poster, and likely be recovered the next time he put the same set of plates on press. �For a long run printer of repeat work, it made eminent sense to have a modern printing system in place that decreased variables and increased quality and productivity�, says Rajesh. >From Ravi Varma�s steam engine litho press to Rajesh Khanna�s 21st century Mitsubishi Diamond, it�s been a long way for the Divine assembly line. Yousuf Saeed New Delhi, India ---- For those who missed the first 5 postings: this project seeks to collect the contemporary religious posters and calendar art, depicting Muslim themes, mostly in north India, and analyze their content, focusing on the symbols of multi-faith or composite culture, besides studying briefly the industry and the artists who manufacture and sell them, the devotees who buy them, the milieu where they are adorned, and the reverence they evoke. This posting is only a section of the research and may not represent the holistic picture or the chronological sequence of the findings. More details, updates and a colourful poster gallery of the project can be seen at: www.alif-india.com/popart __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From jcm at ata.org.pe Mon Jul 26 01:46:10 2004 From: jcm at ata.org.pe (Jose-Carlos Mariategui) Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 15:16:10 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] LEA Gallery cfp: Global Crossings (GX) Message-ID: LEA Gallery cfp: Global Crossings (GX) ** Worldwide Call for Submissions ** Please feel free to spread the word widely: LEA Gallery Special: Global Crossings (GX) Guest Curators: Dennis Summers and Choy Kok Kee (gxgallery at astn.net) The Leonardo Electronic Almanac Gallery (http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/LEA2004/gallery.htm) is inviting submissions in conjunction with the Leonardo Global Crossings Initiative. The Gallery is looking to make visible the work of international artists, professionals and scholars who live and work in a wide variety of situations where access to established venues for exhibition, display and publication is limited. Difficulty of access may be attributed to cultural, geographic, ethnic, institutional or disciplinary diversity, or issues related to the North/South divide, age, gender, etc. Through this Gallery we seek to showcase little-known work in the art-science-technology field and to counter the natural tendency of networks to be inward looking, thus reinforcing established points of view. We are looking for work that considers the global earth in some fashion or another. It can be work that addresses global social, political economic, spiritual, etc. issues. It can be work that physically or metaphorically lies in multiple locations on the planet, it can be work that may have personal relationships to multiple locations on the planet. Or anything else that loosely falls along the concept of being "global" in nature. LEA encourages international artists / academics / researchers / students to submit their proposals for consideration. We particularly encourage young authors outside North America and Europe to send proposals. Form -------- Create a single web page, in any common format that either documents the work or actually is the work. As long as it is only one page, the work can take any form. Try to avoid pages that require special or unusual plugins. Keep in mind that many parts of the world do not have high-speed Internet access. Process ----------- Zip all necessary files into a folder named after the contributing artist. Send as an attachment to gxgallery at astn.net or if necessary, provide ftp instructions. In a separate attachment include: - 300 word abstract / synopsis / description of work - A brief author biography / resume - Any related URLs - Contact details In the subject heading of the email message write ³Name of Artist: LEA Global Crossings ­ Date Submitted². Deadline for submissions: 31 August 2004 Please send proposals or queries to: Dennis Summers/Choy Kok Kee gxgallery at astn.net or Nisar Keshvani LEA Editor-in-Chief lea at mitpress.mit.edu http://lea.mit.edu **************************************************************************** **** What is the Global Crossings (GX) Initiaitve? ----------------------------------------------------------- This initiative is part of the Leonardo/International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST) Global Crossings (GX) Project. GX is committed to identifying and showcasing the work of international artists, professionals, and scholars from outside North America and Europe. Leonardo/ISAST has initiated this policy to reach out to diverse cultural and global communities to overcome the considerable natural barriers that prevent trans-cultural collaboration in the emerging art-science-technology field. This initiative is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, New York. Leonardo/ISAST, a leading international scholarly and professional network, has for 35 years been an advocate of new creative practices, documenting and promoting innovative work through its publications and projects. Info: http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/globalx.htm What is LEA? ------------- Established in 1993, the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (ISSN No: 1071-4391) is the electronic arm of the pioneer art journal, Leonardo - Journal of Art, Science & Technology. The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA), jointly produced by Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST) and published under the auspices of MIT Press is an electronic journal dedicated to providing a forum for those who are interested in the realm where art, science and technology converge. Info: http://lea.mit.edu Content ------- This peer reviewed e-journal includes profiles of media arts facilities and projects, profiles of artists using new media, feature articles comprised of theoretical and technical perspectives; the LEA Gallery exhibiting new media artwork by international artists; detailed information about new publications in various media; and reviews of publications, events and exhibitions. Material is contributed by artists, scientists, educators and developers of new technological resources in the media arts. Mission ------- LEA's mission is to maintain and consolidate its position as a leading online news and trusted information filter while critically examining arts/science & technological works catering to the international CAST (Community of Artists, Scientist and Technologists) ******************************** From amanmalik_2000 at yahoo.com Mon Jul 26 20:58:48 2004 From: amanmalik_2000 at yahoo.com (Aman Malik) Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 08:28:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] A survey Message-ID: <20040726152848.85096.qmail@web90105.mail.scd.yahoo.com> Dear Moderator, I would be obliged if you could please post the following message on the reader list. Aman Malik Dear All, I am a freelance journalist based in New Delhi, India and am currently engaged in doing an article on the parallel lives that individuals lead on and off the net. As you would understand, this study would also deal with crime on the internet and aspects of Internet Psychology. I am chiefly studying individuals who spend a considerable amount of time online- mainly doing things that bear very little or no direct relation to their professional lives- activities like online chat, online activism, blogging and in some cases even hacking to mention just a few. Further, I understand quite a few subscribers to this group are either aware of or deal with issues related to the Internet at a professional level ( in the capacity of psychologists, experts on Cyber Law, Internet analysts and the like) I wish to interview all such people . Would it also be possible for you to make avalable to me any data, articles etc you might have on this topic or issues closely related to this. Those interested in being a part of my study may get back to me on the following adress: amanmalik000 at hotmail.com Warm Regards, Aman Malik New Delhi __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From sunil at mahiti.org Tue Jul 27 16:14:49 2004 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 10:44:49 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] IOSN Releases: User Guide to Using the Linux Desktop Message-ID: <1090925089.622.46.camel@box> IOSN has produced an introductory end user guide to using the Linux desktop. It is now available for review and feedback. This user guide is meant as an introductory guide for a user to use a modern personal computer (PC) running the Linux operating system. The main aim is to provide a self-learning guide on how to use a modern Linux desktop system. It assumes that the user has no prior knowledge of Linux or PC usage. The guide currently formatted for use as printed material, with the acompanying slides to be used by trainers. The training materials are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. User Guide to Using the Linux Desktop http://www.iosn.net/training/end-user-manual/ Thanks, ಸುನೀಲ್ -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 51150580. Mobile: +91 80 36701931 Currently on sabbatical with APDIP/UNDP Manager - International Open Source Network Wisma UN, Block C Komplex Pejabat Damansara. Jalan Dungun, Damansara Heights. 50490 Kuala Lumpur. P. O. Box 12544, 50782, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Tel: (60) 3-2091-5167, Fax: (60) 3-2095-2087 sunil at apdip.net http://www.iosn.net http://www.apdip.net From indirabiswas at hotmail.com Tue Jul 27 12:39:57 2004 From: indirabiswas at hotmail.com (Indira Biswas) Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 12:39:57 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] 5th posting from indira Message-ID: Hello, This is Indira.This time I would like to share with you a report on the the programme preference and broadcast reactions of the CRS. It was the only exhaustive report on the programme preference and broadcast reactions in Calcutta of the CRS and was done and published by P. C. Mahalanabis in the year 1941. A survey of this report would provide us with a clear picture of the audience preference of the time. In Calcutta two random samples were used. The first, which was called �general� sample consisted of 1503 families picked up at random out of the list of houses given in Thacher�s Street Directory in predominantly middle class residential areas of Calcutta. The second group consisted of 803 persons holding radio licenses selected again at random out of the consolidated list supplied by the CRS. Both these samples were intentionally picked up from the same geographical area to enable comparisons being made between results. The �radio� sample had, however, a comparatively large proportion of families with expenditure above Rs.400 per month. This, the reporter felt, was the right amount for possessing a radio in �comfortable circumstances�. The report made a comparative study of uses and preference of radio, gramophone and cinema as entertainment medias. It shows that a large proportion of people, nearly half among both men (46.7 percent) and women (51.17 percent) habitually listen to the radio; while a much lower proportion, only about one-third habitually go to the cinema. The proportion hearing the gramophone is small only about 17 or 18 percent. The radio is used for entertainment with increasing frequency with advancing years. The proportion going to the cinema is more or less steady up to 35 years, but then begins to decrease and falls to the very low value of 16.7 percent among persons above 55 years. The gramophone is used by a slightly larger proportion of younger people below 18 years and by older people above 55 years than in the intermediate age group. Education exerts little influence. Graduates use radio a little more frequently and the gramophone a little less than undergraduates or non matrics; otherwise differences are small, and probably negligible. Coming to expenditure level, it was shown that the use of gramophone probably decreases to some extent among families with a monthly expenditure above Rs 40 while the use of radio increases beyond the level of Rs. 100 per month. Variations are quite small in the case of the cinema, which show that this form of entertainment was equally popular among all economic classes. The study show that among occupational groups, the gramophone is used most frequently by petty traders (26.0 percent) and least frequently by professional people (12.7 percent) while the radio is used most frequently by professional people (51.1 percent) and least frequently by petty traders (42.0 percent). Differences in the case of the cinema are again quite small and do not exceed five percent. Turning to the entertainment preferences, the study reveals that habits and preferences more or less go together. Certain deviations, however, from this general rule are of considerable interest. Practically, everyone in all age, educational, economic or occupational groups would like to go much more frequently to the cinema and use the gramophone much less than they are doing at present. The difference between habit and preference is less in the case of radio; but on the whole, people would prefer to use the radio a little less frequently than at present. Although in actual fact the radio is used more frequently for entertainment than the cinema it is clear that the latter is more popular in the sense that more people would prefer to go to the cinema. That they do not actually go to the cinema more frequently, especially in the case of well-to-do people, is probably due to the long fixed hours and the necessity of going out of doors. The radio can be turned on or off sitting at house whenever one likes, and is thus more easily accessible in a physical sense. Also, perhaps the question of recurring expenditure is a factor of some importance. Once a radio is purchased, there is little visible expense in keeping it up, while in going to the cinema tangible cash expenditure has to be incurred on each occasion. >From the �general sample� it was found out that among middle class families of Calcutta, a very large proportion, 91 percent among men and 86 percent among women, take interest in current news. But, the radio serves as the medium of news for about 35 percent of men and 44 percent of women. A much larger proportion of men, nearly 60 percent, get their news from news papers while only about 39 percent of women do so. As a vehicle of news, radio becomes increasingly important with increasing economic level from about 17 percent in the lowest expenditure group to about 41 percent among families with monthly expenditure above Rs. 400. The popularity of radio decreases steadily with increasing age, and is comparatively small among non matrics and persons engaged in petty trade. The frequency of listening to the radio definitely decreases with age but increases with increasing economic level. The proportion of women who listen often to radio is 36.4 percent and is much higher than the proportion of 19.5 percent among men. On the contrary, the position is almost exactly reversed in the case of those who never listen to the radio for we find that 36.4 percent of women do not do so against 19.4 percent of men. The explanation is probably quite simple. Women having access to a radio listen more frequently as they stay indoor more often than men. But, in the case of families, which do not possess a radio or have no access to one, the men could often go out and listen to the radio from commercial sets or in friends� houses; women could do this very rarely. However, it is obvious from the general sample that radio being an expensive item, was not a household item in the middle class families. It is more apparent from the fact that while a large percentage of men and women wanted information of war news, radio served as a medium of news to less than half of the studied group. In the Calcutta Radio Sample, out of the 887 persons, the institute picked up 803 persons who speak Bengali to study their preferences for different items of the programme in Bengali broadcasted from Calcutta in February and March 1941. On the whole, we find from the study that war news and news talks are most popular in the sense of being often or sometimes listened to by a very large proportion of persons (77.4 and 74.4 percent respectively) irrespective of age, education and occupation. The case of foreign news is slightly different. It is least popular with petty traders and most popular with professional people and students. In the entertainment group modern (78.4 percent) and Tagore (74.4 percent) music easily come at the top both in view of the large numbers who usually listen to them and also in the very small (13.2 and 14.3 percent) numbers of those who do not listen to these items at all. Instrumental music (73.4 percent), plays (68.8 percent) and devotional music (66.3 percent) come next with classical (45 percent) a long way behind. In this group, however, age exerts a strong influence. The proportion of persons listening �often� steadily and consistently decreases with increasing age in the case of modern (from 70.8 to 18.2 percent), Tagore (from 66.6 to 21.2 percent), and instrumental music (from 50.0 to 27.3 percent), and plays (from 54.2 to 36.4 percent), while preference for devotional music increases (from 25.0 to 51.5 percent) with advancing age. In the case of classical appreciation is low in the youngest age group below 18 years (16.7 percent) but attains the peak value (29.9 percent) between 19 and 25 years and then steadily decreases to 12 percent among persons above 55 years. This may coincide with the CRS claim that it was training its young listeners to develop an aptitude for classical music. Turning to educational groups we find that plays, modern and instrumental music have high popularity among non-matrics and undergraduates. Both devotional and classical music steadily lose in popularity with increasing educational qualifications. Devotional music is most popular with landlords, which perhaps is significant. It is noteworthy again that professional people have the lowest preference for classical music. Modern and Tagore songs enjoy the highest popularity among students. Petty traders have also a great liking for modern music but have the lowest preference for Tagore music. This contrast is of considerable significance as it reveals the heterogeneous nature of modern music, which consists of two distinct strata, - one comparable to Tagore music and the other as if of an inferior kind. In this connection it is worth noting that professional people have the highest preference, next to students, for Tagore music and at the same time the lowest preference for modern music. In the entertainment group Tagore music thus stands out as a progressive item in the sense of being more appreciated by people with higher educational qualifications or by higher occupational groups like professional people. Women, on the whole, are more interested in the entertainment group than in news or talks with the sole exception of women�s programme. Women particularly very often listen to plays. Then comes modern music with women�s programme slightly behind. Their next preference is for Tagore music with war news coming closely behind. This indicates that women in this country, as far as those hearing the radio are concerned, are not quite apathetic to current news, especially war news. This report on audience preferences would be very helpful in writing the broadcasting history of the region. With regards Indira Biswas _________________________________________________________________ NRIs ! http://go.msnserver.com/IN/52616.asp FREE money transfers to India. From cliftonrozario at hotmail.com Wed Jul 28 09:46:49 2004 From: cliftonrozario at hotmail.com (CLIFTON D'ROZARIO) Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 04:16:49 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Reports on solid waste management Message-ID: Hi, This is a request to anyone who possesses or has access to the following reports to give me a copy. - Ministry of urban affairs� Shukla Committee�s Report (January 2000) - Supreme Court appointed Burman Committee�s Report (March 1999), - Report of the National Plastic Waste Management Task Force (August 1997) Thanks Clifton _________________________________________________________________ NRIs ! http://go.msnserver.com/IN/52616.asp FREE money transfers to India. From amanmalik000 at hotmail.com Mon Jul 26 20:53:47 2004 From: amanmalik000 at hotmail.com (Aman Malik) Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 20:53:47 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] A survey Message-ID: Dear Moderator, I would be obliged if you could please post the following message on the reader list. Aman Malik Dear All, I am a freelance journalist based in New Delhi, India and am currently engaged in doing an article on the parallel lives that individuals lead on and off the net. As you would understand, this study would also deal with crime on the internet and aspects of Internet Psychology. I am chiefly studying individuals who spend a considerable amount of time online- mainly doing things that bear very little or no direct relation to their professional lives- activities like online chat, online activism, blogging and in some cases even hacking to mention just a few. Further, I understand quite a few subscribers to this group are either aware of or deal with issues related to the Internet at a professional level ( in the capacity of psychologists, experts on Cyber Law, Internet analysts and the like) I wish to interview all such people Would it also be possible for you to make avalable to me any data, articles etc you might have on this topic or issues closely related to this. Those interested in being a part of my study may get back to me on the following adress: amanmalik000 at hotmail.com Warm Regards, Aman Malik New Delhi -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040726/ac595a95/attachment.html From joasia at i-dat.org Tue Jul 27 00:23:04 2004 From: joasia at i-dat.org (joasia) Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 19:53:04 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] EJHAE Message-ID: Apologies for cross-posting. -- CALL for CONTRIBUTIONS The European Journal of Higher Arts Education Issue 2 November 2004 -- The deadline for submissions 30 September 2004. -- Economies of Knowledge: New Technologies in Higher Arts Education This issue of the European Journal of Higher Arts Education explores ideas around the production (research and enterprise) and distribution (teaching and learning) of knowledge in higher arts education in relation to digital technologies. Recent changes in the mode of production and dissemination of knowledge have been often described in the context of what has been fashionably termed as Œknowledge economy¹. Manuel Castells in The Rise of the Network Society, (1996) points to the change in the ways technological processes are organised - from a mode of development focussed on economic growth and surplus-value (industrialism) to one based on the pursuit of knowledge and increased levels of complexity of information (informationalism). In this way, new technologies have enhanced the effectiveness of global capitalism, enabling it to become more flexible, adaptable, faster, efficient and pervasive. Culture, too, and indeed the education system, has become integrated in the process of the creation of capital, with cultural regeneration and a link between research and enterprise as an example of capital¹s renewal. In this context it is clear that art and art education follow economic imperatives for the most part but do they also offer the possibility of influencing it? To what extent can the spaces of determination be creatively reclaimed? This issue of the European Journal of Higher Arts Education attempts to discuss some of these mechanisms of cultural production using networked technologies, and the limitations and hierarchies offered under the so-called knowledge economy in relation to the following themes: · Critical Context: Knowledge Economy, Free Networks and Open Source · Research and Enterprise: New Cultural Economy, Creative Industries and Higher Education · Models in Transition: Emergent Practices in Knowledge Transfer and its Resistance -- The Editorial Board of the European Journal of Higher Arts Education (EJHAE) ISSN 1571-9936, welcomes critical writings and artists contributions of text/images addressing the theme of the issue. -- For details of the format for submission please see the Author Instructions below or contact Francesca Pagnacco, ELIA office, at Francesca.Pagnacco at elia-artschools.org For further information about the theme, specific sections and for a prior discussion on contributions please contact the Guest Editor of the Issue 2, Joasia Krysa at joasia at i-dat.org and/or Francesca Pagnacco. -- All texts will be reviewed by the Board of Academic Referees: Joasia Krysa, guest editor (i-DAT / University of Plymouth, UK/Poland) Geoff Cox (i-DAT / University of Plymouth, UK) Karel Dudesek (Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication UK/Austria) Elisa Giaccardi (University of Colorado, US/Italy) Marina Grzinic (Institute of Philosophy, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, Slovenia) Violetta Kutlubasis-Krajewska (WRO Foundation Center for Media Art, Poland) Neil Spiller (Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London) Marek Wasilewski (Academy of Fine Art, Poznan, Poland). -- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From mklayman at leonardo.info Tue Jul 27 00:31:45 2004 From: mklayman at leonardo.info (Melinda Klayman) Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 12:01:45 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] [Leonardo/ISAST Network] Leonardo Electronic Almanac CFP: Global Crossings (GX) Message-ID: LEA Gallery cfp: Global Crossings (GX) ** Worldwide Call for Submissions ** Please feel free to spread the word widely: LEA Gallery Special: Global Crossings (GX) Guest Curators: Dennis Summers and Choy Kok Kee (gxgallery at astn.net) The Leonardo Electronic Almanac Gallery (http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/LEA2004/gallery.htm) is inviting submissions in conjunction with the Leonardo Global Crossings Initiative. The Gallery is looking to make visible the work of international artists, professionals and scholars who live and work in a wide variety of situations where access to established venues for exhibition, display and publication is limited. Difficulty of access may be attributed to cultural, geographic, ethnic, institutional or disciplinary diversity, or issues related to the North/South divide, age, gender, etc. Through this Gallery we seek to showcase little-known work in the art-science-technology field and to counter the natural tendency of networks to be inward looking, thus reinforcing established points of view. We are looking for work that considers the global earth in some fashion or another. It can be work that addresses global social, political economic, spiritual, etc. issues. It can be work that physically or metaphorically lies in multiple locations on the planet, it can be work that may have personal relationships to multiple locations on the planet. Or anything else that loosely falls along the concept of being "global" in nature. LEA encourages international artists / academics / researchers / students to submit their proposals for consideration. We particularly encourage young authors outside North America and Europe to send proposals. Form -------- Create a single web page, in any common format that either documents the work or actually is the work. As long as it is only one page, the work can take any form. Try to avoid pages that require special or unusual plugins. Keep in mind that many parts of the world do not have high-speed Internet access. Process ----------- Zip all necessary files into a folder named after the contributing artist. Send as an attachment to gxgallery at astn.net or if necessary, provide ftp instructions. In a separate attachment include: - 300 word abstract / synopsis / description of work - A brief author biography / resume - Any related URLs - Contact details In the subject heading of the email message write “Name of Artist: LEA Global Crossings – Date Submitted”. Deadline for submissions: 31 August 2004 Please send proposals or queries to: Dennis Summers/Choy Kok Kee gxgallery at astn.net or Nisar Keshvani LEA Editor-in-Chief lea at mitpress.mit.edu http://lea.mit.edu **************************************************************************** **** What is the Global Crossings (GX) Initiative? ----------------------------------------------------------- This initiative is part of the Leonardo/International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST) Global Crossings (GX) Project. GX is committed to identifying and showcasing the work of international artists, professionals, and scholars from outside North America and Europe. Leonardo/ISAST has initiated this policy to reach out to diverse cultural and global communities to overcome the considerable natural barriers that prevent trans-cultural collaboration in the emerging art-science-technology field. This initiative is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation. Leonardo/ISAST, a leading international scholarly and professional network, has for 35 years been an advocate of new creative practices, documenting and promoting innovative work through its publications and projects. Info: http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/globalx.htm What is LEA? ------------- Established in 1993, the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (ISSN No: 1071-4391) is the electronic arm of the pioneer art journal, Leonardo - Journal of Art, Science & Technology. The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA), jointly produced by Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST) and published under the auspices of MIT Press is an electronic journal dedicated to providing a forum for those who are interested in the realm where art, science and technology converge. Info: http://lea.mit.edu Content ------- This peer reviewed e-journal includes profiles of media arts facilities and projects, profiles of artists using new media, feature articles comprised of theoretical and technical perspectives; the LEA Gallery exhibiting new media artwork by international artists; detailed information about new publications in various media; and reviews of publications, events and exhibitions. Material is contributed by artists, scientists, educators and developers of new technological resources in the media arts. Mission ------- LEA's mission is to maintain and consolidate its position as a leading online news and trusted information filter while critically examining arts/science & technological works catering to the international CAST (Community of Artists, Scientist and Technologists) ******************************** -- Melinda Klayman Director of Development and Communications NEW ADDRESS! Please note our new contact information as of May 1, 2004: Leonardo/ISAST 211 Sutter Street, Suite 800 San Francisco, CA 94108 phone: (415) 391-1110 fax: (415) 391-2385 Email: mklayman at leonardo.info Web: http://www.leonardo.info Did you know that whenever you buy anything through Amazon.com, you could help to support Leonardo? Always access Amazon through the Leonardo portal. That way, no matter what you purchase, Amazon will automatically credit a percentage of their profits to Leonardo/ISAST, at no additional charge to you. Access Amazon via Leonardo at: http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/leobooks.html _______________________________________________ Leonardo-isast mailing list Leonardo-isast at mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/leonardo-isast _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From ravig1 at toxicslink.org Wed Jul 28 15:18:49 2004 From: ravig1 at toxicslink.org (Ravi Agarwal) Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 15:18:49 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Reports on solid waste management Message-ID: <06e901c47488$15347470$6801a8c0@ToxicsLink.local> have all three.... but all on hard copy.... ravi agarwal > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "CLIFTON D'ROZARIO" > To: > Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 9:46 AM > Subject: [Reader-list] Reports on solid waste management > > > > Hi, > > > > This is a request to anyone who possesses or has access to the following > > reports to give me a copy. > > - Ministry of urban affairs' Shukla Committee's Report (January 2000) > > - Supreme Court appointed Burman Committee's Report (March 1999), > > - Report of the National Plastic Waste Management Task Force (August 1997) > > > > Thanks > > Clifton > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > > NRIs ! http://go.msnserver.com/IN/52616.asp FREE money transfers to India. > > > > _________________________________________ > > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > > Critiques & Collaborations > > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > subscribe in the subject header. > > List archive: > > > From rohinipatkar123 at rediffmail.com Tue Jul 27 16:39:12 2004 From: rohinipatkar123 at rediffmail.com (rohini patkar) Date: 27 Jul 2004 11:09:12 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] monthly posting Message-ID: <20040727110912.29623.qmail@webmail8.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040727/d18a9cb7/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- move to the city and initial experiences- a brief   The women interviewed have a typical story to tell. No one is very happy leaving the village where they were born and coming to an unknown cit. But all of them come to Delhi because if offers their children and them chances of survival. Most of these are women whose family did not own any land, neither they had any business. They used to work at home itself back in the village and the husbands often had lost work because the factories and the small economies have been destroyed. So much for Globalization! The meager earning of daily wages etc in the villages is not sufficient to sustain the entire family. There are other reasons like marriage which is often called in migration theory as “associational migration of females”. Although it hardly remains only ‘associational’ once they start earning and sustaining their families. Over time they are the ones who become the principal bread -winners of the family. There are others in the village whose some or the other family member is also in the city, so they provide the option to these women as well. “if you go to the city, you will be able to feed your children, why don’t you go”- is the advice given to her. They start living with some or the other relative in the beginning- for a month or so. After that most of them rent their own space. They have to give an initial deposit- almost all of them have to take loan from someone. They have to take loan even when they come to the city form the village. Most of them have quite sketchy memories of the journey they made to the city- mostly by train and without much stuff that they brought from the village. Most if them remember the initial place in which they stayed when they had come to the city. Most of them found work within a month of coming here- as domestic workers. Although not considered the best of them options for all of them- they took it because that was the work that was available. There was work available in the ‘big kothis’ of Delhi. From tasneem at sancharnet.in Mon Jul 26 10:29:27 2004 From: tasneem at sancharnet.in (Vikas) Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 04:59:27 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] posting: The children of Bhopal Railway station Message-ID: <12D6B14F.6130102E@sancharnet.in> Hi! Well, this is my first posting. I muddled it up - didn't know about the discussion list. Over the last 6-7 months I have been regularly visiting (staying at) the railway station and a shelter home for station children. It is the seam between the station (and its children) and the shelter home that I have been focussing on -the uneasiness of the relationship; a relationship rich in its significances. An essay, anecdotes, fragments will make up the work. The essay has been written; work on the rest of things is on. I'm sending the abstract of the essay (rather something in lieu of it). Abstract It is a difficult place, the station. It is difficult to categorise it. On the one side, it is hell - unabated, ceaseless, torment. A torment without recourse, where the call of Justice has been spent. The poverty, the proxmity of Death, pain, violence: these conditions of being. Such horror, these shrieks of life. It is the place of failures of the negation, of Justice, of the systems it has subscribed to; it where its blunders lie as if in a cauldron. But on the other hand... it is also perhaps something else. It is a refuge, which people run into, which they come seeking. here they live, close to Death, at the extreme of life, condoning its extremities. here, the children also come to play, spurning the world, its grave cares. It is a difficult place this, station. And then there is the shelter home. There is so much in it but still there is so much lacking. Children run away from it. There is so much it could do but it doesn't. Perhaps it can't. Perhaps it can... perhaps it is doing.... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040726/ce0a29ca/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- ***** NOTE: An attachment named tasneem.vcf was deleted from this message because it possibly contained a windows executable or other potentially dangerous file type. Contact admin at sarai.net for more information. From shivamvij at gmail.com Thu Jul 29 22:03:47 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 09:33:47 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] Srushti Finance (fwd) Message-ID: Message: 1 Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 11:17:23 +0530 From: "consumerhelp" Subject: Srushti Finance Rajesh Jaiswal of Srushti Finance had absconded after committing fraud of many crores and duping lakhs of people of their hard earned money. He was declared as proclaimed offender and he was traced by International Consumer Rights Protection Council (ICRPC) at Lucknow. When the Mumbai police did not co-operate to bring him from Lucknow, ICRPC took help from UP police with political pressure, and got him arrested. Rajesh Jaiswal was then handed over to the Mumbai police. Case is going on in the Sessions court where he again applied for bail. His bail application was cancelled as he had jumped the previous bail. Now, he has applied for bail in the High court. We are looking for voluntary services of a lawyer who can handle the case in the high court. Please contact us on 9819598004. If any one has been cheated by Rajesh Jaiswal of Srushti Finance may contact us to get his name included in the list of grieved investors. We are very unsatisfied by the way the Sessions Court is handling the issue since past 5 years. Many judges have changes and all talk about subjects that have nothing to do with the case. The public prosecutor is a silent spectator, who does not take any effort to understand the facts of the case and defend the investors. - Arun From aparajita_de at rediffmail.com Thu Jul 29 13:32:12 2004 From: aparajita_de at rediffmail.com (Aparajita De) Date: 29 Jul 2004 08:02:12 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Fourth Posting Message-ID: <20040729080212.26364.qmail@webmail29.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040729/dc13ee60/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------  IMAGINED GEOGRAPHIES: GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE OF SELF AND OTHERS IN EVERDAY LIFE.THE CASE OF AHMEDABAD In this study my attempt has been to grasp the construction of self understanding and other understanding through a spatialized ontology at the theoretical level. Let me first focus on the construction of self understanding and other understanding. At the outset, I’d like clarify that when refer to self and other I am referring to a collective self and other. Logically my next question is what could be the base or bases of such collective self and other understandings? These base/bases could be a particular set or sets of attributes – like interests, values, race or color, religion, ethnicity, region, language, caste, class, gender and sexual orientation. Thus the shared common attribute/attributes becomes the basis of defining oneself vis-à-vis others as a distinct entity with markedly unique and different set of learned values, beliefs, culture, practices, attitudes, behavior, ethos and world view. This at once indicates a simultaneous process of categorization and identification of self vis-à-vis others and understanding of self by others. A sense of self, of who one is and equally important of who one is not emerges from such a process. What I mean is that self and other understanding is dualistic construct. But does that necessarily indicate that understanding of self and other is dichotomized, standing out in binary opposition to or in conflict with one another? And why not? I think that is not the case because one can have multiple experiences of commonality, connectedness, sense of belonging and affinities. This is especially true in today’s plural, multicultural world as well as when we regard understanding of self vis-à-vis others over time and space. What I am trying to argue is that multiple understanding of self and others proliferate and are rarely singular and definitive as the multiple experiences of commonality, connectedness, sense of belonging and affiliations are not estranged from one another and they do interact, cross-flows and conflicts do occur. It is in fact blurred, which means that self understanding and understanding of others cannot be reduced to a single understanding as it would only be a facet and an oversimplification of the many understandings that one may have of self and others. Then does self understandings and other understandings a mere abstraction? Doesn’t particular form or forms of it do manifest in everyday lifeworlds? It does. In recent years through out the world, movements based on such particularistic understandings of self – that of ethnicity, caste, gender, sexual orientation has been on the rise. And here lies the problem and the contradiction in the entire concept but it also raises the question that when does a particularistic understanding of self and others emerge? APARAJITA DE Research Associate Centre for Social Studies South Gujarat University Campus Udhna Magdalla Road Surat 395007 Phone: 0261 2227173/74 0 9825808100(m) Fax:0261 2223851 email: css_surat at satyam.net.in From vivek at sarai.net Fri Jul 30 17:04:43 2004 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 17:04:43 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] What Kerry did in Vietnam Message-ID: <410A3253.8020108@sarai.net> A troubling article. V. Hail, the Conquering War Criminal Comes! What Kerry Really Did in Vietnam By ALEXANDER COCKBURN and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn07292004.html From miriamchandy at yahoo.com Fri Jul 30 17:36:50 2004 From: miriamchandy at yahoo.com (miriam chandy) Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 05:06:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] a childhood beyond the redlight Message-ID: <20040730120650.69250.qmail@web60506.mail.yahoo.com> finally wrote up a first hand acct of our first wk shop with rescued minor sex workers in St Catherine's home. St Catherine�s Home We walk past the wrought iron gate and into a lush green haven. St Catherine�s home, could very well be the equivalent of the `garden of eden� in the western suburbs of Mumbai. Kalyani and I are pinching ourselves partly because we can�t believe our eyes and partly because we have the first whiff of a likely workshop. It has been three months of fieldwork yet no opportunity to meet and interact with the subjects of our research project. Today there is the first glimmer of a workshop. Anson Thomas had called Kalyani and told her to contact Sr Cecily as he had already put in a word for us. Our excitement is palpable�finally there will be voices and faces to the children we had read about from newspaper clippings and heard about from social activists. Finally we will have the opportunity to forge our own bonds and understand issues first hand. Maybe we would even meet the child who inspired this journey � Sapna� We wind our way up the curving road, that snakes past a playground and old-fashioned bungalows spread horizontally with long corridors unlike other buildings in mumbai that grow floor upon floor to save on space. Sr Cecily is a sprightly nun who radiates an infectious dynamism. She doesn�t have the holier than thou disposition that I have grown to associate with nuns through my convent education� She scans the proposals we have typed out, asks a few questions and then smiles cheerfully � so when do you want to hold the workshops?� We finalise dates and then begin to chat� She reveals the dramatic story behind this shelter for minor sex workers. � We were primarily a home for destitute women. In �99 we were woken up in the night when police vans arrived with girls they had rescued from a brothel raid. There was no place to house them�so they were asking that we keep 160 of them!� We ask whether Sr Cecily is referring to the �99 raid when over 400 girls were rescued? � Yes!! O my it was chaos� The girls were already angry and aggressive because of the way the police handled them. They mistook my brown saree and blouse for a police uniform and O God! � she breaks off unable to find words� �It�s only the next day that they realized they are not in a police station and I am no police woman. One girl asked me `tum log alag hai?� ( are you different from them?) I had no way to explain what a nun is so I said `haanh mein bhagwan ki aurat hoon� (yes, I�m a woman of god)�, she bursts into splutters as she remembers her awkward interpretation�We laugh along. Even now Sr Cecily speaks Hindi that sounds like Malayalam�6 years ago she must have been in quite a spot!! � The girls needed attention�some had TB, a couple were pregnant and some had HIV. There were girls with skin infections and big boils, we had to have 6 nuns and 2 to 3 visiting doctors on the job�. Sr Cecily barely coped with the �99 predicament�but one year later she coaxes the management of St Catherine�s home to begin a shelter for rescued minor sex workers. Today the shelter can house as many as 24 girls. � How long are they here? What happens after?�, we want to know. �6 girls have been repatriated, the majority find work as domestic help. One girl recently got married��, she beams. We didn�t realize that the `marriage� was being quoted as a success story, only later when we meet the girls we realize just how important they perceive it to be. � what about Sapna?�, I ask�Sr Cecily�s face clouds up, she stops mid sentence and almost looks like she will not answer. I realize I have touched a raw chord and defend myself � we read Sapna�s accounts with the child welfare commission�� Sr Cecily is nodding but not responding, � we met Sangita Punekar from ADVAIT and she told us that Sapna is here and that she is a difficult child to handle�she said she has many psychological problems?� Sr Cecily looks up, she realizes that we know about the complications involved in rehabilitating girls rescued from brothels. She is willing to speak about Sapna � Sapna has many problems�she steals. She gets frustrated and slits her wrists. No doubt she is brave. She wanted to give her account to the police, she wanted other girls like her to be rescued�She went back to her village and got her stepmother arrested but it was all revenge. It is anger and a feeling of rejection. She can never get over the fact that her family sold her�. Someone is knocking on the office door. � sister, chai?�, a pretty dimpled girl is holding a tray with 3 cups of steaming tea. Sister Cecily calls her in and introduces her to us as Nandini. The girl smiles brightly, places the tray on the table and than asks whether she can leave? Sister Cecily nods. As soon as Nandini is out of ear shot Sr Cecily tells us � See this girl Nandini? She is from Karnataka, only today I spoke to her parents�but they are refusing to speak to her or take her back. It�s very sad�you know she was not even 1 day in a brothel�. We look puzzled�� Yeah, she ran away from home, she stayed with her cousin for sometime and the very day she landed up in a brothel�it so happened there was raid and she was rescued. But her parents say she ran away and they will have nothing to do with her. This is the toughest thing�Imagine the feeling of rejection?� We can�t imagine� � The girl has suppressed her anger. It is there but she does not show it. I�ve been telling her she must forget her family and concentrate on her studies. But she wants to keep trying�� Nandini we learn is doing well at the open national school program she has been enrolled in. She has got two double promotions and is already in the 9th standard. Despite her sense of rejection, Sr Cecily feels Nandini is coping. Sapna on the other hand proves to be far more difficult to handle. � Soon after she was brought here, she was given counseling and her progress was fantastic. It is after she got involved in the case that she began to go down hill�. Sapna could not adapt to the institutionalization process. She constantly complained that the rules were too strict. Sr Cecily tells us that she often ran away to do `majaa� a common past time with all Sr Cecily�s wards. `Majaa� for the girls is a quick escapade where a girl gets a boy to take them to the movies or buy small gifts in exchange for sexual favours. Sr Cecily confesses that she copes with the `majaa sessions� because she can�t put a stop to it. Most of the girls return to the home of their own accord and Sr Cecily has found her own explanations � Most of them have not known parental love�in fact they have known no love. This boy-girl love is the only version they know�. � So is Sapna still with you?� my persistent journalistic instinct will not let up. � No, she has opted to stay out in a hostel on her own�, Sr Cecily reveals to our disappointment. � I enrolled her in a one month, house keeping course and managed to get her a job with Mac Donald�s. She earns Rs 2500 a month�but now the outlet is calling me up and complaining that she has begun stealing�� Sr Cecily is distressed by Sapna�s troubled behaviour. It seems no easy task to give these girls an alternative future� � O no! even if I have to find them a job as a domestic servant people want guarantees ` do they have HIV, will they be friendly with boys? How can I give answers�these are children. Now I refuse to tell their background�. In the face of societal taboo Sr Cecily has to hide the background of the children. A society that deems prostitution illegal but provides very few options� We drink up our tea and then Sr Cecily takes us into the girls hostel to introduce us to the girls. We are nervous and excited� First meeting The spotless floor gleams as it leads down a corridor and into a large room with no furniture besides 2 computers placed on tables. A film song crackles through the speakers attached to the computer and a group of girls are huddled around the monitor. � Can you call the other girls? Where are they?�, Sr Cecily asks a frail looking girl, who is extremely well groomed. She simpers, pouts and is finally persuaded to summon the others. � She is Babita�she is slightly older than the others. She is doing a beautician�s course�, Sister Cecily tells us. A handful of girls straggle in, Sister Cecily sends them to call others. After many requests and envoys besides Babita�there are 10 faces studying Kalyani and me. Sr Cecily explains that we would be holding a 2-day workshop in a few days time. Kalyani and I try to guage what they know of art and drama�more than that we are gauging their enthusiasm. Sr Cecily had warned us that the favourite response is � kantal lagega� ( �sounds boring��). � kuch poochna hai?� (any questions?), Kalyani asks. This is the moment of reckoning�I am a little wary of the questions we could be asked. One girl asks � Didi apne shaadi kiya?� (Are you married?). She has spotted Kalyani�s mangalsutra. Kalyani is taken aback for a minute and then says � hanh hanh�aur yeh didi bhi� ( yes, and she is married too), pointing to me. A collective response of �oohs�! A barrage of questions � how long have you been married?�, � do you have children?�, � do you stay with your husband or is Kalyani your room mate?� and then a voice rises above the rest � when did you get married�. � when I was 27 years old� I reply. Another round of �oohs�! A bright girl with a golden tooth splutters � You can get married at that age?!� All the others burst into peals of laughter. The ice is broken�and the only inkling we have of the St Catherine�s girls is that they can�t wait to get married?!! That�s until our 2 day workshop. The workshop A raucous cop and robber game is in progress. Everyone has drawn lots�the girl with the joker on her card is the robber. She tries to kill everyone else by winking at them without getting caught. The highly effective robber has already killed 5 girls. Vijaya is a tomboyish girl who refuses to be separated from Lakshmi. They declare that they will catch the robber or die together! Accusations are flying madly� Only one girl is not part of the mayhem. Babita refuses to play. She says she is too grown up for silly games. She sits on the desk and watches on �laughing occasionally until her eyes meet mine. She stops abruptly. � This is your last game and then we will do an art exercise� I anonounce�collective groans. The girls seem to be having a whale of a time, after all I remind myself�they are children who missed out on the silly joys of childhood. Scraps of bright printed cloth material, open bottles of poster paint and smears of fevicol strew the floor. The girls are making self-portraits with thumb impressions. The part they seem to be enjoying is choosing and designing clothes out of scraps of cloth piled in the center. Vijaya is almost done�the other girls hold up her card and hoot with laughter. A close enough depiction of Vijaya � ram rod straight, shirt and pant with no frills attached!! � See even here she looks like a boy na Didi?� giggles Lakshmi her inseparable friend. Lakshmi has made no headway herself because she cannot seem to pick out the perfect shade of purple for her outfit. All the other girls are designing elaborate ghagra cholis, lehengas and there are one or two pinafores. I remember I had picked up sequins and glitter tubes which I pull out of my bag�An instant hit!! Even Babita who had refused to be a part of the card making exercise�is enticed by the glitter tubes. She sidles up and sits besides gold-toothed Shaina and volunteers to adorn her picture with jewellery. Sapna is a plump, pleasant faced girl. She had waddled around lazily through the cop and robber game but now she calls me to see her picture. Even as she squeezes a glitter tube dry to create earrings and necklace for her portrait, she declares � yeh main nahin hoon. Mujhe makeup shakeup pasand nahin hai� (This is not me. I hate makeup shakeup) . � Very good picture� I tell Sapna not to flatter her but because this kamchor certainly has an artistic streak! She beams with delight and says that it is the spitting image of her sister Renuka. Many empty glitter tubes later�the girls are told to exchange cards and write a message for each other. Cards are exchanged but Seema is the only girl who is refusing to let her card out of her hands. Fatima, her teacher who has come to help us out with the workshop explains that she is fairly new and doesn�t trust anyone to write anything nice about her. Tears well up in Seema�s eyes, she holds her card stubbornly to her chest and refuses even sweet natured Nandini to inscribe her card. Finally Fatima intervenes and offers to inscribe the card. Seema reluctantly agrees. � My dearest friend, I don�t know how I would have coped if it weren�t for you. Thank you. I pray that you find happiness and respect. � reads the message for Vijaya � Babita helps everyone but when she was ill, no one went to ask how she was? This makes her feel sad� declares Shaina in her message for Babita The messages reveal a fragile sisterhood �drawn from diverse states, the girls barely speak and understand a common language. Rescued from Mumbai�s red light areas they are only beginning to understand each other in the common shelter - St Catherine�s home. � Seema When you smile the whole world lights up! You look beautiful�, reads Fatima out of Seema�s card. We troupe in for lunch, a degree of warmth has crept in. Seema has not stopped smiling ever since she read the message in her card. A hymn is being sung before lunch. Sapna who is seated next to me whispers � mein Bengali hoon isliye mein yeh Christian gaana nahin gatein.� (I am Bengali, that is why I am not singing this Christian hymn). I nod, understanding fully well the dilemma of children growing up in a Christian institution. Through out my convent education I have questioned why communal prayers cannot be addressed to `God� rather than `Jesus�? A simple step that safeguards against `conversion� accusations, baseless as they maybe in the larger context of charity work that is accomplished by missionaries. Sr Cecily asks � whose turn is it to cook today?� � Seems and Shaina�, is the collective response. Shaina corrects them � Na�it is Vijaya�s turn. I just felt like cooking�. Sister Cecily asks � why did you cook? Let Vijaya cook once in a way�. Vijaya is making a face and signaling that she hates the thought. Shaina pipes up � I didn�t cook because it is Vijaya�s turn. I don�t know how it is but every time I feel like cooking it haapens to be Vijaya�s turn�. The response baffles even Sr Cecily. We slurp our dal, rice, papad, vegetable and pickle greedily, content to make small talk. A game of dumb charades is in progress. Babita has boycotted the session. Seema volunteers to act , She is given the word `maa or mother�. She thinks for a second and then walks around swinging her arms. `walk�, `soldier��wild guesses. Kalyani and I exchange puzzled glances. I whisper in Seema�s ear to hold a child or baby in her arms. She frowns and then nods. She rocks an imaginary baby in her arms violently. `maa� yell the girls in unison. Seema beams, they all rag her for her inadequate portrayal. Seema is crestfallen� We begin to improvise the dumb charade sessions. We ask the girls to share memories associated with a word. The word is: hunger. No one really wants to share a memory. � No one has a memory? No one has been hungry?�, Kalyani coaxes gently. A sullen silence and then a voice mumbles, � hunger everyone has been but so what?� Then Seema again to the rescue, recounts � Didi I remember once there was a family in my village with 3 children. The father used to drink and beat up the wife. The children were always hungry and the baby was crying. I gave the baby some food�� Kalyani is relieved � Very good. Thanks for sharing Seems�anyone else?� Still a sullen silence and a few glares at Seems. Kalyani swiftly shifts gear to the next word: sweets Suddenly there are more tales�of stealing sweets from tiffin boxes and stealing money to buy sweets. Spanking A series of tales of missing school to play by the river, in the field, in the market are shared. In all the stories it is the mother who gives the child a sound spanking. No serious matter to the girls it seems�as the girls giggle after every tale. Only 3-4 girls are opening up. The rest are still maintaining a sullen silence. Story Shaina�s hand is waving in the air. She has a story that her mother always told her � there is a kauva (crow) and a kabootar (pigeon), who are great friends��. The kabootar gets into a series of scrapes where the crow flies to the rescue. Each scrape is narrated with great enthusiasm and some degree it seems of improvisation. The other girls are not impressed, they are visibly wilting and there are some whispers of the dreaded � kantaal hai� . Even Shaina�s steam is running out as the chorus gets more and more audible. She cuts the story short � anyway the moral of the story is that the crow also feels sad and the kabootar should have been there as a friend.� Kalyani and I realize that we need to shift gears completely. The girls are evidently not comfortable with sharing�maybe they are not yet comfortable with us or maybe they have blocked off whole sections of their past, so that they can move on? We resort to playing a game. A tactic we find a useful aid every time the energy levels dip over the next two days?? Two days when we get to know 10 girls�We see their ups and downs� Babita who wants to be `grown up�, above it all and yet yearns to feel included. She comes back for the second day, morning session. Kalyani tells her � you made me very happy by taking part.� She stays the entire day simpering, sulking and taking part� Shaina, always finds a way to do her own thing. In a block printing session she is determined to print without blocks. She leaves for an eye appointment on the first day of the workshop. The second day she has glasses and she is sulking for the better part of the day because she hates them. She is persuading Sr Cecily to get rid of her golden tooth ( a fashion statement in the brothel she was in). Nandini chips in to explain why she suddenly wants to get rid of the tooth, � We went to buy T shirts and shaina kept bargaining for the price saying we have no money. The shop keeper told her how can she say that when she has a gold tooth?�. Shaina is giggling and so are the others. Nandini, Firdaus and Renuka who are doing so well in school that they have been given double promotions. Renuka does such a meticulous block print that her napkin looks professional. Firdaus tells us that she recently won an elocution contest organized by the seminary for all it�s various institutions. She made an impromptu speech. Before we leave she shows us the graphics she has been experimenting with in Corel draw and paintbrush software. Seema and Prema who are so excited that Kalyani and I grew up in Bangalore and know about the film stars they love. Any opportunity they can they sidle up between sessions and share film plots about Shivrajkumar, son of thespian actor Rajkumar, their current heartthrob. Fatima whispers � I can�t believe Seema is talking so much!!� Vijaya would rather be `Vijay�. Popular with everyone, she is accepted and teased for being different. She likes the attention! She also likes English. � I hate English�, her best buddy Lakshmi declares. � It is so difficult I only like Marathi!� Sapna avoids physical exertion but realizes her artistic skills have been noticed. She does a spunky block print that defies any symmetry. After Firdous has shown us her computer graphics, she sneaks us into her bedroom (neat and cheery) to show us a pink lace purse we are tatting. Even as Firdaus is making another oratorical performance in thanking us at the end of two days, Kalyani and I know our lives have been touched. Suddenly at the back of my head are even more disturbing questions: How can most of these girls end up domestic servants? Firdous who likes oration and designing software? Sapna who loves colour and spends every spare moment tatting? How come more than half the group comes from Karnataka? Both Kalyani and I have been proud of growing up in Bangalore with its cosmpolitan culture and `silicon valley� image? Does such an extreme reality co exist in this prosperous state,a desperation that can drive parents to sell their children? These girls are moody yet charming. Have fragile self esteem and yet seem on the whole well adjusted. Yet Sr Cecily tells us they often try to kill themselves. Sapna herself opted to live outside St Catherine�s home? There seems to be a far more complex story behind the psyche of these rescued minors. We hope to learn through the rest of our journey. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From raghavan at servelots.com Sat Jul 31 11:07:43 2004 From: raghavan at servelots.com (raghavan at servelots.com) Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 01:37:43 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Monthly Posting -- Final Message-ID: <183240-22004763153743652@M2W091.mail2web.com> Hello all, This is our final monthly posting for the project titled "Multi-lingual support for web applications using server side Java". A collaborative work of Surekha Sastry and K. Srinivasa Raghavan. Raghavan ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Multi-lingual support for web applications using server side Java ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - As mentioned by Sayamindu in his abstract, a number of regional teams have been springing up to localize computer software and interfaces in their native language. Localizing a software application requires a lot of effort in finding resources related to Indic which could be a font, IME, etc., We came up with the idea of building a Indic community (Indicart) "http://mail.sarai.net:8080/indic" which is a centralized repository of Indic resources. "Indicart" (A cart carrying Indic resources from which one can access a resource or add a resource to it) is an Open community for developers, research scientists and end-users. Any visitor to this community can access the resources available. But a registered user can participate in creating his/her own project space and do the following at Indicart -- Find Indic resources (E.g. Applications/IME/fonts/articles). -- Maintain a project page for his/her project. -- Create and participate in discussion spaces on Indic computing. -- Volunteer for or find volunteers for an Indic project. -- Find or announce an Indic project. -- Participate in maintaining and editing contributions. -- Post multi-lingual content. It is expected that this community will evolve over time to be representative of Indic activities and needs. Suggestions or ideas are welcome for a better logo for this community. -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From shivamvij at gmail.com Thu Jul 29 19:43:38 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 19:43:38 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] The AMAN Peace and Conflict Studies Course Message-ID: The AMAN Peace and Conflict Studies Course (In collaboration with Hamdard University) Delhi, September 13– October 13, 2004 Overview This course on peace and conflict, organised by the AMAN Trust, aims at developing and widening intellectual discourse on the subject among individuals working in NGOs, teachers, journalists, students and other concerned citizens. The course will make Indian and South Asian reality a starting point for an investigation of conflict, violence and its many ramifications. AMAN believes in the need for an integrated and multi-disciplinary approach to conflict in this region. Given the rapidly changing geo-political environment, critical scholars have asked how far the contours and mechanisms of the global system are responsible for generating conflict. This question requires us to explore the inter-connections between ethnic, caste, class, and communal issues in the origins and nature of conflict. Aman will develop conceptual approaches that connect, rather than compartmentalize themes relevant to violence and conflict. We also believe that philosophical and ethical inquiry is a necessary element in such a study.. Our lectures and seminars shall examine the relationship between local and global issues, competing histories and antagonistic polities; and the functions that link ethnic identity, gender, and symbols to political and economic structures. Duration The course will be conducted from 13th September to 13th October, 2004. It will be interactive and residential, with two or three units being conducted every day, two in the mornings and one in the afternoon/early evening. Each unit will consist of two hours, and will include a lecture and a discussion. Costs The costs for arranging this course are considerable. AMAN will charge a minimum (subsidised) fee of Rs. 5,000/- (five thousand) for an individual and Rs 15,000/- (fifteen thousand) for participants sponsored by NGOs and organisations. The costs are inclusive of accomodation and food but do not include travel. Sponsoring agencies are required to get in touch with AMAN to discuss their proposed financial support. Sponsored candidates will be subject to the same criteria as the rest; and admitted on the basis of their application Application requirements Participants ability to comprehend lectures and other forms of discussion in English is necessary, although the course is open to those who wish to speak and submit their course work in Hindi. Prospective participants are required to send following information by 20th July 2004. Date of Birth Educational qualification Current Work Experience (100-200 words) Other interests (100-200 words) Why you want to attend the course (500-800 words) Name and Contacts of two referees Scholarships: A limited number of scholarships are available. Those who wish to apply for this should send us reasons for their request. (200 words) Course Structure The course will consist of the following six rubrics, whose contents will be supplied in greater detail to participants over the weeks preceding the course. A certain number of Seminars will also be arranged. Packets of reading materials will be made available and certain written work will be expected from participants. Applicants need to be prepared for intesive work. They will be awarded a certificate of completion based upon this and their contribution to the interactive sessions and seminars. Rubric 1: Ethical and Philosophical Perspectives on Violence Lead Instructor: Purushottam Agrawal The aim of this course will be to develop informed ethical and philosophical perspectives on violence and conflict. The lectures will examine ideas of Justice and Compassion; the concept of Evil; the idea of the fundamental schism; in-groups and out-groups; love, hatred and violence; how various religious traditions relate with these issues; pagan and monotheistic religions; the concept of sprituality without religion; and psychoanalytical theories of violence. We will employ insights from creative literature to evaluate ethical stances. There will be commentaries on scriptures, their interpretation and relation to everyday practices; literary creativity and issues of violence/non-violence; and analyses of texts such as the Shrimadbhagvadgita. There will be an analysis of the Nirguna epistomolgy with particular focus on Kabir. The following themes will be discussed: 1.understanding 'violence in itself'. 2.the Spiritual and the religious. 3.theologies of violence and non-violence. 4.poetry as scripture- the case of the Mahabharta. 5.poetry, ethcis and epistomology- reading Kabir. 6.violence, non-violence and exclusion in religious traditions. 7.the concept of evil. 8.poetry after Auschwitz. Rubric 2: Aspects of twentieth century world history Lead Instructor: Dilip Simeon This survey aims to introduce the formative political issues of the 20th century, with a focus on basic facts as well as perspective. It will begin with a session on the significance of history fromthe standpoint of human evolution. An argument will be developed, to the effect that the crises of the 20th century represent a turning point of immense magnitude, with serious implications for human survival. Analytical interests will include the history of the international labour movement, democracy and social democracy; the Great War, the new world order and the rise of nationalism; the global impact of the Bolshevik revolution; the emergence and significance of fascism; the Second World War, the Cold War and its long-term effects; the Vietnam war and its impact, theglobal political crisis of 1968; the origins of the Palestine/ Israel conflict, and the history of international peace movements. Rubric 3: Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence Lead Instructors: Urvashi Butalia This module aims to provide an understanding of the changing nature of wars and conflicts the world over. More specifically, it looks at the increasingly complex ways in which the gendered impact of violent conflict plays itself out in the lives of men and women. It looks particularly at women as actors, agents, victims, perpetrators and at the many other roles that lie in between these definitions. It examines the economic, political, cultural and historical contexts in which conflicts are taking place the world over, and at the different ways, in terms of treaties, convenants, international courts, tribunals, peace agreements that are being used to 'settle' conflicts. How far do these take account of the specific needs of women? Further, it contrasts these with the more 'informal' attempts of women's groups to work towards peace, asking why these go unnoticed, particuarly when they are the ones that attempt to address the long standing impact of conflict and political violence in people's lives. Rubric 4: Capitalism, late capitalism and concepts of conflict.. Lead Instructor: Jairus Banaji This rubric will engage with conflict issues through a series of seminal texts. These are: 1) Karl Marx's Capital 2) Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason 3) Duncan Kennedy's Critique of Adjudication 4) Arthur Rosenberg's Fascism as a mass movement 5) Steinfeld's Coercion, Contract and Free Labor The instructor and his guest lecturers will also examine the following: Business and regulation in India: finance capital in the late twentieth century; the Indian corporate sector in perspective; liberalisation, corporate lobbies & government/business 'partnership' in the 1990s; the theory of 'regulatory capture' (business control of regulation) and its relevance to the SEBI code of corporate governance and the Takeover Code; public policy and the abstentionism of the left. Labour standards, the WTO and women workers Nationalism, genocide and the alternatives Organising workers: lessons from the past, perspectives for the future Further comments: Marx's capital: a rapid resume of all three volumes of Capital, mapping and explaining the basic concepts, including issues of 'method'; also an excursus on the history of capitalism (based largely on my paper 'Islam, the Mediterranean and the rise of capitalism', which is available on the net); Free/unfree labour: a valid dichotomy? (= 5) is based partly on Steinfeld and partly on my paper 'The fictions of free labour' in Historical Materialism vol. 11, no. 3. Rubric 5 : Issues in the Contemporary History of India and South Asia Lead Instructor: Sumit Sarkar The rubric will cover conflict issues in 20th century India and South Asia, including independent Indian society and polity. The following sessions are envisaged: The `hardening' of identities in late-colonial and postcolonial India .. Alternative approaches to conflict in 20th century India . The making of Indian democracy. Communal politics in 20th century India : ideologies, organizations , practices . History, textbooks, Ayodhya . New social movements and the politics of development . Trends in Dalit and Tribal movements in Gujarat and Western India .. The genesis of conflict in Jammu and Kashmir . The course of conflict in India's North-East . The struggle for democracy in Pakistan and Bangladesh . Civil war, authoritarianism , and democratic movements in Sri Lanka and Burma Rubric 6: Human security, Citizenship and the Law Lead Instructor: Nandita Haksar Human security is endangered by the increasing number of conflicts responsible for growing violence, by both State and non-State agencies. It has been argued that the promotion of rule of law, human rights and good governance can play a major role in non-violent conflict resolution and violence mitigation. The rule of law in contrast to the rule of person is an ideal instrument for mediation and arbitration since it is consistent, fair, impartial and objective. This course will look at how the law defines citizenship. Do the human rights guaranteed to citizens adequately protect them from violations by the State? Further, we will examine how far the law of citizenship results in exclusion of many people living within State boundaries and thus making them especially vulnerable to State and non-state violence. We will also look at how far international human rights law can protect individuals from violations by the State as individuals rather than States become subjects of international law. Objective of the critical examination is to see how far the law can effectively resolve conflicts and how far it is instrument in generating conflicts. This rubric will examine the following issues: International human rights standard setting – problems and difficulties. Human rights and the Indian Constitution. Collective rights, individual citizenship and representative democracy Rights of non-citizens, refugees, migrants Human rights and the transformation of sovereignty Conflict between international human rights law and international trade laws Human rights in conflict resolution within the United Nations Human rights and conflict resolution in India About Aman: The Aman Public Charitable Trust was established in 2001 to render humanitarian assistance and training to vulnerable sections of Indian society, regardless of caste or creed, in particular those rendered invisible by conflict. The ongoing spiral of tension in South Asia has bred fear and distrust, and undermined democratic institutions. Aman believes that society's neglect of people marginalised by violent conflict will have unhealthy long-term consequences. We envisage a pro-active role for civil society in reducing conflict and mitigating its effects. In keeping with these aims, we have started a programme for comprehending and reducing conflict in India. Our sensitisation and legal-aid programmes aim at strengthening social institutions and resources for non-violent conflict resolution. Our educational work (of which this course is a part), is intended to develop and disseminate inter-disciplinary approaches to conflict. The course has been made possible by grants given to Aman by Oxfam (India) Trust and the Ford Foundation. Please ask for more information on the Aman Trust and the Peace Course from our office, via e-mail, or ordinary mail. Address correspondence to: Hassath c/o The Aman Trust D- 504, Nagarjuna Apartments, Noida Road, New Delhi – 110096 E-mail: peacecourse at amanpanchayat.org _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From jeebesh at sarai.net Sat Jul 31 15:25:05 2004 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 15:25:05 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Call for Papers :: Contested Commons/Trespassing Publics Message-ID: <410B6C79.7050806@sarai.net> *Call for Papers * *Contested Commons/Trespassing Publics :: * A Conference on Inequalities, Conflicts and Intellectual Property 6th - 8th January 2005 in New Delhi, India. The past few years have seen conflicts over the regulation of information; knowledge and cultural materials increase in intensity and scope. This conflict has widened to include new geographical spaces, particularly China, India, South Africa and Brazil. Moreover, a range of new problems, including the expansion of intellectual property protection to almost all spheres of our social life, has intensified the nature of the conflict. It is important to recognize that the nature of the conflict gets configured differently as we move from the United States and Europe to social landscapes marked by sharp inequalities in Asia, Latin America and Africa. In the light of these transformations, we would like to revisit earlier discussions on creativity, innovation, authorship, and the making of property. Is it possible to draw comparative registers between earlier histories of violence and dispossession that accompanied the making of property, and the current turbulence around intellectual property on world scale? In this conference, we would like to push comparative discussions between earlier and contemporary moments of dispossession and criminalisation, between the open source movement and discussions on traditional knowledge and biodiversity. We would also like to build a dialogue between different moments in media history: print, film, music and the new media, so as to prise open questions around culture, circulation and property. This conference aspires to interrogate the philosophical persuasions, cultural dynamics, political economy and legal grids that constitute the contemporary consensus. This cross-disciplinary conference will bring together people from different areas of study: law, history, sociology, literature, anthropology, development and cultural studies, film and media studies. The conference is organised by Sarai (www.sarai.net), a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, and the Alternative Law Forum (ALF), Bangalore. Sarai's research programme focuses on urban culture and the media, while ALF is a collective of critical legal researchers and practitioners based in Bangalore. Sarai and ALF have been collaborating on research and practice in the domain of 'Knowledge and Culture Commons' over the last two years. Abstracts of three hundred words (300) are invited. The abstracts may address anyone of the above themes. We will support travel and board of all selected participants resident in the South. Last date for submission of abstracts is the 15th of September 2004 Please mail your abstracts to -------------- Conference Editors: >From Sarai/CSDS: Jeebesh Bagchi, Ravi Sundaram >From ALF: Lawrence Liang, Sudhir Krishnaswamy -------------------------- Sarai Center for Study of Developing Studies (CSDS) 29, Rajpur Road Delhi 110054, India Ph: 91 11 23960040 Fax: 91 11 23943450 Email: Alternative Law Forum (ALF) 122/4 Infantry Road, Bangalore 560 001, Karnataka Phone: 91 80 22865757 Email: --------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040731/e0fb0674/attachment.html From shivamvij at gmail.com Sat Jul 31 16:31:26 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 16:31:26 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Links: War on Terrorism Message-ID: http://www.socialcritic.org/terror.htm -- I poured reason in two wine glasses Raised one above my head And poured it into my life From shivamvij at gmail.com Sat Jul 31 16:25:06 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 16:25:06 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Build a better Bush Message-ID: Build a better Bush: http://homepage.mac.com/krousen/Bush%20site/index.html -- I poured reason in two wine glasses Raised one above my head And poured it into my life